Category Archives: reviews

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!

Transformational Strategy: from trepidation to ‘unlocked’

I am pleased to share here [pусская версия ниже] a case study I presented at today’s 5th annual Moscow Facilitators conference, on ToP Participatory Strategic Planning with an international humanitarian agency in Geneva. Click on the hyperlinked images to go to other pages and sites with further information.

I am grateful to all at IDMC for allowing me to share the example of my work with them in Geneva, and to Edventure:Frome whose smaller-scale strategic planning exercise in Somerset I mention as well for contrast.

Many thanks also to Liudmila Dudorov and Mikhail Rossus, and all at GoTraining & IAF Russia, for hosting me so well again for my second year in Moscow (for a review of my first, see the Jazz of faclitation is magnificent in Moscow); and to all who attended the conference presentation and my post-conference course, ToP Participatory Strategic Planning.

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Two books and three methods for facilitating social transformation

This post was written for the IAF newsletter the Global Flipchart, June 2013.

Transformational Strategy   Transformative Scenario Planning

Transformational Strategy: facilitation of ToP Participatory Strategic Planning – Bill Staples, iUniverse 2013
Transformative Scenario Planning: working together to change the future – Adam Kahane, Berrett-Koehler 2012
The Kumi method for Social Transformation in Conflict – Transform e.V. in partnership with ARIA, IICP, ICA & others

An advantage of stepping down recently as Chair of IAF and as Chief Executive of ICA:UK, and now working freelance instead, is that I am finding more time for reading, writing and ideas.  Of the many books that I have enjoyed and found stimulating in recent months, I want to recommend these two in particular to readers of the Global Flipchart – for the inspirational stories and insights that they offer, and for their wealth of concepts, tools and tips with immediate application to our facilitation practice. Both focus on the transformative potential of group process for positive social change, but each takes a somewhat different approach.  In reviewing the two books I found myself led to review the third, hybrid approach to social transformation as well, as will become clear.

I have known Bill Staples of ICA Associates in Canada for many years as a colleague within the ICA (the Institute of Cultural Affairs) and also as an active member of the IAF (International Association of Facilitators).  Bill is publisher of the IAF Journal, and chaired the IAF Toronto conference in 2000 that attracted over 1100 participants.  His book Transformational Strategy details the theory and practice of the Participatory Strategic Planning process of ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) methodology, an approach in which I have been a practitioner and a trainer for many years myself.  So this book covers ground that is very familiar to me, although I found it no less insightful for that. Bill previewed the book at the ICA International Global Conference on Human Development in Kathmandu last October, and elements of the approach were embedded in the design of the conference.

I came across Adam Kahane of Reos Partners through his 2004 book “Solving Tough Problems: an open way of talking, listening, and creating new realities”.  He was head of Scenarios for Royal Dutch Shell in London during the early 1990s, and facilitated the Mont Fleur Scenario Exercise in which a diverse group of South Africans worked together to effect that country’s transition to democracy following apartheid.  That exercise, and subsequent attempts at working with leaders to ‘get unstuck’ some of the world’s toughest problems, helped to generate the reflections and refinements to the Transformative Scenario Planning methodology that he describes in his subsequent book “Power and Love: a theory and practice of social change” and now this one as well.  So this is an approach with which I am somewhat familiar in theory, although its insights resonate with my own experience in many respects.  Kahane previewed this book at a lecture I attended at the RSA in London, also last October, ‘How to Change the Future’.

Transformational Strategy is structured in four parts over 270 pages. Part I outlines the global and historical role of participation in transformative social change, and the history and evolution of the ToP approach.  Part II introduces the spiral image as a metaphor for the thought process of planning, and to describe the underlying dynamics of the ToP Participatory Strategic Planning process and the values that underpin it.  It places the spiral planning process in a wider framework that includes the preparation and research that precedes the planning and the implementation that follows it, and introduces a number of particular ToP tools and techniques to support each stage.  Part III has a chapter of in-depth theory and practical tips on the application of each of the four key stages of the spiral process that will be most familiar to ToP facilitation trainees and practitioners – articulating the practical vision, discerning the underlying contradictions, forging breakthrough strategies and action planning for implementation.  Part IV outlines some possible variations in the approach for different groups and groups sizes, and additional follow-on steps to inspire commitment through implementation. The book is richly illustrated throughout by practical examples and longer case studies from ToP practitioners working in a range of different settings around the world, from corporate board rooms and government departments to local communities and voluntary groups.  Example worksheets and planning documentation charts are included in the appendix.

Transformative Scenario Planning takes a more narrative approach, through nine chapters over an altogether lighter 120 pages. First Kahane tells the story of the Mont Fleur Scenario exercise, and how it helped a diverse group of South African leaders from across the many divisions of that society to talk through what was happening, what could happen and what needed to happen in their country – and then to act on what they had learned, so contributing to some peaceful forward progress in a situation that had seemed violently stuck.  Drawing on another 20 years of subsequent practice with scenarios, Kahane goes on to outline his conclusions on when and how such planning works best – namely, in situations seen to be unacceptable or unsustainable, that cannot be transformed directly or by people working only with those close to them, and by means of a five stage process detailed in subsequent chapters. The five stages are framed as a creative application of the U-process described by Peter Senge et al in Presence (2008) and Otto Scharmer in Theory U (2009). This involves firstly convening a team from across the whole system (‘coinitiating’), observing what is happening and constructing stories about what could happen (‘cosensing’), discovering together what can and must be done (‘copresencing’), and finally acting to transform the system (‘cocreating’ and ‘coevolving’).  Through this process actors gradually transform their understandings, relationships and intentions, and thereby their actions and their larger social system.  This book too is richly illustrated with examples and stories, from exercises seeking to transform often profoundly conflicted societies including Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Quebec, Colombia and Sudan.

Kahane adopts a more personal and reflective style than Staples, sharing something of his frustrations and setbacks in his practice of Transformative Scenario Planning and what he has learned along the way.  Staples in contrast provides a brief overview of the evolution of the method, through research and development involving many hundreds of practitioners over 50 years, and focuses more on where and how the method has been successful and (in some detail) on how to apply it.  While Staples provides an entire chapter of case studies and an appendix filled with related materials, Kahane takes a deeper and longer view on the outcome and impact of the examples he offers. He relates a memorable story of a return visit to Colombia in 2012, 16 years after a scenario project began and some eight years after it had appeared to have failed, to hear the then President announce ‘that it had always been alive and was now the leitmotif of the policies of his new government’.  He quotes the Bhagavad Gita, in a wry comment on the uncertainty of outcome inherent in any facilitative leadership:  “The work is yours, but not the fruits thereof”.

Both books emphasise that collaboration and a comprehensive approach are key to achieving social transformation, and that an inner transformation of those involved is both an outcome of and a pre-requisite for social transformation.  Both books also emphasise the role and power of stories, metaphors and images, in achieving both internal and external transformation.

Where the two approaches appear to differ most substantially is perhaps in the type of (en)visioning that is employed, and its role relative to reflection on and analysis of current reality. In ToP Participatory Strategic Planning it is a compelling and practical vision of a desired future, held in creative tension with a searching and in-depth analysis of present blocks or ‘contradictions’ to that vision, that drives transformation through implementation.  In Transformative Scenario Planning it is not one desired future but several possible futures that are envisioned, and these future scenarios emerge from a deep and broad reflection on current reality rather than themselves focusing the analysis of that current reality from which strategies and tactics are developed.  Where the two approaches appear to be in agreement, however, is in the transformative power of that creative tension between clearly articulated future(s) and honestly and profoundly explored present. Also they concur in the paradox, as Kahane describes it, that “we move forward by stepping back: we get unstuck not by pushing but instead by pausing”.  As Staples writes, “naming the contradiction bursts illusions about the current situation and blows the door to the future wide open”.

Both approaches are described as fractal processes, in that each stage contains within it a micro version of the whole process and each process can itself be expanded to serve as a stage in a larger whole.  From this point of view it matters less, in theory, whether articulation of the future should precede exploration of the present or vice versa.  What matters more, in practice, is what particular (micro or macro) process will help a particular group achieve a particular goal in a particular context – the key question at the heart of any facilitation process design, and any in-the-moment facilitation intervention.  It is at this point that the skilled and experienced facilitator will draw from her extensive toolkit to adapt and apply what methods and tools she has available, to tailor a process for the particular needs of the occasion.

I wonder whether the apparent difference in the two approaches in fact to some extent simply reflects a difference in emphasis in how they are described, and a difference in the contexts in which they are illustrated.  As the book titles suggest, Kahane focuses primarily on the role of scenarios in transformation, and Staples primarily on the role of strategy. From this broader perspective, Participatory Strategic Planning could be seen as a tool to apply in order to move from stages 4 to 5 of the Transformative Scenario Planning process (from ‘discover what can and must be done’ to ‘act to transform the system’), and stages 1 to 4 of Transformative Scenario Planning could be seen as elements of the preparation and research that is required to precede a particular Participatory Strategic Planning process.  Kahane draws his examples largely from situations of conflict, and frames his approach as a means to ‘get unstuck’ in the face of tough economic, social and environmental problems.  In contrast, Staples’ examples are largely not drawn from conflict situations, and he frames the ToP approach not as a means of problem-solving but as a means to empower people ‘to see fresh opportunities, to step onto the stage of history, and take an active part in directing it the way they want their world to go’.

I am not clear to what extent Transformative Scenario Planning has been applied in situations other than conflict, but Jonathan Dudding of ICA:UK has written about the application and the limitations of ToP in situations of conflict in the 2012 ICA Nepal book ‘Changing Lives Changing Societies: ICA’s experience in Nepal and the World’.  Dudding has been a key contributor also to the multi-disciplinary, collaborative research process that has developed the new Kumi method for social transformation in conflict.

The Kumi project was initiated in 2003 by conflict analysts Ahmed Badawi and Ofer Zalzberg. Badawi is an experienced ToP practitioner (he & I worked together with ICA Egypt in the early 1990s) and Zalzberg worked with Kahane on his Jewish-Israeli Journey scenario project of 2008. The project brought together ToP practitioners and experts in identity-based conflict and conflict analysis to develop a hybrid approach drawing on the three traditions, informed by a series of pilot events involving Israelis, Palestinians and Europeans seeking to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  An international network of around 35 Kumi practitioners is now experimenting with broader applications of the method.  An early learning of ToP practitioners in this process was that conflicted parties in such a context may need to do considerable work to address the conflict, and their relationships to it and each other, before they are able to embark on a participatory planning process that requires the group to speak and plan as ‘we’.  The resulting method is a five stage process that moves from (1) initial contact, exploration and design through (2) stage setting, group building and articulating the issue and conflicts to (3) deep conflict engagement and analysis, (4) ToP participatory strategic planning and (5) supporting implementation.

Like Transformative Scenario Planning the Kumi method may be understood as an application of Senge and Scharmer’s U-process, it uses story-telling as a key tool for exploration and discovery and it is designed to help a group to ‘get unstuck’ in order to find a creative way forward together.   Kumi does not make use of multiple scenarios, but does make use of the contradictional analysis that lies at the heart of ToP Participatory Strategic Planning.  I hope that one day we might see a book on the Kumi method, to help us better understand how it’s evolution and applications relate to those of Transformational Scenario Planning and ToP Participatory Strategic Planning – to help facilitators learn from the experience of all three approaches, to better design and lead processes that empower people in all contexts to transform their situations together for the better.

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.

Online ToP Group Facilitation Methods training – I am convinced!

ICA AssociatesI was pleased to have the opportunity to join one of the new online ToP Group Facilitation Methods courses of ICA Associates of Canada the other week. I had been sceptical of the value of online training for face-to-face facilitation, but I was impressed and came away convinced!

The Technology of Participation, pioneered and refined by ICA in over 40 years of experience worldwide, is a proven system of facilitation methods and tools that can be adapted and applied to help all sorts of groups accomplish a wide variety of tasks together. It has been central for many years to how I work myself. Today’s Group Facilitation Methods course was first piloted in the early 1990s, and is now delivered by national ICAs and their local partners all over the world to many thousands every year. In my own 20 years of experience of the course I have become familiar with many variations in how it is and has been delivered, not least which of the core ToP methods are included in the standard two days of training – only Focused Conversation and Consensus Workshop, or also Action Planning. Tailored, in-house courses vary even more widely in their formats than scheduled, public courses.  Additional courses cover additonal tools and methods, and support learners to gain the skills and competencies they need to apply them effectively in their own situations.

The basic structure of the course, however, has proven remarkably powerful and resilient across time and context. First, demonstrate each method. Second, talk through the theory of how and why it works and how to use it. Third, give every participant and opportunity to practice the method in safe and supported small groups with expert and peer feedback. Fourth, support participants to plan how they will use the method for real in their own situation in the near future.  End-of-course participant satisfaction ratings on ICA:UK Group Facilitation Methods courses commonly average over 8/10, and 10/10 is not unusual. How could such a tried and tested approach possibly be translated effectively into a virtual environment, I wondered?

One of the keys to the effectiveness of the online course, I have concluded, is the choice of Blackboard Collaborate for the virtual training room.  While many ToP practitioners have adopted Adobe Connect as their platform of choice for virtual ToP facilitation, the whiteboard facility in Collaborate does seem to work better for virtually replicating the real-world sticky wall, such a valuable tool for the ToP Consensus Workshop method.

Perhaps more important is the advance preparation that is expected of participants before the course, including advance scheduling of homework and practice time inbetween the virtual sessions. While the face-to-face course is commonly delivered in full in two consecutive eight-hour days, the virtual course is delivered in six two-hour sessions spread over two weeks or more, with considerable homework expected as well. Participants receive the same GFM course workbook, but by email in advance, and also e-books of the Art of Focused Conversation and the Workshop Book.  They are expected to review the workbook and at least the introductory chapters of the two books in advance of the course, meaning that they arrive with a good overview aleady and some considered questions to ask. This makes a considerable difference to the depth of discussion achieved online.

The first week of the online course covers the Focused Conversation Method and the second week covers the Consensus Workshop method, while face-to-face courses most often cover one method per day. Session one of each week demonstrates the method and introduces the theory, and is followed by homework to embed the theory and raise further questions to address in session two.  Session two completes the theory and supports participants to plan their own real-life practice of the method. Before the course begins they have real-life group sessions scheduled to enable them to practice for real, rather than with each other as on the face-to-face course. Session three debriefs the practice sessions, and looks at further applications for the method in particpants’ own situations.

The course I joined, with sessions timed for North America and Europe (at 6-8pm London time), was attended by six ­­participants from various locations across the US and Canada, plus me and Bill Staples of ICA Associates as guests. Another parallel course was running the same days with sessions timed for North America and Asia, and was being attended largely by a group in Korea.  Both courses were being led by veteran ToP trainers Jo Nelson and Wayne Nelson, with focusing on technical support.

The group were a mix of independent professional facilitators and managers and internal consultants within large organisations – not so different to groups I am familiar with from face-to-face public courses.  I was very impressed with how much value they were clearly getting from the course, and how much they were appreciating it. It was clear to me that the virtual demonstrations of the methods did not provide an equivalent experience to face-to-face demonstrations.  For participants with sufficient experience of group work, however, and with their advance reading on the methods, they clearly provided a perfectly adequate basis for the theory and practice to follow. Moreover, that theory and practice seemed to me to be no less rich and insightful than in face-to-face courses of my experience.  What was lost by not spending intensive face to face time together seemed to be more than compensated for by having considerably longer study and reflection time over the whole two week period of the sessions. What was lost by not practicing together with each other, and sharing peer feedback based on direct experience of each others’ practice, seemed to be more than compensated by practicing in participants’ own real-life contexts and working with real groups to address real issues. While I was fascinated by the many comparisons I was able to make between the online course and the many face to face courses I have led, the group were clearly not burdened by how the course might have been in a face-to-face version but were engaging with it and appreciating it just as it was.

I have no doubt that many learners will continue to prefer face-to-face training, and that many will gain more from that than from its online equivalent – not least those who might for any reason fail to give due time and attention to the homework that is such an essential element of the online course. Equally, however, I am now convinced that there may be many learners for whom the online course might be a perfectly acceptable alternative when face-to-face not possible for travel, cost, timing or other reasons – and that there may be some for whom a virtual environment may suit their learning style better, even when learning methods and skills of face-to-face group facilitation.

I think the key for learners will be to select the type of course that best suits their learning needs and style, and their context and preferences as well. This innovative new online course of ICA Associates is doing a great service to learners by making the ToP Group Facilitation Methods course available online for those that might benefit from it more than face-to-face, and for those that otherwise might not be able to benefit at all.

Future courses are scheduled for August and November/December 2013 – for details visit ICA Associates. Online training in virtual ToP facilitation is available from ICA USA.

The jazz of facilitation is magnificent in Moscow

This article was first written for the IAF Europe newsletter, April 2013

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The first week of April was Facilitation Week in Moscow.  The centrepiece of the week was the 4th annual Moscow Facilitators Conference, held on April 5th. This was accompanied by two days of facilitation training before the conference and another two days afterwards.  The conference week was convened by Liudmila Dudorova, chair of the IAF Russia chapter, and her facilitation company Personal Image.  The annual conference under Liudmila’s leadership has clearly played a significant role in promoting facilitation in Russia and attracting increasing numbers of Russian facilitators to IAF, as evidenced by the ever growing numbers of Russian delegates at the annual IAF Europe conference.

The conference itself attracted around 65 delegates at the four star Vega conference hotel, for a full day programme from 10am-7pm.  Most came from Moscow, but some also from other regions of Russia and from neighbouring countries.  Most were leaders, managers and practitioners within large Russian companies, or independent professional facilitators and other professional contractors who offer facilitation alongside other services.

St Basils Cathedral MoscowThe conference theme of idea generation, innovation and the exchange of experience was explored through eight sessions, in plenary and in two parallel groups.  I was delighted to be invited to join as an international guest presenter, along with Bruce Rowling of Pinpoint Facilitation.  Bruce has worked with Liudmila and her company in Russia over several years, but for me it was my first visit so I was delighted to be able to see something of Moscow while I was there.

I provided two days of pre-conference training to a group of 28, introducing three of ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) facilitation methods, namely Focused Conversation, Consensus Workshop and Action Planning.  I also provided a keynote presentation to the conference, sharing some experience of how these methods have been applied by ICA:UK in partnership with the Royal Society of Arts – in engaging and mobilising the RSA’s 27,000 Fellows to contribute to social impact through civic innovation, toward achieving the RSA’s ambition to be ‘the best place to have an idea’. My presentation can be viewed in my recent post. Bruce provided a conference session and post-conference training drawing on the Pinpoint approach and graphic facilitation.  Neither of us would have been of much use to anyone without the expert and tireless interpretation of Mikhail Rossus, although Bruce was at least adept at Russian small talk involving hello, vodka, thank you and goodbye! I am grateful to ICA Ukraine for providing ToP training materials in Russian for me.

Further conference sessions included Liudmila’s own masterclass on facilitating creativity and innovation in companies, Tim Nestik on knowledge management, Alexander Dudurov on graphic facilitation, Alexandra Kosulina & Mariya Pronina on idea generation, Victoria Bekhtereva on innovation projects and Julia Linkin with a case study of Open Space facilitation in a bank.  Creativity was emphasised throughout the day, starting with a jazz duo accompanying our opening exercise to depict how we generate ideas, by collage in the style of Matisse!

ToP facilitation training in MoscowI experienced a great spirit of sharing and learning at the conference, just as at all the IAF conferences I have attended, and clearly a great passion for facilitation. I also experienced a great hunger for tools and methods, and a particular sense of urgency in learning and applying them.  When I asked what participants hoped to gain from my conference session, the majority of responses were to do with tools and methods to apply. In tailoring my pre-conference training in advance, I was advised that participants would appreciate more methods and want little time on practice and planning to apply what they had learned, and this was certainly borne out in my experience.  In another conversation a conference delegate suggested to me that Russians like to learn and apply quickly because they feel they have some catching up to do – and they intend to catch up and overtake.  Certainly few UK courses I have delivered have attracted such close (and very welcome) attention as this one. Every moment’s break was taken as an opportunity to photograph the latest graphics, flipcharts or cards on the sticky wall for later reference, and several audio devices were recording the whole course for later playback.  I left in no doubt that ToP methods will find a valuable and active place in the toolkits of many Russian facilitators, and that facilitation itself has an important role to play in Russia.

I gained many new Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections from my visit, so I invited them to share some of their own reflections on the conference. This is what they wrote:

“This year’s conference was dynamic and really energy-intensive. It was nice to see a lot of new members and enthusiastic people who are so involved in facilitation. During our work-shop we were happy to feel the engagement of the group, their enthusiasm, genuine interest and active position. And it is very important that our European colleagues have time to visit our conference, thank you Martin for coming!” – Alexandra Kosulina, Moscow

“What I can say about this conference? There were a lot of people who know what is facilitation and who use facilitation at work, and if compared with last year’s conference the number of such people has increased considerably. This is really good, and says that the facilitation in Russia goes forward at a steady gait. The conference was very instrumental and practical – speakers, case studies, master classes – everything was very useful.” – Mariya Pronina, Moscow

“I really enjoyed it. I especially liked your examples and case studies. Thank you” – Alex Kuznetsov, Moscow

“The conference was full of new knowledge and techniques, but the most important discovery for me was the ToP method of Focused Conversation (ORID) which you set out in the training before. Last week I used it in a discussion on our annual report with the employees of our company, and I was impressed by the results – it really involved them in the discussion, and most importantly in the process of developing specific solutions for the future in a meaningful and constructive way.” – Sergey Shupletsov, Moscow

“The training was very useful to me. It broadened my knowledge of effective methods of facilitation: the ToP methods of Focused Conversation, Consensus Workshop etc. The method of Action Planning was especially interesting to me. I already practiced this method when carrying out a session on implementation of organizational decisions. It helped the group while being focused on the purposes to draw up effectively the plan of action. In addition, I also applied this method to accomplish my personal decisions. The model of behaviour shown by Martin during his facilitation has also been very inspiring to me. It is a striking example of the possibility to operate the group progressing towards making the decision, showing respect and trust for the ability of a group to create the decision by itself” – Leonid Bogdanov, Kiev

“It was interesting for me to see your style, new methods and especially new materials. Your training was just really important to me. The conference was rich in new contacts, insights and ideas. For example, just tomorrow I’ll use some new methods from that day. The Jazz of facilitation in the beginning was so magnificent!” – Victoria Bekhtereva, Moscow

 “For me it was great to discover the way to plan a project with ToP Action Planning. Especially the idea of grouping actions by teams that allows the project teams to form and work afterwards in those teams. The idea of using the Focused Conversation method in personal life is also very interesting. I certainly will try to do it. And of course the networking process during the session was valuable. My next step is to go deeply into the ICA books for more information and cases.” – Ariadna Denisova, Moscow

I am very grateful top Liudmila and Mikhail for hosting me so generously, and to everyone involved for making my first trip to Moscow such a memorable and enjoyable one.  I look forward to following the further growth and development of facilitation and IAF in Russia through the many new connections I made in Moscow.  Also I hope that other chapters of IAF in Europe and elsewhere (my own England & Wales chapter included) might emulate the Moscow Facilitators Conference in its approach!