ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the basic relational attributes that help to establish the therapeutic relationship and describes the responding and communication skills and advanced group facilitation skills. Group facilitation has two levels, individual and group, and two components, art and science. The chapter also focuses on empathic responding and identifying and repairing empathic failures. Empathic failures can be especially important in the group, since group members very often are sharing something personal, sensitive, and meaningful for them. Group-level skills are instrumental to expand and enhance growth and development for the group and for individual group members. These are group leader skills that are not usually inherent but must be learned. Some are fairly easy to learn, such as giving encouragement and support, but most are more difficult, such as linking and blocking. Basic skills include active listening and responding, appropriate questioning, a focus on personal experiencing of members, encouraging direct responses among members, redirecting, and reframing.
