Facilitation Stories

Facilitation: the art of enabling a group of people to achieve a common goal. IAF England Wales brings you a show by facilitators, for facilitators and anyone interested in using facilitation for change. We'll share guest stories, experiences and methods. Plus, we'll bring you up to date on what's happening at our Meetups.

FS 77 Facilitation in the Agile Space with Farah Egby and Çiğdem Saka Jackson 05/20/2025

FS 76 Chapter Chat with Andrew Spiteri EME Regional Director 03/25/2025

FS 76 Chapter Chat with Andrew Spiteri EME Regional Director In this episode Helene talks to Andrew Spiteri, Regional Director of the IAF Europe and Middle East Region. Andrew tells Helene about himself as a facilitator, the kind of work he does and his background with IAF. He became regional director at the start of the year and shares a bit about the work he has been involved in so far, his roles and responsibilities as director, and what he would like to see in future for the region and beyond. He tells us about the regional conference in Romania in November 2025 and about what he most loves about facilitation. You can contact Andrew at: And Helene at To contact the podcast team: Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcasts brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. I'm Helene Jewell, and this episode is one of our quarterly chapter chats, where we talk to people leading other chapters in the IAF global community. We ask them how they see the status of facilitation where they are, and the history priorities, current projects and aspirations for their chapter. My guest today is Andrew Spiteri, IAF endorsed facilitator, consultant and elected Regional Director for the Europe and Middle East, EME region of the IAF for 2025-26. Andrew accompanies diverse groups, associations, entities, NGOs and also faith based organizations, and also often works in international settings, helping groups in collaboratively formulating vision, strategy and action planning activities. Andrew comes from Malta, is a resident in Brussels, and is in Italy for long stretches during the year. Welcome Andrew. A.S Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. H.J Every time I speak to you, you're globe trotting somewhere. A.S That's right. Yeah, that's right. H.J So tell us a little bit about you as a facilitator, and the kind of work that you do? A.S That's, it's always difficult because to start, because it's, it's so fascinating facilitation. And I think I was doing facilitation for many years without actually knowing it was facilitation. So I love to help groups work together, and what I really love is to give space to each and every person, because to manage to help that everyone contributes. Because I really believe everyone, even those who are apparently not well prepared, well suited or appear to be like a lot of the time. But I think everyone has a gift to gift and facing that challenge of helping take away all what, what blocks this, this, this participation, and creating climate where people can collaborate is really something I love, and so that's what I try to do in my facilitation. I work a lot with groups, associations, sometimes even with companies, but I would prefer normally NGOs or even associations, which could be very small or very big, international, with all the challenges of culture differences and cultural differences and even age differences. So, yeah, that's a bit what I'd like to do, and what I do usually. H.J Brilliant. And I think that thing about doing facilitation, before you know, it's called facilitation, is definitely a common theme, certainly, I think, back on all the podcasts we've recorded, and I think that's one thing that comes out in nearly all of them, fascinating. Okay, and so very international. What language do you facilitate in? Mostly, is it English? A.S Yeah, basically it's English. Not only, I know English, Italian, Maltese, evidently. So sometimes I do it in Italian. It depends on the group. I've just come from, Vienna. I had five sessions, very intense, and basically they were all in English. I had simultaneous translation in German. Most Viennese understand very well, and even speak English quite well. So it depends on the context, on the place, on the client, let's say, on how you organize. Yeah. H.J Wow. Sounds like you have a very diverse practice, which must be completely fascinating. A.S I remember once I was, like, two years ago, I was in Poland, and so this organization, sort of, they were, they knew a lot of Italian more than English. So I had two headphones, sort of from one headphone I would speak, a headphone with a microphone, and I would speak in English, sorry, in Italian. And they would they would hear me and translate in Polish. And from the other headphone, I would hear what the other people were saying in Polish translated into Italian. So it was like good, yeah. H.J Wow, that's the ultimate in a simultaneous translation. Blimey. Okay, so I should add multi-talented linguist to your list of skills, by the sounds of things. So I'd like to know a bit more about you know IAF and I know you've been involved for quite a while, so when did you become a member of IAF? A.S So that, yeah, yeah, it will go back to what you were saying before that for many years, or for many for some time, most of us actually don't know we're doing facilitation. Probably it's because facilitation is so new and even so not known so much. So I found myself in Italy for a long time helping organize big events, but not just the logistical part, but especially the content part, not the content in the sense of Creating Content content, but in helping like the group using their content to work together. And I was continually searching for, I was sure there was some sort of thing, some organization, some shared knowledge on this. And then when, finally, in 2018 I moved to Brussels, I got to know about the IAF Belgian chapter, and I was really excited. They have, they have, and it's still ongoing, a monthly meetup in Belgium. And it's, uh, being so particular in Belgium because, especially Brussels, because it's a real international city, because of all the institutions, NATO and the EU and 10s of 1000s of people who basically speak English as a common language. So the IAF chapter does all its things in English. And I started frequenting that. And I remember I never missed a meeting. It was like so important. And then in 2019 there was the Milan Conference. And so it was set then from then onwards, I nearly immediately became a member and and prompted onwards. It's history. It's sort of, it went on now. H.J Once you start finding out about all these things that go on within IAF and the wider community, you sort of slowly become more and more involved. Nice. And I realize, although I'm going to ask you in a bit about your role as regional director, I'm not actually sure, are you part of a particular chapter, given that you sort of, you're a little bit of a nomad. You move around quite a lot. A.S Yeah, actually, I still am part of the Belgian chapter. Actually, I got elected together with others on the IAF the Belgium board, so I'm a member in absentia, because, I mean, I know they meet regularly. I don't have lots of time, but I do give them all the support needed, like all the others, actually, but I have a soft spot for Belgium, I must confess, evidently, yeah, so, so that's, that's what I do. H.J Great. So officially, part of IAF Belgium. And what kinds of things have you been involved with? So obviously, you've been going, you know, you started going to the meetups in Belgium, and it sounds like you went to the Milan Conference. What else have you been involved in, either as a participant or part of organizing? A.S So, so yeah, these official meetings. I mean, the Belgian reality is quite interesting, because the meetups are like, there are two or three different types. Like the basic is where there is someone who specialized in some methodology or something he's been doing, or she's been doing for many years, and they hold a session where they share all their knowledge. And another type of session would be where there's someone who's learning, maybe a new method, and would create a safe space, where they use us as guinea pigs, sort of and, and then at the end there's also, there's always a debrief. And then the in both of these, it's so interesting, because you get to widen your knowledge of how to help groups with facilitation, yeah. Another point I forgot to mention, in my activities, I am finding myself staying quiet for long stretches in Italy, because most, some, most of my clients, are in Italy, actually. And the Italian chapter, I'm very much in contact with them. I know them, most of them, personally. They've just had this Friday and Saturday, their annual conference. It was a real big success. I had a work in Vienna, so I couldn't go there. But last year I went. It's always a really interesting event. So they don't hold monthly meetings. But for example, I got to know there is a group in Padova, in Padua, which meets every two months. They call it Facilitator Playground for one morning, and they do many the same as we do in Belgium. So every time I can, I go up and stay with them and support them, participate. So yeah, it's giving this back up is really essential. Because in these meetings, you find big community building between facilitators. You find a pool of learning with shared knowledge between facilitators and you and encourage each other, you get to know, maybe you get to know, people with whom you could actually work later on. But on the whole, you become friends with others, and I think that's a real big it's something. It's not nothing. It's a when we help each other, and you get to know differences, which can become a gift, because you widen your your personality, your knowledge, your approach to things, yeah. H.J Yeah I really love that about the IAF and just the sort of wider community as well, hanging out with other people that really love to talk about facilitation and, and all its kind of broad, you know, broad aspects, different aspects of it, and, and, yeah, you're right. You sort of, you do start to make friends and start to build up those relationships, and it's really nice. And I think, well, I guess for you, particularly, working across different countries, actually, you get to sort of have a foot in a couple of different camps, which must be nice, so true. And I really like the idea of the I think I've heard them called, like, Facilitation Labs, that kind of thing, where you talked about, with Belgium, you bring a sort of something to try out with the group. That sounds really interesting as well. A.S It's because we're all in different phases of our professional life. There are those who maybe are already quite expert in some some methodologies, and have had many experiences, you know? I mean, one thing which really strikes me about facilitation is that often we describe it as an art and a science. And I think with these things, we do exactly that, and we learn that. So science is quite precise, and you need to get to know precise things. And there are aspects of facilitation which are very functional, very specific. But it's also an art, and an art you cannot foresee it. You you do it only by experience. You can learn by experience because you never, you cannot say, okay, there will be 10 people, and I will do this, this and that. There are always so many variables and unforeseen things. And how do you respond to that? So experience helps, sharing experience helps as well, and training in this thing is really important, H.J Definitely. I think that's one of the things I love about it. You're never quite sure what's going to happen, and I know that terrifies some people. Okay, so I want to ask you now a bit more about your, the fact you are the director of the Europe and Middle East region, and I think you started, or you stepped into that role at the beginning of the year. I just wanted to know what, what that entails, what are your main responsibilities? A.S Okay, I'm still trying to find out. I mean, we're still in the end of March, so just the first quarter. First thing, I'm still alive, so that's quite something. I find there are two faces of this responsibility, of the service. So one aspect is like the grassroots, sort of helping all those facilitators in our region in any way possible where they need help, evidently, but help is such a big word, and it has so many different possibilities and connotations, so this would be one aspect. And the other aspect is representing all these facilitators in our region with their wide diversity, I think we're one of the, not the, but definitely one of the most diverse regions and all of IAF and so representing them on the wider world context, where we meet as a board, as a global board where we set directions for IAF globally. And in this sense, bringing this specific characteristic, which is ours as a gift to the rest of IAF, and also learning and and receiving the gift of the others and their cultures, their ways of approaching things, and sharing and and, and trying to bridge that with IAF regionally. I think it's, it's a very interesting experience. Yeah, these two aspects. H.J And quite challenging, probably as well. Because, I guess when I think about it, we are a very diverse region. I mean, you know, Europe and Middle East in itself is a mixture of quite a lot of different countries and cultures. So that must have a few challenges as well, I presume? A.S Oh, definitely, definitely yeah. For example, soon we're going to have Facilitation week now, and evidently, finding a slot during the year where that could be ideal is not, is not so simple, because we have so different, how do you say, cycles, different cultures and then the holidays and weathers and things which are which characterize then our actions and and how we organize ourselves as societies. And for example, in Europe, or if you say we're going to hold something in August, people would say, Oh, forget it. I mean, it's a non-starter, but if you do that in India, it could be probably quite good, or in other parts of the world. So when we meet as globally, like even when we meet regionally, actually, we're really challenged to live by what we preach and be good facilitators so that we find consensus and try to understand better what is the best solution by hearing each other well. H.J Yeah that's really interesting, sort of practicing what we preach, I suppose, and living that experience of being part of that sort of quite diverse group, and perhaps that helps us think about, you know, groups that we're actually working with, hadn't thought of it like that. So it's March, and you've only just really started the role. Is there anything particularly significant that you've been involved in so far, or is it still very much Finding your Feet? A.S No, definitely. One very significant and very important thing which I've been involved in is the annual face to face board meeting which the global board does. So we usually meet on Zoom. Previously, it was once a month. Now we've decided to do that once every quarter, and there are other meetings as well. So it's not that just once every quarter, for example, very soon we'll have this, we call it The Big We, where we as a global board, meet with many other people who are normally quite involved at a local level in bringing about and helping facilitation worldwide. So it's not just four times a year we meet. But usually all these meetings are on Zoom. So having a global face to face meeting is so important because, evidently, meeting face to face, it has its own characteristics. You cannot equate it to a Zoom meeting. Both are good, but they have differences. And so it's so nice to actually physically meet those people with whom you work with and get to know them. Get to know them much closer. Get to know what they like, how they go about, what are their characteristics, what they like, what are their challenges and together, maybe find out how we can dialogue and bring about, help each other in those challenges. Yeah, it was, we've just had this three weeks ago in Lisbon for basically three days, and it was so enriching. So personally and even as a group, I would believe, from what I heard afterwards, very, very enriching. H.J And that's the global board, and so presumably attended by regional directors from other regions as well. Who was there? A.S Yeah, definitely. So we had one type of member would be the regional director. So apart from myself from Europe and Middle East, there was one from Asia, who's actually from India right now, but it's such an enormous region, and actually we dream of eventually trying to find a solution, like creating more regions out of that region, because it's like half of the world. But anyway, myself and the Asian representative, a representative from Oceania, a representative from Africa, Central and South America, and then the North America. And then, apart from these regional directors, there was the executive committee. So that would be the chair, and the Vice Chair, where the Vice Chair actually is currently, is our ex Regional Director, Tamara, most of you know her. We had a representation of the executive administration, because we're based right now in Canada as an office. And then we had some directors for specific competencies, like, for example, we have one for learning and all the certifications, one for big events and activities, one for communications and one for member experience. So, so we're, we're quite, quite a group, and but it's, it's really interesting, because you learn a lot from each other. H.J Yeah, and it's really, really good to kind of hear or get a bit of a flavor of what that global boards and what IAF at a global level actually looks a bit more like as well, because obviously we perhaps focus on our chapters or even our region, but we are part of that much larger organization as well. So aside from that place in the global board, we also, and I say we because I am also on the Europe and Middle East leadership team. We had a face to face get together in Istanbul in November, didn't we? And that was us creating an action plan. So I guess that's the sort of, perhaps other side, or one of the other sides of your role is leading the leadership team. A.S Yeah, and that's, that's very nice, because we as a region are organized with this. So normally we're organized at chapter level. So in a nation or a space, a geographical area, 5-10 members put themselves together and create a chapter, and they help each other. They do some training activities, some social activities, some learning activities, as I was saying. And normally, we meet regularly, once a month, with all the chapter leads from all the region. And it's very enriching. Some can come, sometimes some can come another time, but it's always really enriching. Now to help these persons, to help all our members, we created some years ago, a leadership team, sort of some members who have experience and who can help the regional director. So with the regional director, there is this team, and my experience before and even now, is that we really work together and try to find out solutions, try to understand what's happening where there is necessity of health, and how to promote as much as possible, even outside the the idea of of the practice of facilitation. So like two things, helping those who are already members, and helping spread the notion, the idea of facilitation. H.J It's a really nice group to be part of as well. For me, who tends to mostly stay in the UK, it's nice to be part of such an international group. And I'm surprised you have time to do any work. A.S Even I H.J So thinking, thinking forwards about, you know,... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/35856080

FS 75 Race Ahead for Facilitators with Bianca Jones, Cat Duncan-Rees and Paul Brand 02/18/2025

FS 75 Race Ahead for Facilitators with Bianca Jones, Cat Duncan-Rees and Paul Brand In this episode Helene talks to Bianca Jones - Award Winning Mental Health & Anti-Racism Training Provider, MHFA England Associate and Founder & Managing Director of EDP Training, Paul Brand- Facilitator and Management Consultant, Director at Risk Solutions and IAF England and Wales board member and Cat Duncan-Rees- Facilitator and founder of Curators of Change and also an IAF England and Wales board member. She starts by asking Bianca to talk a bit about the work she does and what led her to develop EDP and the Race Ahead training She asks Cat and Paul about what led the IAF England and Wales Leadership Team to ask Bianca to deliver this training course online in October and about their key takeaways. Cat and Paul talk about the RA4F special thread at the IAF England and Wales conference Facilitate 2025 this year and where the idea came from? Bianca shares some examples of specific impact or changes she's seen in a facilitator’s approach after attending Race Ahead Bianca gives some more details her session at the conference and the training course she is offering the day before. All the guests then talk about why a focus around racial equality at the conference is important and why active race awareness matters in facilitation and what anti-racism might look like for facilitators. The guests also talk about their hopes for longer term initiatives in teh facilitation communicty around anti-racism. To : To To contact Bianca - [email protected] To contact Cat - [email protected] To contact Paul - To contact Helene: To contact the conference team: Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helene Jewell, and today we're going to be talking to Bianca Jones, Cat Duncan-Rees and Paul Brand. Bianca is an award winning mental health and anti racism training provider, MHFA England associate and founder and managing director of EDP training. Paul is a facilitator and management consultant, Director at Risk Solutions and IAF England and Wales board member and Cat is also a facilitator, founder of curators of change, and also an IAF England and Wales board member. Welcome everybody. So nice to see you all. Okay, so we've got a little bit of introductory stuff out of the way. I am going to dive in with my questions, and my first one is to you, Bianca, tell us all. Tell us about the work that you do. B.J Oh, thank you so much. So I am Bianca Jones. I run a company based in Bristol called EDP training, which stands for Empower developed people, although we deliver training all over. We are eight years old, and we started by delivering Mental Health First Aid training. I retrained with Mental Health First Aid England, and through my work, I saw that there was massive inequalities in the workplace with black and brown people or racially minoritized individuals is the language that I will use, and I wanted to do something about it. So I started pulling together the race ahead suite of courses all around race, equity and allyship, to help people really understand what they're being an ally to. And that's been since 2020. We've been delivering our race ahead suite of anti racism and allyship courses . H.J Great, and what kind of people come to these race ahead training courses? B.J So first of all, anybody can sign up, because we have digital options as well, and anybody who's interested in kind of racial inequality. But we started focusing at corporate organisations, so mainly businesses, but I work with so many different types of organisations, small organisations to really, really large you know, with over 500 people, we work with charities as well, nonprofits, and we have lots of different options for if it's just an individual that wants to do some training, they can access our digital self-led options. And then we also have a train the trainer, because other trainers wanted to be able to train in this course and be able to deliver it as well. So we started that in 2022 in September, I believe. So we've currently got 15 other instructors out there that are delivering the race ahead suite of courses as well, but we tried to have lots of different options to make it accessible for anyone that wants to learn about this very important and vital subject. H.J Wow. So it's not just you. In fact, there's quite a large group of you then. B.J Absolutely taking over, spreading the message with the mission of race equity and allyship. H.J Fantastic. Okay, and I've met you before, along with some of the IAF leadership team, because you delivered your race ahead training course to us, didn't you? And so I'm going to turn to Kat and Paul now to just remind us, or remind me, and let everybody else know how this came about. How did the IAF leadership team come to engage Bianca and be participants in her training course? P.B We started having a conversation about a number of things to do with racial discrimination and minoritization out of the back of our two most recent conferences. And we were looking at a whole range of stuff about, you know, how racially balanced was our actual community? How comfortable were people from different backgrounds in that community? And we had some conversations, you know, because not everybody was entirely comfortable. And people had some experiences they thought, well, that could have been a lot better. And really, we started to think about whether we should have some kind of initiative across our community of IAF England and Wales and friends, that we could invite people to join, to do some self work in this area. Think about how it affects our work as facilitators. And we thought that the first step we should take was as a leadership team, or at least parts of the leadership team actually engaged with that ourselves, and we had a contact who knew Bianca. And so about eight of us had two or half day online sessions with you, and started to think about that as the kernel of something we might spread more widely, and I think we'll talk about later in the podcast. So yeah, but very much the sense of, well, we had to start with us before we start thinking of leading something with other people. H.J And Cat I know you were involved in a lot of the conversations that led up to this, and for you, I think it was something that was very important that we did. Wonder if you could tell us a bit more about that and how we got to where we got to? C.D Yeah, absolutely, really important Helen. I think for me, just picking up on what Paul sort of said around the conference, I think this first really started to come to light post COVID I think it's important to say when we started to bring people together. So there's a heightened awareness anyway, coming out of that post COVID period, and the world is looking and feeling very, very different. And, you know, we did a hybrid conference in Birmingham few years ago, we went on to do another two in Birmingham. We've got conference coming up this year, but over the previous three conferences, there's been a steady kind of build up of us trying to diversify that community, invite people in to do some very different sessions to really push the boundaries in terms of what we mean by inclusion for the facilitator community. I think, as well, and maybe this is a whole other podcast in itself, that idea of neutrality and how can we as facilitators really genuinely stand for, stand alongside those who are from minoritized communities, Race being one of those minoritized communities. So some of the feedback from conference has been quite hard to digest. We know we haven't always got it right, but as Paul said, what we really want to do is start with ourselves as a leadership team and a board in order to be able to have the knowledge and the insights that we need to confidently be able to get alongside people who are coming into our spaces. I say our spaces, actually we want it to be, you know, their space, and for them to be really much a part of it. And how can we also challenge back in the broader facilitated community, because there is a huge lack of awareness. And I think that's something that's taken me a little bit by surprise, my own lack of awareness in that, not just the lack of awareness of other people, but as I'm growing in confidence and awareness of why this is so important, it's helping me to have the confidence to be able to challenge others. And I think that's where we're at now in terms of conference, and not just conference, actually, Paul will talk a little bit more about that. It's, you know, what we're committed to as a community over the next 12 months and beyond, in terms of really pushing that and diversifying things even further, and helping people to understand why this is so important, whatever spaces they're in. H.J And before we jump into talking a bit more about conference, actually, I just wanted to quickly ask both of you about your key takeaways from the training, because I know if I go back and think about part of the training there was a bit of an action plan at the end, and I go back and I think about all that. I think wow, there was a lot in there and for me personally, I learned so much. But I just wondered if I could ask each of you, maybe Cat first and then Paul, for a couple of your key takeaways from Bianca's training? C.D Yeah, I think my key takeaway was, one of them was, you know, really that commitment and willingness. In terms of a training session, you know, the people who came to those online sessions in themselves, or quite a diverse group of people in terms of gender, race, age, was notable as well and experience, you know, longevity as a facilitator, and how long people have been working in this space. And I think it was just brilliant to be in a space where people could be themselves, bring their questions and challenges and their lack of insight. And I say that for myself as well, and have a really open conversation. But I think the takeaway from that overall is how sensitively and how brilliantly Bianca supported us to do that and looked after her own well being in that. Because I think there's a fear for me of getting it wrong. But actually, you know, that's why we are where we are. I think I've been driven by that fear, personally, of getting it wrong, and therefore that drives you to a place of inaction, whereas actually, you know, and the other takeaway is that it's better just to do stuff, to jump in, be alongside. Yes, we are going to get it wrong, but actually it's better that we're going in and having those conversations and doing that than not acting at all. But having that awareness that Bianca brought to us has really, really helped with that. And you know, my commitment to that is to go down the route of, you know, continuing the training personally, and hopefully doing the train the trainer. H.J And Paul, a couple of key takeaways from you ? P.B The one that struck me very hard in the stuff Bianca did with us. And here I'm feeding partly off a similar conversation a few years ago with another Association I'm involved in and some of this became very familiar, is I am the archetypal un-minoritized person. I'm a middle aged, white, educated male, you know, I have, I have the sort of trifecta of advantages in life, in some sense. And it always strikes me in beginning, what Bianca said about just how hard work, general life can be if you are minoritized in any way. And we're talking particularly about race in this case, just because of the constant chipping away of places and language and society and expectations and things that people don't even quite realise they're doing in terms of, I mean, microaggressions is the thing we're talking about that have become so embedded in our language, in our society. But if you're on the other side of them, it's not that any one of them, you know, lays you out flat, it's the constant wear. And starting to get people more aware of, particularly people who, like myself, are not minoritized in any way or in largely way, of the fact that that is very real and very present for people is actually a huge step, I think, in starting to educate yourself. And it's no more complicated than the idea of putting yourself in the other person's shoes. And you know, how complicated is that? And yet many of us never have to, because it's not us who's suffering it. And I think also support what Cat was saying. I think a lot of people, whether they're dealing with race or any other minoritization, they become paralysed with the idea that, well, I don't, I don't know how to approach this, and they end up doing nothing. And I think there has to be a willingness in convening a space to talk and have this conversation that actually you're going to make a mistake at some point. In the sense that you're going to do something, and somebody of a different colour or minoritization is going to feel it, but it's better than doing nothing and so and just washing it back under the carpet of your life and saying, Well, you know, maybe I don't have to do anything about this. And so we get into this idea that, well, we need to start with us. We then need to think about the spaces we convene, and what we can do as IAF England and Wales to make those more inclusive, safer, more open to this kind of conversation. And then, of course, the third layer, which, of course, is the ultimate goal, is that the people from our community who come to our spaces to think about facilitation and development, that they go out into the world, and they are more able to not only be more sensitive to racial minoritization issues, but then also move on to in a number of different ways, actually becoming a force that acts against racial minoritization in the way they run their session. So that may be very overt, or it may be very subtle, just in terms of not letting things slide when they happen in a session. And maybe we'll talk about our ideas for that a bit later on. H.J Thank you. I just wanted to come back to Bianca, actually, and just obviously, you get a lot of feedback I'm sure, from all of your different training sessions that you do. How do Cat and Paul's comments and key takeaways stack up against what you normally hear? Is that the kind of thing you normally hear? Obviously, these are specific, perhaps to the facilitation community, but in general, what kind of feedback do you get? B.J The difference with this course, with the eight folks, was that you're all facilitators, you're working with groups. So the feedback was very much the confidence came out about people being able to challenge or having the language to challenge. And we go through a tool called the Four Ds, which is by a company called Pearn Kandola. So we go through, how to kind of challenge if we hear anything, and just more aware of being able to spot microaggressions. So that came through on the feedback is the confidence increase for people to actually action. So not just being passive, but actually going into action and feeling like actually they could pick up something in a group, and they could gently, maybe challenge someone to think about what they've just said, and actually noticing if somebody's being excluded or someone's being left out, and just having a little bit more awareness around the dynamics of race and racism, and how that can manifest and play out in a group. So there was more of that kind of feedback that came through from the group in October. It was nice to see, though, that I've seen a lot more action in this group, a lot more willingness and want for action. H.J That's interesting. Why do you think that is? just putting you on the spot there B.J Oh, I think it were, I think facilitation in itself, the group that we had, are probably more active than some other groups. I think the willingness and what happened over the two half days as we bonded as a group as well, we kind of galvanised each other. I think that was really, really helpful. And I just think there was a general interest in this, and the willingness piece was there, higher than maybe some other groups that I've worked with. H.J Interesting. Okay, thank you. And I really enjoyed your course. It opened up so many new things for me. So thank you. Right to my next question. Then Paul has touched on this a bit already, and I just want to bring us now to thinking a bit more about the conference, because there is a race ahead for facilitation thread at the IAF England and Wales Conference, which is called Facilitate 2025 and that's happening in April. And so I just wanted to ask Cat and Paul, what is this special thread, and where did that idea come from? The leadership team has done this training course. We've all been or eight of us went on Bianca's course. But what about the rest of it? How does this feed into the conference? C.D Over the last three years of conference, we have, as I've said, already pushed the boundaries in terms of diversity and inclusion, and we have very proactively welcomed people into the community and into conference from a whole range of different backgrounds who would never have potentially even identified themselves as a facilitator in the first place, let alone being part of a community of people like this. And as I said earlier, you know that some of the challenges that that's then raised, obviously, if you're inviting people into a space and you're inviting them in to deliver sessions on on topics around race or inclusion or equality or whatever, then you know you have to expect that there's going to be some learning from that. And so you know, over the last few years, there's been a lot of feedback, a lot of learning. We've gone down the route of doing the training with Bianca, and we've decided that this year we will put at the heart of the conference, and we're putting the emphasis on anti racism. That's not to say that everything that you will experience at conference will focus on anti racism, but I think what's really important to us is that as an environment, as a space, over the two days, we are challenged to make people feel really welcome, regardless of their background, but in particular, those black or brown people that are coming into the space, because that has been a challenge for people in the past. So that needs to cut across the whole conference. But alongside that, we are hoping or aiming to have at least a quarter of the sessions. So in conference, we generally have four different tracks, four different themes. It's the same this year. But rather than have one track that focuses specifically on anti racism, we've decided that we will blend that. So whatever the track is, people have the opportunity to deliver a session that will focus more explicitly on issues of race and racism, and our aim is that we would have at least a quarter of the programme that will focus on those topics. Now, as you can imagine, this is quite a big, bold step, and while we've increased the number of sessions that people have delivered around issues of diversity and equality over the last few years, we probably haven't hit that kind of like, you know, a quarter of the programme is tackling those issues, so that's our commitment. But anything that we can, we can get included in the programme that focuses around race and anti racism would be, would be brilliant. So we're actively encouraging people to submit sessions with that as a focus. Obviously, the challenge to that, then back to us as a community, a leadership team and a conference organising team, is how we make sure those people are supported in that space as well. So that's... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/35311825

FS74 Representation and Lego with Camilla Gordon 01/21/2025

FS74 Representation and Lego with Camilla Gordon In this episode Nikki talks to Camilla Gordon, a process facilitator , about representation in Lego and her new “Figiverse” project. They talk about How Camilla uses Lego Serious Play in facilitation The lack of representation within Lego ‘I had people of colour seeing these more representative Lego pieces and had really emotional reactions to it, because people have never seen themselves in these pieces’ ‘It has become so normalised that particular identities don't get represented in different spaces’ Improving representation and access to more diverse Lego pieces ‘recognizing that these forms of representation shouldn't be separated from the more traditional Lego pieces, but actually should be a core part of those packs’ Camilla’s new “Figiverse” project including how it started and future plans A full transcript is below. Links: Today’s guest: To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter: Facilitation Stories website: And to email us: IAF England and Wales: The Facilitation Stories Team: Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript N.W Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales Chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name's Nikki Wilson, and today I'm going to be speaking to Camilla Gordon. So welcome, Camilla. To get us started would you like to tell us a little bit more about you and what you do. C.G Sure. So I am a freelance facilitator, and I'm a process facilitator. So focused on getting groups from A to B, I am what I would call sector agnostic. So work across a range of different sectors with lots of different clients and groups from unaccompanied children, refugees and asylum seekers all the way through to corporate boards, and part of my approach in doing that work is trying to facilitate processes that are more inclusive, kind of recognizing power dynamics and hierarchies and rooms. I'm really clear that I'm not a D&I facilitator. For me, that's just the core part of how I work, rather than it being a kind of defined piece. And so, yeah, I do lots of kinds of work, lots of different places, lots of different processes. N.W Great. And so the focus of today's conversation is Lego. So how and why do you use Lego in your work? C.G So I'm a Lego Serious Play facilitator, or what I usually like to say, I'm trained in Lego Serious Play. I say that because I use elements of Lego Serious Play in my work. But I'm not wedded to it in a strict way, in relationship to the process and how it works. I like to take bits and pieces of different methods and tools to make it work for the group, and so use Lego in a range of different ways within the different processes that I run from using Lego Serious Play in its most formal sense, but also using Lego as a tool to explore different parts of conversations and in different ways. N.W And so while you like to use some Lego, I believe you noticed there was something that you didn't like about it. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? C.G Yeah, definitely. I started using Lego Serious Play about seven years ago, and one of the first things I noticed was the lack of representation within Lego. I saw lots of yellow faces, I saw lots of yellow hands, but I didn't see any representation of black and brown heads and hands. I didn't see any representation of disabled people. I didn't see representation in many ways, in the Lego that I was using. Following on from that, I spent a lot of time looking for some of those pieces, looking for ways to bring representation into my kit, because the groups that I work with were because the groups that I work with are from a huge range of different backgrounds with a huge range of different identities. And on that journey, I realised part of the reason I didn't have that in my kit to begin with was because very little of it existed in the world. I ended up on Lego resale websites, talking to Lego dealers, and while there were a few representations of black and brown heads, a lot of them were double printed with happy and angry on either side. And I was very aware of the stereotypes and tropes that come along with racial stereotypes, and I didn't want to feature that in my kit. And in the end, I had to get them custom printed, so I bought a whole load of heads with the formal colour being reddish brown or medium Nougat, which is the term the colour definition from LEGO. I had to get them custom printed. And obviously, recognizing representation isn't just about racial representation. I also spent a lot of time looking for other identities that could be represented. And looked at things like wheelchairs. They were also very hard to source and had only been released in one kit. And they were five pounds each for the ones that I could source and they were very hard to find. Looking for other forms of representation, things such as hijabs, different elements of different religions, different elements of different identities, they were virtually impossible to find. And so it became a bit of a mission for me to try and find more pieces like that. And I came across a statistic. These numbers are not the actual numbers but it was something along the lines of 8 to 10 times the number of yellow and white heads represented to the number of black and brown heads represented. So there was a huge disparity in relation to those pieces. Part of the reason doing this was so important to me was there is a perception that yellow is a neutral colour and that yellow represents everyone. When I get asked this question, I usually respond by asking, there is an American cartoon, The Simpsons, and they are all yellow. What ethnicity would you say the Simpsons were? Usually I get a very clear answer back, if I don't, then I ask which of the characters in The Simpsons aren't yellow? And then we find characters like the shopkeeper Apu. And then it becomes even more clear that actually that isn't a neutral colour. And time after time after time in my workshops, I had people of colour seeing these more representative Lego pieces and at times, I've had, you know, really emotional reaction to it, because people have never seen themselves in these pieces. I've had young people in wheelchairs who have never seen themselves in these pieces, and I regularly hear things along the lines of, it's me, I've never seen this before, through to young people who have taken away models of themselves and keep them on their on their shelf, because they want to keep that in sight for them, because they have never seen it. And part of the reaction when I talk to people is less about seeing themselves, but the realization that they have never seen themselves because it has become so normalised that particular identities don't get represented in different spaces. N.W Okay and so, I mean, obviously you were already taking some action within your own kit, but then you've now decided to actually take this forward and do something wider and bigger. How did you decide to do that and to do something more with the work that you'd already done? C.G Well, this has been something that's been set on my mind for two years, but I was really keen that other people should have access to these sort of pieces, from the perspective of particularly Lego Serious Play facilitators, to broaden the representation within their kits. But beyond that, I use Lego mini figure pieces at the start of almost all my workshops, whether or not I'm using Lego Serious Play in order for people to be able to build representations of themselves. What has come out of that is the number of people requesting those pieces and asking where I got them from, because they want access to them. And so over a period of time, it became really clear that people did want these pieces. And so I decided that it was important for these pieces to be on offer, not just for Lego Serious Play facilitators, but for facilitators in general, and if and when individuals want them, for families, for people who are not facilitators, and for youth groups who work with a range of identities in their spaces. And it was hearing from individuals again and again that they wanted access to these pieces that was this sort of catalyst for me moving forward with this and trying to make it happen. N.W And so how did you decide how you'd approach taking it wider, as it were? I mean, so you said that before you get custom printed figures in the designs that you want, how did you decide to kind of approach taking it wider? C.G Well, something that has changed over the last few years is Lego has improved the range of pieces that they offer. While they don't always feature in their kits, you can order them directly. N.W Right. C.G And so in me being able to access more pieces, it meant there was an opportunity to pull a range of pieces together to make, to make a product, to make something that would be beneficial to groups of people recognizing that these forms of representation shouldn't be separated from the more traditional Lego pieces, but actually should be a core part of those packs. As I say, I don't think we should be adding things on, they should just be the norm. Yeah, and so that was part of how I went about it. I did a lot of research around what pieces were available, and a number of pieces are actually no longer available. I had a number, I have a number of heads, black heads that feature Vitiligo. I can no longer find those on the Lego website. I also came across a piece with a cochlear implant on the hair, I had to order those from a Lego dealer because I could no longer source them directly from Lego. And so there's been a lot of different moving parts, but for me, it was about the research piece and looking at how we could bring the different parts together into something that was accessible for people to be able to purchase, and also gave the opportunity to give kits to youth groups and organisations who potentially wouldn't be able to afford them otherwise. N.W Okay and so what you're going to be offering is complete kits with this range of different pieces within them to people to purchase and potentially some to for people to get free if they're not able to afford them. Is that? Is that right? C.G Yeah, so the the business is called Figiverse, and there are curated packs of different size, generally ranging from for groups of 6 to 8, for groups of 14 to 16, for groups of up to 30, that include a range of mini figures, a range of heads and hands, and also different accessories. Other products that are on the market generally offer per one mini figure, one accessory. But really for this to work as a product, you need more than that, because you want people to have the choice in how they represent themselves. And so generally the kit, so for our kit, for 14 to 16 people we have over 100 accessories in that pack so that people really can choose, and they are designed to be used by facilitators. And so they come with a set of base plates so people can present their models. And come, you know, in a carry bag, trying to think about these products from all different angles to make them as usable as possible, and a number of different use cases for facilitators to be able to to use them effectively from the get go. N.W Okay, great. And so for listeners' benefit, we're actually speaking at the end of November in 2024 how and where have you got to so far with this project? C.G Great question. Well, so hopefully today, I'll be launching the website, and, broadly speaking, seeing what, what the response is. Ideally we would see in the next few weeks, in the run up to Christmas, what sort of things are popular, and then doing a bigger launch for January, wanting to make sure that we're getting it right in terms of what people want, but also being really clear that these products aren't Perfect. All the elements that we would want represented aren't there, and so over time, keen to improve that range. So while right now in the product development, we have what we can get, we're actually very limited by those things. And I've tried to find ways right now to improve that. So creating flags, like pride flags, for example, to try and represent identities from a range of different perspectives and ways. So those are currently made by me using decal but hopefully moving forward, they would be more professionally developed. So at a very early stage in the whole thing, but trying to work with a good enough mentality to try and get out there. N.W Okay, and so I was going to ask a bit about what's coming next. Well, obviously, just actually launching the website. And then you said that you've got a kind of bigger launch plans for January. Have you got any particular ideas of what you're going to do with that? C.G Yeah, I think for me, I would like to really expand what can be offered, primarily because I want to get this into more spaces for more people to be able to access. Right now, you've got the core kits. Other options that I'm looking at are things like office parties, renting a kit, organisations are really keen to move away from alcohol based social events because they're not inclusive, and so using this is a bit of a tool for that, offering rental options. But also if people want to create their models and then keep them also offering things like guest books for weddings, where people want to build themselves as a wedding guest and keep a really wonderful part of their day for them. Also options for things like subscriptions, so facilitators can keep updating the kits that they have, and getting new accessories, and maybe going seasonal accessories. So I think there's a lot of different options that are quite exciting to think about, but again, trying to start with the basics to see, to see what happens really from here. N.W And do you have any thoughts about how you will kind of prioritize what the next stages of development will be? Because obviously, you've said there's this whole range of options, and you're starting with that kind of good enough core where, how would you decide what to do next with each of those? C.G Broadly, the next few weeks will dictate a lot of that, where the interest is. At the moment, I haven't gone for kits that are smaller than sort of 6 to 8 people. I've had a lot of interest from parents, from people who look after young people, and so potentially looking at an offer there, but a lot of it is dictated on capacity. At the moment, it's just me roping in a few friends when we can, and also keen to have a look at the sustainability side of things. At the moment, 20% of the kits, up to 20% of the kits are from, include pre-loved Lego pieces, and so we'd love to play around with that, but again, right now, it's seeing what happens now, what the interest level is, and then working with that to try and build products and offers that work for the audiences that we're talking to. N.W And I guess what you're saying about pre-loved and sustainability part of the issue with that is that a lot of these things don't exist in the pre-loved market at the moment. And so you're, you've maybe got the core kits that are the more easily available pieces, and then I suppose the more that this grows, you've got more chance of being able to get pre-loved pieces. And so, I mean, you've probably hinted at this already, but what are your hopes for the project, and what help do you need to get there? C.G I think my hopes are that one day, when I take a kit such as this into a group, there'll be no reaction to it, because people will have seen these pieces, they'll be used to seeing all of these pieces in every Lego kit, and that would be my ideal one day. That might be quite far away at this point. But also, I would love for this conversation to keep going, particularly with Lego, to see if there are opportunities to work together or to really look at the range of pieces that they have and how that can be expanded in relation to other forms of identity, particularly beyond racial identity, as I think there's a there is a huge focus on racial identity, but there are also plenty of other identities that aren't represented in lots and lots of different spaces. So having more access to pieces that represent that kind of wide range of identities is really important to me, and so I'd like to keep the conversation going. If people wanted to get involved, it'd be great to have those conversations. Get in touch, join the mailing list, but also, if you're a facilitator and you're looking for something you can bring into your workshops, do think about picking up a kit. They are great for things like introducing people, but also for opening conversations around diversity and representation. I have also used them for things such as building teams. What, how would you build your ideal team? What do each of these people need and look like? And so I think there's a range of things and as I said, representation is a core part of this product. But actually, the reason I developed the product is because it's a really, really great way to open conversations with people that aren't related to representation, and these pieces are just a part of that in the way that all of the other pieces are. N.W Okay and so if listeners want to know more about this project or about you and your work how can they find you and find the project? C.G So Figiverse has its own website, which is . I'm also hoping by the time this goes out, that there will be some social media presence. We'll see about that. But you can also find me as an individual. My website's , find me on LinkedIn, and would love to chat more and find out from people what they think about this as an idea. N.W Brilliant. Well, I'm sure there'll be lots of people keen to get in touch and sort of know more about it. Sounds like a great project, and we'll put the links in the show notes as well so that they're easy to find. But thank you so much Camilla, it's been great to chat to you about this. C.G Great thanks. Nikki. Really appreciate it and excited to be able to share a bit more and a bit further and wider about the project. N.W Brilliant. We'll be looking forward to hearing more. C.G Thanks H.J So listeners, we've reached the end of another episode of facilitation stories, the community podcast of IAF, England and Wales. N.W If you'd like to find out more about the IAF and how to get involved, all of the links are on our website. Facilitationstories.com H.J And to make sure you never miss an episode, why not subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use? N.W We're always on the lookout for new episode ideas. So is there a fabulous facilitator you think we should talk to? H.J Or something interesting emerging in the world of facilitation you think listeners need to hear about? N.W Send us an email at . H.J We hope you'll join us again soon for more Facilitation Stories. N.W Until then, thank you for listening. /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/34853355

December pause 12/17/2024

FS73 Reflections on being Chair of IAF England and Wales with Jane Clift 11/19/2024

FS73 Reflections on being Chair of IAF England and Wales with Jane Clift In this episode Helene talks to Jane Clift about her role as the Chair of IAF England and Wales. They talk about: How Jane got involved with the IAF and the facilitation community “the game changer for me was coming to my first IAF conference,I had never met so many people interested in facilitation” How Jane became the Chair of IAF England and Wales Highlights and challenges since becoming the Chair The importance of the IAF and community events “I think there's been a recognition in our chapter, in our community, we can all learn from each other.” And future plans for both the IAF England and Wales chapter and Jane A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest: LinkedIn: Email: To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter: Facilitation Stories website: And to email us: IAF England and Wales: The Facilitation Stories Team: Helene Jewell: Nikki Wilson: Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to facilitation stories brought to you by the England and Wales Chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helen Jewell, and today I'm going to be talking to Jane Clift, consultant, coach and facilitator and Chair of IAF England and Wales. Welcome Jane. J.C Thank you very much, Helen. I'm very happy to be here. H.J So I've got lots of questions for you, mostly about your role as chair, but before we do that, it'd be really nice to hear a little bit more about you as a facilitator and the type of work that you do. J.C Very good opening question there. So I have facilitated in quite a wide range of contexts, and I think I was doing it before I knew it was called facilitation. So I'm currently have my own business, but I've also worked a great deal for organisations, originally in sort of technology and consulting roles. So I think I was setting up and running workshops well before I knew that there was a term called facilitator, or that facilitation was a thing. So I would say that my practice started very, very organically, very organically. It's H.J It's funny, if I listen back to all the different podcasts we've done, we've done, I would say that that kind of thing is a real thread through all of them that people have kind of come into facilitation accidentally, organically, or discovered that it is called facilitation after they began doing it in the first place. J.C Exactly, yeah, something that I've also, I've always really loved stationery and stationery shops, like I really, really enjoy going into rymans and places like that. So obviously, when you're working as a facilitator, you have got the best reason in the world to be stocking up on colourful stationery craft materials. So there's something about that aspect of it that I don't know, just I've always really, really liked that idea of bringing, like, colourful stationery or objects into the workplace and having a reason to use them. And that reason is facilitation. H.J I love it. That's a great reason. I am also a self confessed stationery nerd, so I totally, I'm totally on board with that. Is there a particular type of facilitation that you enjoy doing, or that you feel is your kind of forte? J.C So I've done a lot of facilitation around agreeing, like a strategy or a road map, or like, identifying things that are getting in the way. So one of the areas that I've actually facilitated on quite a lot is risk management, which is really an important topic if you're doing large scale programs or projects, which I've done quite a lot of in my career. So I actually really like that as a topic, whether you do that in person or online. I have done quite a lot of those workshops where you end up with a room covered in pieces of paper, covered in sticky, you know, in post its and so forth. But during lockdown, like many people, I became very adept at online facilitation, and that's probably the space that I've worked in the most over the last few years, and I, I really, really like that, and I'm amazed that it works, because you're connecting up people that can be all over the world, and you're just in this virtual space, and yet you can, you can make magic happen if you can facilitate it well, and I find that an incredible and unexpected gift that came out of lockdown. Having said that, there is nothing like the energy of being in a room with people. I also absolutely love that I had the great pleasure of being facilitated myself recently, large scale workshop, 30 of us in a room, all talking about something, and it was just so much fun. So I'm not sure I've really got a niche. I'm quite a versatile person, but I tend to be better with topics that are a little bit more creative or future oriented, or that are kind of attached to something that's happening right now. Hence the interesting risk. H.J Ah, interesting, okay, and it's, yeah, also good hearing about that adaptability, which I think also flows through a lot of facilitators, practice or facilitation, and yeah, that whole movement online. I think it is amazing sometimes, as you say, to think how people can be connected online, but somehow, well, it's not somehow the magic happens. It's because we're brilliant facilitators. J.C It is because we're brilliant facilitators and we can create a safe and a fun space. It's, it is incredible, and it's also something that you almost don't realise that you have a gift for until you get that feedback. Oh, that was great workshop. Oh, we made, you know, we made progress, or I felt I could speak up. During the lockdown, I volunteered as a facilitator for action for happiness, and I ran a monthly session, and each month we get to, oh, I've got to do that session again. Oh, like an hour and a half, and I go into it, and I had a co facilitator, and we'd be part way through the session, and the magic would start to happen. And you could feel, because lockdown was a very tough time for many people, and you could feel the magic of facilitation happen. You could feel people relax, open up, and at the end of the session, we'd always do this check in, and everybody without exception, every single one of those sessions we ran, people said, Oh, I feel better. All my energy levels have lifted, or I feel relaxed. And I just thought, wow. H.J Yeah. And you get that real kind of lovely feeling in your body where you think, oh, yeah, this, this is, this is good. This is why I do this. Okay. And so you talk about, you know, your work, and then sort of almost discovering, I guess, that you are a facilitator, or that that's the thing that you can call what you do. When did you get more involved in the kind of the facilitation community and the IAF in particular. J.C So like many people who facilitate, I had been doing quite a lot of facilitation, without much formal training or orientation and without any awareness there was a facilitation community. So what kind of got me into the IAF was I, I'd been doing some team, like away day workshop, and I had, this is classic me, by the way, I kind of reinvented the wheel, not realising that there were lots of methods out there and and like ways of doing things. And after I did this workshop and probably kind of gave it far too much effort, I thought I actually need to get learn some technique here. I've got the interest, I've got the motivation, I've got the aptitude. I haven't got enough technique. So I went and did some training with ICA UK. I did, I think that their group facilitation skills course. And I think the trainer was Martin Gilbraith, who, at the time, I think, was very much a leading light in the IAF. And I joined the IAF, and then I kind of washed in and out of it a little bit. And when I started to get more involved was at one of the London meetups. That's, I think, when I started to become more actively involved. Realised it was a community. Realised that you could come gather, meet other people who facilitate and talk about facilitation. Wow, amazing, it's a thing. H.J A big network of geeks where we get to talk about all of these tools and techniques and stuff and stationery, probably. And so you discovered, I guess then this community, what kind of drew you in more, what kept you going to, you know, maybe the London meetups or ? J.C I really like, I like being part of communities. So even though I have my own business, I do like to collaborate with other people. I do like to be connected to other people. It's quite important for me. So there's quite a lot of community attached to coaching, which is another area I'm involved with. And I think once I identified there was community attached to facilitation, I was just interested in finding out more. And the meetups were definitely really good for that. And then the game changer for me was coming to my first IAF conference. I don't think I'd ever met, I had never met so many people interested in facilitation, all in one space. And also the diversity of practice was really, really, it was really inspirational for me. I had been toying with some more creative practices, not necessarily having the confidence to implement them. And at that conference, I saw people that were just going, you know, all in on their more creative facilitation practices. And I was like, wow. So I think it was that very first conference which really said, thought, these are my people, these are my tribes. We're all different from each other, and yet we've got this thing in common. And so it was the creative thing, a kind of curiosity about people, and I think another common thread was this desire to, desire to make an impact in the world, but in quite a practical way. H.J It does, I recognize that feeling of finding your people and just feeling really comfortable in a space, whether that's a meetup or something bigger, like the conference, and just thinking, oh yeah, people get what I'm talking about. And, yeah, that, yeah, making a difference I think is, is part of that, isn't it? How can we spread the word a bit? How can we share our, share our inner geekery, our love with other people? Okay, so pulling you further in, then you've been chair for the last couple of years, since January 2022, I think. And so how did that happen? J.C Well, I have to say I wanted to get more involved in the IAF, and I think I stood for the board, and I guess I didn't intend to be chair, but I'm one of those people who I think it's called situational leadership. I don't choose to be a leader unless I feel in a context I am the best person to be that leader. So so I don't have, I don't have a burning desire every day to lead, but when I'm in a situation where I think in this context, I'm the best person to lead in order for us to get a good result, that's when I get involved. So that's I think, in with that group, when I became, when I joined the board and joined the leadership team, I was, I felt I was the best person, or the one who had had the capacity and the willingness. There was plenty of other people who had the expertise to do it, but I had the capacity and the expertise and the motivation to be the chair. So that's why I became the Chair. And it's been incredible, incredibly interesting thing to have done. H.J So that's interesting, that kind of sweet spot of having all those things come together at once, as you say, the capacity and the sort of, you know, the space and the skills to actually do that. And so thinking the responsibilities is quite a it's a big deal being the chair, especially of, you know, a group of people that are all volunteers all coming together, you know, all sort of, all having their own day jobs as well. What have been your main kind of responsibilities, I suppose, as a chair, knowing a little bit about having done the role already? J.C So the responsibilities are quite varied. The way I've worked as the chair is, there's a lot of structuring of the leadership group so that we can work effectively. So I guess there's an administrative element to it, and there's also an aspect to it where you're trying to move things forward in what you feel is the general direction that the group is interested in, whilst being mindful of the fact that everybody is indeed volunteering their time, and that, you know, it's a volunteer organisation, with fairly sort of Slim, slim but stable financial capacity. So it's it's been, for me, about like moving us forward, taking us further away from that sort of post COVID environment, where I think many organisations, you know, they had to get back on their feet, and I think you had steered the leadership team beautifully through the incredible challenges of lockdown. And I think I've been able to pick up from where you left off, continue the great work. And I think move us into an even, you know, into a stronger position. And definitely, I feel we've fully recovered from lockdown now, and I think evolved somewhat as well in some really, like, great, sort of great directions. And I think we've also, and I've done this quite frequently when I've been in leadership roles, is I've tried to sort of streamline. And so sometimes with all organisations, particularly ones where a lot of people are very ideasy, you can spread yourselves too thinly, you can chase hairs, you can have an inconsistent practice because you're trying to do too much because you've got so many ideas. So I think one of the responsibilities of the chair is to sort of say, yes, these are all brilliant ideas, but where, where do we feel we can really make the most difference? Where should we? Where should we focus our energies to have the greatest impact? So that's definitely one of the, one of the responsibilities of the Chair is to sort of provide that, that leadership to, but to, you know, to acknowledge all the great ideas, but just to say, right what are we actually capable of doing as a leadership team, as an organisation, given it's entirely volunteer led. H.J And especially maybe with a group of facilitators, you know, we do tend to like ideas, don't we? We've got all sorts of, you know, things that we think should happen and could happen, and so I guess containing them then and making sure that, yeah, some are driven forward, some aren't lost, and people are still on board with with all of what's going on is definitely quite a challenge. And thinking, also back to my time as chair, it felt like that was a period of, as you say, in COVID, treading water, just making sure that things sort of carried on really but definitely your era has been much more of a moving forwards, progressing, improving things, I think. Thinking then about highlights, I suppose, things that have really stood out for you, things that have gone really well. What are those? J.C The highlights for me, from my time as chair the sort of the red carpet event every year is our conference. It's so much fun. It is two days of learning, connecting, getting totally out of your comfort zone, talking about facilitation, meeting your community, making friends, being grateful, thanking everybody for all that they're doing. So the two conferences in the time that I've been chair, they've both been really, really wonderful events for me, and I am so grateful for being part of them, even though, as Chair, I'm actually quite second hand to the conference because it's organised by a different group. But when I'm there at the conference, I have felt this is such a celebration of facilitation, it really is. And I've also been really pleased I've brought new people to the conference and introduced people to the leadership team and so forth. So that's the red carpet events. I've absolutely, also really loved our leadership away days. And in fact, can you just describe them different? Yes, we're calling them retreats now. I also love, yes, our leadership retreat. So they've been absolutely wonderful events as well. And I remember thinking, Oh, I'm going to be facilitating facilitators, uh oh. So I remember that was thinking that was quite the challenge. And yet, you know, I think we've, I think I've been involved now in three of the retreats, and I think they've all, they've all gone well, and I've learned a lot about facilitation from, from running those, from designing those sessions, and from also witnessing people in our leadership team facilitating sessions within the session. So they've been really wonderful as well. And I guess I do love the in person activities, like I do love being in a room or a space with other people, so any opportunity to do that has been great, and I think inspired by meetups that I went to in London, I'm now based in Sheffield, and I've also kicked off like a facilitate Sheffield group. I'm not sure I would have done that had I not had the experience of being a chair. I've just realised sometimes it's just like, shall we do this? Shall we try and get something moving? And that's been really interesting as well, that sometimes you've just got to have a go. H.J Oh, that's interesting. That the Sheffield meetup sort of grew out of your position as Chair, if you like. It's interesting thinking about that facilitating, facilitators bits? I totally Yeah, that really makes sense to me. That whole, you know, you, it's really good to see other people and experience other people's facilitation, but at the same time, I think possibly we are the worst participants, but it is nice to kind of get together and have that, have that all sharing of how we do things as well. I think it's quite inspirational. J.C It's really, really inspirational for me. I find the diversity of people's practice, of their life experiences, the fact that people come from different parts of the UK, and we've all converged, actually, I think it's been in Manchester or Birmingham. So we've kind of all come together. I find that very, very interesting. And everyone's paths into facilitation have been quite different. So so for me, I kind of find those sessions are very opening up, and afterwards I go away and I've learned something that's often quite significant for me and I've then carried forward with me. So I'm not going to those sessions and think I'm going to boss everyone around. It's been, they're very collaborative. H.J Definitely. No, that's been my experience as well, that feeling of collaboration. So what's changed, you know, quite a lot, probably in your time as chair, from this period of, you know, COVID, where things weren't moving forwards very much perhaps. What are the main changes you think you've seen in the last couple of years with the IAF England and Wales leadership team and board, but maybe beyond that as well? J.C So there's been quite a lot of changes. I think facilitation itself as a sort of professional and area of expertise is more understood, known, celebrated and in demand than it's ever been. That's quite interesting. I think in the time I've been chair, I'm, I have a tendency to want to structure things, so I probably have brought in some structure more, perhaps some more structure than there was previously. And I've, as I said, maybe done some of that streamlining activity. And I think everybody that I know in IAF England and Wales is really keen to, you know, expand our community, welcome more people in ,work on the diversity. I think that we are slowly becoming more diverse. We acknowledge that there's a lot more to do in that space, but there's a sort of appetite and a sort of momentum around that now, we're not just talking about it, we're doing something about it. So, for example, most of the leadership team have now taken part in anti racism training, which is, you know, really, really important. So I think perhaps we were a little... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/33969807

FS 72 Working as an Internal Facilitator with Cath Brooks from the Environment Agency 10/15/2024

FS 72 Working as an Internal Facilitator with Cath Brooks from the Environment Agency In this episode Helene talks to Cath about her role as Senior Engagement Advisor and internal facilitator with the Environment Agency (EA) Cath tells Helene a bit about the EA and the type of work they do. She explains how her role as Engagement Advisor includes facilitation and also how she works an an independent internal facilitator for other projects withing the EA. Cath gives some examples of what she really enjoys about her role as a faciliator including working with the public on a climate adaptation project and working alongside external independent facilitators that the EA also use. She explains that external faciliatators are often used when more complex conversations need to be had, or where there has been a breakdown of trust and someone independent is needed. She shares some insights as to how the internal facilitators network of aroudn 200 facilitators was set up and how she balances her work as Senior Engagement Advisor and facilitator. She tells Helene about a role play technique that really made a difference and about how asking good questions are crucial to her work as a faciliator. Cath also talks about how she keeps her faciliation skills up including attending the IAF England and Wales conferences, and local IAF meetups and EA facilitator learning days. She also shares some advice for other internal facilitators. A full transcript is below. Today's Guest To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter Facilitation Stories website: And to email us: IAF England and Wales: The Facilitation Stories Team Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson: Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helen Jewell, and my guest today is Cath Brooks, senior engagement advisor with the Environment Agency. Welcome, Cath C.B Hi, yeah. Hi. How are you doing? Alright? H.J I'm good. How are you? C.B Yeah, good. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I'm Looking forward to it. H.J It's really good to have you on the podcast. Okay, so I have a whole load of questions to ask you, starting with the Environment Agency. I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about what the Environment Agency does and what your role is? C.B Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I hope that it'll inspire people. I've worked at the Environment Agency for almost 20 years, and I still absolutely love it. It's a great organisation. So we're a public sector organisation, and we aim, quite simply, to protect and improve the environment. We employ about 12,000 people, and some people work nationally across England, and then some people work in area offices. We've got 14 different area offices across England, so you either work on national issues or you work on local issues in one of our area offices. And I guess to create places for people and wildlife, we work on quite a lot of topics that people are deeply concerned about, and finding ways forward can be difficult on some of the issues, people have strong opinions about the environment and how we should be managing the environment quite rightly. So Facilitation skills are really important in that context, with some of the really difficult issues that we're managing. So some of those topics are things like managing major industry, making sure they're not polluting the environment, and waste, dealing with contaminated land, making sure water quality of our rivers and we've got enough water so water resources as well, working on fisheries, conservation and ecology, and my area that I work on is management of flood risk. So those sorts of issues are really interesting, and people have strong opinions about how we should be managing those issues. So there can be quite a lot of conflict, I guess, which is why facilitation is so important. H.J And so then, obviously that's quite a broad even under the umbrella of the environment, that's quite a broad range of different areas, and in your particular area then, in your role as senior engagement advisor, what does that actually involve? Sort of before, obviously, I guess facilitation is part of that, but I know you also do it sort of separately as well. What does your main role? What does your main role involve? C.B Yeah, so we've got engagement advisors. Obviously, the organisation's quite technical organisation, quite science and engineering led, but we also have engagement and communications experts within the Environment Agency, and I'm one of those. So I work alongside quite technical teams, and at the moment I'm working, I've worked in lots of different parts of the organisation, but at the moment I'm working in flood risk management, supporting our teams. I work nationally, and so supporting our national teams with big projects where there's, they're difficult topics, where people have strong opinions. And my job, my main job, is engagement planning. So we're whatever the project is thinking about what are our engagement aims? Why do we want to work with our stakeholders? Why do they want to work with us, making sure we're not just thinking from the perspective of the Environment Agency, my job is to help our staff to think about the impact it's going to have on on a range of stakeholders, and plan the best methods that we can for that particular project to work out, how can we get the best from our stakeholders? How can they get the best of us? How can we find solutions that work for all of us, not just for the Environment Agency? So we try to avoid taking what we've called in the past the ‘decide, announce, defend approach’. My job is to help staff to be more, to sort of take a more ‘engage, deliberate, decide’, so to help have quality conversations about these difficult issues, really listen to our stakeholders, designing the right methods, really to help create that space for those quality conversations about what can be really difficult issues. And that's my job, is designing those sorts of engagement methods, if you like, and then facilitation sits really nicely alongside that. H.J And so when you do that facilitation, I as far as I understand, you're part of an internal facilitators network. How, how did that kind of come about? When was that set up? C.B Yeah, that's right. So when I joined the Environment Agency, back in 1996 we didn't have many people who worked in engagement roles or facilitation network. So we started really by setting up the engagement roles and setting up training for staff around comms and engagement and how to do that engagement planning like I've just talked about. And very quickly we realised actually there's another set of skills that that we need to develop as well, which is facilitation. So when you are designing methods that involve dialog, you know having facilitation skills, having skills to be able to design those interactive sessions in a way that you're making the most of that time when you've got your stakeholders in the room is really important. And it's quite a different skill, actually, than just engagement planning, being able to design a face to face or an online session where you've got people in the room making the very best of that time. So we're all really busy. Our staff are busy, our stakeholders are busy. So making the most of those opportunities, that's why we developed the facilitation skills courses. So first of all, we started off by getting some expert engagement professionals in to help us design facilitation courses that were for in-house facilitators. And then very quickly, and within about 18 months, we realised that people were going on the training, really enjoying the training, but then struggling to apply the training in their day jobs, because, you know, you could go a couple of months and not use it. And we very quickly realised that if you're going to facilitate, and you have to do it quickly, you have to do it very often, and you need, you need to support each other. So we set the network up to give people safe space to be able to facilitate internally. So to develop people's skills and create opportunities to be able to facilitate not in your day job. So that's why the network was set up, was to, so people could put forward a facilitation request and get someone who wasn't their day job, they went and practised their skill outside their day job, which, which means you can facilitate in a more pure way which was, which has been fantastic. It's, it's worked really well. H.J And I want to ask a little bit more about that, actually. But before I do, I just wanted to pick up on the differences between engagement and facilitation, and where you see the differences being? C.B yeah, I do think they're quite different skills. So I think being able to do good engagement planning across a project, you think we've got big projects that might go on for years, and they're quite technical. You need to understand the, you know, the technical context of that bit of work, what the business objectives are, what the engagement objectives are, what best methods we can apply, you know, to help people to engage with us, and for that to have an impact on on the decision making, that's quite different. You could do that, and then you can realise in that process, there's usually going to have to be some kind of series of face to face events. But the person doing that engagement planning might not necessarily have this skill to be able to run that face to face content, and sometimes actually, we do need a completely independent facilitator. So there might be a topic where we might have lost trust with some of our stakeholders, where it's not appropriate for the Environment Agency to facilitate those conversations and we do need an independent facilitator. And that is whether it's an in-house facilitator and an independent facilitator, being able to design that's more in depth, designing how to make the most of the conversation, how to create a space where people feel safe, to be able to air their concerns and feel listened to. I guess it's like engagement planning, but it's really specifically thinking about that particular conversation and what you want to get out of that conversation. So it's micro design, I guess, within a particular moment in time, and you might use that facilitator, or you might use a facilitator that then exits the process, whereas the engagement person stays throughout and they use the results of that conversation, and they kind of have to carry on, whereas a facilitator might just come in for that particular moment, then they might not be involved again. So they are quite different skills. H.J And so what determines how you choose a particular facilitator, be it an in-house one or an external facilitator. How does that process work? C.B Yeah, so we'd use an in-house facilitator for a process where, so quite often the engagement person needs to be, needs to participate in the conversation. And if the engagement person involved in that bit of work needs to be involved in the conversation, then they'd use an in-house facilitator to help make sure that, you know, they just come in, offer the service, create the space so that everyone in the team can participate. And often there's other people outside the team, you know, other stakeholders and things. And if the topic is not too controversial, it's all to do with positionality and trust and the way the Environment Agency is viewed. If there's good trust and good relationships between all the people, then an in-house facilitator can do that role. When I'm doing that, I upfront say, I work for the Environment Agency, but I'm not here today as someone who works in the Environment Agency, I'm here to facilitate and make sure you're heard. I'd work with all the different stakeholders before to make sure that the design was taken their, you know, that their needs into account. I wouldn't just turn up on the day, so do all the things that an independent facilitator. Obviously, we're a public sector organisation, so it has to make the most out of me as a facilitator and engagement expert. So I try and do that as much as possible. I'd only use an independent facilitator, which obviously costs us money as an organisation. We’d only do that in a situation where we genuinely needed that independence, and lots of reasons for that, but normally it's to do with trust and transparency and making sure that, you know, there might be awkward situations where things might have gone wrong in the past, and stakeholders would feel more comfortable if someone independent is facilitating, even just for a small period of time, just to help us through that. H.J And how many facilitators have you got as part of your network then? C.B Yeah, I knew you were going to ask, I think there's about 200 at the moment on the facilitation network. H.J Wow. Okay, and how do you manage that kind of balance of work in your, let's say, day job, versus facilitating for a different, a different project that you're not part of then? C.B Yeah so for me, I mean, we all do it differently. So we're allowed 11 development days a year. And so I use those Development Days aren't just, you just, don't just go on training courses and things. I use my Development Days to do independent facilitation for other people within the environment agency. So each quarter I have a maybe do one event per quarter for someone else, if it's a chunky event, because you need to do the planning for them, you need to facilitate and then help them with the results. So I think we all do that. We view it as part of our development, and we, you know, discuss it with our line managers and carve out time to go and do it. It's completely up to each individual facilitator to decide, and we have peaks and troughs in our work. If you're working on a project that had a lot of facilitation within that project, then you might not do any facilitation for anyone else in that quarter. But yeah, generally, people use their development time. H.J Okay. And what kind of facilitation do you particularly enjoy? C.B My favourite thing I've done in the last 12 months was when we were at the River Severn, when we did, when I have opportunities to facilitate with members of the public who are not part of the Environment Agency. And I was really fortunate, we were sort of testing a new methodology on the River Severn about adaptation pathways, they're called, so thinking about climate change and the impact of climate change, and we did something called Community panels, where we got members of the community. So an independent facilitator designed the process and needed some sort of support facilitators, and I acted as a support facilitator, and that was really, really fun. It's just a real privilege to be able to hear from members of the public who don't know anything about what the Environment Agency does, and yeah, to help them to have conversations about the environment and flood risk management, and their ideas were absolutely brilliant and really refreshing to hear. And that was, that was great, because most of my work is either internal or with partners that know the Environment Agency well. So that was something that was different for me and really stretched me as a facilitator, bringing together people that didn't know each other. We were doing it online, and, you know, I didn't know them, and it was, yeah, it was helping them to feel relaxed very quickly and heard, that was, that was really good. It was good for me as a facilitator. Good stretch. H.J Nice and how often, I guess, do you get to do something a little bit stretchy? Let's say that you actually learn from rather than, let's say a bit more day to day type stuff? C.B Probably only a couple of times a year, because it did take up quite a lot of time. It was four evenings and a whole day on a Saturday. So that's quite unique. But again, very much supported by the organisation, and was viewed as part of my development. And it was, it was a brilliant part of my development. It really blew the cobwebs off in terms of my facilitation skills. Took me out of my comfort zone, and it was really good. And I guess it would be easy not to do things like that, and it would be, you know, easier just to kind of do the day job. But where's the fun in that? You know, it really, it really helped me, and I took a lot from it back to the day job, and it reminded me about the importance of making sure people are comfortable and active listening. And it was good for me to hear how people view the Environment Agency, who don't know much about what we do. And so, you know, they came up with these brilliant ideas. Like, as an engagement person, I was able to come back in and sort of talk to people about so. But realistically, yeah, time wise, probably once or twice a year. H.J And how easy is it for you then to kind of just thinking about that there's different hats that you wear. How easy is it to be sort of, you know, independent facilitator versus engagement professional, and, you know, to kind of remember which hat you're wearing, I guess? C.B Yeah, it can be hard. I think when you're, we get quite embedded in the projects that we're working on. So I'm working on one really big project at the moment, and, you know, you have weekly calls within the technical team, and you become part of that technical team, and that's where it becomes hard to add value I think. When you're fresh and you go into a team, that's when you know you can sort of challenge in a really constructive way. So I think we just, yeah, I just I do, I need to have reflective conversations with people on a regular basis. So my manager is brilliant for that. She's quite sharp, she's really useful for me and sort of challenging me and making sure that I am still doing the job and not sort of just blending into that technical team.Because facilitators and consultants, the benefit of using independent facilitators is that they challenge on our cultural assumptions, and we have got a lot of cultural assumptions, and we do make a lot of decisions, which means that we probably sometimes can push engagement down the track a bit further than we should. So yeah, so that's it's difficult, but yeah, using, using my manager and and also independent facilitators, that's where they can really add value. I think when we're using them on projects, it's really having really useful conversations with independent facilitators about what I'm working on, and they can give really good advice and just keep you remembering about how to challenge teams in a constructive way. But it is quite tiring. I'm not part of that team. I am there to challenge constructively, and it, yeah, can be tiring, but it's, you do get a lot of rewards as well from it, but you're not part of that team. And that's, I guess that's a bit like what it's like as a consultant, is that you're not, you're not fully part of that team. You're there to kind of help them as a team, to work well together, but not necessarily be embedded within that team. H.J Which definitely has its pros and cons. So thinking about then, the kind of the learning, the development, the support that you have to work as a facilitator, what kind of opportunities? I know you said you have your development days, and that you use those to do facilitation. But what else are you able to do to kind of keep your skills up and to learn more? C.B So we get together as a network, so we have... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/33453582

FS71 Chapter Chat with Jan Lelie IAF Netherlands 09/17/2024

FS71 Chapter Chat with Jan Lelie IAF Netherlands This episode is one of our quarterly “Chapter Chats” where Helene and Nikki talk to a member of the leadership team from another IAF Chapter. Today’s guest is Jan Lelie, founder of IAF Netherlands. Outside their IAF role Jan is a facilitator with a background in experimental physics. Key topics from the conversation include: How Facilitation and the role of Facilitators has changed over time What Jan has learned and continues to learn from other facilitators “you have to practice what you preach. When I go to an IAF conference, I will do a workshop of myself and I also work with other facilitators to see and to learn from each other” How the IAF Netherlands Chapter was established “ we wanted to have a certification process, and at that time, it was only in English… ” we were the first organization which offered certification in their mother tongue.” Topics and themes of past IAF Netherlands conferences The IAF Netherlands Initiative: ‘diverging conversations through facilitation’ “We wanted to know, where did you make the difference? What was the turning point?” “a suggestion of one of our facilitators that we should have a kind of year book” Ways the IAF Netherlands brings people together A full transcript is below. Links Today’s Chapter Today’s guest: Contact Jan by email [email protected] To find out more about the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter Facilitation Stories website: And to email us: IAF England and Wales: The Facilitation Stories Team Helene Jewell: Nikki Wilson: Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to facilitation stories, the community podcast brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. I'm Helene Jewell. N.W And I'm Nikki Wilson. H.J And this episode is one of our quarterly chapter chats, where we talk to people leading other chapters in the IAF global community. We ask them about how they see the status of facilitation where they are, and the history, priorities, current projects and aspirations for their chapter. Today, we will be talking to Jan Lelie, facilitator and founder of IAF Netherlands. N.W So welcome Jan. So to start off with, could you tell us a little more about yourself and the work that you do Jan? J.L Yes, of course. Well, I facilitate, and I said, I've always facilitated. I worked for six weeks as a consultant in 1984 and then decided that it was not for me, and that any situation requires all the participants to be in the same room, in the same place, and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. And find out actually what the problem is about. So I studied physics, experimental physics, and there I learned that the definition of the problem is part of the problem. So in most of the situations, people have a, how shall I say, the rudimentary idea of their problem, and then they start to implement a solution. And when the solution doesn't work, the solution actually becomes a problem. So you're asked to get a solution implemented which is not the solution to a problem, so it will never work. And I started out in IT, information technology and communications, and there, often IT is not a problem, it's a solution that doesn't work. H.J And so you have been part of the IAF for nearly 30 years, I think. How have you seen the practice of facilitation and the role of facilitators change in that time? J.L Well, first of all, I think that everybody facilitates. It's like everybody communicates. So facilitation, in my experience, is about making connections. It's how you connect with people, how your relationship works, and from there, and everybody connects with each other, only like with communication, nobody has been trained into effective communication and in effective facilitation. So most people work from an expert position, like a consultant or a trainer or even a moderator, and facilitation, in my opinion, is a different paradigm, a different way of dealing with relationships, and the only way to progress is to to learn from each other in working as a facilitator and facilitating. So that was one of the reasons I went to an IAF conference in London in the end of the 1990s which was organized by the IAF, and because we had a computerized brainstorming solution, we wanted to show and also I already had organized a group of what we call moderators, a network of moderators. And then I learned that what I was doing was called facilitation. H.J It's interesting. I think a lot of people have said that, that they, they didn't necessarily call it facilitation, or call themselves facilitators. They sort of discovered by accident that there was a name for it. J.L I studied biophysics, and I used to call it catalysation. And the catalysation is what most of all biological systems rely on, catalysation. And catalysation, strangely enough, means breaking the connection. So facilitation means making, to make. And Li is a very ancient word which we can recognize in the word line. And line of Li is connection. So catalysation is breaking the connection. And in my way of facilitation, I'm always being aware of how to end the relationship, how to stop the relationship. I always facilitate with the end in mind, and that's what the catalyst does. The catalyst takes one molecule and another molecule, and tries to connect them, and then steps out of it and unchanged. N.W And how learned over that time, and if you, if you kind of recognize that that original conference, that what you were doing was, was facilitation, what kind of other things have you picked up through being engaged with other facilitators over that time? J.L What I do is practice makes perfect. So you have to practice what you preach. When I go to an IAF conference, I will do a workshop of myself and I also work with other facilitators to see and to learn from each other. Nowadays, at the conference we took about a quarter of an hour after a session, during IAF conference, to reflect on the session itself. What went well? What did you do? What can you do differently? And I think that is basically how I work. So it's still, I'm still doing training and courses, and then also what we learn together. I always say I cannot teach you anything. I can only facilitate your learning. And that's how I approach facilitation. Also, I try to be a facilitator’s facilitator. This might sound strange, but I will say the universe is my teacher. So the universe is very kind, and they offer you lessons. And the problem is that you, as I said, you cannot see the lesson until it appears, and then it's always in the resistance. So when you feel resistance against something, it's probably something you need to learn. And that is also what makes facilitation for most people very, I shall say, difficult or awkward, is that you have to deal with the resistance of a group or the situation, and let it be, not try to solve anything, but just like to see how it works out. If you see what I mean. Like I said, the universe doesn't have an agenda. So sometimes the lesson comes too early. Then you learn something, and you think, okay, thank you. And then sometimes the lesson comes too late. So then after two or three years, you realize, okay, this session, I happen to speak to a colleague facilitator yesterday, and she has problem in managing her team. And she said, it's difficult. And then I asked, What kind of difficulty? Is it difficulty? And then we remember suddenly a session we did, like 4, 5 years ago, what was a very simple technique by a Korean facilitator who I've invited of making bracelets of your, of what you find difficulty, and then put them on your arms and on your legs, or wherever you feel the difficulties, and then sit with them for some times, and then have a conversation with others who are also sitting with their difficulties and dealing with that. And that's where I work. You know, you get this, this method or this tool, and then you think, okay, just the opportunity will arise. N.W Oh, excellent. I love that idea of sort of collecting things that you might use in the future, but not necessarily knowing where they will, where the need for them will emerge. I think that's probably something that a lot of us do, but not always consciously. So that, I love that example. It's great. H.J I just want to think a bit or ask a bit more about that, the whole sort of community element, I suppose. And thinking about IAF and the IAF Netherlands and ask a little bit more about that. So you're current and past chair of IAF Netherlands, but prior to that, you were IAF Benelux. Can you tell us a little bit about how the chapter was established? J.L Yes, in the, well in 1990s I met John and Maureen Jenkins. And Maureen had been, or was, was becoming Chair of IAF world, and they happened to work in the Netherlands, and they organized a conference in Amersfoort here in the Netherlands, and I joined the conference together with some colleagues. And during the conference, we decided that we should have a Dutch network of facilitators, and we started to create a foundation called IAF Benelux. And it was in a time when IAF didn't have any chapters, it was just IAF world, and you became part of what, in my opinion, was an American organization, and then we, well, we founded this, this, this network, and we organized events. I think the most important thing is what we did is local events,and a yearly conference and also I went to the to European conferences. But the main thing for most Dutch people is they like to work in Dutch. And that is the other thing we organized from the IAF Benelux, we wanted to have a certification process, and at that time, it was only in English, but as that's been established by Dutchman, and there were some Dutch speaking assessors. We use the English process to have people certified in in Dutch and here in the Netherlands, we were the first organization which offered certification in their mother tongue. H.J Um, and that's for the Certified Professional facilitator accreditation J.L Yes, and I think we had about 100 or so certified facilitators here in the Netherlands at some time, because we did it together with the yearly conference, we had a certification event, and also we had separate certification event. At a certain time I think we had two every year. And beside that, we organized events, like I said, I like to meet other facilitators and to work together and to explore our way of working. And John and Maureen at that time, were very, as I said, supportive of the, of it. I think Maureen is one of the best facilitators in the world. He's one of a kind. So, and that's what worked for a couple of years, six or seven, eight years. And then IAF organized itself into chapter structures, and we had to become an association. So we, we terminated the foundation and became IAF Netherlands and for again, about, I think, 7,8,9 years. But the problem I always said with associations is that you have all these things about membership, and I think that association is not the best fit for a network of facilitators, because it creates expectations about what IAF does. So people usually ask me, okay, what is IAF going to do for me? And I said, Well, nothing. I'm not your mother. You have to facilitate yourself. We're here to facilitate you. But people kind of expect us to do things for them, and I was resisted that so, but I must say, I'm an exception. So most of my fellow board members, they were very kind, and they organized things, and they made memberships at everything. And I'm not that good in organizing things, you know. H.J I guess that's true of lots of people, though, isn't it? So some people are natural organizers, and some people just want to go and do whatever the facilitation or the, you know, take part in things. And sounds like a, it's a good job that you have that mix in the chapter. J.L Yeah, and I also said I'm the worst chair in the world, you know, because I facilitate, I don't share anything. So, but in the end, because the problem with a board is, in my opinion, that you shouldn't have people in the board for eternity. So we made the decision that you could only be two times three years in the board, and then you have to leave the board. So gradually the board of the IAF changed, and then many of the board members became frustrated, because when you organize a conference, not many people show up. I think that is only natural with facilitation, because it's the diversity of facilitators is too wide to have a common ground. That may sound strange, but in my opinion, we don't have a common ground. We don't have anything in common except that we call ourselves facilitators, and that is not enough to have a professional association. I personally always say a facilitation is not a profession, it's a calling. N.W And so I mean, I suppose, bearing that in mind, despite some of the challenges of finding some common ground, you have hosted 12 conferences, I think, over the past sort of 30 years, while you've been involved. So what have been some of the topics or themes that the conferences have been about and that you've brought together people around? J.L Well, usually, I collect a small group of people, and we have a conversation about, or a facilitated meeting about what, what could be the theme of the conference. So we did a conference of, do, do the nothing, or in, in the Dao, it's called the way Wu wei. So it's, it's like do nothing, and it's very difficult for facilitators not to intervene, but sometimes it's very important not to intervene, so be there and be aware of what happens, and notice that you should let things go as they were, and only wait until you are invited to intervene. So we did a conference about that. We did a conference of sedators carries on. So I think it's in England it's a set of movies, carry on movies. N.W Yeah, quite a different facilitation, I think in my memory, but yes. J.L No, but it's also what we do. You know, you just carry on. N.W yeah, too true. J.L and also like things that like, Oh, what do you do when you don't know what to do? This is also an interesting theme. And we also did a thing on facilitating with the brain in mind. So at that time, about 10, 15 years ago, a brain facilitation was coming up. So I just invited facili, we just invited facilitators to have a meeting together, so and bring the knowledge or the experience together. And then we also did something about like serious facilitation, which is also very funny, facilitation, seriously. H.J It sounds like there's definitely a bit of a theme just listening to you talk around facilitators needing to sort of step back a bit and not get too stuck in. And I do recognize that that kind of feeling, that sometimes you feel as a facilitator, that you need to do something. J.L The other issue with facilitation is that you always have to work from a perspective and a meet up perspective. You have to be aware of your awareness. So you have to be aware of the metaphor which is being used. So people talk in metaphors, but you have to take the metaphor literally and not figuratively, and that is, and that is very hard to do, to see yourself in a situation and be aware of your situation and at the same time, how should I say, control your behavior or or inhibit that's also a thing which is important, that you are inhibited. In my opinion, I will say that your timing is more important than your method. So we are also always focused on to methods and techniques which are important. You know, you I know about every method and technique in the world, but at the same time, the timing is more important so you can use the wrong method and still have the right timing and get the results. Where, if you have a good methods, but your timing is wrong, then it won't work. And then people start to think, Okay, I should know this method better, but now it's not in the method its in your timing. And in my interventions, I always try ,and then when we do is also about when we're training, to be late in your intervention, a bit laid back so you can see your intervention coming, at least I can do it, and then I say, Okay, let's wait for some time and see if I'm right. You have to be aware of your assumptions. Yeah, that's it. And that's also in physics, you know, that's what I'm mean, to be, to be aware of your assumptions about what is needed and first test your assumptions before you act on it. That's, I think, how you should define your meta perspective. So whatever happens in a group, you make an assumption, okay, I think they are stuck. And then you say, okay, What sign do I have that they are stuck? Okay, well, they're quarreling, yeah, but quarreling doesn't mean they are stuck. It can also be very constructive. You know, one of the times as an example, I was a co facilitator with a facilitator, and people only in a group were disagreeing with each other, and they asked me, What should we do? I said, Well, just let the disagreement continue. Disagreement is good, and only when you're called in to, to facilitate, then you come as a facilitator. And and this is very hard to do, because you want to keep, to care for the group. Do you want to people to be constructive and to have people sometimes they have to disagree with each other. And only when you're asked to intervene, you intervene. N.W Yes, I think there's something really interesting there about, as you said, the timing, and kind of maybe leaving it a little bit longer than you'd be tempted to, just because sometimes then something more emerges that you might not have assumed would happen. And, yeah, really interesting. H.J Okay, thinking of time and moving on, just so we make use of the time we have. I just, I wanted to ask a little bit about the book that you co wrote, co authored. And this was, I think, one of the initiatives of your chapter, the IAF Netherlands chapter, and it was called diverging conversations through facilitation. And I think it's got 24 different case studies from different facilitators. And I just really wanted to find out a little bit more about that. J.L It was actually a suggestion of one of our facilitators that we should have a kind of year book. So every year a book about facilitation. And so I invited a group of facilitators to brainstorm about it, and I asked them to bring one of their favorite books, one book that inspired them. And then everybody introduces themselves using their book they brought. And then we looked at the qualities of the book, and then we make a list of the qualities about the book on facilitation, and then it was, they came off. So okay, we should have concrete cases about what you do as a facilitator, where you make the difference. It should have a strict format of four pages with two pictures, but not use the actual pictures, which make them into a line drawing, because you can read line drawings easier than pictures. And also they don't age. So pictures age, and then it should have a, shall I say, the preface, and a reflection on the on the book, and, and then we made this the chapters like, Okay, what did the client say? What was your situation? what was the core question? What did you do as a facilitator? And then away, actually, where did you make the difference as a facilitator? And then what was your result? And then a reflection on your session. And then we edited all the and then we asked people first of time in the Netherlands, we did the thing in... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/33022277

FS70 Journaling, Writing and Facilitation with Claire Pearce 08/20/2024

FS70 Journaling, Writing and Facilitation with Claire Pearce In this episode Nikki talks to Claire Pearce about Journaling and Writing. Claire is a writer and facilitator who runs journaling and writing workshops and she also has her own radio show. They talk about: Why Journaling is a powerful too that facilitators could use themselves; “Externalising the internal is probably my favourite expression to describe it” Claire's journey with journaling and how it has changed for her; How to start journaling and writing regularly; “I think just start really small is my main bit of advice” How Journaling can be applied in facilitation work with groups; “ It's kind of like whatever people share they're ultimately sharing something about being human” The writing activities that Claire uses in facilitation; Facilitation tools and frameworks such as the GROW model. A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest: To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter: Facilitation Stories website: And to email us: IAF England and Wales: The Facilitation Stories Team: Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript N.W Hello, and welcome to facilitation stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson and today I'm going to be talking to Claire Pearce. So welcome, Claire. C.P Hello, Nikki, thank you for having me. N.W No problem. So first of all, um, could you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do? C.P Okay, so I do lots of things, which I've, I've begun to reconcile myself with. So in terms of journaling, and writing, I run journaling and writing workshops. One workshop I do is more about just writing for fun. And I call it writing for fun, even though it's sort of morphed out of journaling, I'm using prompts and things to get people just to write freely and have a bit of fun with it, and see where their pen goes, which is great for if people are sort of blocked or just want to have a bit of fun writing, heaven forbid. And then the other leg is more sort of self help, I suppose. So I do a monthly workshops that has a theme, like in January, I always do my, what's your theme workshop? So what's your theme for the year? So we reflect back and we look forward and sort of develop a theme or get to something near a theme. So it's that kind of thing. So there's the two different kinds. But yes, they are all with the idea of getting people writing because fundamentally, whether you write, journal or something in between, it's all good for you. At least it is for most people. N.W And beyond that, obviously, I know you also as a facilitator. So is there anything else that you want to say about your facilitation? C.P I guess, yeah, I do freelance research work. I really enjoy it. I love sort of learning about something completely new, kind of going, Oh, wow, this is interesting. And yeah, so I do that as well. And I do do an odd bit of coaching. And I do have my own radio show. But that is obviously a voluntary,not obviously. But it is a voluntary thing that I do, because I love it. What else Oh, and I write, I've written a few books, I'm writing a few more. And I'm just getting into copywriting. It's going to be another string to my bow, because I've realised I really enjoy it. So yes, lots of things, I'll probably be something else the next time I speak to you. N.W I know that's that feeling Claire, don't worry. But today, we are going to be talking about journaling and writing.Both are something that facilitators might do on a personal level, also as an approach that we could use with groups. So thinking first of all about on an individual level, what is it that you feel makes journaling and writing so powerful? C.P Externalising the internal is probably my favourite expression to describe it. And that's exactly what it does. And you know, I'm trying to find a way to capture that thing. You know, when people say a problem shared is a problem halved or whatever , there's something so true about that. And whilst it's not as powerful as speaking to a person, because that is the ultimate, you know, if you're struggling with something, or even if you just want to offload doing it with another person, there is something about the energy, I think, that passes out of you to somebody else that's different than if you write it down. But writing it down is the next best thing. And you can do it 24/7, because you've always got a pen and a piece of paper to hand. So you're not having to rely on it, I suppose it is a bit about self reliance, probably a part of my own personal journey with it. But yeah, just getting stuff out so that you can see it in a different way, you get a different perspective. And yeah, it just makes you feel better. And you can, you know, see things that you wouldn't have thought if you had just kept it in your head, you know, it stops the spin cycle. It helps you get a bit of respite, if you know if something is whizzing around in your head like that tumble dryer type effect. It gives you a bit of respite from that. And like I say, you look at it, and you get some different perspective. And just the energy of writing it, getting it out of you releases something, I think. N.W Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. Listeners won't know but I'm a regular in your workshops, and really kind of learned the power of journaling over the past year and a half, two years. I think there's also something about the kinds of patterns spotting where I've probably identified things that come up again and again and again. And I have no idea that they were quite so regularly going to be coming up, you know, like, I knew that they'd been niggling away for a while. But when I look back, I think, oh, you know, how is that theme or things related to it continue to resurface, then there's a chance to kind of dig deeper into that. C.P And also, depending on how you use journaling, and like you say, if you're the sort of person who will look back and reflect over a period of time, there's so much you can learn. You know, you can see you're likely to see themes and recurring patterns and recurring dynamics and start to see, oh, there's a one common thing here and that's me. So it's not saying everything's my fault, but it's starting to see that there's something about the way I'm reacting or creating something, you know, that is relevant. And yeah, but there's, there's so many benefits, we could spend probably hours talking about all the benefits. N.W And so I mean, what's been your own journey with journaling? Have you always journaled or is it something that you've particularly found that has evolved over recent years? C.P It's definitely evolved. I probably started journaling properly about, I'm gonna say 10 years ago, without overthinking it too much. But I was in therapy at the time. And my therapist recommended, it was called something like freeform writing for therapeutic something another at the Gestalt centre. I think she still runs it, actually. And I thought, Oh, she's just trying to get a course out of me. I was quite cynical, honestly, because I just thought, oh, writing is not my thing. Because my sister was always the writer and I was more sort of arty, whereas we've swapped which is really interesting over the years. So I went to this writing thing, thinking a bit, feeling a little bit. And I absolutely loved it. And I use some of what I experienced in that workshop as my inspiration for the way I run workshops, because there's a lot of pair work, and it's all about just getting stuff down and sharing it because we're all the same underneath. We've all got the same neuroses and anxieties, and, you know, hopes and dreams, you know, we're not as different as we think we are. And when you share with people, which is what I do in my workshops with the journaling, it's amazing how people connect, and it's almost like I can, I can see the relief sometimes with people where they're like, oh, it's not just me, you know, whatever it is. Sorry, back to my journey. So yeah, I did that a weekend and I just loved it. I made everybody I knew do writing with me, free writing, I suppose, essentially where you just let go into the pen and just keep going. And then I started the workshops. But yeah, so on a personal level, it was just that weekend, the stuff you know, and I always talk about stuff with a little asterisk, which is just all the pent up, unprocessed, unfelt, unacknowledged feelings, emotional responses, you know, all this stuff in me that had nowhere to go, I didn't even know it didn't have anywhere to go. But I realised during that weekend of writing, it's like oh wow there's stuff that needs to come out here. It was really dark. And there was a lot of swearing, and but it was all, you know, you could kind of just go for it. And I really got into it after that. So I'd say that was you know, I had a diary when I was a kid. But it was so dull. I kept one page of it just to remind me how dull it was. I had tea, I went to bed, went to school. It was so dull, I didn't get it. So yeah, and like you say, evolve it, you know, it has really evolved my journaling. And funnily enough, recently, I was reflecting, I haven't journaled anywhere near as much in the last year or so, but I've written a lot more. And I've sort of realised that my journaling has more evolved into writing. So I get the same, I think I get the same thing out of writing that I did out of journaling, it has definitely changed over time. Yeah. N.W And so for any facilitators listening who haven't tried journaling before, or perhaps are doing it but aren't aware they're doing it, what would you suggest in terms of getting started, you know, just having a go? C.P Well if they're doing it, and they're not aware they're doing it, then they don't need to do anything, I'd say. It doesn't really matter, I don't think what you call it. If you, if people haven't tried it, there's a few ways in, one of them is just to pick a, first of all, pick a time that works for you, don't try and do it, don't sort of fall into that, oh, I should be able to get up in the morning and at least do half an hour, you know, that never works. So find a time that works for you. It could be on the hoof, you know, it could be like five minutes at lunchtime if you have a lunchtime. So just a time that works for you, just pick you know, think tomorrow when is going to be a good time and pick that moment. And then just write for five minutes. Maybe just write about how the day has been so far. Just just to get started. I mean, a really good prompt is “I noticed” and Nikki, you would have heard me use that before in workshops. But it's a really interesting one because it's completely different. If you just write what did I do today, or it brings up completely different things I notice. So I noticed as a good prompt, I guess it depends what people want to get out of it. Because I'd say whilst ultimately just pick up a pen and write some stuff down. If you're wanting to journal in a way like you do, where you write over a period of time and then you review back and you're looking to learn about yourself or you know your habits, how you do things and learn about where you can make your life easier, really, I'm not going to say improved because I think we're all fine just as we are. But then that's a very different. You might want to be a bit more regular and a little bit more, I'm going to leave it for a month and then I'm going to look back and see what's there. Personally for me, the journaling I've done the most is what I call medicinal journaling, which is basically in the moment. So if you're feeling stressed or anxious or angry, anything that's a bit difficult. I mean some people find excitement difficult so let's throw that in there as well. You know that in the moment ,what's going on? Why am I feeling anxious? Sometimes we don't know. So that's when I am most likely to pick up my journal or get my phone out if I'm out and about and type, you know, just type it in and just describe it. You know, where is it in your body, how you feeling? What's going on? Just what's going on in your life because it can be so obvious sometimes, but you don't see it always. But when you start writing it down, it will pop up. And you'll go, Oh, yes, that's what this is about. So that's really helpful to know. Because then you can do something about it. So medicinal. But then, you know, I say that I started doing that after I had journaled more regularly. So maybe, maybe it's not easy to start with that? I don't know. But yeah, I think it does depend on what you want to journal for. But yeah, I think just start really small is my main bit of advice, because if I had a penny for everybody who said, I can do at least half an hour, and I can get up a bit earlier, that's not much to ask, well, but it's the same with any habit and you don't do it, you might do it for a few days, but then you'll stop. And then you'll feel bad because you've stopped and then you won't do it again. So start with a minute, you know, literally just go a minute in the morning and just go, how am I feeling today? Just name it. N.W And I think there's definitely something powerful about getting started as well, actually finding the minute to put the pen to the page, sometimes it then becomes an hour and you hadn't realised, but you would never have intentionally carved out an hour to do it. It's just that once it starts Oh, I can't stop now, maybe that's just me, but. C.P Yeah, no, that's absolutely what happens. But if you said, you said I'm going to do an hour, you'd be like, Oh, God, I don't want to do that. That's too much. I've got too much to do, blah, blah, blah. N.W And so thinking more about our roles as Facilitators, and working with groups, I mean, obviously, you've you've mentioned pair work already. But often we're in a situation where we're trying to get people to talk to each other and to interact better. So with that in mind, why would you encourage Facilitators to consider bringing writing activities into a group situation? C.P Well, I guess the most obvious place, I would think it would be a great thing would be in a sort of icebreaker context. Because I just think, you know, I've been on lots of workshops, and I've run lots of workshops. And you know, and, and so is everybody listening to this, and so have you, you know, and good ice breaking is so powerful, can change the whole session, whatever, whatever it is. And for me, when people turn up, one of my favourite exercises is what I call ‘The Whine Bar’, which I think you've done, which is just to have a good moan and a good whine about anything in your life, just get it all out. Because I think this is half the problem. We don't allow ourselves to be honest, even with ourselves. And I think journaling has really helped me with that actually going back to your earlier question. So really kind of just getting stuff out. So that's a nice thing to do. Because it just allows people, it's kind of going you're allowed to be human here, I think, I mean I didn't plan it. I didn't think about it before I did this exercise. But on reflection, I think that's part of it. So it's a real, you're allowed to be human, you're allowed to moan. Doesn't mean you're gonna dwell in it for the rest of the session or whatever, but you're just allowed to get it out. And then by putting people in pairs to share, and I always invite people to either share what they wrote, or just talk about how it was because not everybody wants to do that, obviously. And there's just, I think it's, there's just something magical that happens, because when people come back, and I see their faces in person as well, people have such an energy, most, you know, 99% of the time. And you can see they shared something with their fellow human being. Even I mean, I don't know, because I don't get to hear what people say to each other. But it's just that humaneness. It's kind of like whatever people share they're ultimately sharing something about being human, whether it's like, oh God, I felt like it was, like I say, so it's that whole it wasn't just me that, you know, is crazed about the election, or, you know, whatever, or that feels like I'm gonna lose my mind on a daily basis, or whatever it is. And that privacy of the pair, which again, I know, I don't need to tell this to this audience, because you'll all know about, you know, the individual, you know, if you put people in threes, they just won't share as much and somebody could still not talk. Whereas pairs, people have to say something, even if it's, I don't want to say anything. And there's something about that that's liberating. It's kind of like, Yeah, you don't have to fine. So I just, yeah, like I say, when I see those faces, when people come back, it's a beautiful thing. And, and they've just shared something more than, you know, knocking about an idea. And I don't think there's any context that is out of bounds for that, I guess, if you're dealing with people, maybe where people are struggling with mental health, for example, if you knew, if it's an explicit situation where that's being talked about or worked on, I guess you would kind of maybe approach it slightly differently. I probably still do the same kind of thing, but maybe in a slightly different way. But so I think it's really powerful for that and as we work through a workshop, you know,it just continues to do that same thing. People are seen and heard, you know, and people can go a whole year without being seen and heard and you know, immediately even if it's irrelevant to the topic, I think that's the thing as well. It's just the magic of that being seen and heard and listened to and witnessing somebody else, you know, you get to witness somebody else and realise, again, that we're all human and flawed, worried we're getting it wrong, desperate to get it right, all of that nonsense, you know, we realise that it's not just us. N.W What is it you say about kind of starting that with some writing rather than just saying, you know, have a good whine to your partner, whatever? What is it about the writing part of it that you think particularly allows for those, that kind of opening up? C.P Yeah, that's a good question. So I think when you write stuff down, you can just be much more honest than if you were speaking out loud. You know, if I asked you a question, and you gave me the answer, or I said to you write down what you think about, you're going to be much more, again, 99%, the time you're going to be, everyone's going to be much more honest, in what they write down on a piece of paper, because it's private, it's for them. And I always say to people, you know, write it for yourself, first decide afterwards, if you want to share any of it or not. So it is it's that honesty, it's that, you know, and I can still, I can still edit myself and journal. And I think we might have even had this conversation, but it's still possible to completely be editing yourself, but to suddenly realise I'm still editing what I think and what I'm allowed to say. And journaling does give you that freedom and just think you're gonna, you're going to be more honest. And then when you share it, you're more likely to sort of take a bit of a risk. And people are often quite surprised by what they write down, things that they haven't seen will come out. So people want to share that, they want to... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/32587377

FS69 Social Presencing Theater with Rosie Cripps 07/16/2024

FS69 Social Presencing Theater with Rosie Cripps FS69 Social Presencing Theater with Rosie Cripps In this episode Nikki talks to Rosie Cripps, a facilitator and evaluator who helps build social movements and evaluate complex systems, about Social Presencing Theater. They talk about: What Social Presencing Theater is, its origins and some of the tools and techniques that sit under it; The role of the facilitator in creating psychological safety and responding in the moment without knowing the details of the issue being explored; How Rosie first experienced Social Presencing Theater and what interested her about it; “with social presencing theater, you can get to the crux of the matter so quickly, and so, kind of precisely, and so clearly see what needs to change without barely exchanging any words at all.” A workshop that Rosie ran with Ann Nkune at the IAF England and Wales conference using the tool “Stuck”; “Some people said it made them not just think differently, but feel differently”. How this experience led Rosie to attending a recent Social Presencing Theater course and the learning from that experience; Rosie’s thoughts on how to take this forward, including a call out for collaborators; A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest: Rosie Cripps on LinkedIn: Today’s subject Presencing Institute: U School: Arawana Hayashi Social Presencing Theater website: (book), Arawana Hayashi To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter Facilitation Stories website: And to email us: IAF England and Wales: The Facilitation Stories Team Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson: Transcript N.W Hello, and welcome to facilitation stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson (N.W), and my guest today is Rosie Cripps (R.C). So welcome Rosie. R.C Hi, thank you for having me. N.W So to start off with, could you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do? R.C Yeah. So I'm a facilitator and an evaluator. I help build inclusive community-led movements and as part of this, so I've helped teach architecture students, Appreciative Inquiry, and I've been exploring the idea of universities as anchor organisations to help communities become resilient and self-sustaining. And I evaluate kind of complex, messy systems. And I usually do that using outcome harvesting, which uses lots of facilitation. So in summary, I kind of help build social movements and evaluate complex systems. N.W Great. And so today, we're going to be talking about Social Presencing Theater. So for listeners who don't know what it is, Please, could you tell us a little bit more about it, and how a typical session might work? R.C Okay, so this is very different from my day to day work. First of all, Social Presencing Theater uses mindfulness, movement, and reflection, to create quite dramatic shifts in perspective. So it can be used at an individual level, or with teams, with big organisations, or in quite complex systems around social justice issues, or climate change, or something like that. It was created by Arawana Hayashi, and she's a dance teacher. But it's mainly been applied across sectors by someone called Otto Scharmer. He's an academic at MIT and he basically coded what are the principles of innovation, and he turned them into a theory called ‘Theory U’. And that's all open source, because he wants as many people as possible to be tackling the complex issues of our time. But they together, Otto and Arawana, they co founded the Presencing Institute, and they use Social Presencing Theater as a means for helping people to progress past habitual thought patterns and into these principles of innovation in whatever context they're in. So I personally find Social Presencing powerful, because you can work through very kind of tricky issues where we might feel stuck or unable to move forward very quickly, sometimes taking you to a place of being more stuck. But at least you have different insight. But without having to reveal at any point, what the issue is or what the tricky situation is. And it can be also very bonding for the people who are doing it. So your group that you're working with, it's very bonding, even if you're working with a complete group of strangers. N.W And so how might a typical session run? R.C Yeah, a typical session. So this is tricky, because I'm new to it. And there's also lots of different methods that sit under it. Some individual based tools and techniques, and some are for very large groups. But they think the way that Otto Scharmer mainly uses it with kind of fortune 500 companies and big organisations is he uses something called 4D mapping, which was co created by I think Otto Scharmer, and Arawana. And people who also use organisational constellations, and people who use presencing more generally. And 4D mapping, basically, you map out a system using people. And then you sense together a different potential future for that system. So it allows you to see in kind of 3D what the system is currently looking like, and how it could potentially shift. And that can be really powerful. And systems mapping, because it's very malleable. I like traditionally in systems mapping, I would kind of draw out a system, and it's very fixed. Whereas in this situation, you're sensing together as a group, where are the opportunities for movement, and that can give a lot of insights into what should change. N.W Okay. And so what would the role of the facilitator be in that environment? And how would that be different from other types of facilitation? Would you say? R.C Yeah, I think, I think in that context, because you don't always know what the actual topic is, there's kind of two parts to it. So one is it's about making the situation safe, because I think generally, we're not used to moving as a society. We're not used to using movement and so the psychological safety is really important. And then the other aspect is you're going in blind. So you're kind of sensing the room as opposed to, in a normal situation, you can be kind of tracking the flow of the room by listening to people in their conversation them expressing what's, what's going on. Whereas in this context, it's much more about sensing what's happening in the room. And responding to that in that moment. So it's quite different actually supposed to be a lot more emotionally responsive to what they would normally be as a facilitator, I think. N.W And, and as you've said, this is quite different to the kind of tools and techniques and facilitation work you'd normally do. So when did you first come across Social Presencing Theater? And what was it that interested you about it? R.C So I was reflecting back recently about which of the workshops and where are the places in my life where I've had the biggest personal transformational shifts, and which have been the workshops that have made those shifts last, and they've all involved movement. And so there's two workshops I've been to in my life. The first was in my early 20s, which is kind of a week-long workshop which involved movement. And, again, involved no talking. And then I volunteered at the Never Done Before Festival, which is run by Myriam Hadnes’s community, and just stumbled across a Social Presencing Theater Workshop. And in that workshop, it was online, it was only like an hour, I think. It was people from all over the world who had never met before. And yet, even in that very short amount of time, we just did some small movements.You know, just sat at my desk, and then also some group movements just in breakout rooms, and it totally shifted my perspective. And I felt incredibly close to the people that I'd been working with, even though I'd never met them before and it was all through a computer. So it kind of made me think, Okay, I'm personally finding this stuff really powerful and interesting. But is that you know, other people's experiences. And before kind of, like throwing myself into that, I guess I really wanted to explore that further, and see if other people were getting these shifts and transformations as well. Which is why, and then I started talking to Megan Evans, he's been a kind of mentor to me, and to Ann Nkune, who I know, to a shared love of Appreciative Inquiry and time to think. So I just literally read Arawana's book, and then suggested to Ann that we run a session at the IAF Conference, which we did this year. So that's kind of how I came to it, it's not been a planned route. But I found it personally very powerful. And it's also linked in to actually, after I had children, I started dancing. And I had a complete shift really, again, in my perspective, when I just I think I lived so much in my mind, when I started dancing, I had this dance teacher who didn't teach us kind of choreographed moves, he just taught us how our body wanted to move. And I didn't know if you can actually even call it dance, it's probably just me moving around terribly, but I found it really powerful and healing, just getting out of my head and into my body. And I think that's a lot of what this is about. It's about just getting rid of those habitual thought patterns and kind of living in our minds all the time. And being in our bodies and noticing that our bodies have a lot of wisdom and knowledge that we just waste, we just waste. And the thing I found with social presencing, is we spend so much time talking especially you know, as in groups, as facilitators, we see so much talk and conversation. Whereas with social presencing theater, you can get to the crux of the matter so quickly, and so, kind of precisely, and so clearly see what needs to change without barely exchanging any words at all. N.W Okay. And so you've mentioned that you ran a session at this year's IAF England and Wales conference,with Ann Nkune, and so could you tell us a little bit more about that? R.C Yeah, so I mentioned earlier, there's, there's quite a lot of tools that sit under social presencing theater. So our IAF conference workshop focused around a method called ‘stuck’ and in that you take a situation where you're not moving or thriving or something's not moving forward, or maybe you're just kind of stuck in your comfort zone and you you're not really willing to step out. And you embody that situation in whatever form you want to take. You form a statue and you call that sculpture one and then you kind of sense in your body you let yourself move to a different future. that wants to emerge through you. You move to a second position, and then you call that sculpture two, and you give each sculpture a phrase. And that in itself sounds very bizarre, but is very powerful. So for instance, the other day, I had a situation where I had to report a huge amount of data to a group of people. And I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed. And so I put myself in this stuck position where I had my kind of arms up in front of my head, and was almost crouching down, and my word was overwhelmed. And then I moved into a second position, which gave me a lot of clarity. And I had another phrase, which was, they need to make sense of it. And so I in my head, I've been getting stuck over and over with trying to make sense of all these overwhelming amounts of data, when in actual fact, it kind of shift the perspective straight way for me in that I didn't need to be making sense, but I just needed to be presenting them with data. So that's just an example of where you might use stuck. So we use stuck. And then you start off working through your own stuck practices, even from sculpture one to sculpture two. And then you extend that out as a group. So in our workshop, and in most social presencing situations, we don't at any point, know what issue someone is working through. So you'll do your sculpture one to sculpture two on your own, and then you extend that out as a group without explaining what it is that you're working through. And the other people in our group will help extend out our stuck situation. So they become other players in the system. And they help enhance that feeling of stuck, and also give a different perspective on it. So So in my situation where I was stuck with feeling overwhelmed with all this data, I might have someone standing in front of me who's representing all the hundreds of interviews that I've done. And then I might have someone stood behind me, who is representing the people that I have to show all this data to. And then we would move together as a group, so they wouldn't know what this issue is about at all, but they might look at me and say, You look pained or, or I'm seeing confusion, something like that. And then we'd all move together with no idea where each other we're going to move or any sense of where we should move, we just move wherever feels right at the time. And then we'll move collectively together into a second sculpture. And then again, they'll give their perspective on the situation. So they might say, you know, you look freed or relieved or something like that. And the other people's insights can be just as valuable as your own. And I think for me, and our IAF session, that was what people found most powerful is working through something as a group, without anyone in the group knowing what it was about, except for that one individual. And even though as a group members, for example, I've done this a number of times, even in situations where I don't know what the person's going through, I can personally find it very moving as well. I think just by moving together as a group is very bonding in itself and illuminating. So we did that at the IAF conference, we did this stuck on our own and then stuck as a group. And then we use time to think, to reflect on what those processes felt like to the groups involved. N.W Okay, and so you've mentioned, I think that this session was for you a bit of an exploration of how to use this. So what were your personal kind of takeaways from that session? R.C I think there were a lot of takeaways, actually. I think the main thing was that it was something other people found powerful. So I went in thinking, okay, is this just me, in fact, I was there the night before in my hotel, and I was thinking, Oh my gosh, what am I doing? Because I'm going to a conference I've never been to before, co facilitating with someone I've never met before, on a subject that I've only read a book about. You know,I didn't know whether this is going to be something that anyone else would get anything from at all. So the main takeaway was, oh, wow, okay other people are finding this useful as well. And I think having spoken to a few people after the conference, they said, you know, it's one of the sessions where they were able to go deepest. And again, I think that's because they didn't have to talk about anything that they were kind of working through. So as a facilitator that's quite strange because you're kind of blind to all of that. But it's really nice to be able to create a space where people can work through some quite tricky personal issues. So yeah, there was that, that it was helpful. Some people said it made them not just think differently, but feel differently. And that, you know, someone else mentioned that there's something that they've been talking to people about for months and months and months, and just couldn't see a way out of this situation that then had done that, and then could instantly see a way through. So I was like, Okay, great. I feel like it's, it's a useful tool. So that was the main thing. I also noticed that maybe it isn't for everyone, and getting the context is going to be right. And I think for Ann and I, we both kind of felt that we recognise that it was probably more powerful, like using movement is more powerful than we originally expected. And thinking about how we prepare the room for the emotions, it can trigger as well, I think is quite important. But yeah, just the overwhelming thing I took away was the kind of desire to experiment with other people more, to try it out with other people more. And so then that evening, I think went back to my hotel room and signed up to a course in Berlin to properly train in it. N.W Great. And so you've neatly led into my next question, really, about that course, and what happened on the course? And what did you learn there? R.C Yeah, so the course was a two day course with Arawana Hayashi herself. So that was really exciting, because she kind of founded it all. And it was with 43 other people from all over the world, actually, but mainly from Europe. I think there were four people from the UK. And we went through all the different types of techniques, which she describes in her book called Social Presencing Theater. And yeah, it was, it was just incredibly insightful. There were lots of different techniques that we tried out, some, you know, just on our own, some as a whole group of 43 people, some in small groups, all that can be used in different contexts. And again, I think by the second day all of us were just feeling like, why would you bother talking anymore? It just seems like such a waste of time, when you can kind of get so much clarity and connection with others in silence, you know, just by moving together. But it's called Social Presencing Theater, but it's not about theater, it is just about moving and embodying. There's no acting element to it. There's nothing theatrical actually about it at all. It's just a way of using, thinking with our bodies as well as our minds. Yeah. So the training was fantastic, gave me loads of ideas and met loads of connections, lots of people who were also thinking about using it in all kinds of leadership scenarios. And actually some massive issues about, you know, tackling climate change and deforestation in the Amazon and all these different frameworks, people using it for and all of them finding it ,yeah, a really interesting method of breaking just habitual thought patterns and approaches to situations and thinking about things really differently. N.W Okay. And so I know that you, you weren't on the course very long ago. So this might be a difficult question to answer. But what are your current thoughts on how you might take it forward and put it into practice? Yeah, R.C Yeah, so I think main thing at the moment, which is very much just a thought process, to help serve this, but Ann and I are thinking about experimenting, doing another session at London Lab, which is linked to the London IAF group. So we're thinking about doing that in maybe September or October. And I'm personally thinking about how I built it into my work with systems thinking and systems mapping. So it's part of the evaluation work I do, we do a lot of systems thinking work. And I think using it in that context is really helpful, because it's a really malleable way of looking at how we can change and shift systems, but also even the stuck practice, which is just within individuals. You know, through all my systems based work, the one thing that stands out is that unless we change people, you know, we can't change systems. And the stuck practice itself is a way of really helping people shift their perspective on their role within a system and what they can do individually to change things. So yeah, I'm thinking about how I can build into my work. And I'm also just looking for as many people as possible to collaborate with who'd like to experiment with Ann and I on this. N.W Great. And you mentioned earlier that in your IAF session, you combined this with time to think, are there other kinds of facilitation tools and techniques that you think could work well... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/31930282

FS68 Chapter Chat with Sara Tremi Proietti and Andrea Panzavolta from IAF Italy 06/18/2024

FS68 Chapter Chat with Sara Tremi Proietti and Andrea Panzavolta from IAF Italy This episode is one of our quarterly “Chapter Chats” where the team talks to leaders of other IAF Chapters. In this episode Helene and Nikki chat to Sara Tremmi Proietti and Andrea Panzavolta from IAF Italy. They talk about How the chapter began in 2013 and the successive leaders since then; Initiatives to extend the reach of the chapter in Southern Italy: The co-leadership model used for the past two leadership terms; “Our jobs are a little bit different. So it's very interesting because we see things from very different perspectives. And this is also always very, very rich, and something that I really, really recommend” (Sara on co-leading with Giacamo) The Chapter’s Annual Conference- its volunteer-led model and support provided to people who’d like to run a session; Working collaboratively with other Associations in Italy; Twinning with other IAF chapters including Romania and Syria; Plans and aspirations for the future of the Chapter; “we would like the chapter to be a point of reference at the national level for organisations who are seeking facilitator facilitation services or just want to learn something more about it” A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guests: Sara Tremmi Proietti: [email protected] IAF Italy website: IAF Italy email: Today’s subject LinkedIn Article about Co Leadership by Andrea and Deborah: To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter Facilitation Stories website: And to email us: IAF England and Wales: The Facilitation Stories Team Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. I'm Helene Jewell (HJ) and N.W I'm Nikki Wilson (NW) H.J And this episode is one of our quarterly Chapter Chats, where we talk to people leading other chapters in the IAF global community. We ask them about how they see the status of facilitation, where they are, and the history, priorities, current projects and aspirations of the chapter. Today, we're joined by Andrea Panzavolta (AP) and Sara Tremmi Proietti (SP), co chairs of IAF Italy, welcome. S.P Thank you, Helene. A.P Thank you so much for the invitation and also for your perfect pronunciation. H.J Thank you so welcome to you both. And to start off with, we would like to know a little bit more about both of you and about the kind of work you do. So if you could tell us a bit about yourselves, that would be great. S.P Thank you Helene. Okay, so my name is Sara, and I live in Rome, which is in centre of Italy. I have been working in public administration for over 10 years now, and for the past three years, I've been drawn to the world of facilitation, first attending a course and then starting to work also in in this field, public administration, I focused initially on economic programming, but then I turned more on teams like innovation and process optimization. So that's how I met facilitation, because during an office reorganisation attempt, we met a lot of conflicts and resistances and difficulties with our team. And so I understood that I needed to, you know, to discover and to learn something more about people, about relation, about group working. So that's how I met it and how I am. A.P So may I introduce myself, and first of all, thank you for the invitation and for this amazing initiative, because I also listened to the past podcast and were very, very, very well done. I'm not the actual chapter leader. I was the past chapter leader with Deborah Rim Moiso. So thank you also, Sarah, who invited me to join you. And I'm an urban planner and the facilitator, of course, our 20 years that I practise as a facilitator. I'm a founder of the formative collective, that is a project that focuses on the team of non violent communication. And of course, we use the participatory techniques, methods. And I was awarded with the Platinum Award 2020 by the International Association of Facilitator. So I'm very proud about this, in a project that I follow it by region Emilia-Romagna, that is my region in the north of Italy, and the team was about the Community of Practice on participatory policy making. So that's all for me. H.J Thank you. Really interesting to hear how you both got into facilitation and congratulations on your award too, Andrea. A.P Thanks so much. It's a past award. N.W Great. So today we're going to be talking about IAF Italy, which we know had its 10 year anniversary last year. So what can you tell us about how it started and how the chapters developed over that 10 year period? A.P Yeah, thank you for the question Nikki .The Italian chapter born in 2013 on the initiative by Giancarlo Manzone and Gerardo de Luzengerger that I imagine you know very well. And from 2019 to 2021 was coordinated by Paola Martinez. That is another IAF member, very active. And since May 2021, has been coordinated by me and Deborah Rim Moiso. And now the coordinators are Sara Tremmi Proietti and Giacomo Petitti. And the chapter started to create collaboration between facilitators, and mainly to explain what the facilitator do. At that time nobody in Italy know the term, the word facilitator. And I was scared to present me as a facilitator, because nobody, nobody could understand what I did. So this is our first mission in that time. H.J Thank you. Really interesting. Sorry, Sara, did you have something to add? S.P Yeah, I would like to, just to add that the professional facilitator now it's spreading a little bit more in Italy, but still, we have a lot of resistance among organisations. And there is a great concentration of facilitators in the north of the country. So we are our initiative now is also to bring facilitation to the southern regions of the country. And we are quite pleased about an initiative that came from our members, which is a small initiative, because they just decided to have a WhatsApp chat called like facilitators from the South. And the nice thing is that this initiative came from a Canadian girl, who is a member who lives now in the south of Italy, and but, and she's a member of IAF Italy, and she formed this WhatsApp chat, and we are quite proud of this, even if this is a small step, but it does mean something for us. H.J Wow, that's so interesting. And also that kind of organic movement of yeah, people starting up their own, yeah? Well, WhatsApp chat S.P Exactly, exactly, yeah. H.J And I think what's interesting actually for us is, the more we do these Chapter Chats, we hear a bit of a consistent theme, actually, in this people don't really know what facilitation is. That certainly, when we spoke to Bogdan from IAF Romania, that was one of the things he was talking about as well. So it's definitely and in the UK. So it's definitely not, uh, not something, uh, specific to where we are, which is interesting. Okay, so, um, thinking then, uh, well building a bit on what you were saying, Sara about, you know, you've got some new initiatives. Can you tell us a bit more about the chapter as it is today? S.P Yeah, sure. So the chapter today has about 30 to 35 members, as I was saying before, with the predominance in the north of Italy. So it's like 20 to 22, members in the north, and four of them are certified facilitators. So now we still have two co-leader, a co-leadership. It's me and Giacomo Petitti. We have been holding this role for a year now, so it's midterm kind of. And what we do is we basically carried on the work, the job that was began by Andrea and Deborah, because we hold monthly meetings. So it's pretty regularly. It's like the third Monday of each month we meet. And we also provided IAF Italy with a Zoom account so that we can, we could, uh, ensure you know this regularity. And this is a place, this is a moment of the month where people can meet and discuss and also participate in building and nourishing the community and to identify together goals and activities. So we wanted to be a participated chapter, no. So since we are kind of scattered among, you know, along the country, across the country, we cannot hold, like in person events so frequently. So we have our national event, which is held in Milan every year. So we keep it, you know, online, mainly. And then we we have, like, some activities, like, you know, things that we participate in, in events with other association for the promotion of the participation, or for the promotion of facilitation as well. Like, we went to an event last September in Bologna. So we travel a little bit, me and Giacomo sometimes. And then to, you know, to keep up with members, we have this WhatsApp chat, and then we have a sort of newsletter. We can call it like monthly, where we give, we keep them updated to with the international events and initiatives that are going on into the IAF Ward and yeah and that, that's pretty much it. And then we have, you know, like a specific also, activities that we were following, but maybe Andrea will tell you more later about it. N.W And you touched on the kind of Co-leadership model that you follow. What do you, have you found works well in making that work when you're co leading? A.P Yes, before the 2021 the chapter had always been led by an individual, but when Gerardo asked me to became the chapter leader, I was very scared. And in that period I had less time to dedicate to the association. So I asked to Deborah Rim Moiso to help me, and she joined, and she was very happy to join this experience. And we together were inspired by experiments in Co-leadership adopted by the global ecovillage network and and we not, we're not sure, but they may have too been inspired by the Kurdish democratic and federalism practices. So this was our approach, and it's very simple. Our co-leadership started, I don't know if now work at the same, but I think it's very similar. And any leadership position is taken at the same time by two people of different genders. So we suggest different genders, both are leader together. And you know, as IAF you need to have only one reference, one the chapter leader, but I was the person who did the senior tour. But for me and Deborah, we have the same power. And for me, was very important to share the season and to share also that after the meeting with the IAF International. And was very, very useful also to define the future strategy, also to when we decided to engage more members from the south of Italy, we decided together this and we decided to to have regular meetings with us, with me and Deborah. We call the coffee time meeting, or the beer meeting, the beer time meeting. So every week, we had a short meeting of half an hour to share ideas and also to share information that we took from from different meetings that we participate. So we shared also the duties you know about, to be a chapter leader. And so was a very good experience, and we suggested this managed model to all the chapters. H.J Nice, and for you Sara, does that, is it a model that feels nice working alongside somebody else? S.P Yeah, very much. I really appreciated this initiative. And when Andrea proposed me to take the role and told me that Giacomo was in as well, I was really relieved. I was like, Okay, now, now I know that I can do it like this. You know, in pairs. Yeah, I think it's very interesting to be together. And also you can, you know, divide activities, such as the previous one I was talking about, when you have to travel around. And also you can, you know, share meetings where you have to, that you have to attend, but mostly you can discuss and share fears and projects for the future. And also Giacomo and I have very different backgrounds. How are you know, we live in different places, in different type of communities, our jobs are a little bit different. So it's very interesting because we see things from very different perspectives and this is also always very, very rich, and something that I really, really recommend. So I'm really, really enjoying this. And also the nice thing was that at the last general conference, we kind of hosted the conference, which is organised by Gerardo every year. But also we decided to have a session together for a session. So we brought a workshop so we could test, you know, our Co-leadership in person and during work. So that's nice. H.J So it sounds great from sort of lots of different perspectives. And yeah, interesting thinking about that diversity perspective that you both bring two sort of different mindsets or different ways of facilitating to your leadership. And I can absolutely, having been passed England and Wales chapter chair, I can absolutely relate to that being a bit scared of doing it by yourself. So if you've got somebody to work alongside with that must feel really good. So the other thing you you've just mentioned again, leading us nicely onto, my next question is about your annual conference. It would be really nice to hear a bit more about about the how that works, about your plans and past conferences as well. You tell us a bit more. A.P Yeah, maybe I could introduce some themes related to the past conferences. And what I could say a lot of subjects. We started with ‘the collaboration era’ was the title of the first Italian conference. Was the first conference to make know better the professional facilitator, and to start also the collaboration with different professional you know. At the time, each facilitator was very jealous about his work ,his profession, because it was, was something very precious, so we decided to start collaboration to share experience methods and what what we know. In our conference, everyone bring his or her experience and the share methods could offer a free workshop so you have to share something of your professional experience also. And another theme that I loved, it was “where the donkey falls”. So when you are a facilitator, you do everything very well, but when you start to converge to the, to take the decision, here come the problems. So how we could take good decision, how we could go in the conversing way and respect our participants or the group's members. And after that was very good for me, the covid free editions conference, because we shared all we learned in these months of pandemic situation also about the online. But were moment to share those feelings as professional, as individual, as a member of a family, and what does. Also the last conference we organised were about the facilitate in a few words, so no verbal facilitation. How to use the body, arms? You know, we are Italian. We could was very, very well para verbal. But you never stop to study. You have to improve your skills. So we decide to face this team. And the last in the in 2024 the team was neutrality in facilitation. I mean, it's possible to be really neutral as a facilitator in a group, how you can do to be natural, what methods, what you have to do before the groups works before the workshop or after, to be more neutral. And at the end, one of the most nice for me experience of the conference was the agile and facilitation conference that was there during the European Middle East, original conference of the IAF, so was a very, was an international conference. We mainly, not mainly, all the conference has been organised in Italian language. This was the only conference can I organise in English. Always in Milan was dedicated to Agile. So to work with an agile methods, and also to go in deep in the Agile methods that it's not only for person that work with computer and engineers but it's also good for design thinking, the facilitator. And I don't know if Sara wants to add something more about this experience? S.P Yes, thank you Andrea, it was very exhaustive. Yeah, what I would like to add is more like a personal, maybe, point of view for in a way, because I, as I said before, I met facilitation three years ago. So I just attended a couple of conferences the last two. So the first one was, yeah, the one like facilitating in a few words, and that, for me, was really amazing, because I just met facilitation and I had no idea, like not no idea, but I was very young in facilitation. So experiencing facilitation through the body and through paraverbal was very enriching for me, because I could learn a lot and experiment on myself a lot. And the second one, and the very nice thing for me was that I was asked by Andrea, I think by Andrea, or by Delfino, I don't remember, to to facilitate the open space technology that we always have during the conference. And it was the first time for me, and that was absolutely amazing experience. And in general, the great thing about the conference is that it brings together very different people, and you get to know that, other words, you know, exist in facilitation. And this is something that being new. It's always you know, something to discover. So it's very interesting. And another thing that I would like to add is that in the this year, last conference, which was held in March, the one about neutrality, was organised in a slightly different way, because there was like a preparation path conference. And people were, are kind of supported and not tutored, but supported in their planning and designing of the workshops that they wanted to to offer. And these, and they were like, they were like feedback, attentions, so that people could improve and take care of, you know, details supported by by a team of, you know, facilitators, and these ensured great quality of of workshops during the conference. It was really, really, really high quality. And I believe that it helped also young facilitators to, you know, to offer workshops with less anxiety. I don't know how to say that, you know, so, yeah, that was really, really nice. I think A.P If I put up just a very practical thing that is not obvious, the conference is all organised by volunteers, and this is a choice, because the fee is very low, so it's about 180 or 150 euros. It depends about the year. So we want to be very open also to person that are not facilitator, are curious about facilitators or facilitation methods and stories, and that's all. H.J Sounds kind of similar to the conference that we put on in England and Wales, actually there's, yeah, definite similarities. Nice. Thank you. N.W Brilliant. And so I suppose building again on that kind of peer led nature of the work the chapter often builds collaborations and partnerships, both within Italy and beyond. So if we just start off with Italy, could you share some examples of some recent and current collaborations that you're involved with? A.P Yeah, thank you, Nikki for the question. Yes. When I became chapter leader, together with Deborah, we decide to enforce relation with National Association, because we understood that we have to grow, and to grow we have to enforce the relation to know more association that are interested in the same subjects. So mainly we did intervention to explain what I effectively do and what are the core competencies, support, facilitator, and, you know, just to present ourselves and to explain what a facilitator is. We invite all the members of different association to share information and objectives, to find common ground. So we work, in particular with IP two, that is an association in Italy that work on public participation. And if the members are more academic, are more are not professional... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/31653497

FS67 - Public Dialogue with Suzannah Lansdell 05/21/2024

FS67 - Public Dialogue with Suzannah Lansdell In this episode Nikki talks to Suzannah Lansdell about Public Dialogue. Suzannah is a freelance facilitator who also advises organisations on how to do public and stakeholder dialogue, particularly in the science and technology sector for Sciencewise. They talk about Public Dialogue as a process bringing together members of the public with specialists and policy makers to discuss complex and controversial topics and gather public insights on the issues without necessarily coming to firm recommendations; “this is this is not a Focus Group. It's not kind of top of mind views. It's digging behind that” How members of the public are engaged to take part; The role of a facilitator in Public Dialogue and how it’s different from other types of facilitation; Some recent topics for Public Dialogue including Embryo Research, Future Flight and the role of Data; The experience of participants and how this differs from other consultative processes; “one of the key things about Public Dialogue as you give people the time to kind of wrestle around the issue and think more deeply.” How information is shared with participants, including striking a balance on the level of detail and the importance of including a diverse range of specialist perspectives; Evaluation in Public Dialogue and the focus on monitoring longer term impacts from the process; Suzannah’s hopes and expectations for the future of Public Dialogue, becoming more embedded in policy making and democratic processes. A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest: Suzannah Lansdell on LinkedIn: Today’s subject Sciencewise: Involve Resources: Involve Methods: To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter: Facilitation Stories website: And to email us: IAF England and Wales: The Facilitation Stories Team: Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript N.W Hello, and welcome to Facilitation Stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson (NW) and today I'm going to be talking to Suzannah Lansdell (SL) about public dialogue. So welcome, Suzannah. S.L Thanks, Nikki, lovely to be here. N.W Okay, so to start off with, could you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do. S.L So I'm a freelance facilitator, I've been doing that for about 15 years or so. I started, and so how I got into it just as a bit of context, as it sort of helps a bit with the public dialogue is, I started working for an environment charity back in the 90s. And I was doing a lot of work then with businesses, convincing them that there were commercial implications around environment sustainability issues. But one part of that the charity had was also about consensus building, about how do you get different organisations to approach environment sustainability issues, that at that time in the 90s, were very kind of adversarial in a more kind of consensus based approach. And absolutely core to that was facilitation, as a way to, to break through that more adversarial approach. So then I started working a lot on that and I kind of cut my teeth on some of the big issues of the day, things like nuclear waste, oil disposal, oil infrastructure disposal, biotechnology. So some really kind of big issues where people were on opposing sides and a facilitative approach helped people to kind of have more constructive conversations and find a way through. So that's kind of where I cut my teeth. And then moving on, what I'm much more doing now is that I advise and I support organisations on how they do public and stakeholder dialogue, and particularly around public dialogue work for an organisation called Science wise, that looks at public dialogue around science and technology. But I also do some kind of keeping my oar in on the practice in terms of facilitating citizens assemblies, and other kind of processes involved with the public. And then a little spattering of training in facilitation and a little bit of kind of charity away days, but most of my work at the moment is around the kind of public dialogue in science and technology. N.W Okay, great. And that was a very neat segue into today's topic, which is about public dialogue. So for listeners that aren't familiar with this term, what do we mean by public dialogue? S.L I suppose in its simplest terms, it's a process where you've got members of the public coming together with specialists and policymakers and other stakeholders to deliberate and have conversations about usually kind of complex or controversial topics. And they do that over several hours, so this is not a focus group, it's not kind of Top of Mind views. It's digging behind that. So you give people a lot of time to think about the issues and to have conversations with those specialists, but also fellow participants. So probably people are maybe deliberating over 10 hours or a couple of weekends. It can be online, it can be face to face, it can be a bit of a mix of both. The key purpose is to get those insights from the public to feed into kind of a decision whether that be a policy or whether that be a strategy. And some people might have heard of the term of mini Publics, so it sort of fits within that frame of mini Publics. And we could talk a bit more about who's the public in this. The key difference that I see with public dialogue is that unlike, for example, citizens juries or citizens assemblies, we don't usually ask people to come up with or vote on recommendations or come up with specific recommendations. It's much more that they're kind of invited to explore that issue and then there are insights that come from that, but it's not taking it to that kind of final this is what this group of people think and vote on. N.W And so who would normally be the sort of Commissioner of the public dialogue who would bring those groups together? S.L It would be a decision maker. So it'd be somebody that has some traction over that issue. It might be that they own the policy or that they own the strategy the public dialogue is feeding into. So that could be a government department, it could be a Research Council, it could be a regulator. So usually at that sort of level. N.W And you touched on this a moment ago, but mini publics as it were, who normally would get involved in these, and how would they get involved? S.L Yeah, so I think what's really important to know with public dialogue, or indeed any of those mini publics is that these are not public participants that choose to sign up, because they've seen it in their local paper or something, they are kind of randomly recruited to take part in this process. So what you're trying to do is to get a reflective group of the population to be part of these processes, and they're paid to attend. So you're getting over that slight bias that you might have, if you have a local meeting, for example, where just those people with the time and the inclination, and already with an interest in the topic turn up. So you're recruiting them kind of randomly, and that might be that they are approached on the street and it might be that they are approached through some kind of invitation. So usually, for example, on citizens assemblies, they're approached through a sortition approach, which is, you randomly receive an invitation through the post. Most public dialogues, it's recruited sort of on the street. And then you're looking for a kind of demographic, as I say, that kind of reflects the population, whether that be gender, whether that be where people are from, it might be things like whether the urban and rural split, it might be to do with the age profile, so that you've sort of got a little mini public in the room that you're having that conversation within. N.W Have you got any examples of recent topics that you've seen covered in a public dialogue, just to bring that to life, I suppose. S.L Well certainly. So the science wise work that I work on, it's, I mean, as you might expect, it's kind of around science and tech innovation, sorts of topics. So some of the recent ones have been things like embryo research, and where that goes in the future. Future flight technologies. So there's a whole new area of kind of innovation around future flight and what does the public think about where that might go? BioMed adaptation has been another one. Lots around kind of data, what do people think about data that is held on them or data that might be used? Where are the boundaries around that? And through things like genome editing in farmed animals, so a real range across that sort of science and tech space. N.W So obviously, we've talked about the commissioners and the public involved in this, but this is facilitation stories. So what would you say the role of facilitators is in a public dialogue? And how, in your experience, is that different from other types of facilitation? S.L So I suppose, obviously, there's the core basics of facilitation, that are the same, but I suppose, for me, the real the things that really stands out are that, absolutely, as with lots of other facilitation, your view on a topic has to really stand down you can't be seen to influence the process in one way or another. And when some of those topics they're very kind of emotive. Another thing is that because you've got a group of the public there, so I suppose those two things, you're likely to be part of a bigger team. So the number of participants involved in a public dialogue might be, it might be 30, but it may well be closer to sort of 100. So there's a team of facilitators, you've got a group on your table, say if you're just a table facilitator of seven or eight participants, and they're public participants who, it's not like if you were, say, working in with an organisation where you might have a bit of insight as to who's going to pop up on your table, you might have people there who are really not confident in speaking or, or who might have literacy challenges, or who might have English as a second language. So you've got to sort of adapt to that group of participants that you have, and work with them to build their confidence to express their views about the sorts of issues that are under consideration. And then I think this notion that you're part of a team of facilitators, you're all doing the sort of similar process on separate tables, and that is part of a bigger jigsaw piece. So you sort of got to manage how your group is responding to those questions and that plan that you've got, and knowing that you need to kind of get to an output for that specific section, because it fits together into the whole jigsaw piece of the whole process. So I think that that's an interesting dynamic. It's not like you're there and you're kind of controlling the whole space. Of course, I'm talking there about a table facilitator and then there's the kind of facilitator who's kind of orchestrating the whole piece as well. I mean it's fascinating working with the public, that's the bit that I just find so interesting is giving people the opportunity to have their voice heard in these issues and people love it. But as a facilitator kind of getting to the point where people are comfortable to do that is interesting. N.W Yeah, I mean, I haven't mentioned as we've been talking, but I have facilitated in these environments. And I think one of the things that I always find so fascinating is that you can have a whole load of different groups essentially following the same framework and process and they will come out with completely different things, or they will respond to the materials in completely different ways. And you've got such a close comparison, because they're all in the room together with half an hour, or whatever it is, and I just find that fascinating, or I've done some where I've done the same process two nights in a row with different groups. And literally, it's nothing to do with how I facilitated it because I was the same person. But yeah, so interesting to see how different groups respond to the material. S.L And sorry, I was just going to say. And also giving people the opportunity, because of course, you've got a mini public there. They, the participants themselves are meeting people that are from all sorts of different walks of life, and seeing how they reflect also on other people's contribution and how that adjusts their views. And again, that, for me, is one of the key things about public dialogue, as you give people the time to kind of wrestle around the issue and think more deeply. N.W Yeah, absolutely. And again, I mean, we've touched on this a little bit, but obviously, this can often be about quite complex subject matter, you've given some examples at the beginning, and the participants will have varying degrees of prior knowledge. So obviously, giving them some information is one of the key things in this, what have you seen works particularly well, in how you present that information to people and perhaps not so well? S.L So yeah, absolutely, you kind of have to give people enough information that they can deliberate on it, but not so much and that for me is the real critical point is that it's boiling it down into what is the appropriate level of detail, participants don't need to have a PhD in the topic. And they very quickly, participants really quickly kind of get to grips with what the topic is. So for me, the really crucial things is that you have to have specialists from a diversity of perspectives. So that participants can kind of reach into the corners of the issues and what the different kind of takes are on that. And I know most of the time it is done through some form of kind of presentation. But it's really important to pick your specialists well, that they can talk in an accessible way or brief them well to do that, and make sure that you know what it is that they're saying, that you get to look at their slides beforehand and make sure that it is accessible. It's not kind of reams and reams of really detailed stuff. But other ways in which the worst sorts of information imparting are where you have a really long, dense presentation. So that's designed out. You tend to give it in small bite sized, probably no more than 10 minute type of talks, you layer up the sort of information that you're giving to people so that they've got these sort of bite sized chunks, and they're hearing from different perspectives. But as well as hearing from different perspectives, you sometimes in public dialogues, you can also interview people before the dialogue and put that into provocation, kind of cards or animations or sort of pictorial scenarios so that people can access the information in different sorts of ways. What's really crucial is that they hear from different perspectives, they get a chance to sort of question and interrogate that, and it's not in a kind of overly complex way. So that's the real skill of who's designing the whole process, is making sure that we're hearing the right sort of information enough for participants to get to grips with it, but not so much that they're just listening to reams and reams of presentations, because that's not the point. The point is not to kind of come out with an educated public. The point is, is that we want to hear what participants kind of deliberations and insights on having known enough about the topic. N.W yeah, and I suppose almost that instinctive reaction or whatever it is that they have picked out from a presentation that's most important for them is a valuable insight in the first place is that, actually what is it that they're taking away from all of the information they've been given? S.L Yep. What's really nice is if you have the opportunity and the processes, which because they're run over a number of sessions you can often do this, is to ask participants also what might be missing or what they might have to revisit. And, again, if you've got a specialist sort of in the room, whether that's a virtual or real room, using them as a kind of resource to be able to pull on as well is really important. N.W Yeah, I think that we perhaps haven't made that clear that quite often those experts will give a presentation but then they are still available to chip in, to answer questions, to clarify bits. So that's really interesting, too. Yeah. And again, so while it's not unique to public dialogue, I think something that a lot of the processes involve is a really kind of structured evaluation. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? And how it sort of fits in the overall process? S.L Yeah, yeah and certainly for science wise public dialogue. So just actually, to really quickly scale back. So science wise supports government departments, research councils to do public dialogue and kind of mentor supports those organisations, but also provides some co-funding. So there's always an independent evaluation that sits alongside that public dialogue. And that both I think, quite uniquely, for this evaluation, it sits at the beginning, and it can give sort of formative input throughout the process as it's being designed. But also it produces a kind of summative evaluation at the end. So what is it that participants have felt? What is it that specialists have felt? So gathering all of that data like you might do, usually in a kind of evaluation. So it's more than just observing the sessions, doing a participant survey and reporting on that. And the other thing that I think is kind of really important is, again, certainly for science wise dialogues is that there's a sort of interim report when the dialogue report comes out. But then we go back or the evaluator goes back six months later, and says, right, what was the impact of this public dialogue? And that, to me, is really, really crucial so that you know where has it influenced? You said at the beginning, that this was going to be something that inputted into this policy, or that inputted into this strategy. Six months on what has happened? Have those impacts happened? Have other things happened that have been as a result of that public dialogue process? N.W And I suppose with that in mind, have you got any examples of where you've seen really specific big changes that have come out of those that you can sort of share? So obviously, a lot of them are still in progress. S.L Yeah, sure. Well, I suppose the one that quite often is, is quoted and this is going back a little way. I mean if you look at the science wise website, there's always the evaluation reports are up there as well. And they, certainly the more recent ones, kind of capture those impacts. So it might be that it's led to a whole raft of new social science research. But one of the ones particularly that's quoted is around something called mitochondrial transfer, and this was quite a controversial area of research. A public dialogue was held which helped inform. Then the recommendations of what was the human fertilisation embryology authority, the HFEA , who regulates all of that, and that then fed into changing the law on what was allowed in terms of this mitochondrial transfer. Whilst they would have done other stakeholder work, they would have listened to what experts thought about this, actually hearing about what the public thought, whether this was the right way to go, what were the sorts of limits? What were the red lines? What sort of conditions should be in place? Formed a really kind of core plank of then what... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/31291797

FS 66 Facilitate 2024: Growing Together with Paul Brand 04/16/2024

FS 66 Facilitate 2024: Growing Together with Paul Brand In this episode Helene talks to Paul Brand, Director of Risk Solutions and part of the IAF England and Wales Leadership Team, Board member and conference team member. They talk about The IAF England and Wales facilitators and friends Facilitate 2024 Conference (April 26th & 27th 2024) and what it is all about. Who is on the organising team and what Paul's role has been What is different from last year's conference What kinds of sessions we can expect What he is looking forward to A bit about the participants some of whom are coming from outsde the UK How the IAF England and Wales conferences have grown over the years and what makes them successful "it is a bit like a buffet and having taste of this and a taste of that." "what really makes me happy about the whole thing, and inspired by it, is watching people enter into it and throw themselves into it. Watching them having conversations with people they've never met and would never meet and, and go away taking whatever it is they've taken from the conference". A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest was Dr Paul Brand Today’s subject The Facilitate 2024 Conference To find out more about the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter The Facilitation Stories Team Helene Jewell: Nikki Wilson: Transcript Hello and welcome to facilitation stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helene Jewell and today I'm talking to Paul Brand,a management consultant whose work focuses on public policy. He often works on long term engagements across entire sectors for multi organisation communities, and uses facilitation extensively in his work. He's also an IAF England Wales board member, certified professional facilitator and a member of the conference planning team. Welcome, Paul. Good morning. It is morning. It is morning. Good. It is morning. It is morning. So my first question is just to ask you, really to tell us a little bit more about you as a facilitator and your involvement in the IAF. So I came into facilitation like a lot of people, not quite realizing I was doing it, doing a lot of public policy consulting things, and needing somebody who would lead groups of people through discussions. And then that became a better understanding of what facilitation as a profession was all about. And that grew and grew over the years. I did a long piece of work in the about 2011 2012, working with a very senior IAF board member. We did a lot of events together, and during that time I understood what the IAF was about and realized I needed to actually make my facilitation skills part of my professional development formally. So I did the IAF certified professional facilitator thing in 2012, which was quite a developmental experience in itself, and I keep that up to this day. And then over the last four or five years, I've become more and more involved in the workings of IAF, in England and Wales particularly, and have also had the privilege of attending a couple of the european conferences in Paris and Milan, finding out how our colleagues across the channel do it. So it's been an arc of development. Yeah, an arc of development slowly, slowly coming further and further in. And obviously we're here today to talk about the about conference. So let's start off with the kind of, the basic stuff. So IAF England and Wales conference in April, I guess. What do we need to know? The dates, where it is, what is it all about? So it is Friday and Saturday, the 26th and 27 April. And for quite a few years now, we've done this Friday Saturday mix seems to balance that. Some of the people, depending on their work and professional lives, some of them can, you know, share those two days, rather than it being two days out mid week or two days at a weekend. It is in Birmingham it is at a venue called the Priory rooms, which is quite close to the middle of Birmingham. It's very easy to get to, and it's two full days, the Friday and the Saturday. It is quite broadly based. We had about 70 people last year. As of yesterday, we've got 100 people coming this year, and we're going to have to cap it at 120 for venue reasons, which is a really nice, really nice set of challenges to have. That is. That is. So there are a few more tickets. We are recording this a little bit before the conference, obviously, but there are, at the moment, a few tickets left. It's about 20 whole two day tickets left. We have to stop it at 120 because just moving that many people around the venue, because of the safe of it, becomes a limit on that. You can book single day tickets. So even after full tickets closed, there might be some one day tickets left. There's about ten or 15 people coming on one day or the other, but most people are there for the two days. Fantastic. And so obviously, a lot of work goes into organizing the conference. I know that we worked quite closely together doing the hybrid conference of years ago. Tell us a little bit about the organizing team. Who's on it? What do they do? How have you kind of made things work from behind the scenes? So the conference team is all volunteers. Obviously, everything in this group is. It is so two thirds people who are also on the England and Wales leadership group. So they have wider interest in the if group and some people who just do the conference. The core of it, of course, is the people who put the program together, which is a team of three or four people. And so this year, with this sort of numbers, we're running four parallel tracks during most of those two days. And there are four very, very broad sort of types of session. They're all interactive sessions. There's no big lectures at this conference, but there's a thread which is learning facilitation tools, techniques, skills, that kind of thing. There's a thread which are sessions which are about growing and personal development and reflection. There's a thread which is about work and business, professional development, everything from how to run a business, because quite a lot of people are freelancers in this thing, as opposed to working in house. And what the differences are there, even down to, you know, how do we think about charging for our time, depending on the context? And then we've got a fourth thread this year, which is actually on the whole area of diversity, inclusivity, lived experience, and what do we need to learn as facilitators in this generation about how we handle those issues, even if that's not the topic of the discussion. You might be doing a session on something very engineering or very management based, but how are you managing diversity, inclusion and dealing with people's lived experience in different areas? So there's quite a variety of stuff. There's four parallel tracks. There's no big lectures. There's some opening and closing sessions and any sense of how many. You probably do know this, I expect it's written down somewhere. But how many different sessions are there altogether? 30 ish, because we're running, apart from the opening and closing each day, we're running four tracks all the time from, like, from when we set off on the Friday morning until Saturday afternoon. And there's a closing plenary, so there's about 30 dishes to take from the buffet and you can go to about a quarter of those. If you. If you went to a session in every slot, you could go to about a quarter of that number. But then there'll be other ways of accessing some of that material and talking to other people and stuff. So it is a bit like a buffet and having taste of this and a taste of that. That sounds like there's so much to choose from and that's the important thing, isn't it? You're not sort of channeled in a particular direction. You can choose what you want to suit you. I would say what's quite interesting, because I was at a session this morning talking with some of the session leaders. We've got quite a few people who are not only coming for the conference for the first time, but they're jumping in the deep end and are doing a session and this is their first contact with IAF. So that's quite exciting and quite brave of them. It is. I was going to ask, actually, how many people doing sort of offering sessions have not done it before? Because some people do offer sessions sort of fairly regularly at the IAF conferences. We counted it up last year and we reckoned it split about a third. A third? A third. A third of the people were, you know, connected into IAF. They were probably members, they were involved in something, that kind of thing. There was about a third who we might count as IAF friends. They. This wasn't their first IAF event experience. They. Maybe they come to meetups or they'd been to a previous conference or they knew somebody. And about a third of the people last year, they had just heard of this conference, they just heard of IAF and they came along, and that was their first baptism of fire, if you like. So I don't know if the balance is the same yesterday, but there's certainly, there's that breadth coming that's really nice and really good that there's sort of some, I guess, old hands, if you like, that are sort of really familiar with. Very politely put, helen, very experienced facilitators who are coming back to share their wisdom again and some new faces. My really strong memory last year was a young woman who came from another country. We'll talk about that in a minute. She contacted us very hesitant, said, I'm not from the UK. I studied in the UK. I want to come over and see my university friends. I want to come to the conference. What do you think about me doing a session? Would it be okay? I'm not that experienced as a facilitator, and I'm really new to IAF, so we encouraged her to come over and go for it. She was really quite frightened when she turned up on the day. She was brilliant. It was a lovely session. It was really, really good, because one of the things that happens is everybody coming to this conference in the past, they realize that they've been on the other side of this. So there's a willingness to explore new ground with someone who's been trying to facilitate something and encourage them and go along with their process and their game or whatever it is. So it becomes a very positive place even to try something completely new, even if you're very nervous. And I'm sure that will happen again this year. We'll have someone doing that. And I know I've always felt, when I've gone to the conferences before, really felt that actually, that it's quite, the phrase is a little bit overused, safe space to actually explore and experiment and have a go. And it's a really supportive community, isn't it? So, you know, nobody's going to turn around and go, oh, no, I didn't like that. You know, there may be some reflective comments and all the rest of it, but it's all very, very supportive.... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/30824943

FS65 Chapter Chat with Bogdan Grigore IAF Romania 03/19/2024

FS65 Chapter Chat with Bogdan Grigore IAF Romania In epsode Bogdan tells us about himself as a facilitator and trainer, what it means to be a playful facilitator and his journey into facilitation. He tells Nikki and Helene about how IAF Romania and how it all began, from joining IAF in 2018 to getting intouch with other facilitatrors in Romania. With the start of the pandemic 2 years later and everyone had more time he found out what was needed to start a chapter, and started IAF Romania with Bogdan as the Chair. Since 2020 the chaoter has grown to 27 members, with more facilitators wanting to be a part of the community. The growth has happened in terms of quality of events as well as numbers. Facilitation is not well known in Romania and not well known in organisations. Bogdan talks about engaging new people to the world of facilitation, organising events and enabling people to make connections and talks in more detail about some of the events they have hosted for example Open Space in HR. They also have a group mentoring programme and how that works. They have two types of approaches - one for the community and one for the IAF Romania members. Most events are co-facilitated so there is a lot of learning. Some examples of the events are: Training about having impact in online facilitation - Nelson from Portugal. Pop up sharing around a particular topic. Facilitators Studio - where someone can bring a new design to try out. Facilitator Lab - helping two facilitators to create something together. An example of this is AI and facilitation. The core members of 10/12 come up with the ideas for all the events and build the ideas together. They plan to have their first in person event - a facilitation festival in the autumn. Bogdan talks about collaborations with other IAF Chapters and explains how these have worked: Twin Chapters with IAF Italy Facilitation Lightening Talks, some of which were with IAF Ireland and IAF Italy He talks extensively about the collaboration with IAF Japan and the 9 or 10 meetings that were needed to set this up and the cultural learning points. Helene asks Bogdan to talk about his role in IAF Europe and Middle East as part of the share and learn team and the benefits of bringing together different cultures and facilitation experience. Bogdan talks about what next for IAF Romania - elections, continued focus on mentoring, sending chapters from the Power of Facilitation book out in their newsletter which they have translated into Romanian. Bogdan lastly talks about his hope for the future and the facilitation festival. To contact Bogdan: IAF Romania: The Power of Facilition: Lightening Talks: Celebrating Diversity with IAF Japan Find Helene on LinkedIn: Find Nikki on LinkedIn: Listen to our podcasts: Email: [email protected] /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/30436803

FS64 State of Facilitation Survey and Report with Deborah Rim Moiso 02/20/2024

FS64 State of Facilitation Survey and Report with Deborah Rim Moiso In this episode Helene talks to Deborah Deborah Rim Moiso from SessionLab about their recent survey and report. Deborah shares her experience as a freelance facilitator and discusses her mentoring program with IAF and her passion for facilitating multistakeholder projects on nature conservation, climate change, and youth training. She talks about how in 2022, the first global survey of facilitators was conducted by Session Lab, gathering data on who facilitators are, where they are, and their age. It was initiated by Session Lab to address the lack of data on facilitators, despite reports existing for other professions like UX design. This survey looks at Facilitation trends and insights from a global survey. Facilitators were surveyed globally, with 1000 responses from diverse regions, including Japan. The report was well-received, with new questions added to better understand learning pathways to facilitation, and feedback from contributors and experts. Deborah talks about the role of expert commentators and how they condensed the data and provided insights, asking questions and challenging assumptions to open discussions and conversations. Deborah describes some of the key findings from the report including Facilitation industry trends and AI adoption. One standout reflection from the report is the generosity of the facilitation community in providing answers, despite the lengthy survey process. Deborah discusses some of the other insights from the report including: Online vs in-person sessions Facilitators delivering shorter sessions Representation, professionalisation and diversity The facilitation industry and accreditation programs The importance of including younger perspectives in the facilitation profession To contact Deborah: email To read the 2024 State of Facilitation Report: To help SessionLab promote the project: If you have any questions about the report or the data behind it, or want to contribute to the next edition, get in touch with us at . Find Helene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Listen to our podcasts: Connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories Email: /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/30013553

FS63 Jamie Colston - Facilitating Systemic Constellations 01/11/2024

FS62 - Chapter Chat with Tamara Zivadinovic 12/11/2023

FS61 Authentic Facilitation with Christine Bell 11/14/2023

FS61 Authentic Facilitation with Christine Bell In this episode Helene talks to Christine Bell about a session they co-facilitated for Facilitation Week. They share some of the group’s thoughts on what authentic facilitation is as well as some of their own emerging questions on how to balance being authentic but remaining in control and whether authenticity can be learned or taught. They also reflect on their first experience of planning and facilitating together and how liberating it was to deliver a session with no required outputs and without using some of the “usual” facilitation tools. A full transcript is below. Links: Contact Christine by email: [email protected] Find Helene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Listen to our podcasts: Connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories Email: [email protected] Nikki Wilson (NW) Hello, and welcome to Facilitation Stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. In today's episode, Helene Jewell speaks to Christine Bell. Helene Jewell (HJ) So in today's podcast, I am going to be chatting to Christine Bell, Director of Centre for facilitation. Welcome, Christine. Christine Bell (CB) Hi, Helene, nice to be with you again. HJ And it wasn't actually that long ago that I saw Christine, because we did a session together for Facilitation Week all about Authentic Facilitation. And that's what we're going to be talking about in today's podcast. But before I lead into asking Christine, lots of questions about that and doing a bit of reflecting, I just want to ask Christine to tell us a little bit about her facilitation practice. So what kind of work do you do, Christine. CB I mainly work with researchers and innovators and looking at different ways of doing things, different approaches, trying to get them to collaborate with each other and kind of break down some of the barriers and get to know each other so that they can start to find out interesting connections between different bits of research and then mash it together to come up with something new and interesting, that breaks through some of the challenges that we're facing, environmentally, socially, etc. HJ Right. Okay. And we have never actually worked together, but I think it's fair to say we know each other through the IAF, or through the larger facilitation community. Yeah, yeah, we've probably, we've probably met quite a few times on the different online forums. And then at the conference, I think the Conference this year was first time we actually met in person. And then and then we met in Bristol, because I was working in Bristol. HJ So yeah, so our paths have crossed a few times and then feed somehow, you have this great idea about doing a session in Facilitation Week, and you thought “Ah yes I’ll ask Helene” Well, first of all, let's start with Facilitation Week, what is Facilitation Week? CB Facilitation Week is a week of different activities designed for the facilitation community so that we can learn and develop from each other and explore different aspects of facilitation. And, and I was very conscious that my time is really quite limited, like, you know, with my time because of all the elderly care issues that are going on for me. So I give very little back to the community. So it felt like it would be quite a small thing for me to do and quite manageable to just offer to run a short session within Facilitation Week. So that was, that was the starting point. And then I learned because I also did that for the facilitation in person event in May. And I learned then because I got involved with another facilitator to run a session there, , actually, if you're going to do it, why not use it as a learning opportunity for myself to actually work with a peer that I don't usually work with, and just learn from that person kind of share best practice together, because then it's actually a developmental experience for me, and not just me doing a free bit of facilitation. And a free bit of, you know, I can facilitate and design facilitation all day long, and that's my job, but to actually to do it with a peer that I don't usually work with just makes that more, it’s more fun. And it's more developmental as well. So, yeah, so you came into my mind, because I thought, oh, yeah, I'd like to work with Helene. I think it would be fun. HJ It was so nice, it was like “yes, of course”, like, and I think it's true that Facilitation Week is that there's loads of different sessions, and they're hosted by loads of different people all over the world. So in a way, there's that opportunity to explore and connect, and it's fairly low risk. It's a really nice way to sort of get to know people. And yes, I remember your session that was for the May conference, I think,and so I was quite quite pleased. I thought, well, this is a nice opportunity, because we've connected a bit online. We've been to those meetups and the conference together. And yeah, I thought, Well, this sounds like a good idea. And I know originally, you kind of thought about two different things. I can't remember. CB Yeah, I can't remember what the other one was. But you jumped on the authenticity and when, because I went “I’m vaguely thinking this authenticity”. And I think that was because I just finished my last piece of work for the summer, which had been avert a hybrid conference, and someone had commented about my style and approach and how different and distinctive it was to other online facilitator that they’d worked with. And I think I was reflecting on that and recognising actually, that is, one of my strengths is that I can be in the virtual environment, and I feel natural in that environment. HJ So yeah, I remember you sending an email and thinking about these two different options. And the authenticity stuff really jumped out at me, I think, partly because a lot of the time when we talk about doing sessions, for you know, things like Facilitation Week, I think it's really easy to jump to sort of tools and techniques and sharing that kind of stuff. But I was really intrigued by this, because I thought it's something quite different. But also, I wasn't quite sure where it might go. And I'm quite, I'm always quite keen to try and explore things and see sort of what what could be. So I think when you suggested that, I thought, “Great, that's a good starting point. Let's, let's jump in there and and have a little go and see where it goes”. And it's probably fair to say that that was, that was the way our planning worked a little bit. CB Yeah, it was, I think it was, it was a little chaotic. And then I think I had, I had a quiet period, it was just before the beginning of August. And so I started, I intellectualised about it, which is how I often go. So I did some research. And I started like pulling out all this stuff on authenticity. And it wasn't really, it kind of just made it feel quite sterile. And I thought that's not really it. That's not what I'm talking about here. Then my kind of as happens in the whole of this year, my mum went into hospital again. So I was back into a crisis period. So I didn't have much time to think about it. And so then when you got back from your holiday, we were kind of scrambling around going “right, what is it we're trying to do?” And that's when I came up with the title. HJ It was, “Am I? Can I? Should I?, which I think actually intrigued people in itself. So I think that was great that it was such a sort of organic. That's nice. Yeah, but it just Yeah, did it just appear? Or did you spend a long time thinking? CB No, no, I think it just I went for a bit of a walk. And I just, and it kind of came to me. And it was because this, the way of these things is you often have to come up with your title for the marketing before you've really thought what the session is going to be about. So I didn't want to kind of make it too prescriptive that we would then have to fit into. And I think as I was thinking about it was those dialogues, those kinds of things about what am I actually authentic? You know, is that what I'm coming across here? When people say to me about how I come across as a facilitator and how relaxed they feel with me, is that about authenticity? And then the kind of what is it I do to become authentic? So that's the kind of learning piece? And is it something that you intuitively do? Or is it something that you can actually learn to do? And then the “should” bit was because I think mainly because I was going through that crisis with my mum, as you know, and, you know, there are times when I've had to just put the face on. And you know, internally, I'm crying. And actually, I've got to kind of be out there being positive and engaged Whilst this is going on in the background. And I'm worrying about it. And so, you know, in some ways, is that true authenticity, if we're having to put a bit of a mask over to our feelings? But actually, should I really be truly authentic with a big group do 60 people need to know all my emote stuff that's going on? They just like me to get on with my job and facilitate. H Yeah, and it's so intersting, because I know, when we were talking about, you know, what do we what is this session gonna be like, what do we need to put in there, we did have a lot of conversations about that kind of stuff. And I know for from my side, it has been suggested by a couple of people that, you know, like you perhaps I'm quite, I don't know, quite energetic, perhaps quite personable in my facilitation style, quite, maybe quite relaxed, but that sometimes I need to maybe dial down my energetic-ness, that kind of outward enthusiasm for a session, let's say, because that doesn't fit with the session, because the tone of the session needs to be different. And so for me, that was one of the questions that I know, I brought into our discussions about, well, when is it good to dial up or dial down your natural self? And when do we need to be a certain way? Um, so yeah, thinking about your example there, you know, you've got stuff going on. That's actually, you know, it's really affecting the way you do things and to have to put on that that face. How does that feel and how does that work? And I think we ended up having these really fascinating conversations between ourselves before we actually even got into the session. And I almost think that it's the kind of conversation that's almost quite hard to put into a session, because it is very organic in a way that it can go, there's so many different elements to it, it can kind of go left or right or all over the place. You know, there's lots of different bits. And so, in a way, I think the way that we we did the session, it was quite open, and we sort of went with the flow, it felt quite right. CB And some of that was kind of by default, wasn't it? Because originally, I was saying, “I could use this new, you know, I'm learning over the summer, I want to learn how to use this new tool. And maybe we could use that” and, and then because all of this stuff happened with my mum, I didn't have the headspace to deal with that. And actually, then we started talking about it, you and I, and we had so many conversations planning it we would just go off into kind of like, oh, this is a really, I knew then that the session was going to work because we just the pair of us could sustain an hour's conversation on authenticity, really, really easily. And so I think that's at that point, we went, why are we worrying about capturing this, we don't need any output. This is facilitation, we, it's a group of random strangers, we don't have to make any decisions, we don't have to come to any conclusions. We don't have to produce a bit of output for a client and so all the stuff that we usually do, we just stripped it right back, because we realised that we had a joyous time just talking about this. And so we worked on the assumption that our participants would come to this as facilitators, and would engage with it. And by stripping away all of the usual periphery stuff, we just made it feel quite natural, and therefore authentic. And that's kind of a couple of them said something in their feedback about how we had made it right from the beginning, a really relaxed session so they could bring their authentic selves. And the conversations very quickly got to a quite a deep, authentic level with random strangers. And they were all going crazy at the end sending each other, you know, putting in the chat or the chat, I was going through the chat. And it's like, yeah, this is my email. This is my, who cares about data protection, here's my email, contact me, here's my LinkedIn details. And in a way, yeah, that that's not always usual in an online session. HJ Yeah. And I think it's at that point about, they're not needing to be a particular output, I think is really important. But I think the other thing about working with somebody you haven't commonly worked with, there's that trust building, I guess, relationship building piece. And I feel like we inadvertently did a lot of that behind the scenes, which meant that perhaps, as a co facilitation team, that it worked really well on the day and that we were able to, to hold those conversations without having to worry too much about some of the logistics and all that kind of stuff, which I think sometimes you can worry about, I think it felt like we didn't have to worry too much. It felt like we had quite a strong team, I suppose. CB Yeah. structure as well didn't we so I mean it was like, you know, I'm gonna do this bit, you're gonna do this bit, you're gonna organise the breakout groups in the background, and you're doing that bit and I was doing the breakout rooms. And it's like, so we kind of made sure that we knew we didn't, it didn't feel like we crossed, we kind of crossed over each other. It felt like we were holding this together. HJ Yeah. So I don't, of course, don't want to give anybody the idea that we we didn't plan the session. I promise. We did we used session lab. We did have a nice plan. I think it was more about the way that we put that together. But going back to the session then and how many people did we actually have because one of the things that I was really pleased about and not surprised necessarily but but really pleased that it was actually quite a global audience was an audience, a global load of participants. But how many? CB think we had about 14 in the end. So we restricted registration, because that was partly me just feeling like “I can't I've got too much going on” and the complexity of having a really big group when you want to have a plenary discussion, because we decided we wouldn't do everything as a feedback thing. We would have a lot of stuff in the groups and then our last session would be a plenary. And to have a really massive plenary, just I felt would have been more difficult for people to be themselves and to share stuff, so we had a much smaller group, so I limited the Zoom registration to I think 30, something like that. And yeah, and then we had about an you know, the usual attrition of people not turning up and someone turned up, I think 12 hours later, you know, the usual thing you someone didn't read the time zones. But we yeah, we did., we had people from Europe. And so we have someone from Greece, someone from Austria, and then we had a really nice clutch of people from India, HJ It was really nice to see that truly sort of lots of people that, that I'd never seen before I didn't have a particular connection were very new to me. And a few sort of faces that I know as well. But it was a really nice group of people. And so reflecting back then, on what we actually did, I remember one of the things that you suggested we do right at the start of the session was to put people in trios, I think, and send them straight into breakout rooms. And that felt like people were able to have these conversations straight straight away before we launched into the session. So I really enjoyed that. And then we came back. And what did we do after that? I'm trying to remember what our first bit was. CB I think we started very much about what is authenticity? What does it mean? What does authenticity mean? So we kind of almost used that structure. So we started off with the kind of me Yeah, am I authentic? And so what do I do that shows that authenticity? And what does that mean to me? And then we moved on more about into the can I be more authentic? So what can I consciously do? Because I think you talked about that. And particularly, what can I consciously do I remember, we were talking about the headsets. And like, you know, the first time you have to wear, well, the first time I had to wear a headset, because I had a very large group that I was facilitating, and the acoustics were bad. So I did that “I don't need a headset, I can and it's like, no, you can't be heard. It's not fair. And people who've got hearing difficulties that you kind of do this, it's not great for your voice. So just put the headset on and get on with it”. And I spent the whole session feeling a bit like Madonna or Kylie or a pop star with this kind of thing. It was one of those ones that had the kind of headphones thing. And it felt like I kept referring to it. And it got in the way of me being authentic. And we were just talking about yo know, how do you consciously manage in those situations where you're there is some kind of restraint or you're feeling you're not in your normal comfort zone, you've had to move out of that for some reason? And how do you consciously bring yourself back to that authentic self? So that was that was a really interesting conversation? Well, we think they were didn't we, Helen, because we didn't actually join, though, consciously decided to send people off into breakout groups, and not do that kind of, I'm going to be really nosy and drop into the breakout groups, because we felt that was going to affect the authenticity of the breakouts. And it serves no real purpose. HJ Yeah. Really interesting having that conversation in our planning about, you know, the benefit of that and how or the risk or how that might work. And I know the feedback at the end suggested that people really appreciated having that time in breakout. So it was, the time was about them having those good conversations, rather than there being too much weight on having to share it or they're having to be an output particularly it was about them having those good conversations. And it really felt like that went down well, but yeah, we weren't, we weren't able to go in or we could have done but we decided not to go into the breakout groups and be nosy. But then we did do some plenary at the end, didn't we? CB Yeah, that's right. Because we realised in our plan, like we looked at the session law, I remember looking at the session level going and we do that there's just not enough. It's like actually, we need more time to have a plenary with a whole group at the end. And so we just shifted things, we didn't have mini plenary and then big plenary, we just went bang straight from breakout groups into a large plenary, which wasn't that large because the size of the group. And I think that was really good because we had a good 20 minutes or so for the final plenary, though that was when we really got a sense of the growth that had gone on in the conversations and that's when we heard conversations that have gone on. HJ And I was... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/28454657

FS60 Exploring Philosophical Inquiry with Rosie Carnall 10/10/2023

FS60 Exploring Philosophical Inquiry with Rosie Carnall In this episode Nikki talks to Rosie Carnall about Philosophical Inquiry. It’s a way of engaging in a conversation explorating into philosophical questions. Rosie has used Philosophical Inquiry in a range of situations, from Art Galleries, to pubs, to workplaces. Nikki and Rosie talk about how to choose stimuli for discussions and learning from a specific example of when Rosie ran the same session back to back, online and in person for a hybrid team. The full transcript is below. Links: Rosie’s website: Nikki on LinkedIn: Listen to our podcasts: Connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories Email: [email protected] NW Hello and welcome to facilitation stories brought to you by the England and Wales Chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson and my guest today is Rosie Carnall. So welcome, Rosie. So to start off with, could you tell the listeners a little more about you and what you do? RC Thanks, Nikki. So my name is Rosie Carnall, and I'm a Freelance Creative Facilitator. My background’s in mediation and conflict resolution and from that, I learned quite a lot about facilitation and developed that as an interest, and I've also worked in things like Project management. And then, more recently, in my work, I've been able to focus more on facilitation, and in particular, using both creative methods of facilitation to get people thinking and talking, but also facilitating creative sessions. So I typically work with creative writing and the creative field but I'm also really interested in art -based work. So quite a broad range of interests, but at the core of it all, is facilitating interesting and engaged conversations. NW Fantastic. And we're going to dig in a little bit more about that, in this episode. So you and I met at the IMF conference, and I discovered that you include philosophy for communities in your practice. So I had a really positive experience as a participant in the past, and I was really keen to, to find out a bit more about how you use it. So for listeners that aren't familiar with P4C, could you tell us a bit more about it? RC Yeah, that's great that you had a positive experience. I'd love to hear more about that another time. So Philosophy for Communities is a method of holding a Philosophical Inquiry. And Philosophical Inquiry is kind of what it sounds like, it's a way of engaging in a conversation that takes forward questioning and exploration into philosophical questions. And philosophical questions are all around us in life. And P4C, Philosophy for Communities is a way of, it's a method to enable people who aren't academic philosophers who don't wouldn't consider themselves to be philosophical necessarily, to discover big questions, and discuss them together. NW Okay. And so, when did you first encounter P4C and what appealed to you about it? RC The first ever time I encountered P4C was when my son took part in it in a P4C inquiry as part of a youth group. And I was just a parent on the edge kind of thing. I wasn't participating. And they, they had in any P4C inquiry, you would have a stimulus, so that's the starting point for whatever the discussion is going to be. But the stimulus always has quite a lot of different ways to go. And the stimulus on this occasion was a children's story, Michael Morpurgo story. And it was the one about the Christmas Truce, the story where in the First World War, there was a truce called on Christmas Day, and the English and German soldiers played football together. And then the young people, including my son, read the story. And then they asked questions, and then they discuss the questions they came up with. And then they went on to create a Christmas play, to put on arising from their discussion. And the thing that really struck me was how they engaged in such depth with what the story meant. So when they put on the play, they weren't rehearsing lines, they were conveying meaning. And it just felt such a rich form of learning that I thought, well, I really need to find out more about this. So and that, that brings up the the idea that P4C also stands for Philosophy for Children, and it's used in a lot of schools in Britain. It's an international movement. It's a way of teaching thinking skills and critical thinking. And it's also a way of engaging children in kind of social learning, and how to disagree agreeably. And Philosophy for Communities is the exact same thing. It's just with adults in community rather than children. NW Yeah, excellent. I mean, I, as I said, I encountered it as an adult first of all, but hearing that it had been, you know, the stem of it was from, from kind of school based learning, I just thought I wish that we'd done this at school, it would have been so valuable, I think to, to kind of build those skills, as you said that that whole idea of being able to discuss and sit alongside other people and kind of draw out that meaning. And so how did you I mean, obviously, you you learned about it as an observer, how did you first come to try facilitating it in practice? RC Well, Ijust, I was already doing facilitation. And I was interested in using it at that time, I was working as manager of a team and a national organisation and I started trying using a bit in that kind of team context. And I also used it in community, I'm a Quaker, as it happens, and so at our Quaker meeting, we offered a couple of P4C inquiries, and I was lucky that I had a friend who's very skilled and knowledgeable about P4C, and the thing that happens straight away, in that classic learning journey is that soon as you start trying to actually do something, you learn so much more about what you don't know about doing it, You know, it looks so easy, “Well, I'm going to give that a go”, and really quickly I was like I need to do some training in this if I want to get really good at this, or even, you know, even as a starting point. I began to understand and for example, in facilitating a group to come up with questions, I just needed to do a much more deep dive into like, “What is a question? And how do we get to good questions?” So I did some training with an organisation locally, who, who mainly trained teachers in Philosophy for Children, but I came along and said, “Well, I actually don’t work in a school I'm going to, I'm going to use it with adults, mainly. So that was how I did the training. NW Excellent. And so since then, obviously, you trialled it in practice, and then kind of did this bit of training. But where have you used it since then? Are there any contexts where you feel it particularly works well? RC Yeah, so I've used it, I've used it a lot with Quakers, for interest and for kind of, not teaching so much as learning. So getting a group together and inquiring into a shared question, it means that people are sharing their knowledge and their ideas and their thinking, and that fits really well in that context. So that kind of community learning together. And I've used it in pubs. So I set up and run a Philosophy in Pubs group in Sheffield, that's been going, coming up for five years, in fact, and that's just an open access group, anyone who's interested can come along, and each month, it’s a monthly group, and I bring a different stimulus, and we'll see where that goes. And during the pandemic, I moved that online. so I've used it online as well as in real life, so to speak. And I've used it as part of a more creative focus or cultural focus, as part of the Sheffield Year of Reading, which was a whole year the library set up, of getting people into reading and thinking. And for that we used different excerpts from books or a poem. I've used it as, I do creative writing, and Creative Writing facilitation. So I use it as a way into creative writing, but also as a way of people engaging with each other's writing to critique. So something I call creative critique. So we use people's passages of writing as the stimulus for the inquiry, and it means they get a sense of whether what they're writing is actually landing with the listener. And I now also offer P4C sessions in a local art gallery and a few art galleries and I call that “Philosophy in the Gallery”, and so then in that case, it's again, it's an open access session where people would come and we look at an artwork together, and then evolve our thinking arising from looking at the art, so not so much a focus on learning about art, art history, or even the kind of painterly strokes, but what does it mean to us? So always it's about what does it mean to us? And then I've also done some work with organisations. So then right back to the beginning, in a way of working with a team and using it as a way of bringing a team or colleagues together to think about questions and issues together. NW So kind of building on that, where do you look for the stimuli that you would use in these sessions?, RC Ah that's an interesting question. I look for them everywhere. So in the Art Gallery, my job is easy, because I go into the Art Gallery, and then I can have a look and choose one. For the sessions in the pub, I try and have a really varied range. So, in fact, I did a session on Tuesday this week and our stimulus was an excerpt from a book called Bright New World, which is about climate change, and what we know about how to manage and mitigate climate change. It's a very positive book. And there was a section about trave and I just thought, “Oh, that's interesting. It's got lots of different thinking in it”. and then the group came up with their question they wanted to ask. And I use poems, I use short videos, I used a Hey Duggee episode, which is a children's cartoon, and they had I use it there is in fact, I Hey Duggee on philosophy, but I use the one on collecting, and so thinking about what does it mean that humans collect things. And I might also use something from a philosophy book, but I'm not an academic philosopher. So I don't tend to get you know, I'm interested in people's own philosophising, rather than, you know, I'm not bringing that into the room, we're finding out where that comes from. And with the teams or an organisation or community group who have a particular theme they want to explore, then I will be thinking about “how can I, what can I find that would open up questions on that theme without being didactic?” So it definitely needs to be something that's open ended and isn't arriving with a moral opinion into the room. Although, if there is you know, maybe it's hard to get totally away from morality, but people need to have the sense that they can disagree as well as agree. NW Yeah. And that there's presumably that there's sufficient scope within that stimulus to go in lots of different directions and kind of take it their own way. RC Yes, exactly. And that is a very common experience. And, you know, in fact, what's quite common, is that I think “Oh, that's really interesting”. And whatever it is, that's interested me, in the passage I choose, or the artwork I choose, it turns out, you know, no one else finds that interesting, you know, that people will come up with these really different questions, and not what I was expecting at all. And that's one of the glorious things about the process. NW But I suppose with that in mind, though, are there situations where you'd hesitate to use this kind of technique? RC I think it's a tricky question, isn't it? Because in one way, I want to say “no, it can be used everywhere. You know, it's such a rich possibility. And it's so open”, and with my background, in mediation and conflict resolution, you know, it's one of the reasons why I got interested in Philosophy for Communities. But I think, as a mediator, I became a bit frustrated with the idea that people thought, “oh, you know, we need a mediator”. And they typically thought that a lot further on into a conflict, when they may be, you know, if you're going to have a mediator get one early, but also that there's, there's a desire within the idea of having a mediator for a solution and an answer and someone an expert to come in. And so what I'm really interested in as well, maybe if we could all talk to each other more and disagree agreeably, and be able to accept that someone has a different opinion than us, and that's okay, it's just interesting rather than threatening, then that might, it's kind of the groundwork of conflict resolution in a way. So it's almost like the antithesis of social media where people get into these terrible conflicts because they're, they're just getting reactive and up against each other, where P4C or Philosophical Inquiry is about staying alongside each other without having to agree. And so perhaps that means that I'm a little bit more willing to take risks. Because I think, I think a lot of people are really alarmed by the idea of conflict or alarmed by the idea that people you know, people might get upset. I don't want to upset anyone, but neither do I want to quash emotion, because emotion is part of our human experience. And emotion is part of how we know what we think about something. You know, that's a really clear route, if you hear some information, and it invokes a strong emotional response in you, then, you know, that's telling you something about what you think about that information. For me, that's part of the rich potential for Philosophical Inquiry. That said, in terms of my responsibility, as a facilitator, I would always want to be sure that I could create a safe space, or a brave space or an appropriate space for sharing within any community. So I would want to do a dynamic risk assessment of you know, you know, what's appropriate, and thinking back, I suppose, partly to my mediation, training or thinking about power imbalance. And if, if power imbalance can't be managed within the group, then it's not going to have the ethos that I would want. So I would be looking to manage that process but so far, no one's asked me to do a Philosophical Inquiry in a situation where I've said, “No, that's not going to work”. And in fact, family Christmas a couple of years ago, we were just sitting talking, and then we kind of got into a question and really, I was facilitating an inquiry, you know, it was just an area of interest for the five of us, you know, that's possibly quite a bold move, to introduce it completely socially. I mean, there wasn't such a structured thing there. And I always say that in in terms of this practice, that I feel like I've really developed my own thinking, you know, we talk about teaching children thinking skills, but I definitely feel that my own thinking has improved, and that it's doing P4C has made me better at arguing with my husband. I don't know whether he appreciates that or not, but I feel very strongly that, you know, it's I'm, I'm able to think more clearly and to understand more about how I'm feeling and you know, what is the actual question I want to discuss? NW Right and so, with all of those different directions that you've taken it, including into the domestic environment, this might be a difficult question to ask, but where would you like to go next with it? RC And well, I'm really excited about my work with Art Galleries and Museums, and opening those spaces out to more people. And particularly with Art Galleries, I have this strong aspect to my practice, where it's really important to me that you don't need to know anything about art to experience art, and so the Philosophical Inquiry, I think, can really help. I know, it does help people to, to open that up to like, “Oh, my ideas and thoughts are the same and different as other people's, and that that's an equal process. And we're just going to look at the art, and then respond to it.” So that's a really exciting area of interest for me. And in getting people, it can be quite social in that way, in that way, can help with reducing loneliness and isolation. As a social, I always say, “Do you like meeting new people, but you don't really do small talk? You know, P4C is for you”. So I'm interested in that community based work, and particularly with Art Galleries and Museums, and I'm also really interested in the workplace, and teams and colleagues, and bringing people together to think together about what underpins their work. So I think often in the workplace, you can be so focused on action, and practical steps and getting things done, that it can be really helpful to take that step back and think about, well, “why am I doing this? What you know, what is it that brings us together? What are our shared interests and concerns and opening up those bigger questions about the ethos and value of the area of work?” And thinking that through in the background, I think that's very interesting how that works. NW Okay. So I mean, obviously, quite different contexts there, I suppose showing that kind of breadth of where P4C can apply and equally have value, and so I suppose thinking or drawing that right back to a very specific example, when we had our initial call about this podcast, you were just about to run the same P4C inquiry twice with a morning online and an afternoon in person. So I'm kind of curious as to how that went. RC Yeah, that was a great day it was, was for a national organisation who are now of course, much more dispersed than they were before. So that change into a lot of people working from home and coming back to the office, and how does that workplace community function in those ways. And so that was the reason why we had an online session, as well as an in person session, and using the same stimulus and the same session plan, but of course, getting different thinking. So that, in fact, the stimulus or use that was a short film, about how trees communicate. So there's this thing the Wood Wide Web, that trees, you might see trees as individual trees, but in fact, they communicate through their roots and through the soil system, and they can create complex communication. So we had that as a stimulus on each occasion, and then looked at what the concepts were that were coming up, and how that related to the idea of a community of colleagues, and particularly colleagues who now don't necessarily see each other so often. It was a great day, that some of what I noticed about it was the difference between online and in person. And in particular, I've got an interest in the fact that in online sessions, especially in a group, is quite difficult to laugh, and to have humour. Because just purely because of, if someone's speaking, someone else can't be speaking, you know, you get that kind of disjunct between and timelag, you know, whereas in the room, it's much more easy to have that kind of humour and laughter happening. Not that people online, didn't make jokes or enjoy, but there's something different in that in how that works. And it was interesting as well, because when we were looking at what concepts people drew out, that's the kind of starting point they watch the stimulus together, and then think about what are the important concepts here., and there were a lot of commonalities between the morning and the afternoon, but there were differences as well. And so then that led to different questions being asked, and a slightly different... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/28202375

FS59 - A new Chapter 09/20/2023

FS59 - A new Chapter After over 100 episodes spanning 4 years, Pilar Orti is stepping down from her role as co-host on the Facilitation Stories podcast. In this special episode, Pilar joins regular co-hosts Helene Jewell and Nikki Wilson to reflect on her time on the show and what comes next. How It All Began The idea for Facilitation Stories emerged organically at an in-person meetup hosted by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) back in 2019. Pilar had given a talk on using podcasting to build community and connection in remote teams. Afterwards, some attendees suggested starting a podcast for the chapter. Pilar agreed to help get it off the ground. Along with Martin Gilbraith's support, Pilar worked with Helene and another co-host to produce the first 4 episodes and establish a regular cadence. After some early experimentation, they settled into releasing 1 episode per month. The organic, unstructured nature of those early days established the podcast's informal, conversational tone that continues today. Why Listeners Connect A big part of the podcast's appeal is its sense of community. As Pilar says, it feels like "listening to your friends." Most facilitation podcasts focus on tips, tutorials, and sales pitches. Facilitation Stories stands out for spotlighting members of the IAF England and Wales community sharing stories and learning from real life experiences. The hosts' genuine enthusiasm, warmth, and enjoyment comes across in every episode. According to Pilar, her favorite episodes are the unscripted conversations between two or more co-hosts. The rapport and natural interactions make listeners feel like they're right there in the room. Evolution of Facilitation During the Pandemic Pilar, Helene, and Nikki reflected on how facilitation has changed over the past few years, accelerated by the pandemic. Virtual facilitation has become more ubiquitous and accepted. More organizations recognize the need for facilitators to help guide productive online meetings and events. Hybrid events also present new challenges facilitators must adapt to. On a skills level, facilitators have had to expand their digital literacy and learn to facilitate exclusively through a screen. Soft skills like reading the virtual room, fostering connections, and keeping energy levels up become even more crucial. Co-facilitation partnerships have also blossomed as the complexity and demand increases. Facilitators increasingly team up with those outside the profession who bring complementary expertise. Key Takeaways A few key themes emerge from Pilar's time on Facilitation Stories: Start simple - When launching a new podcast, focus on consistent execution over production value. Get the first 10 episodes done to build momentum. Rotate roles - Swap hosting and production duties between team members. It keeps things dynamic while building everyone's skills. Personality matters - Let your authentic style and personality come through. This attracts the right listeners who connect with the content. Find your niche - Targeting a specific community makes it easier to grow an engaged audience, as demonstrated by the show's IAF focus. Value enjoyment - Do it because you find joy in the process and camaraderie. Passion shines through and makes it worthwhile. What Comes Next While sad to say goodbye to Facilitation Stories, Pilar is embarking on an exciting new chapter. She shared some of the creative pursuits and professional projects she'll be focusing on: Developing an audio course on asynchronous communication Exploring the comics medium and using visual storytelling Continuing fiction writing and other literary projects Building her podcasting expertise through new shows and helping others level up their podcasts Authoring books on topics like co-hosting or using Trello for podcast production After years of client work, training, and teaching, Pilar is ready to put more energy into generating original content and productions. She remains as passionate as ever about podcasting and plans to start new shows in addition to advising others. When asked if she had any parting wisdom, Pilar expressed full confidence that Helene and Nikki will continue taking the podcast to new heights. She may no longer be there, but the strong community built on Facilitation Stories will carry on /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/28090964

FS58 Facilitating Dialogue Spaces with Jindy Mann 08/08/2023

FS58 Facilitating Dialogue Spaces with Jindy Mann Welcome to Facilitation Stories, brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. In today’s episode Pilar Orti talks about running circles (spaces for dialogue) with Jindi Mann, founder and facilitator of Leader Brother Son and coach and organizational consultant at The Selfish Leader. Jindy recently ran the as part of his work with Leader Brother Son, where he works with groups of men. The work has the potential of benefiting mental health and diversity. The Men at Work survey in particular, was a way for them to gather some insights into the male experience at work. In particular, it highlighed what men find hardest to talk about at work and what can help them show up more fully at work. To explain the roots of his work, Jindy talks about his early life, growing up in a British Indian family, his two business degrees and masculine cultures in the business world. He came to realize that he had an opportunity to work with this, as he was seeing the same thing repeatedly: the idea of taking up this role of "man" without interrogating what that means. Alongside some other coaches, Jindy started offering free online groups two and a half years ago. They’ll be starting their 10th group in early August. There is a short application process for joining the groups. Intersted participants first make an enquiry on the company's website, and this is followed by a short conversation to align expectations and understand the principles behind the sessions. There are typically, eight to twelve people in each group and at least two facilitators in each session. As the work comes from a personal space for Jindy, he often feels the tension between leading or guiding the group and just allowing the space to be what it is. Jindy and the other facilitators are not the ones who have the answers, they are not defining what a man should be or what Masculinity is, but they are holding the space by contributing and holding the principles and the shape of the conversation, rather than telling it where to go. Throughout this work, Jindy still feels that tension of when to take some sort of action as a facilitator or when to contribute or when to say anything. He uses the coaching acronym WAIT – why am I talking? Jindy has started to refer to himself more explicitly as a "facilitator" when starting doing this work with men, but he has used facilitation in different ways in his consulting career. As to how the work with the circles and his co-facilitation have evolved, Jendy shares that when the groups started they introduced specific topics for discussion, but soon they started to invite the group to say what it wanted to explore. He shares some of the theories and practises that have influenced him including the idea from Wilfred Bion of that there are thoughts present in the group, but they haven't yet found a thinker. It can sound almost mystical, but the unconscious is always present, is always active in a group. And collectively things can emerge in a group. (For more on this read any of Jung or Freud’s work and Experiences in Groups by Wilfred Bion.) Jiindy has trained as a facilitator with Way of Council and in the conversation he shares his experience there and its overlap with psychodynamic theory. Jindy talks about his co-facilitators Aaron, Mark and Russell and how they met, and how they all bring something slightly different and have different influences. But that they have an important chemistry between them. The team are not taking their work into organisations. The work here will be different as the dynamics in organisations will be different than in an open group. People there will have assumptions about each other, and there will already be a sense of status and hierarchy. Jindy shares the pros and cons of doing these groups in person and online and about AI in coaching and wraps up with a couple of broad reflections: firstly, the conversation about men and masculinity is growing. Secondly, there is an increasing need for great dialogue and for great facilitated spaces for all of the things we're facing as a society. If you want to find out more about Jindy's work, you can go to Leaderbrotherson.com. And also you can also check out his other organization called The Selfish Leader. He is on LinkedIn Men at Work Survey Leader Brother Son You can connect with Pilar Orti on LinkedIn. Listen to our podcasts: And connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/27671958

FS57 Open Source Facilitation with Perle Laouenan-Catchpole 07/11/2023

FS57 Open Source Facilitation with Perle Laouenan-Catchpole In today's episode, Nikki talks to Perle Laouenan-Catchpole, an Amsterdam-based facilitator and experienced designer. Perle shares the origins of Perle's award-winning, open-source workshop that aids individuals in identifying their personal climate action. Perle discusses the importance of open source in facilitation work and the impact it has on personal growth, relationship-building and work perception. She firmly believes in the need for collaborative and shared resources in addressing pressing issues like climate change. T he discussion also touches on different platforms for sharing open-source material and how they can be leveraged by other facilitators. Links: Website Perle's LinkedIn Session Lab Template Nikki's LinkedIn Here's the transcript of the conversation: NIKKI Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson and my guest today is Perle Laouenan-Catchpole. Welcome Perle. For listeners that don't know you, could you start by telling us a little bit more about you and your work? PERLE Yeah, absolutely. So, I am Perle. I'm a workshop facilitator, moderator, experienced designer and aspiring spoken word artist. It's something I have been pushing myself out of my comfort zone to do for a while now. And I'm based in Amsterdam. I was actually born and bred in Cornwall, so you'll notice a very British accent on me, and I've been living in Amsterdam for the past twelve years and have the great joy of co-parenting a five year old daughter. And yeah, that's about me. NIKKI Excellent. And so the inspiration for this episode came from saying that you'd won a thing for a workshop you've designed. So, first of all, could you tell us a little bit more about what you won, and how that came about? PERLE Yeah, absolutely. Well, to give you a little bit more context about my work, so I went freelance in January and I was working as a full time facilitator before that. And over the past couple of years I really recognized that my skill as a facilitator is facilitating large groups online and that opportunity doesn't come along very often. So I started seeking out communities that could use my skills and landed on a community called , which is a 20,000 strong community of individuals trying to find climate work in climate or transition their roles into climate work. And I facilitated a workshop for them using Dr. That basically similar to Ikigai, which is the Japanese concept for finding purpose, helps you identify your personal climate action. So that workshop, 200 and something people turned up for it and it was incredible. And the workshop design, I then submitted to a contest hosted by which is a facilitators platform, and then won in one of the categories. And I was just really happy to see that workshop then become an open source template for other people to use. So that's how I ended up writing a post on LinkedIn saying I want a thing. NIKKI Well, first of all, congratulations Perle, that's great news and you just touched on it there. But one of the things that had really caught my eye about that post was that you said that you'd made it into an open source template. So I wondered if you could tell us a bit more about how open source features in your facilitation work. PERLE Yeah, absolutely. And I'd say I kind of categorise it in two ways, because as a facilitator and experienced designer, I rely hugely on open source materials. I'm constantly seeking new ways of doing things, new concepts, new exercises. So I'm leaning on other people's open source material all the time - and then that then encourages me and it inspires me to do the same. And I actually believe that facilitation is an abundant skill set. We need more Facilitators in the world. We need it in our organizations, in our teams. And I fundamentally believe that if we can support one another to grow those tools, that mindset, that approach in our work, then the world is better for it. And yeah, I just believe there's enough work for all of us. So why keep my skills, my knowledge, my understanding of how to facilitate to myself, if we can kind of trigger other people to do more with their work too, especially when it comes to climate? NIKKI Excellent. You've talked a little bit about kind of drawing from other people's work as a key tool for yourself. But how did you first start working in a way where you were sharing more of this information? And how do you go about that? PERLE Yeah, I feel like that it kind of reinforces some of my key values as just a human being, where I aspire to be and try to be open and kind and authentic anyway. And then I have had the pleasure to work for many organisations and companies that do the same. So they either are open to partnering with lots of different partners to achieve their goals or providing services that increase access to global needs such as health care and education. So in a way, my value system makes me seek out organisations or types of work that allow me to be an open source minded person, I guess. NIKKI So thinking a bit more about what impact opening up and sharing your own work has had on you, could you tell us a little bit more about that? How has it affected how your work is perceived or the relationships you build, those kind of things? PERLE So I truly believe that if you're open with your work and your approach to work and you are authentic in that process, then you attract the same types of people and opportunities back. And I also have a fundamental belief that we are able to grow with each other. I'm not somebody who works very well individually. I really work better when someone else is able to spark my energy, grow my energy, add to my ideas, add to my body of work. And I know that I am valuable for other people in that way. So if we kind of can approach facilitation with that kind of mindset, then we only make it better for people receiving that facilitation. So yeah, it's just a belief system, I guess. And I'm feeling the benefits of it because I meet incredible people, I work with incredible people and I do a job I love. NIKKI And so, I mean, personally, I'm really a convert to the benefits of open. Now, I was before this conversation, but you've even convinced me more. But I think when I first started to become more aware of this way of working, it felt a bit counterintuitive. And you've said that you yourself have more recently gone freelance. And I think there was a sort of mindset around, if I give too much away, how will I justify charging for the things that I do want to? And also always being aware of things like risk of copyright and ownership. And for any listeners that are kind of grappling with some of those ideas, even if they've heard about the benefits from you, what would you say to them to kind of reassure them or convince them to give it a try? PERLE Yeah, I actually want to just first acknowledge that it's a very real feeling, right? Because it took me a second to press that button and submit my template to be open source, because in the end, well, anyway, that is a free workshop that I'm offering so a couple of hundred people could join it without any monetary benefit to me. So I was already making that choice for it to be open source. And yeah, it's a workshop that I could have monetized. But I also believe there's different types of level of my work that I can monetize and there's other types of work that I can open out to people to learn myself, learn what works, what doesn't, and test new concepts, test new ideas. And so I use often my free workshops or my open workshops as testing grounds. And that enables me to get stronger as a facilitator, hone my skills. So I won't provide all workshops open source or all templates open source, because in the end, I need to also grow my paid work, my clients, I also want to be able to provide my clients with tailored solutions that work for them. And some of it can work for other organisations, and I will share the bits that could. So in a way, it's not one or the other, it's about the gradient and just giving parts of you or parts of your thinking or your work out into the world so that you can spread a certain message or spread a certain need that the world needs. NIKKI Okay, and you mentioned that the workshop that you won this award for was shared on Sessionlab. So is that the main place that you might open out workshops and designs, or are there other places that you also share content? PERLE Yeah, Session Lab is the first. Honestly, there are a few different platforms that I'm looking at to expand my work. One of my main clients, Limelights, that I work for quite a lot as a freelance facilitator, they have a couple of Miro templates that are available really around Sprint methodology, but also using Kotter's Eight Steps for Change in sustainability teams. So in a way, there's many different avenues that work can be shared. And as facilitators, we should be looking for these platforms to put our ways of working out there. NIKKI And so if anyone is listening and they're interested in finding out more about open source and how it could apply to their facilitation, what would you recommend as kind of sources of information/first steps? PERLE Yeah, well, I feel like there's obvious spaces to look for. So in Miro, Mural, there's so much abundance of resources that are available for facilitators. And then, of course, Session Lab is my daily go to. It's a gold mine of resources. The library is free, it's open, it can be used by anyone And then actually Chat GPT, it's becoming my sparring partner and it's the place where I often put in the big questions like, where are the places that I could look for putting open source material there? What type of material should I be putting out into the world? So it's an aspiring partner that allows you to think with you to increase your accessibility to different resources that you may never have heard about before. NIKKI Okay. And for all those places that you mentioned, is it possible for other facilitators to share their work on those places as well? Just to confirm, apart from Chat GPT obviously. PERLE Yeah, of course. Yeah, Miro, for sure. And actually, it triggers me, Nikki, to talk about Slack because there are so many Slack communities, Leapers, which is a freelance network, and then Freelancers Get Done. And that actually is a Slack community that has a facilitation bench and facilitation skills channel. And those channels are really great sources of ideas, but also just going, hey, I have 100 people in this workshop, two days, any inspiration of how I could get them from A to B or working on this challenge? And there are so many incredible kind of minds within minutes jumping on your challenge and helping you to come up with ideas. NIKKI Okay, there's so many different suggestions there Perle, so hopefully everyone's got a notebook, but we’ll include them In the show notes as well. And so we had a quick sort of message exchange on LinkedIn after your post and you said that you felt that open source was where it's at, particularly around climate. And what is it specifically around climate that you think makes this a particularly important approach? PERLE The urgency, fundamentally the urgency. We need fundamental change and action and we need it fast. And the more we do things, do things together, open out... I got the workshop idea based on Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson's open Source Ven diagram that she created that helps people find their climate action. Based on that work, I am able to create a workshop on it. And based on that, 200 people joined. And that's how movements start, that's how movements spread, start, and fundamentally, when it comes to climate, we know that we have to keep acting and keep acting fast. So, yeah, fundamentally, open source is exactly where we should be, the kind of mindset we should be approaching with climate. And there's amazing case studies and examples of open source climate actions that are happening out there in the world and it's inspiring to see how many people are motivated to put their time and effort and their skills to solving world problems. NIKKI No, definitely with that in mind and all that we've talked about. I know myself that you're always working on things because I see them popping up, as I said, particularly through LinkedIn. But have you got anything in the pipeline that you're working on or that you want other listeners to know about that you know others are working on? Is there anything we should be looking out for? PERLE Yeah, so I'm working on quite a few open workshops with the Work on Climate community. So they're popping up every month or two and you can basically just follow me on LinkedIn and you will see the work. I feel like we've got summer approaching, things are a little bit quiet, so, yeah, I'm really focusing on testing concepts and doing that with communities like Work on Climate. NIKKI Great, well, I think it sounds like you're going to be keeping yourself busy in the slowdown over summer. So if any of the listeners want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that? PERLE For sure, LinkedIn, my name will be spelled out for you in the show notes. I'm sure it's not an easy one. And then I also have a website that you can drop me a line on which is And yeah, I'm very much looking forward to hearing from you. NIKKI Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Perle. It's been really good to talk to you this afternoon, and I hope you can keep spreading and sharing the open message and that some of the other facilitators listening kind of had their interest sparked in learning a bit more about this. Because I think totally agree with what you've said about kind of spreading the word, spreading the resources. It's so important. Thank you. PERLE Thank you, Nikki. /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/27266904

FS56 Facilitating a Multi-Faceted Project with 4 Facilitators 06/13/2023

FS56 Facilitating a Multi-Faceted Project with 4 Facilitators In this episode, Pilar talks to fellow podcast team members Helene and Nikki, along with Penny Walker and Shanaka Dias about a global, hybrid process they facilitated together, running over 4 days with multiple languages and timezones. They reflect on planning in advance, adapting in the moment and working well as a team. The full transcript is below. All of the team can be found on LinkedIn: Penny Walker: Shanaka Dias Helene Jewell Nikki Wilson Pilar Orti And you can find all of the links to IAF England and Wales on the Facilitation Stories website: SPEAKERS PO – Pilar Orti HJ – Helene Jewell NW – Nikki Wilson PW- Penny Walker SD – Shanaka Dias PO 00:03 Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of facilitators also known as IAF. My name is Pilar Orti and I have the absolute pleasure of recording today with not one guest, not two, not three, but four. So first of all, let me introduce fellow co-hosts of the show Helene Jewell, hello, Helene. HJ 00:26 Hello, nice to see you. PO 00:30 Nikki Wilson. Hello, Nikki. NW Hello. PO 00:33 And I then like to welcome back to the show Penny Walker who first appeared in episode two of this show. So welcome back, Penny. PW 00:40 Thanks very much. It's lovely to be here. PO 00:43 And finally, first time guest and someone I've never chatted to before Shanaka Dias, welcome to the show. SD 00:50 Thank you. Thank you for having me. PO 00:52 So to have some proper introductions, I've asked each guest to prepare just two lines to introduce themselves. So we're going to say the same order in which I introduced you so that you'll know when it's coming. So Helene Jewell, we'd like to introduce yourself. HJ 01:06 Hello,I'm Helene. I'm a freelance facilitator based in Bristol, and I work cross sector with all kinds of clients and Yeah, mostly team organisational development and strategy stuff. PO 01:18 Excellent. Thanks, Helen and Nikki Wilson. NW 01:21 Hello, I'm Nikki, I'm based in Essex and I run a social purpose business focusing on facilitation, research and strategic support. And as a facilitator, I particularly enjoy working on Deliberative Public Eengagement projects and Action Learning. PO 01:39 Thank you. Thanks, Nikki and Penny Walker. PW 01:42 Thanks, Pilar. I'm Penny. I'm an independent facilitator based in North London, and my specialism, I suppose is working with clients to have more effective conversations about tricky things. Maybe because they're complicated or there's conflict, or there's multiple parties. And those conversations are mainly about sustainable development topics. It might be climate change, it might be biodiversity loss. It might be I don't know social enterprises coming together. So those kinds of conversations. Yeah. PO 02:14 Thanks, Penny, and Shanaka Dias. 02:17 Hello, I'm Shanaka. I'm based in London. I'm a freelancer. I work in the social sector with charities and foundations. And I guess my specialism is bringing people together to firstly have difficult conversations and to look at ways to come together around measure mission and vision and strategy. PO 02:40 Thank you Shanaka. Thank you very much. Right. So the reason we have you all together for this very special episode, and we're really testing the platform as well, is that you all facilitated a trilingual hybrid session back in January 2023. Is that correct? PW That's right. PO Yeah. So I'm going to be discovering what you did along with the listener and what your challenges were. So let's start with how did this collaboration start? And maybe Penny, you can kick us off? PW 03:12 Thanks. Yes. So I'm trained to use a particular process called the Organisational Mapping Tool, which is something that is promoted by the Ford Foundation, a philanthropic funder based in the US, and one of the grantee organisations needed to use this tool as part of the grant conditions, and because I'm on the list, they came to me and they said, could you run this for us? And they said it’s a little bit complicated, because we're going to it's going to be hybrid, and we know this, and I was not very comfortable with that. And I said, “Well, that is you know, it's going to cost you more, we're going to need a bigger team. And you know”, they said y”es, that's fine, we're comfortable with hybrid£. And they said, “Oh, and by the way, we also need to do it in three languages. So and by the way, we would like to have other meetings going on, kind of with the people who are in the room together over the time”, so I knew that I needed a big team. Nikki has worked with me before using this particular process once so I thought that she would be my first kind of “go to” person and I know that Helene had a great time helping out make the IAF England and Wales conference hybrid a couple of years ago, so I thought, I wonder if Helene will be up for being on the team. And then I asked I asked them who else they knew who they thought might be up for it and Nikki recommended Shanaka so that was how we came to be working together. PO 04:42 Nice. Oh, I love that because of the you some of you have worked together there was a new elements into the into the four so I love it. Excellent. Nice and who were their participants then? If one of you feels like giving us just an overview of who they Were where they were located. And just a little bit of the logistics around the event. Helene. HJ 05:05 So the participants were the staff from this organisation. And they were based in several different countries. And I can't completely remember which countries they were based in, but we had probably, Penny may tell me, I'm wrong, half of them in the room, and another half in different countries over Zoom. And so yeah, it was bringing their different different staff members from within the organisation together. PO 05:34 And the people who were online, were they in their other countries together and online or individually online, NW 05:41 I think it was quite a mixture, mostly on their own. Some of them were in the same country, but not sitting in a location together. PO 05:50 Okay, so at least you had that and Penny can you do remember the countries of the participants? PW 05:59 So we had some, we were working across multiple time zones, which was another kind of design challenge. So we had some people in Sub Saharan Africa, we had some in South America. I'm not sure if the people who were in kind of Asia Pacific managed to join us. And the other interesting thing about it was that we had some people who started online, and then were able to join us in the room, and vice versa. So there was someone who tested positive for COVID, partway through who went from being in the room to online. So that changed, so we needed to have really good understanding of who our participants were. And each morning, we would sit down with our key kind of client liaison and find out who was going to be in the room and who was going to be online, and what languages they were comfortable speaking in so that we could think about how we might do breakout groups, I can see Helene is rubbing her eyes, even just at the memory of it. HJ 06:58 It's funny, because on the one hand, I sort of I remember, you know, I loved the challenge of being kind of quite, you know, think on our feet and all the rest of it. On the other hand, when I recall some of the elements, I think so “how did we do that?” PO 07:11 Wow. So over four days. So that's interesting. Before we go into maybe how you prepared for it? Does that mean that during the four days? Did that look like you ,were you meeting before each session together? How are you checking in with the client who wants to have a bash? Penny go for it. PW 07:32 So we, it was over four days, but each day, we only worked on this particular event for half of the day. So the people who were in the room had other side meetings when they weren't in session. And that helped us overcome some of the timezone difficulties. And the other thing about it that people will be interested to hear is that three of our team were in the room, so Helene and Shanaka, and me were with the client and Nikki actually did all her work online. So our check-ins were over Zoom, so that we could make sure that that Nikki was there. And it also meant that Nikki was able to give us a really good insight as to what the online experience was like, because try as you might if you're in the room, that's that's the thing that pulls you. And it's very easy to neglect or not have a proper understanding of what the online experience is like. NW 08:30 Yeah, I think sort of adding to that. The fact that I was purely online, and there was no temptation to even be in the room, I was in a completely different location made that a very pure experience as well. I think if we'd ended up swapping on and offline, it would have been, that would have been a bit more blurred. But it was very clear to me that I was experiencing it just as someone who was joining from anywhere else in the world apart from obviously, that English is my first language, so I didn't have that added layer, but I think that that really made it very focused on this is what the online experience is like. PO 09:07 Yeah. And did you have interpreters as well? Is that right? PW 09:11 Yeah. So the client tries to be, it's part of their push to be very inclusive and to make sure that they have for the work they're doing in country that it's with people who are from that country rather than, you know, white, Northern World kind of people parachuted in. So they they have quite a lot of experience of working in English, French and Spanish. And so they already had, not in-house, but they had interpreters who they have worked with a lot in the past and they taught us about Zoom’s interpretation channel, which I don't think any of us had used before, so that was quite exciting. And they also were very comfortable using a translation software called Deepl, which I had not come across before, but does seem to be a kind of a really good bit of automatic translation software. So they were quite used as an organisation to at least trying to make that work. And that was something that I definitely felt I learned from the experience. PO 10:24 Wow very heavy tech. Helene, were you going to say something? HJ 10:27 No, I was just saying I had used the interpretation, software on Zoom before, but never, not with three different languages going on. And most certainly not with hybrid. So I think that the challenge was the sort of the added, you know, added bonus of not just one logistical challenge, which is working in three languages, but obviously, the hybrid element and making those two things work together. PO 10:51 So you had everything interpretation, timezones, online versus in person and, and going and people turning up switching, I've never come across that, like people switching between the two mediums. So let's talk a bit about how you prepared for it. Shanaka, I'm going to go to you. Because for me, it feels like you were the one that was coming into, these three people already knew each other, so how did the group preparation look like? And also, from your point of view, what are some of the things you remember from the beginning of the process? SD 11:26 I'm thinking back to it. So um, we had a quiet, a really structured plan. So Penny put together a really structured plan. But at the same time, we sort of knew we would have to be adaptable to that. So we tried as much as we could to look at the languages that people spoke, put them into groups, we tried to think about how we could mix up the group so that the same people speaking the same languages weren't only speaking to each other all the time. So we also tried to look at who was multilingual and mix up those groups, that had varying levels of success. And we also wanted to try and make sure that it wasn't just the people online speaking to each other, that they would be able to speak to people in the room as well. And that had varying levels of success as well. So we a lot of planning went into it. But then we had to adapt on the fly as things turned up, because there were a lot of moving parts. And I think the one thing that really stood out was just how well we managed to work together around that. And part of that was down to, I think, having clear roles. So we really defined what we were doing. We swapped out Helene and I swapped on the day because we were both in the room. So on each day, we would swap out what we're doing, and have a turn at it, but at the same time, even though we had clearly defined roles, we were flexible enough to help each other when different things started to happen. And that worked really, really well. The client, were really surprised that this was the first time that we were working together we were we got some great compliments off the back of that. PO 13:09 Nice. Anything else to add about that preparation? PW 13:13 Well, I think I, I wasn't really sure how to bring us together as a team and how to how to prepare for it. And I think I fell back on just trusting that if we got to know each other a little bit, that would be a really helpful platform. So our first kind of planning meetings when when we first kind of talked about it. Think I invested a bit of time in getting people just to say, kind of talk about their work and what they were interested in and what they were comfortable doing and not comfortable doing. And out of that emerged a little bit of what would be appropriate roles. And I think the team, let me know that if we did it, not that we necessarily would want to because it was very challenging. But if we did something like this, again, that the lead facilitator role in the room could be shared out a bit more than we did. I think I held on to that because I was anxious about, the thing that maybe hasn't come across so much in this conversation yet is how prescriptive the process was that we needed to go through using this Organisational Mapping Tool, which was a survey a whole staff survey of maybe, actually when you count them up individually, over 80 questions, and we needed to present the data and then get the group to kind of come to consensus around what the group score was based on the data and to have conversations about it. And there were glitches with the, with the form that was provided. So actually, some of the questions didn't properly record the data that people that, the responses that people put in Shanaka spent a lot of time between sessions combing through that manually and and brought a lot to that, and then so there was a lot of prescription in the process. And I kind of felt that I needed to make sure that we got through that, perhaps at the expense of the more interesting, creative, flexible kind of conversations that you might want to have when you bring all your staff together for for that amount of time. So I definitely felt some tensions. And it came. One of the things I thought about was the different kinds of compromises that we might need to make as a team. You know, we know we've got a compromise to make here. Are we going to favour this or that in the design and so on? PO 15:33 Helene did did want to add something go for it, Helene? HJ 15:36 Yeah, no, it was just the in that planning phase. So because Penny and Nikki had use this tool before, and were familiar with it, I think that was that was a really kind of interesting, but helpful dynamic, that they could bring their experience of having used it before. And I think that obviously informed the plan. But in that process, and in that, sort of uncovering the prescriptiveness as Penny's just said, I realised, one of the things I realised was that Shanaka in particular, is very good detail and I myself find very not a detailed person. So that I think then informed how we sort of played to our strengths when it actually came to working together because of the glitches and as Penny said, in the form, and the various things sort of to do with that detail of getting the data weren't quite as we wanted, Shanaka was able to sort of jump in and help. And then actually, as we, we did move on our feet throughout the process, it was that detailed kind of what I call Excel spreadsheet, nightmare stuff, I really didn't want to run away from that, but I realised he was really good at so that helped, you know, helped us work together to find and focus on a bit that we knew we were, you know, we could add to more PO 16:49 Thank you, Shanaka is there something you wanted to add? SD 16:54 Yes, actually, I was, I was gonna say, we, the overall feeling for me is we each held our space really well. So I was comfortable that Nikki was holding the space for the online group, so that I could let that go. And I could focus on the some of the detail and fixes that were needed. I was comfortable that Penny was holding the space in terms of the whole thing and giving us the space to work on some of the issues that we were having. And I was comfortable that Helene would be looking after the sort of people elements of it, and sort of providing that creative boost and the energy that was really, really needed. So that gave me the headspace to focus on dealing with some of the issues that we were having. And that was a very comfortable space to be in, even though all these things are happening at the same time. PO 17:46 Thank you, Nikki talking about the preparation, maybe that you had to do to be online? Do you feel there was anything that was different or similar? How was that how was preparing to be the person who was holding the online cohort? NW 18:05 Well, it was, it's very interesting, because I don't consider myself a techy person in particular at all. So having that as my kind of responsibility was quite interesting. So yeah, so that was quite interesting, I think particularly thinking about the multilingual aspects, the fact that they were going to be the interpreters who were joining online as well, and that they were sort of part of my cohort. But they were also supporting people in the room occasionally, was quite interesting. I think, as a person, I really like to plan everything. And so the kind of weekend before I was there, trying to arrange, you know, who would be in what breakout and how I could, and I had all these spreadsheets and lists and things. Of course, when it got into the room that went completely out of the window. And I had a notebook and a pen, and I was scribbling names down going, “well, this person's here today and that person isn’t” and so I think, yeah, it was, it was probably quite a big lesson in thinking, well, you know, in many ways it does is not a use a good use of time to really spend lots of time preparing for those kinds of things. But I knew that for my own peace of mind, I needed to feel like I've done as much as I could to prepare for it. And then if I needed to... /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/27103713

FS55 From Working for the European Commission to Independent Facilitator with Sue Bird 05/23/2023

FS55 From Working for the European Commission to Independent Facilitator with Sue Bird In this episode of Facilitation Stories Pilar is joined by Sue Bird, who is a European public affairs specialist and facilitator. Sue ran a session on facilitating for government at the recent IAF conference. She talks about how pleased she was to be able to attend the IAF England and Wales conference in Birmingham recently, and how it was great to be able to meet fellow facilitators and understand how they're running their business, how they do facilitation. She talks about how she does both European Public Affairs consultancy work AND facilitation. Sue reflects on a session she attended at IAF England and Wales about structuring your facilitation business. She set up her own business a year ago, following her 30 years work for the European Commission in a number of different policy areas, and in funding programme management. She wanted to set up a business that would play on these strengths and use the training she has received in the Art of Hosting and Participatory Leadership with the European Commission. She used this in her job to help in team building process, strategy development and other areas while employed with the Commission. She still helps them out in this way still as an “Active Senior”. On the topic of how well embedded facilitation is into the European Commission, Sue mentions that the tools they use at the European Commission are well known tools, such as the World Café. She thinks that facilitation is about marrying passion and profession. Sue talks about the very generous training offers in the European Commission and how she was attracted to facilitated meetings and realised that this was something she really wanted to get trained in. The Commission trained people to a good enough point to try them out as internal facilitators. Her facilitation work was in addition to her ordinary 40 hour week. Sue describes the different types of work that she is able to offer now and how facilitation links into the public affairs she gets involved in. Pilar asks how facilitation in government might be different to other sectors. Sue explains that there are political processes that affect these different organisations and that being involved in politics is a very human experience. She talks about how uncertainty can arise and how there is often pressure on public officials. She also talks about when there are changes in the working environment and how reorganisation of services can happen every now and then. When change is in the air, there is quite a bit of uncertainty and, as in all large organisations, people’s opportunity to influence what they do is limited. All of this will affect how people show up to facilitated sessions and how a facilitator needs to manage this. Pilar asks whether when working with people in government, people might not be able to be as open. Sue says that there would probably be a minimum amount of openness but that it will be up to the procurer of the service to set the scene. The facilitator will need to build up a trusting relationship with the client. On the subject of working as a facilitator in an institution with people of different nationalities, Sue mentions the possible challenge of language. She will be soon facilitating a session in French, and although she is fluent, this will be harder work. International organizations tend to create a culture of their own, and there's a certain understanding that broadly facilitators need to accept that and work with it. Sue shares a little about her role with the IAF Belgum chapter and their 24 members. They have two different types of meeting each month. The focus of one of them is on sharing tools that educate, while the other is called a “Facilitators Studio”, where people can experiment. One recent topic has been different decision-making tools. To connect with Sue Bird on LinkedIn: You can connect with Pilar Orti on Twitter https://twitter.com/PilarOrti Listen to our podcasts: And connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/26833374

FS54 Falling Back in Love with Appreciative Inquiry with Ann Nkune 04/01/2023

FS54 Falling Back in Love with Appreciative Inquiry with Ann Nkune In today’s episode Nikki talks to Ann Nkune about her rediscovery of Appreciative Inquiry. Ann is a facilitator working with charities, social enterprises and the public sector helping people to increase their impact and be sustainable. Her work over the last 10 years has been parent friendly start up and career development programmes for women operate in the environmental and social impact sector. Ann describes a Linked In post that she recently wrote about Appreciative Inquiry (AI) where she was able to connect with other AI enthusiasts to talk to about it, help her work through the complexities and challenges and think about what more she could do when facilitating. And how she had fallen back in love with it having not used it for a while. Ann talks about the premise of AI and how most theories of change are about identifying a problem or risk. Whereas AI says that change is much more likely to happen when people understand where their strengths and the strengths of an organisation are, and can have a level of enthusiasm and optimism that change is possible. So AI increases the positive energy that comes from a group even when there are tricky things so they can see their way through the difficulties. She describes some examples of AI and the process which starts with a topic and going through 4 stages; DISCOVEREY (proud/pivotal moments and skills and qualities), DREAM (allows people to step back and see the big picture and how she encourages people to be creative) - Ann shares an example of creating playdough toilets! DESIGN (what is the reality and what are the options) and DELIVERY (commitment to action and major projects that are required to get to the dream stage). Ann tells Nikki how she had rediscovered AI in lockdown when doing goal setting online. She remembered how she first started to use it several decades ago and how she was initially quite cynical about it, but that AI gave the people she was working with a new perspective. She shares her observations and different uses; for individual discussion e.g. mums of young children as a way of capturing their strengths, bringing together people in teams to build relationships in new ways. She describes how energising it is in a group and to be visionary even if they don’t think they are. Nikki asks how her thinking about it has evolved....Ann says she has a recognition that where situations are complex and there is anxiety or conflict that there needs to be a pre-briefing, something that happens pre-process so that people have an opportunity to vent and get things off their chest, and process so they can decide what is crucial to bring in and what can be left out, and to understand what is going to happen in the process. She also describes how she discovered Time to Think by Nancy Klein and the thinking environment and how this requires a particular type of listening and questioning. Operating the AI process using thinking environment principles really improves it. She also considers conflict and Non Violent Communication as a potentially something to use before AI. She is also a fan of mindfulness as a way of preparing for these conversations. Nikki asks about the preparation and getting to know the context when using AI . Ann says she doesn’t do this as much as she used to when she felt she needed lots of facts. But now she needs to know that people are in the right frame of mind to do the process. She prepares well but doesn’t get too bogged down in the details. Ann shares some examples of using AI – individual work with women who have taken the leap from prevaricating to putting something in place and taking practical steps (using AI and the Lean Canvas). In terms of organisations she has done quite a few team building sessions, building relationships between board members and staff, allowing them to work more effectively. To connect with Ann Nkune on LinkedIn: or Instagram and her webasite is: You can connect with Nikki Wilson on Twitter @NiksClicks Listen to our podcasts: And connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/26413536

FS53 A Co-facilitation story with Paul Kelly and Caroline Jessop 03/14/2023

FS53 A Co-facilitation story with Paul Kelly and Caroline Jessop In this episode Pilar talks to Paul Kelly and Caroline Jessop about co-facilitation. Caroline is a facilitator based just outside Winchester. She describes herself as a creative facilitator and enjoys the things that leave people upbeat and energised. Paul is the founder of Pandek Group which is a Facilitation, Training and Coaching business based in the South West specialising in bridging the disconnect within organisations. He uses Lego Serious Play as one of his facilitation tools. Paul and Caroline have recently worked together on an away day that focused on the disconnect within teams in a professional organisation. They had already had a conversation about wanting to do some work together when this piece of work came up. Caroline describes herself as a born collaborator and how she and Paul have similar expertise but different styles. She felt this piece of work was quite serendipitous and had space in her diary to explore the “gritty” brief. It was also a learning opportunity for them each to experience someone else working and their different techniques. Challenging, questioning, evaluating and rationalising, and reflecting on their own practise. An example of this was in writing the plan and the level of detail, the order of the process. Paul’s way of thinking about co-facilitation is that: You can get someone to support you and for example get materials ready. Or they can act as a backup if there is illness or emergency. You can have co-facilitation when you are taking turns to deliver even though there may be one person leading on contracting, delivery and design. Joint facilitation – includes everything that is co-facilitation but the design is done together too. Collaboration facilitation - All of the above including the contracting and even sourcing the work in the first place. You need to have an open and honest conversation about whose brand you are going under in the first place. Paul and Caroline’s collaboration followed the following stages Meeting with the client to pitch together – this was quite organic, and they both asked questions to get a broader understanding of the brief than they might have done on their own. Putting together a headline plan – Caroline was keen to use a particular methodology that she included. This was followed by some tweaks and discussions with the client. Paul then took the lead on making it come to life and they used SessionLab to add structure to the plan. They were able to ask each other probing questions to check the plan. Prior to this piece of work, they were both on the IAF England and Wales conference planning team together and Paul also worked as part of a team of facilitators when Caroline brought in several facilitators for a piece of work. Caroline has co-created sessions with a number of people and says this broadens your perspective, and the diversity of experience teaches you things you didn’t know that you didn’t know. Creating the outline for them was okay but the client needed more detail and several iterations of the plan. It helped that two people were listening and gave clarity and confidence in what they were proposing. Caroline and Paul were on WhatsApp, behind the scenes during the meeting with their client and this created a good flow of conversation between them. Being listened to by multiple people by the client is always a good thing. They did the budget conversation live online with the client and they were able to use Whatsapp to do this. They had had a previous conversation about budgets and knew the suggested rate in advance. Throughout this project, Caroline and Paul learned that: You need a growth mindset if you are going to work in front of a peer and take the feedback. This is a good challenge to have. Balance of clarity over how you would do it and the benefit of doing it that way needs to be as ideal as it can be for the client and this can be tough to hear that someone else may do this differently. Because of the complexity of the piece of work it was important for them to have had a chance to recharge and share what they did and to discuss when it got really tricky. Here's some advice for someone who is going to co-facilitate or work with another facilitator for the first time: Do it – you are learning as you are doing. Listen with positivity – there are different ways of doing things it’s your opportunity to share as well as experience them. Jump in and try it. Be mindful of what the client is asking for. Connect with Paul Kelly: - Connect with Caroline Jessop: - And you can connect with your host, Pilar Orti on Twitter. /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/26126427

FS52 Learning to let go, Shoop and the IAF conference 2023 02/28/2023

FS52 Learning to let go, Shoop and the IAF conference 2023 In today's episode, Helene talks to Catherine Wilks about her experience of running a session at last year's conference. They talk about The Shoopery, working on instinct and play, adapting the plan as you go along, the power of letting go and the plans for the April 2023 conference. Catherine was introduced to the IAF and the idea that she may actually be a facilitator by Cat Duncan Rees (IAF England and Wales Treasurer). She set up the Shoopery with Pip and Alfie. Having met at a Mental Health organisation and used mental health services themselves, they realised that there was the need for something to happen in between waiting for appointments. They developed lots of different ideas and workshops and realised they were good at helping people let go. Enter “the Shoop”. Everybody’s Shoop can be different – which Catherine describes as positive, upbeat, out of your comfort zone experiences. When people experience their shoop, they say that at the point of letting go they are comfortable with being themselves. People don’t just want to cope with life, but live. Through their sessions, Catherine and her colleagues help bring things out that may have been squashed for a while and this helps people know that they matter. "If you know that you matter, that changes everything in life." At last year’s conference, everybody ended up talking about lemons. Catherine explains what the lemons were about, the “toy of the conference”, and she talks about wanting to make surprising things happen. Their session at the conference had 3 times more people attending than expected and so they ended up running it outside. The aim was to try out lots of different things and to get to the point when people start to bond and trust each other and learn to work as a group. Throughout the session, they had conversations about what letting go feels like, what gets in the way and what helps. The aim was to do something that you didn’t think you would do through little Shoop nudges. Catherine has learnt that actually she is a facilitator and that the conference is a really wonderful space to test things out. She felt everyone was really supportive and she now feels part of the community. She has volunteered to help organise this year’s conference which is at a Quaker House in Birmingham this April 2023. Tickets are already selling and lots of people are talking about it – the forms are also out now for submitting their session ideas. Catherine will be doing another session at this year’s conference about awakening instinct. She is excited about the conference themes around professional development and peer support and talks about how facilitation is such a diverse field that there are those who don’t call themselves facilitators, but are using facilitation in their work. Find out more about Catherine at and on And connect with too. Find out more about the IAFEW conference in April and get tickets here: And or /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/26044290

FS51 Exploring play in climate conversations with Lucy Hawthorne 01/17/2023

FS51 Exploring play in climate conversations with Lucy Hawthorne In this episode Nikki talks to Lucy Hawthorne who for the past year has been experimenting with bringing playfulness to conversations about climate. Lucy is a facilitator by trade and an environmental campaigner by background and has been exploring the link between playfulness and climate action for around five years. In the latter stages of her campaigning work, Lucy was at her most successful, including involvement in the ban on fracking in the UK, but was also at her most jaded. She was becoming adept at political maneuvering but not really shifting people’s hearts and minds, and began to think about how to engage people more deeply in this important subject. As she moved into facilitation she began to look for the antidote to the lack of deep engagement and realised that people were being scared into action, but crushed into apathy. Maybe plan was the antidote. Lucy has spent a lot of time thinking about what play means and how it is both a set of tools and a mindset. The project hasn’t developed in quite the way Lucy expected but the end point is roughly where she was expecting. Initially Lucy thought this might be like a research mission looking at different elements of play and climate, systematically interviewing people and writing up findings, and at the end of the year, she’d have a pseudo evidence-base on the benefits of play in climate action. But being playful and iterative about the process, Lucy has found other ways forward, asking the same questions but being less methodical about recording the evidence and dived quicker into action, prototyping and testing the concepts and principles out with people. Lucy uses Lego a lot in this work as it has a low barrier for entry. It’s familiar for people and Lucy describes it as the “trojan horse”, getting people in as they think it’s fun and whacky but then having conversations that are fun but also serious and at times quite profound. She is also interested in play more generally, and talks about techniques such as improv, drama and art as different mechanisms of playfulness. Lucy is particularly interested in how to get people involved in a conversation that they generally avoid, or avoid having as deeply as they could do. Lucy tries to use tools that make it easy to get started. Nikki asks Lucy what prompted her to put the ideas into action. Lucy feels this isn’t really a choice: climate action is urgent and theory isn’t very useful, there’s a need to give things a go and iterate to see what works. It’s also about Lucy embodying in her practice as a facilitator, the things she’s talking to other people about. For Lucy, playfulness is about curiosity, experimentation and going with the flow which is counter to her experience as a campaigner. She’s pushed herself to give things a go, to run events and have conversttions with people that previously would have terrified her- and counting that as playfulness. They move on to talk about how Lucy has used a prototyping approach. Her first event posed the question “How playful is the climate movement?”, and this helped set up different avenues of enquiry for Lucy, both on how people relate with climate change but also how they relate with play as adults. She’s found a network of people who’ve helped to “chew the process through”. She then started iterating workshops, online and in person, using Lego Serious Play for different audiences, and looking at different aspects such as emotions and blockers to action She’s also done in-house company events and lectures, talking about principles around play and how it might relate to climate action. Nikki asks about the challenges and opportunities of using a physical medium such as Lego both on- and off-line. Lucy has found the kinds of conversations people have had have been different. Face to face conversations have generally catalysed a sense of connection, but because online is slightly more independent, people have noted a high level of quiet reflection. Lucy also notes that with the online work has allowed the reach of the work to be much wider, involving participants globally. Lucy talks about some of the logistical challenges, using second hand lego as far as possible and finding ways to incentivise people to return it. It’s also a challenge to work on in 2023 as she’s keen to make this accessible to people whether or not they have Lego at home, wherever they are in the world. Lucy has enjoyed the online sessions but also feels there’s nothing like being in a room with a table full of toys. It’s been a rich year of learning for Lucy, mainly that there is “just something about play” and the word “play” that is different to parallel words. Lucy’s convinced that if she changed the wording it wouldn’t be as effective. She’s found it seems to appeal more to women and this is something she wants to unpick further. She’s also found these freeing, playful techniques are most effective when talking about the difficult emotions associated with climate change, and “moments of stuckness”. From this learning she now understands her mission to be how to make it safe, light and fun to talk about climate change, so that people can engage more deeply, honestly and creatively with the subject. Lucy and Nikki do a live demonstration of some mini Lego Serious Play exercises building on the metaphors that are the basis for Lego Serious Play. Lucy is curious to continue exploring her role in how to support people to make faster progress and move into more radical action. Lucy is ready to launch as an organisation in its own right and will now be diving deeply into this work, particularly helping businesses to solve climate blockers and how to partner with other people working to the same ends and help them increase the impact of their work. There will be a full series of events, more in-house workshops and exploring the broader principles of what it means to have a playful mindset. Links: To find out more about the Climate Play project: To attend future events: LinkedIn for Lucy: Nikki on Twitter: @NiksClicks /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/25607622

FS50 Wrapping Up the Year Reflecting on Our Meetups 12/13/2022

FS49 Two lenses on photography and facilitation 11/08/2022

FS49 Two lenses on photography and facilitation Today we have a treat for you: Nikki Wilson interviews two guests who use photography as part of their facilitation practice. Gianpietro Pucciariello and Chris Chinnock. Our first guest is Gianpietro Pucciariello, who returns to the show after appearing in episode 15. Gianpietro’s working life in the UK is divided into two: he’s a start up founder and a sole trader that covers many roles. He supports mission-drive individuals and communities to building social environmental impact communities and ecosystems. For this he uses creativity and innovation practices, coaching focus conversations and collective learning experiences. His last project is called through where he connects learning from different areas in his life. He’s developed for others a 3hours outdoor walking self-development journey, using photography for self-exploration. Participants can use their cameras or phones to take photographs to visualise their problems, using metaphors to connect to the problem, and help the problem surface. At the end of the workshop, individuals create a plan of action to take their learnings forward. In essence, photography here is a tool for self-discovery and research, in the present, within our present environment. This idea has its origins right back in Gianpietro’s childhood and adolescent. As an introverted child, he liked to observe in silence, and he used to spend a lot of time in the photography shop of his aunt and uncle. The passion for photography increased later on in life and it became a way of self-expression, especially during the time that his father’s neurological disease was worsening. Around 2013, Gianpietro joined a photo journalist course about telling stories through photography, and this turned out to be one of the best decisions of his life. Rediscovering photography led to him leaving a job he wasn’t happy in, and led him to become a facilitator and nurturer of others. Now he’s using photography as an organic processing for self-reflection and understanding the world around us. We need to be present in the moment, in a similar way to facilitation. He’s now looking at blending different practices, for example from the art of hosting, open space technology, embodiment and clean language. Gianpietro has been running these workshops and has had good feedback, so he knows that the process works for other people as well as himself. The workshop will run in the weekends as the weather is getting colder, but he’s looking to have longer events in the spring, a kind of “Lens to Self Plus”. He’s also looking into building a community around this practice, with follow up exercises; as well as a few interactive email-based course about creative leadership, mindfulness and problem solving, all starting using photography. There’s a lot to think about when you are in charge of a group, walking around a London area taking photographers, so Gianpietro has a list of things he does to make sure people are, and feel, safe under his care. The fact that the workshops take place in a group helps participants form their ideas through talking to others. To make sure Gianpietro keeps his instructions clear and precise, he makes sure when he communicates each task to the participants, he only uses five words to do so. You can find out more about From Lens to Self here: ———— 27.06mins Nikki’s second guest on the show is Chris Chinnock, the Founder of the social enterprise , which uses photography as a tool for social change. Chris spent about five years exploring asset-based community development, travelling around the UK delivering training and attending events talking about the ways in which organisation and communities interact. His professional career has always had a thread of community development and creativity running through it. Alongside that, he’s also been interested in photography and has worked as a freelance photographer. During the pandemic he was thinking about, in essence, what he wanted to do with his life and re-evaluating the time he was spending outside vs inside the home. He’s now able to draw on a range of things that inspire him and which he thinks are important. The role of photography in community development, or a community context was one of the first thoughts around Our Creative Connection. “Photo voice” is a methodology applied mainly in academic research to get feedback in a visual time. Chris is now offering “photo voice” to explore how images and creating photographs can invite new conversations, without needing to start with words, or only use words. He’s also been taking portraits in people involved in an organisation celebrate its 10th anniversary, gathering their stories. He’s now opening the first dark room photography and printing workshop. What he’s taken from his previous roles as facilitator: the mindset of how you plan for workshops, when you’re creating the space for people to develop; he’s also been heavily influenced by Peter Block’s work around the impact they have on people depending on how they show up. Chris uses photography also to explain what he does, giving him a different starting point, a more open one. And of course, there’s not a right or wrong way to use photography in this way. Images are useful to start conversations. For example, Photo Voice is not a photography project, it’s more about “voice” than “photo”, it’s about finding your own story. Using an image to start a conversation also allows you to talk about subjects that are difficult to talk about. One of Chris’ future projects is going to involve embedding photography into the curriculum to help with learning outcomes. He’s also interested in how organisations can use images to communicate better and using art to shine a light on different subjects. You can find out more about Chris' work here: And this episode's host, Nikki Wilson, can be found on LinkedIn too: /episode/index/show/facilitationstories/id/24915930

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