Monthly Archives: May 2014

Facilitation case study: Celebrating 20 years with the European Training Foundation in Turin – #ETF20

“How might you creatively engage a diverse, international group of around 120, both face-to-face and online, to reflect, learn and bond together in celebrating 20 years of collective achievement?”

etf20This was the question facing Michael Ambjorn and I as we prepared to work with the European Training Foundation (ETF) in Turin earlier this month. Part of the answer lay in the ‘Wall of Wonder’ method of ICA’s Technology of Participation, captured by Michael in a timelapse (below – the #FacHistory hashtag at the end refers to another 20-year anniversary project currently underway and using the method, Celebrating the development of facilitation – world-wide and history long)

ETF is a decentralised agency of the European Union that supports transitional and developing countries “to harness the potential of their human capital through the reform of education, training and labour market systems”, within the context of the EU’s external relations policy.  Michael and I were engaged on behalf of AlignYourOrg to design and facilitate a one day celebration and team-building event for current and former staff, with an element of online digital engagement as well. We had some fun with that, as you can see here!

The ETF team had arranged for professors and students of Turin’s Albertina Academy of Fine Arts to lead creative arts workshops on the day, so we were to integrate that into the programme. A launch event in early April enabled us and the artists to meet many of the staff, and to begin to prepare together for the main event. Art teams were formed and team badges distributed, team ‘historians’ and ‘archaelogists’ were appointed to unearth and collect artefacts and mementoes to share, and the all-important #ETF20 hashtag was announced to curate online contributions.

The day itself was held at a fabulous venue, the former munitions factory Arsenale of Peace, which allowed us the use of multiple large indoor spaces and a beautiful sunny courtyard as well. In our opening session in the theatre space we presented the aims and agenda of the day, below (click the image to enlarge).

#ETF20 aims & agenda

We then moved to the courtyard for a ‘constellations’ energiser, captured by Michael in another timelapse. First participants formed ‘human’ maps’ depicting where they were born, and then the location of a memorable event with ETF. Then they lined up in order of day & month of birth, and then in order of their first involvement with ETF. This warmed people up literally, as well as in terms of sharing something of themselves and their stories of involvement with ETF. We then distributed playing cards in order of participants’ first involvement, to assign them to 12 groups of 10 (by card number, excluding aces) such that each group had an equal mix of ‘old-timers’ and ‘new comers’.

The ToP Wall of Wonder (or Historical Scan) method is a powerful tool to enable a group to share and learn from their varied perspectives of a journey through history, to review the past in order to prepare for the future. In the first stage of this Wall of Wonder session, the 12 groups were invited to brainstorm and share memorable events and milestones in the 20 years history of ETF from 1994 to 2014, and anticipate future events to 2020 and beyond as well. Events were brainstormed and stories were shared at the personal and world level, as well as at the level of ETF itself, and written on cards and plotted on a timeline on the ‘sticky wall‘ at the front of the room. Participants drew on their collected artefacts and mementoes for inspiration, and plotted photographs alongside their cards – including polaroids of each of them, taken by Michael on the day, and plotted to indicate their date of first involvement with ETF.  You can see all their movement in the timelapse above, as the timeline takes shape as the front of the room.

For the second stage of the session, we introduced an element of the World Cafe conversation method by inviting participants to move tables to form 12 new groups – this time according to the suit of the playing card they had each been given (3 groups for each of the four suits). In these new groups they shared some of the stories they had told and heard, and some more, and began to discern impacts between world, ETF and personal levels, and trends over time. After each stage of the session the 12 tables shared stories and insights with each other in plenary, culminating in suggestions for what name to give to their shared journey of 20+ years.

Below are just a few of the day’s tweets, to indicate how it was received, and a handsome recommendation received from Bent Sorensen, ETF Director of Communications, on LinkedIn. For more on the day as a whole (in tweets, images and more timelapses!) click on the final image below for #ETF20 on storify, and see the beautiful ETF video of the day.

If you find yourself struggling with a similar question, or if you could use any help with engaging and aligning your stakeholders, please contact me or Michael. Otherwise do anyway join us on twitter! @martingilbraith @michaelambjorn

https://twitter.com/Mirjam_deJong/status/464328077888479234

https://twitter.com/sandracavallo/status/464373121622241280

https://twitter.com/ccieczko/status/464463417638928385

https://twitter.com/balex67/status/464458639068381187

Bent Sorensen ETF recommendation

#ETF20 storify

https://twitter.com/martingilbraith/status/585693980488294400

A view from the Board – from the new Chair of a renewed IAF Board

the International Association of FacilitatorsThis article ‘from the archive’ was first published IAF’s monthly newsletter the Global Flipchart, January 2011. See also Reflections on a term as IAF Chair, first published in the Global Flipchart, January 2013.

Happy New Year, and welcome to this New Year issue of the Global Flipchart, from the new Chair of a renewed IAF Board. I feel proud and privileged to have the opportunity to serve our Association and our profession as Chair of the IAF Board for 2011 & 2012, and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the new Board and myself, and to share something of how I am viewing my role as Chair.

First, let me thank my predecessor as Chair, Gary Rush, and those other members who have just retired from the Board as of the end of December – Mark Edmead, Tony Nash, David Spann & Michael Spivey. They have all contributed greatly to IAF and its development during their terms on the Board. Their volunteer commitment to take this responsibility and devote their time and energy over recent years is much appreciated.

I would also like to thank, and welcome to the Board, those members who have been prepared to make such a new commitment, and who have been newly elected to the Board as of the beginning of January – Daphne Cant, Jerry Mings, Cynthia Pace, Ephraim Osunde, Bill Reid, Sheryl Smail and Linda Starodub. Thanks are also due to those Board members who are continuing to serves their terms (Sharon Almerigi, Kimberly Bain, Jackie Chang & Carol Sherriff) and those who stood and were re-elected to second terms (Pamela Lupton-Bowers, Rhonda Tranks & Simon Wilson).

I thank also Chair Julie Larsen and the other members of the Board Nominations & Elections committee, who led us through the recent election process that has enabled us to start the New Year with every one of the 15 Board positions now filled, and with renewed clarity and commitment of Board members to their roles. Thank you also to you, the members, for turning out to vote – and to the many members who volunteer their time and expertise for IAF in so many ways, year round. For details of the IAF Board, its members and their roles, please visit the ‘About IAF’ pages at www.iaf-world.org.

I have been a member of IAF since 2007, but have attended I think 10 IAF conferences (in Europe and North America to date) since my first in London in 1997. In 2008 I earned the IAF Certified Professional Facilitator designation, and also in 2008 I was appointed to the IAF Board. I served first as Regional Representative for Europe, and then was appointed as Vice Chair for 2010.

My background in facilitation is in the international community & organisational development work of the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) – a global network of autonomous non-profit organisations in 30 countries, out of which IAF itself originated in the early 1990s.   I was first trained in ICA’s ToP facilitation methods (the Technology of Participation) as part of my international volunteer induction training with ICA in 1986. Following a year volunteering with ICA India, and then six years working with ICA in Egypt, I have worked with ICA:UK since 1997 – supporting the grassroots community development work of our sister and partner organisations in Africa and elsewhere, training & orientating international volunteers, and applying ICA’s participatory approach to the youth work sector and to local public service delivery in the UK – see www.ica-uk.org.uk. As Chief Executive, the focus of my day job is the management and governance of ICA:UK as a charity and a social enterprise. A good deal of my time is also spent delivering services, however, which in this case means providing facilitation, training and consulting to develop capacity for participation and partnership working, largely with public and voluntary sector clients nationally in the UK.

I think of my professional interests and goals in terms of facilitative leadership, where facilitation, management and governance intersect – so I have sought volunteer roles as well that have allowed me to explore and develop in that area. These have included serving as Board member and Treasurer of ICA International from 1998-2006, more recently as Trustee of UK youth development charity FOCUS and committee member of the UK Quaker Congo Partnership, and now most recently as a member of the Board of IAF.

I am viewing my role as Chair primarily as providing facilitative leadership to the Board – in order that we may best, collectively, provide facilitative leadership to the Association as a whole, and in order that IAF may best provide facilitative leadership to our profession and indeed to the world at large. With reference to IAF’s six Core Facilitation Competencies, I would describe this facilitative leadership role in terms of:

Developing and promoting collaborative relationships through clarity, transparency and accountability – within the Board, within the IAF as a whole, and between IAF and its external partners and stakeholders

  1. Adopting, communicating and applying appropriate group processes, notably IAF policies and procedures, and also structures
  2. Sustaining and enhancing a participatory environment that is inclusive of diversity, encourages creativity and innovation, and manages conflict
  3. Ensuring appropriate and useful outcomes through development and implementation of effective strategy
  4. Building and maintaining professional knowledge, around association management and governance as well as facilitation
  5. Modelling a professional, facilitative leadership approach at all levels

I am excited to be starting my term as Chair with a strong and committed new team of Board members to work with, and to see them energetically acquainting themselves with their new roles, with the active support of their predecessors and of continuing Board members. I am keen to enable the new Board to form, and indeed to perform, as quickly as possible; so I am delighted that we will be meeting face-to-face this year in January, in London to minimise costs, rather than in conjunction with a conference later in the year as has been recent practice. I do however look forward to attending IAF conferences as well, as we all will, in my case starting with the North America conference in Denver in April.

At our January Board meeting we will articulate our work plan and budget for the year ahead, and during the year we will use the Global Flipchart and other means to communicate and engage with you, the members of IAF, on progress, challenges and opportunities for involvement. I expect key challenges and priorities for the Board to include (in no particular order, and very much inter-related): membership retention and growth, chapter development, successful delivery of annual conferences in the regions, strengthened financial management and financial security, the upcoming new website and our online presence, and the development and growth of the certification programme. I think that one key to success, in all of these, will be articulating, communicating and delivering the demonstrable value that IAF can add to its members, to the profession and to the wider world. I think that another key to success will be applying our own expertise as facilitators to do all of this collaboratively, together.

Please get in touch with me, or any of your Board members, to share your questions, feedback or suggestions; now and throughout the year. You can email me at iafchair@iaf-world.org, skype me at martingilbraith, and connect with me at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/martingilbraith. You can find contact details for all IAF Board members at www.iaf-world.org.

On the Road

This article was first written for and published in the IAF Europe MENA newsletter, May 2014.

Moscow facilitators planning ‘What can we do over the next 3 years to promote a culture of participation in our organisations?’Moscow facilitators learned the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process last month by planning ‘What can we do over the next 3 years to promote a culture of participation in our organisations?’

When Julia Goga-Cooke invited me to contribute to this new ‘On The Road’ section of the newsletter, I think she may have known what sort of month I have been having. As well as visiting some interesting places, I have been able to meet and work with some wonderful IAF colleagues.

I began writing this from Marrakech, where I was facilitating last week for the first Arab Regional Forum on Youth Volunteering. This was convened by UN Volunteers, and brought together over 100 stakeholders from across the region and beyond to share, learn and plan together. On exchanging business cards with one delegate from Jordan, he told me that he had just emailed with IAF about joining or setting up a local chapter. So I was happy to share what I knew about the IAF membership in the region, and IAF’s chapter approach, and to learn from his experience of facilitation and facilitators in Jordan.

Prior to this I was in Turin with IAF member Michael Ambjorn of AlignYourOrg , in preparation for facilitating an event there together this week with the 120 staff of the European Training Foundation to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year. It was in designing this event, including a ToP ‘Wall of Wonder’ historical scanning process, that I had the idea for the rather more elaborate process to contribute to IAF’s 20th anniversary year celebration that became ‘Celebrating the development of facilitation – world-wide and history long’. This was launched in April, online and at the IAF North America conference in Orlando. Please do join in, online and at future conferences and chapter events between now and International Facilitation Week in October.

Prior to that, I was in Moscow at the start of April for the 5th annual Moscow Facilitators’ conference. It was great to be back, having attended for my first time last year and contributing a keynote and pre-conference ToP Group Facilitation Methods training. This year I presented a case study of the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process with an international humanitarian agency in Geneva, ‘Transformational Strategy: from trepidation to ‘unlocked’’, and post-conference ToP Participatory Strategic Planning training (see photo above). The 100 or so participants came from the regions of Russia and Ukraine and Finland as well as from Moscow and the UK.

I have been privileged these last few weeks as well to serve as a mentor to one of ICA Ukraine’s ToP facilitation trainers, and to learn something of how she and ICA are working to network diverse actors in Ukraine and to re-envisage and rebuild their country’s future together. It was a privilege also (and fun!) to help to network ICA Ukraine’s facilitators with Russian facilitators attending the Moscow Facilitators conference by exchanging real-time Facebook updates between my post-conference ToP strategic planning course in Moscow and Natasha’s simultaneous ToP strategic planning course in Lviv.

It is a great disappointment to me to learn that this year’s IAF Europe MENA conference Facilitation Reloaded will no longer be held in Moscow, although recent events have made it increasingly self-evident that it would not be able to go ahead as planned. It seems to me that there is a need, now more than ever, for facilitation to grow and make a valuable impact in the region. I am delighted to know that the conference will be relocated rather than cancelled, and that the Moscow team will remain involved, and I shall be delighted for the opportunity to visit Copenhagen instead in October. I hope to see you there, and I hope that colleagues from Russia and Ukraine will be able to attend.

In the midst of all this I was also able to squeeze in a day of facilitation training with ICA:UK, for an international firm of sustainability consultants in London – happily, and rather appropriately, I was able to travel to that on foot!

ICA International Board update, May 2014

Global Buzz
This post was first published in ICAI’s monthly bulletin the Global Buzz.

At the ICAI Board’s April meeting the focus was on detailed planning and assignments for implementation of the 2014 Business Plan finalised in March and circulated then.  The Board offered it’s support to the regional Vice Presidents as they work to facilitate networking among members within their regions over the coming months.  Krishna is liaising with members in Asia Pacific to convene a regional working group to facilitate peer-to-peer support and collaboration in that region, Isabel is working with members in the Americas to organise online facilitation training in Spanish and Gerald is connecting with African ICAs by phone and skype. Martin is also working with ICA Spain to confirm the dates and location for this year’s face-to-face ICA European Interchange, to be held late October or early November in Andalucia.  We agreed that ICAI would make a token contribution toward the rent of the new ICA offices in Toronto, from where our Canadian colleages continue to maintain ICAI’s legal status and financial accounts, and we have renewed ICAI’s membership of the World Alliance for Citizen Participation CIVICUS.

Building on conversations with members at last year’s online regional gatherings, Martin has now drafted criteria for non-voting Associate membership of ICAI and for ICAI financial support of member’s peer-to-peer initiatives.  These will be reviewed by the Board in May before being circulated to the membership for further feedback and revisions, in order that they may be voted on at the online General Assembly in June.  Also building on last year’s regional gatherings in preparation for the June GA, Staci is drafting an online survey by which to consult members on possible approaches to convening a face-to-face ICAI global conference in 2016.  The annual accounts are ready for Board approval in May, and we continue to monitor progress on ICAI’s ‘Continuance’ as a non-profit in Canada and on release of the legacy that has been left to ICAI.  Invoices have been circulated and members are renewing their dues for 2014.

The ICAI working group on global ToP (Technology of Participation) policy has had several online meetings involving a dozen or more colleagues from many ICAs in all continents, and is considering what it may circulate more widely for consultation in advance of the global online gatherings and GA in June. The Winds and Waves team published another fantastic issue of ICAI’s flagship magazine, Networking, and are about to meet to make advance plans for the next issue.