Thank you to everyone attending my session today at the 2015 IAF Europe MENA conference in Stockholm, Making Waves. I am pleased to share the slides I used here below, and below that the session description.

The session was inspired by an earlier blog post Four steps to a universal principle of facilitation and learning and drew on the Focused Conversation with video Three dimensions of the facilitator role.

ORID and the ToP Focused Conversation method are featured in the Group Facilitation Methods courses, coming up November 17-18 in Brussels and monthly with ICA:UK in London & Manchester.

Please share your own experience of ORID or your own ‘universal principle’ in a comment, or contact me with any questions or for further information.

Is there a single, universal principle of facilitation? Mine’s ORID!

At a monthly meet-up of the International Association of Facilitators in London, the question was posed “is there a single, universal principle of facilitation?”  More to the point of course, if there is – what is it!

It didn’t take me long to think and respond that, in my own facilitation at least, there is certainly something approaching that – a simple four-level model of human behaviour that is always in my mind as I design and facilitate any learning or collaborative process, and that is very often explicitly the basis of the design.  Anyone who has worked or taken training with me, or who is familiar with ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) approach, will know immediately what I am talking about.  It is the basis of the ToP Focused Conversation method, featured in the foundational ToP Group Facilitation Methods course, and it is affectionately known as ORID.

In this session I shall introduce the ORID model, first by demonstrating the ToP Focused Conversation method in leading a conversation on the role of the facilitator, and then by talking through the theory behind the model and by giving some examples of broader application as a universal principle of process design and facilitation. Participants will have an opportunity to consider how they might apply the model themselves in their own situations, and what they can learn about their own ‘universal principle of facilitation’.

The session will introduce a simple but powerful and versatile model, that can be applied as a tool and even as a guiding principle. It will help facilitators to engage and empower their groups with greater confidence and versatility, to better enable them to make the change that they are seeking in the world.  The session will be equally suitable for newcomers to facilitation and for experienced facilitators who are new to ToP, and those who would like to deepen their understanding of ORID as a design tool.

For more on my work, and what others have to say about it, please see how I work, who I work with and recommendations & case studies – or view my profile and connect with me on LinkedIn.

You can connect with me also by joining my free facilitation webinars online, and IAF England & Wales’ free facilitation meetups in London and elsewhere.