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Embedded Facilitation
The facilitator participates authentically while tracking both the game system and the human system.
Inside the Shared Game
They hold cards, make choices, compete or cooperate, manage resources, and live the same constraints as participants. They are not a clipboard observer.
Two channels:
- Game channel: rules, resources, strategy, timing, current board state.
- Human channel: participation, regulation, power, emotion, avoidance, repair, alliances, silence, over-functioning, exclusion, emerging opportunity.
Ethical maxim: Shape the encounter, not the person.
Intervention Intensity (Descriptive)
Use as a shared vocabulary for how much the facilitator shapes conditions. This is not a prescription to escalate, and it is not clinical advice from a webpage.
- Level 0: Presence
- Level 1: Modeling
- Level 2: Invitation
- Level 3: Structural Nudge
- Level 4: Process Pause
- Level 5: Explicit Processing
- Host generally lives at 0 to 3 (simple Level 4 only).
- Coach commonly 0 to 4; Level 5 only for nonclinical skill transfer.
- Therapist may use the full ladder with clinical judgment, consent, treatment relevance, and documentation.
Stop when the material exceeds your role. Leaders & Facilitators stay in Host-safe intensity.
Reflection Spine (Optional)
During and after play, the public reflection spine remains Empty → Sort → See → Act. See stays observation, not a verdict. Act keeps judgment with the participants and the practitioner's scope.
What It Looks Like in a Game
From the Lead step of the free Hanabi guide preview: planned pauses happen between turns, never during a clue or card action. Players may talk about the process of communication without revealing hidden cards. Then the table resumes standard play without extra information, and the facilitator keeps a neutral face.
That is a Level 4 Process Pause done in a Host-safe way: short, about the process, and back to the game. Every game in the Game Library has a Lead step like this.