12-Step Meeting

I attended an AA Meeting that was an open book club meeting. During this meeting, the role of the facilitator was a bit unconventional. It would have been more of an advisory type of role. He let the members of the group have most of the control when it came to discussions, and this was a very informal type of meeting. This was very apparent when the group would turn to more of an open discussion style during the meeting where there was little to no direction from the leader other than offering up a question and occasionally sharing insight on what was being said. We even spoke to the leader after the meeting about his role, and he mentioned that he approached this meeting very different than he would a closed meeting. In a closed meeting, he is acting as more of a structured facilitative leader. He will try to steer frequent talkers away from over-sharing during a meeting, and play a more active role in taking charge of the group. In the closed groups, the members are meant to learn something from the experience through discussions and they play an active role in making choices related to the group. During this meeting, the facilitator encouraged participation by sharing his own insight. It was brought up during the meeting, that it is easier to share and help other people who have been in a similar situation. For him, he pulls on and shares his experiences with alcohol and going through AA to relate members in the group. The environment was a room in a church with about 30 chairs. There were around 10 members present, and because of the abundance of chairs, people were randomly spread about with some people choosing to sit alone and others sitting in groups of up to 3 people next to each other. Because of this, there really was a more sporadic and random sharing order. I think that the session was therapeutic for the participants. I believe that the group was a mature group because the leader was able to be flexible in the roles that he took on even to the point where leadership was shared a bit with people who acted as the group treasurer and secretary. This was more of a social support group because the participants were peers that shared  similar stories. They did not necessarily provide solutions to the problems that were being shared, but more so supported each other and spoke to their shared experiences. There was also a good balance between the task of asking questions based on the content from the book that was being covered and the leader addressing the various needs of the group members present.