When an organization is divided, the temptation is to push for a quick agreement, to get everyone to “move on” and get back to business, but forced alignment doesn’t hold. Regardless of whether I’ve been working with a team, a board, or in an international context with the United Nations or the Red Cross, the same principle applies: people will work towards an outcome they helped shape, and quietly undermine or outright oppose one imposed on them.
Real alignment comes from a process people trust, especially when the issues are sensitive.
Why sensitive issues get avoided, and why that’s costly
The hardest issues, such as a power imbalance, a history of mistrust, and a tension everyone feels but no one names, are the ones that get talked around. Avoidance feels safer in the moment, but the issues don’t disappear; they go underground and resurface as disengagement, turnover, or conflict that appears to be about something else. Carefully naming the real issue is usually the key.
For example, when I facilitated a session to assist a non-profit organization in creating a new vision statement to realign their work, the group became bogged down. They couldn’t agree on the values the statement should reflect. When I asked them to discuss what was causing them to get stuck, one person noted that this was the first time they were collaborating on something positive and future-focused, and that it felt foreign. Fighting was easier than a collaborative dialogue. By naming the tension in the room, the group shifted into a self-reflective discussion about their behaviour with one another. They were then able to create a Vision Statement together that reflected their commitment to maximizing their future teamwork.
Designing a process for honest dialogue
A divided group will not find its path to improvement through any ordinary meeting. It needs a process deliberately designed for the situation. In practice, that means:
- Clarifying what the group requires to be aligned: a decision, a shared understanding, a repaired relationship, or all three.
- Creating conditions for candour, so people can say what’s true without escalating or fearing reprisal.
- Managing the emotional charge so the conversation stays on the issues, not the personalities.
- Building toward outcomes people can stand behind, not a vote half the room resents.
- Creating a customized step-by-step facilitation process, because no two facilitations call for the same process.
I facilitated a session with senior leaders from a variety of organizations that provided learning support to at-risk youth. Changes to the government funding model were expected to result in a 50% budget reduction across the board for the coming year. The situation was clear, they could refuse to collaborate and try to fight for the biggest slice of the pie, creating “winners” and “losers”, or refuse to accept the new reality and hope the government was bluffing. Of course, emotions were running high.
The facilitation allowed the group first to determine their shared purpose, enabling alignment before assessing for solutions. I then led the group in co-creating norms for engagement that would be used throughout the facilitation. The group explicitly assigned roles such as “flag raiser” and “reality-tester” and established a process for decision-making. The group further decided that throughout the decision-making process, they would make space to honour their programs’ history and keep students’ needs at the centre. Starting the process by focusing on shared purpose and what engagement throughout the facilitation would look like clarified where the group needed to be aligned, created conditions for candour, reduced emotionality, and built solutions the group could stand behind. This is the heart of facilitation: an objective third party creating and holding a structured, customized process to manage dynamics so that the group can do the hard work safely.
What Facilitation Creates
Facilitation is not just another meeting. It’s a planned dialogue with steps that help a group make difficult decisions without emotions ruling the day. Facilitation’s main aim is to create alignment within a team, department, or organization. When this alignment occurs, the following happens:
- Groups focus on three parts of every facilitation: content, process, and relationships.
- Groups learn to leverage conflict into productive dialogue. When conflict is handled well, group members know that it is a natural, normal, and even necessary part of group work. Conflict does not derail the group’s purpose or functioning. The group uses conflict, when it arises, as a source of learning, creativity, and broader perspectives.
- The group develops a shared understanding of its purpose, priorities, and relationships.
- Alignment fosters professional behaviours and increased meaning-making, versus problematic group behaviours and assumptions.
- Trust increases.
- Roles, responsibilities, shared direction, expectations, and decision-making become clearer.
- Commitment to the group increases.
- Accountability and collective responsibility take centre stage.
- A shared direction emerges.
In the facilitation I described above, I designed a process that led the group to attend to content, process, and emotion naturally:
Content: Plans for Alignment
- The group named the core problem it needed to solve in one sentence: How to sustain educational programming for at-risk students within a drastically reduced budget? This starting point created a shared purpose, rather than participants fighting for their own solutions or turf.
- Facilitation surfaced a shared “aspirational vision” for the future model (personalized, holistic, relationship-based, self-paced) before anyone was asked to solve the funding puzzle, so realignment started with purpose, not cuts.
- Participants mapped out roles and responsibilities, turning a vague “who’s in charge of this” into an explicit division of labour.
- Naming the tensions directly, such as the desired model may be financially unsustainable, gave the group a concrete design constraint to work with in later sessions, rather than an unspoken elephant in the room.
Process: Inclusive and Comprehensive
- All central players were brought in, either at the table or through structured consultation between sessions. Decisions were not made by senior leadership alone and then announced. This ensured those who had to implement the decisions were also aligned, as they participated in decision-making.
- The group co-created its own working agreements (norms) at the outset, rather than having ground rules imposed, which gave people ownership over how they’d treat each other under pressure.
- Time was deliberately set aside to describe who the learners were and what they needed before jumping to structural or budget solutions. By keeping the people most affected (students) at the centre of the process, it kept the process from becoming purely administrative.
- A defined cadence (four meetings over two months) gave the group room to work through anger and disagreement in stages, rather than forcing consensus in a single high-stakes session.
Relationship: Feeling Respected and Valued
- The norms generated by the group itself included “trusted and valued,” “level playing field,” “quality listening,” and “open and honest without judgement”. This allowed participants to voice aloud the conditions they needed to feel safe raising hard truths.
- Explicitly assigning roles like “flag raiser,” “reality-tester,” and “voice of objective reality” gave even the toughest or most dissenting input a legitimate, expected place in the process, rather than treating pushback as disruption.
- The facilitation made space to “pay homage to the history and contribution” of the existing programs before discussing dismantling. This was a small but deliberate move to honour the people whose work was under threat.
- Front-line staff and support staff were positioned not just as implementers but as “front line problem definers” and “creative brainstormers”, thus signalling that their perspective mattered as much as senior leadership’s.
The success of this facilitation was based on a well-thought-out, measured process that allowed participants to take a holistic approach to a significant issue.
Frequently asked questions
When people feel pushed toward an outcome, they may comply in the moment, but they are less likely to understand, accept, or sustain the solution. The underlying issues often remain unresolved because the process has not created enough space for people to name their concerns, test assumptions, understand competing perspectives, or develop shared ownership over the path forward. Sustainable outcomes are more likely to emerge when participants have had a fair opportunity to be heard, understand the reasons for the decision, and see how their input shaped the final direction.
Yes, but carefully and through a structured process. Avoided issues don’t disappear; they resurface as disengagement, turnover, or displaced conflict.
When a group is divided, the topic is charged, or the leader is too close to the issue to run the conversation neutrally, an objective facilitator and a designed process are what move it forward.
Bring a divided group back together.
If your organization is stuck on a sensitive issue, an objective, carefully designed process is usually the way through. We can help you build one.
Contact Turning Point Resolutions · explore our facilitation and assessment services.
Related reading: Facilitating groups through conflict to consensus · When conflict won’t resolve: workplace assessments
About the author
Kent Highnam is a Senior Practitioner with Turning Point Resolutions Inc. and Dean of the School of Health, Community and Social Justice at the Justice Institute of British Columbia, where he also teaches at the Centre for Conflict Resolution. He holds a Master’s degree in International Relations, has worked internationally with the United Nations and the International Red Cross, and is fluent in English and French. He is valued for his thoughtful approach to assessment, mediation, facilitation, and sensitive-issue navigation.