Tag Archives: CPF | M

Evidencing facilitation competencies – CPF | Master recertification

This is the essay that I wrote and submitted for my IAF Certified Professional Facilitator | Master (CPF | M) re-certification in April, which has now been approved.

In their feedback, the assessors wrote:

“This application demonstrates the qualities expected of a CPF Master. The applicant combines extensive experience with ongoing curiosity, learning, and service to the profession. Particularly impressive is the ability to continue evolving practice while contributing significantly to the growth of other facilitators and to the development of facilitation communities internationally.

The reflections show both professional maturity and humility. The applicant does not rely solely on established expertise but continues to question assumptions, explore new perspectives, and engage thoughtfully with issues of participation, equity, power, and inclusion. This willingness to continue learning while simultaneously supporting others is one of the strongest indicators of Master-level practice.

The application also highlights a sustained commitment to the wider facilitation profession through mentoring, training, publishing initiatives, community leadership, and international collaboration. The impact extends well beyond individual client engagements and contributes to strengthening facilitation as a profession globally.

Overall, this is a strong re-certification application that clearly demonstrates continued growth, contribution, and leadership within the facilitation field.”

The requirement of the essay was to “write on your growth as a facilitator since your last recertification, including lessons learned against the IAF Core Competencies, and explain how your facilitation style and behaviour have developed”. See also my previous essays of 2008, 2012, 2016 & 2020.

In my 2020 CPF-M application in late 2019, I wrote with regard to my future growth as a facilitator:

“I am clear that I want to continue to “stretch and grow as I take on new levels of challenge”, as my assessors urged in 2016, and I am asking myself what that might look like. My expectation is that it will over time involve more (and more advanced) training, more mentoring & writing, less air travel and more virtual work”.

As in 2019, I shall use the IAF competencies as a framework by which to reflect on and illustrate some of my professional experience, learnings and development in the period since then – affected greatly, of course, by the COVID19 pandemic that was just then beginning to spread rapidly worldwide.

Those expectations have been largely met, with the exception of more writing. The one to travel less and work more online was of course met to a greater extent than any of us could have expected, at least during the peak-COVID years. Working more online resulted in a great deal more collaborative working as well, with clients and with other facilitators.

A. Create collaborative client relationships

I have continued to publish annual reviews of my facilitation practice on my blog since 2016. They record that I delivered 122 contracts to 91 clients in the 6 years to June 2025.  Sheer volume of work in the 3 peak-COVID years 2019-22 was only slightly higher than the prior 3 pre-COVID years to 2016-19, but in the three post-COVID years 2022-25 it fell by about 40%.  To a large degree this was a result of a conscious post-COVID choice to work and travel less, and be more selective about my work.

More significant for my growth as a facilitator, particularly in terms of creating collaborative client relationships, the number of online and hybrid sessions that I delivered grew from 5 in the pre-COVID years to 193 in the peak years and down to 18 post-COVID – compared to 83, 16 & 40 in-person events delivered during those three 3-year periods. Not unrelated, contracts delivered with a co-facilitator, producer or team of facilitators grew from zero to 50 and then fell to 10 for those three periods.

A good example of stretching and growing as I took on new levels of challenge in creating collaborative client relationships was a series of 17 trilingual sessions of the online Global Assembly (GA) of Amnesty International that I delivered over 4 months in 2021, involving 3-4 delegates of each of around 70 member entities worldwide.

For this I led an international team of five facilitators collaborating with multiple teams on the client side. These included the elected GA Preparatory Committee, the Global Governance team of the International Secretariat, the translation and interpretation team, a tech support team and numerous specialist teams involved in preparing and presenting motions for consideration and voting.

This was the first time for Amnesty to hold its GA online, and challenging for all of us in many ways. Contracting in particular was challenging, and mutual commitments were reviewed and revised repeatedly in the context of considerable ambiguity and uncertainty, a highly political process and a complex and demanding governance framework. Nevertheless one delegate remarked that it was the most engaging and collaborative GA that he had attended in 20 years, and client feedback was good.

Ann BurroughsAnn Burroughs, Chair of the 2021 Global Assembly and Preparatory Committee, wrote:

“Martin and his team provided outstanding support during Amnesty International’s 2021 Global Assembly which for the first time was held entirely online. They were integral in the planning of the model which helped to ensure broad participation and access for delegates of almost 70 member entities. Their experience and familiarity with facilitating online spaces were game changing and were critical in helping to build trust in the process and in a new model of digital governance.”

B. Plan appropriate group processes

My core facilitation methodology and focus of my facilitation training, ICA’s Technology of Participation, continues still to serve me well.  I find that there are no applications to which it can not add value, if only as a frame of reference. Nevertheless I have continued to explore and apply other methods, tools and approaches as well, including many digital tools in the context of much online work.

An in-person example of this was a 3-day meeting in Lille in 2023 that I delivered for around 30 delegates of the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, to support their learning and collaboration on Dramatically Reducing Embodied Carbon in Europe’s Built Environment.

A key aspect of the meeting’s design was to work in three different venues around the city, each selected by the host city to highlight different aspects of building decarbonization. I wasn’t able to visit the rooms in advance of designing the agenda and process, but I was able to arrive early enough at each to plan and prepare how best to make use of them.  I adapted my planned process, methods and tools considerably in order to meet the agreed aims of the event while considering what would work best in the spaces available.

Irene Garcia, CNCA project manager, wrote:

“I had the pleasure of working with Martin for a 3-day event in Lille in June 2023 as part of the “Dramatically Reducing Embodied Carbon in Europe’s Built Environment” project, led by the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA). His facilitation skills played a crucial role in guiding multi-level conversations among participants. He was instrumental in organizing the flow of the sessions and seamlessly adapted to the unique needs of the group, making sure that the voices of all stakeholders were given due consideration. His preparation, energy, and professionalism enabled us to dive deeply into the complexities of decarbonizing the built environment, and the results of this workshop were wonderful”

C. Create and sustain a participatory environment

I wrote in my 2020-21 annual review:

“I have been challenged by the Black Lives Matter movement and other recent manifestations and responses to systemic injustice and oppression, and by clients who have been similarly challenged, to reflect on how I might ensure that my own practice is more effectively and explicitly anti-racist, feminist and anti-oppressive, and to commit to working on that.”

Exploring feminist facilitationThat commitment led me to participate in the 12-week online feminist leadership development programme of We Are Feminist Leaders in 2022, to blog on my experience of ‘Exploring Feminist Facilitation’ and to lead a series of online webinars, with a number of IAF and ICA colleagues and others, to advance our exploration together and to encourage and support others to join us.

I have continued to value the professional community and facilitation meetups of IAF England & Wales, and particularly the annual conference, for offering numerous valuable learning opportunities on ways to honour and recognise diversity, ensuring inclusiveness, in the light of systemic and intersecting barriers to participation. These have convened increasingly diverse groups in recent years, and offered diverse programmes featuring numerous sessions focusing on aspects of diversity, inclusivity and lived experience including dyslexia & neurodiversity, power dynamics & protected characteristics and language.

The more I learn of diverse new perspectives on diversity, equity and inclusivity, the more I find I have still to learn. Nevertheless, a recent ToP Group Facilitation Methods training course reassured me of the extent to which my own experience, coupled with the intentional inclusivity of ToP methodology, can already serve to address such barriers effectively. The trainees were leaders of a number of staff networks of a national, public sector development agency, each intended to support and advocate for staff with a particular protected characteristic such as faith, disability, sexuality etc., and to hold space for them to support each other. They were very aware of barriers to their own and others’ participation, and very articulate in expressing them, and they were very delighted and appreciative of how inclusive and engaging they found the facilitation and the training to be.

D. Guide the group toward useful outcomes

Crafting a joint commitment on living wages in banana supply chains - workshopIDH is an international foundation that works with businesses, financiers, governments and civil society to realize sustainable trade in global value chains. In June 2022 I was invited by IDH UK to design and lead a first in-person workshop in London for 16 CSR officers of nine major retailers, after they had had several online workshops together during the pandemic, to agree a draft commitment on measuring living wage gaps in their banana supply chains.

I used the ToP Focused Conversation method to structure the day as a whole, and to design the opening conversation and closing reflection. I used the ToP Consensus Workshop method to articulate “What are key elements of a Living Wage Commitment for Banana Supply Chains that we would like UK retailers to be able to agree?”.

Critically, I invited participants to draw on a previously circulated draft commitment to identify elements that they would like retailers to be able to agree. For the purpose of consensus-building, I discouraged them from focusing on what they did not or could not agree, or what it would take for them to be able to agree. The former would be an unhelpful distraction, and the latter would be addressed later under Next Steps and following the workshop.

To enable them to work most effectively together, I invited them to adopt and/or adapt some pre-drafted working assumptions, including for the first time “to respect each other’s health by practicing COVID safety”.

A year later, in June 2023, my IDH client Amanda Penn wrote:

“The top 9 UK retailers launched a living wage commitment in March. On numerous occasions the CSR managers who attended the workshop you led credited that day with being a pivotal moment in the process and paving the way for the ultimate result. So, thank you!”

In October 2023, I was pleased to be able to work with Amanda again, with some of the UK retailers and some of their European counterparts working to develop joint commitments on living wages in Banana supply chains, to design and facilitate a one day hybrid workshop in Madrid – thus guiding a wider group to further appropriate and useful outcomes.

E. Build and maintain professional knowledge

FacPower out now!It was partly my experience of co-authoring a chapter in The Power of Facilitation (FacPower), a collaborative book project of a number of IAF contributors led by Kimberly Bain, which inspired me in 2019 to expect my future growth as a facilitator to involve more writing. In fact I have found that I have had little appetite for more writing of my own, but increasing opportunities to support others in their writing.

My most substantial project has been to maintain the FacPower website and to convene and support over 80 IAF colleagues around the word to work together in teams to translate the Power of Facilitation into their own languages, in order that we all are better able to use the book to help to promote the power of facilitation worldwide. Eight translations have since been published, and (in all 9 editions) the book has been downloaded a total of more than 30,000 times. Several new translation teams have just started work in 2026 after being inspired by a 12 month-long online group study of the book led by the IAF Global Book Club last year.

I have also been pleased to contribute an endorsement or foreword to the publications of IAF and other colleagues in recent years including The Art of Focused Conversation (Second Edition) by Jo Nelson, Facilitating Breakthrough by Adam Kahane, Making Workshops Work by Penny Pullan and How to Facilitate the LEGO Serious Play Method Online by Sean Blair.

After discontinuing my own public schedule of in-person ICA:UK ToP training courses in 2020 in order to collaborate with ICA:UK colleagues to develop and deliver online versions instead, I re-established them in London in 2023 and then again in Brussels in 2024 and now also in Barcelona in 2026.

I have continued to mentor two mentees per cycle of the IAF mentoring programme, making a total of 11 since 2019, and I have mentored three new ICA:UK ToP trainers in that period as well.

free facilitation coachingIn 2021 I was inspired, partly by my experience of IAF mentoring and partly by my exploration of feminist facilitation, to begin to offer free facilitation coaching online for young or emerging facilitators – particularly those using facilitation in their work for peace, climate justice, gender equity or anti-racism, or otherwise in response to systemic injustice and oppression or toward achieving a just and sustainable world for all. I have learned much from coaching the 22 diverse, younger facilitators that have so far taken me up on that offer.

I returned to hosting free facilitation meetups of IAF England & Wales in London when they began again in person in 2023, and in 2025 I began to host such meetups also in Barcelona on behalf of IAF Spain.

F. Model a positive professional attitude

Ukraine anti-war protest, 6 March 2022 in LondonThe outbreak of full scale war against Ukraine in 2022 prompted me to reflect on ‘Facilitator neutrality in the context of war and oppression’, inspired by responses of Ukrainian facilitators and informed by my exploration of feminist facilitation. I wrote in a blog post with that title:

“While we must strive to ‘model neutrality’ in respect of the content of the group’s work, in order to be effective in our role as facilitator, we need not and perhaps cannot be neutral to it. We cannot and must not be neutral to the group’s process. We must demonstrate and advocate for respect, equity and inclusion, for dialogue and consensus.

To demonstrate and advocate for the values and competencies that we believe are needed to improve group effectiveness and to address the challenges faced by people around the world, we must stand up for them and we must be seen and heard to stand up for them. That must mean also standing up against those systems and structures of power, discrimination and oppression, violence and war, that deny the inherent value of the individual and the collective wisdom of the group, that risk people’s welfare and dignity and that obstruct or destroy an environment of respect and safety.”

I wrote that I was shocked and appalled then by the unfolding Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I have been shocked and appalled since by a great deal more war and oppression as well. I continue to struggle to know how to respond, knowing that anything that I do will not be enough.

To demonstrate and advocate for the values and competencies that I believe are needed to improve group effectiveness, and to address the challenges faced by people around the world, seems to be the very least that I can do. I am thankful that I find that I continue to have ample opportunities to do that as a professional facilitator and a CPF-Master.

See also about me, how I work, who I work with and recommendations & case studies, and please contact me about how we might work together.

Another year in freelance facilitation, and how it turned out, 2019-20

Introduction to Facilitation Online

Since I posted Reflecting on another year of freelance facilitation a year ago, last August, our lives and work have changed radically for many of us. I mentioned then that I would be taking ‘something of a sabbatical’ from October to March in Sitges, in Spain. As it turned out, that was cut short by less than three weeks by my early return to London due to COVID19.

I Declare A Climate EmergencyI reflected in Sitges in January on What can I do about climate change, personally and as a facilitator?. I concluded, among other things, that I would seek to travel less, and work more online. That has worked out well so far!

In the year to June 2020 I delivered 25 contracts for 19 clients in 5 countries and online – that compares with 25 for 14 in 7 countries & online the year before. So, the same number of contracts for a few more clients in a few less countries.

Of those 25 contracts last year 7 were facilitated processes (14 the year before), 16 were facilitation training courses (14) and 2 were largely consulting (0). They involved 14 face-to-face and one ‘hybrid’ event (31 f2f), and 16 wholly virtual sessions or series of sessions (1). I spent 28 nights away on business, 4 in the UK and 24 abroad, compared with 14+33=47 last year.

So, half as much face-to-face and half as much facilitation, and considerably more training and consulting – plus 16 times as many virtual events (admittedly many were smaller) and 40% fewer nights away on business.

The fall in face-to-face work and nights away certainly comes as no surprise. One virtual and 10 face-to-face contracts were in the 3 months before Sitges, and 2 virtual and 5 face-to-face contracts were in the almost 6 months there. Since then I have canceled all 14 of my face-to-face public courses for 2020, and four in-house contracts were either canceled or delivered online.  Prior to a very welcome holiday in Wales these past two weeks, I had had no nights away at all since returning and entering lockdown early on 12 March. Until the end of June I had not traveled more than a few miles by foot or bicycle. I am grateful that plenty of online work has come my way to take to take up the slack, and interested that that has involved a significant rise in training and consulting.

ICA:UK AGM, December 2000 at Wick Court CentreMy online work did not just start with COVID19, however.  With the Wikimedia Foundation last July on behalf of ICA:UK, I provided virtual co-facilitation for remote participants in a 3-day meeting of a strategy working group of around 12 in Utrecht. With AEIDL in December, I designed and facilitated a 2-day ‘hybrid’ team planning meeting involving around 15 participants in Brussels and another 5 online. In February from Sitges I produced a pair of online facilitation training sessions with Extinction Rebellion, on behalf of Orla Cronin Research. In fact I have been facilitating and training online for clients since at least since 2012, and otherwise also since long before – as I recalled in May, in From the Archive: a 2001 online Focused Conversation on ICA:UK values. So I have been fortunate to be in a position to respond quickly to the sudden increase in demand for everything online. That response has included adding new modules on virtual facilitation to my training offer since March, namely Introduction to Facilitation Online and Facilitating Virtual Events I Online.

What else has changed for me, in response to the rise in online working, is much more co-facilitation and producing and much more sub-contracting and partnership working. Existing partners with whom I have collaborated a great deal more, in recent months especially, include ICA Associates Inc., ICA:UK and Orla Cronin Research. New partners that I have been pleased to have the opportunity to work with as well this year include Kumquat Consult and Rees McCann.

My nature of my clients has changed considerably less this past year than the nature of my work with them. Returning clients in the past year have included Amnesty International, Greater Cambridge Partnership, Interact EU, Personal Image, PICUM and of course ICA:UK. New clients have included  AEIDL, The Brooke, EMCDDA, Extinction Rebellion, ILGA Europe, NCVO, Southern Hemisphere and the Wikimedia Foundation.  So, still UK charities and international NGOs, plus European agencies and contractors, NGO networks, Associations and a few others. Also this year I have worked (both online and face-to-face) with colleagues of IAF chapters in Australia, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Turkey.

Photo by Mikael Kristenson https://unsplash.com/photos/3aVlWP-7bg8

After a considerable pause in my long-standing series of Free facilitation webinars, before and during my time in Sitges, the onset of lockdown from March proved a timely opportunity to convene some online sessions to demonstrate something of virtual facilitation while exploring issues around the new online working. Several of these were scheduled in partnership with ICA:UK as part of its Online Focused Conversation Series: Taking time to connect, learn and reflect. Topics included Promoting inclusion in online facilitation, Taking your event online: what could possibly go wrong?, How engaging can your online session be?, When is online better than face-to-face? and Exploring Facilitation Competencies. Three of these attracted more than 100 participants, one as many as 250, and they all generated a wealth of insight and very positive feedback.

thumbnailMy role as Chair of IAF England & Wales again accounted for most of my volunteer time this year. Our 2-day Annual Conference in October, the Power and Practice of Facilitation, attracted over 100 participants from across the country and beyond. In December another three Board members were elected, bringing our number to nine, and we held our first online Annual Members meeting.  A dozen of our wider Leadership Team of 28 met overnight for the first time for our annual planning and team-building gathering, in January in Birmingham. That led to the development of IAF E&W Hubs and Guardrails for Buddying, among other new developments. Our #IAFpodcast has now reached over 20 episodes – including, with my own involvement, on The importance of values in facilitation and Facilitation in different languages. Since we announced in early April that all our local meetups around the country would be meeting online until further notice, we have seen an extraordinary flowering of peer support and learning opportunities among IAF facilitators and friends – including much learning and sharing on online facilitation, of course.

In my own professional development this year, my fourth 4-yearly CPF assessment submission Evidencing facilitation competencies led to my being awarded the new CPF | Master designation in April. I embarked on a new mentoring relationship with my second mentee through the IAF Mentoring Programme.  My session proposal with Michael Ambjorn of AlignYourOrg for the IAF Gobal Summit in Stockholm this October 2020 was accepted, but then of course the summit was canceled due to COVID19. We established a simple website and social media channels for the Power of Facilitation book project for which we have co-authored a chapter, on which our Summit session was to have been based. We are hopeful that the book will nevertheless be published in time to launch during this year’s International Facilitation Week in October, albeit not in Stockholm.

I continued to participate in the ICA:UK ToP trainers’ network and to serve as volunteer webmaster for ICA International, and I attended this year’s ICA Europe regional gathering in Vienna in November.

So, what else of the sabbatical in Sitges? I did certainly enjoy a little less busyness, and a little more sunshine. I was indeed able to advance my Spanish skills somewhat, with the aid of several weeks of intensive classes and some practice – including on occasion with IAF Spain. I did also find some time reflect, write and learn, and to look ahead to my next seven years of freelance facilitation – not least on What can I do about climate change, personally and as a facilitator?.

I shall certainly continue to travel less and work more online than I did prior to last October, that much is clear.  What interests me more, now, is when I shall again travel or work face-to-face at all, and how much. I realised just how unenthusiastic I am about returning to face to face facilitation already when I recommended others for two client opportunities last week that normally I would have been very pleased to accept myself.  For more on how that turns out, watch this space…

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Evidencing facilitation competencies – CPF | Master

This is the essay that I wrote and submitted for my IAF Certified Professional Facilitator | Master (CPF | M) re-certification in December, which has just now been approved.

The requirement of the essay was to “link lessons learned since your last re-certification to the IAF Core Competences, demonstrating changes in your facilitation style / behaviour, and indicating what growth you have experienced as a facilitator during the period since your last certification”.

As in 2008, 2012 and 2016, I use the IAF competencies as a framework by which to reflect on and illustrate some of my professional experience, learning and development – this time in the four years since 2016.

A. Create Collaborative Client Relationships

I have continued to deliver around 20-25 contracts per year for around 15-20 clients, most face-to-face and some virtual or involving some virtual component – see Reflecting on another year of freelance facilitation. In recent years the balance has shifted from around two thirds facilitation and one third facilitation training to about half and half.

I have continued to work with international NGOs, foundations, associations, networks and alliances, and a few others, largely in Europe and the Middle East and particularly in London and Brussels. However, this past year has seen the return of UK local authorities and multi-sector partnerships, after many years working with such clients on behalf of ICA:UK in the 2000s. New fields for me this past year include agile coaching, software development, Results Based Management and remote team working.

After working mostly with other facilitators in my early career, I continue now to work mostly solo. However, I have enjoyed being stretched by new co-facilitation experiences in recent years. These have included working as lead facilitator for one of 6 teams of 3 (lead, co-facilitator & graphic recorder) each with a sub-group of around 35 delegates at a two-day conference of over 200 – with Lorensbergs for the New Shape Forum of the Global Challenges Foundation (featured image, above); and as a remote virtual co-facilitator supporting a few remote participants to an otherwise largely face-to-face meeting – the latter was one of many topics I covered in a recent interview with SessionLab published this month.

Much of my work in recent years has been relatively short-term and small scale, involving a single event of one or a few days or a series of two or more over a few weeks or months. One recent example of a multi-session process was with Oxfam OPTI, involving design and facilitation of a series of consultation & consensus building workshops to engage over 100 staff of 4 Oxfam affiliates based in Jerusalem, Gaza & Ramallah in operationalising a new One Country Strategy and Country Operating Model – see case study.

A longer process and more complex multi-session process was with Eurochild, involving process design and facilitation over 6 months to help to engage around 170 member organisations in developing a new strategic plan, including with around 100 member representatives at a General Assembly meeting and with 20 Board members and Secretariat staff at a 2-day planning retreat in Brussels – see case study & video.

Since 2018 I now offer the ToP Facilitating Client Collaboration course, one of the IAF-endorsed ‘ToP Facilitation Essentials’ series, which covers this competence in some depth.

For many years I have routinely gathered participant and client feedback at the close of each workshop, course or project. In 2017 I reviewed and analyzed such feedback from ToP facilitation courses, taster sessions & webinars over the previous 5 years since I went freelance – 47 training courses, 13 conference & meetup taster sessions and 7 webinars reaching a total of 1,089 participants – and began routinely to invite feedback from training participants and facilitation clients also 3-6 months after each event or project. This has resulted in 71 online survey responses received so far, and a number of client recommendations:

Neil Mehta of Water Wisdom UK wrote in July 2019: “Martin is a highly experienced and professional facilitator whom I’ve worked and collaborated with over several years in two of the charities I have led. Martin has facilitated a number of strategy retreats for our teams. He helped us think through how to successfully design and document a 3-year strategy as a collective resulting also with a clear 12-month KPI to execute for the executive/operational team. A real star.”

B. Plan Appropriate Group Processes

A regional team retreat for an international non-profit, for 60 staff of 5 country offices in Sicily in 2018, was to be held in a venue provided in-kind by a partner organisation in the old city of Syracuse.

Syracuse Institute

It turned out to be a beautiful and inspiring venue, entirely appropriate in terms of the group and the content of their work – but less so in terms of facilitation process. The Institute is housed in a restored 16th century church, a listed building with peeling walls filled with precious art and whose only large plenary room is a lecture theatre with fixed rows of seats facing a raised stage with a giant and immovable oak table in front of a screen.

It was clear that there would not be an option to use any alternative venue, so I began to wonder what sort of process could I use to turn to advantage these features that I might otherwise consider disadvantages for the sort of team-building, learning & planning that was called for.

I had recently been introduced to the Interview Matrix method at the IAF Ottawa conference, so decided to use that for a vision workshop where I would otherwise have used the ToP Consensus Workshop method with a sticky wall. I find that the Interview Matrix is not as powerful for consensus-building, but it was quite adequate for this occasion. It allowed the group to work half the time interviewing each other in changing pairs, in and between their fixed rows of seats, and the other half discerning patterns in the interview data in groups of 10-15 in smaller breakout rooms.

I had also been recently introduced to Mentimeter, at the IABC EMENA Copenhagen conference, so I decided to use that for group introductions and brainstorming in the opening and other plenary sessions. There was no alternative to sitting in rows facing a screen, so the group made use of the screen and their own smart phones, where they were sitting. We kept the plenaries to a minimum, but were able to use them well for whole group reflection & learning in-between smaller break-out sessions in other more conducive rooms.

Gnanam Devadass, Deputy Director, Campaigns, at Amnesty International wrote in December 2017: “Martin supported the design and development and also facilitated Amnesty International’s four-day Global Activism Hackathon, held at the International Secretariat in London in October 2017 and attended by 60 participants and resource people. His participatory approaches, methodologies and tools enabled the fullest participation of multi-lingual delegates from diverse backgrounds from across the globe. His facilitation was excellent and greatly appreciated by the participants. He worked well with the organising team and the steering group. His professional and flexible approach was very impressive and helped to achieve the intended outcomes of the Activism Hackathon.”

C. Create and Sustain a Participatory Environment

Reflecting on another year of freelance facilitation

In 2019 in facilitated a two-day team retreat for the 20 or so staff of an international association. I was referred by a previous client who had recommended me because it was expected to be a difficult meeting and was being approached with trepidation by all concerned. I was advised that were trust issues and difficult relationships within the staff, not least between a new management team that had been recently appointed to replace their predecessors that had left under a cloud, and who were keen to establish their leadership and new ways of working, and long-established staff who felt threatened and insecure and in some cases were suspected to be in ongoing, friendly relations with the ousted leadership.

I agreed to take on the project as a 9-day contract to allow ample time for individual telephone interviews and an online survey in advance, to consult on issues and concerns and to build support for the process and my facilitation. I coached the new Director and management team on their roles in the meeting, and consulted with a number of key stakeholders that would not be present – notably the external consultant whose investigation and report had led to the change of management. The meeting was held in a beautiful countryside retreat centre with good facilities for meeting and for more informal interaction. We used a variety of methods and approaches and we allowed plenty of time for each session and took everything slowly and surely. For the most sensitive and risky session we sat in a circle of chairs and made extensive use of silent individual reflection.

I think everyone found the meeting difficult, and probably the Director and management team most of all, but I think that they all were relieved and pleased that they had been able to talk to each other constructively and begin to address some of their real issues together. I was reassured that a slow and careful, inclusive and collaborative approach seemed to have been enough to enable them to do so.

Barbara Hintermann, Secretary General at CAUX-Initiatives of Change Foundation wrote in September 2017: “Martin facilitated our Caux Reference Group meeting in June 2016 held in Caux/Switzerland. The Caux Reference Group is an international advisory group to the CAUX-Initiatives of Change (IofC) Foundation, composed of about 50 persons from the International IofC network. Martin facilitated the meeting with the necessary calm and used various facilitation tools to engage the group actively. While there were some rather emotional moments, Martin managed that the participants delivered the key elements for a variety of changes that needed to be reviewed by the foundation.”

D. Guide Group to Appropriate and Useful Outcomes

The Oxfam & Eurochild case studies referred to above in (A) and the recommendation of the CAUX-Initiatives of Change Foundation were among a series of six examples of how I have applied, customised and adapted the ToP Consensus Workshop method that I shared in a series of weekly posts to mark International Facilitation Week in 2017 – Responding to changing situations and needs with ToP Consensus Workshop.

Another of these examples helps to illustrate how I have managed small and large group processes to draw out data and insight from a group, helped the group synthesise patterns and guided the group to consensus and desired outcomes – this was the 5-day International Council Meeting & Conference of the International Council of Unitarians & Universalists (ICUU) in Mennorode, the Netherlands in 2016.

This was the culmination of a 9-month strategic planning process, involving also a series of online sessions and a ToP Participatory Strategic Planning retreat in Boston in the spring with a focus group of around 25. At the Council Meeting of 140 we used a series of ‘World Café’ style table conversations in changing small groups to discern learnings and implications from the strategy development process, following a few short presentations from those involved and drawing on documentation. In the afternoon we used a ‘super-sized’ Consensus Workshop process to answer the Focus Question ‘“What are key elements of the mission and purpose of ‘ICUU 2.0’, for the next 20 years?”.

At the end of the day volunteers were invited to join a working group to discern and articulate the emerging consensus concisely in a revised mission statement for approval by vote of the formal Council Meeting at the end of the week. The final statement was strengthened further by some minor revisions suggested during the formal Council Meeting. Once approved, the new mission statement was verbally translated as it was read aloud in all of the 25 or so languages spoken by those present, to symbolise global consensus and commitment: “The Mission of the ICUU is to empower existing and emerging member groups to sustain and grow our global faith community”.

Osama Saeed Bhutta, Director of Communications at Amnesty International wrote in February 2018: “I attended a meeting facilitated by Martin and was so impressed that I had him do the same for my directorate’s annual retreat. He has a singular ability to get people talking and dreaming freely, but to then to pull it together for a focused action-oriented conclusion. The meeting he held for us yielded a bonded team and a new comms strategy, a legacy that will live on for a long time to come.”

Jana Hainsworth, Secretary General at Eurochild wrote in September 2017: “Great that we had structure, but also great that we could think on our feet to adjust the planning according to what we were hearing from members. All in all we got a huge amount of raw material for development of the strategic plan. The methodology clearly helped.”

E. Build and Maintain Professional Knowledge

ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) methodology continues to serve me well as the basis of my practice – I wrote in 2014 that I regard the ORID framework of ToP as something of a universal principle of facilitation. However, I continue to explore and apply other methodologies and approaches as well. In addition to the Interview Matrix and Mentimeter mentioned above in (B), other examples include Liberating Structures and Agile.

I discovered Liberating Structures by buying the book and downloading the app, and explored the toolkit further by hosting demo sessions at IAF England & Wales meetups and by attending the London LS Users Group. I applied and adapted 1-2-4-All structure (with ORID questions) as co-facilitator for one of 4 table groups in a workshop of 60 senior leadership of an international tech company in 2019.

After meeting many agilists through IAF E&W meetups and attending the IAF EME conference on Agile & facilitation in Milan, my interest was piqued further when I facilitated a 2-day team retreat for a partnership of eight agile coaches. Subsequently I took Certified Scrum Master training. While I learned that I have no interest in working as a scrum master, I gained valuable insight into how & where facilitation is so widely used in such approaches; and how the CSM certification process works and how very much it differs from the IAF process.

With ICA Associates Inc of Canada in 2017, I attended and trained as a trainer in each of the new IAF-endorsed ToP Facilitation Essentials courses, Facilitating Client Collaboration and Meetings That Work. Since 2018 I have been offering this series of courses in Europe, including also ToP Group Facilitation Methods – see Join me for ToP facilitation training in London, Brussels & elsewhere in 2020!

I have continued to tweet, blog and host free facilitation webinars, and to host and attend IAF and other meetups and conferences – particularly as chapter lead and now Board Chair of IAF England & Wales. In that capacity I have been excited to support the launch of a new IAF E&W podcast in 2019, Facilitation Stories.

E. Model Positive Professional Attitude

#iafpodcast

For the January 2020 episode of that new IAF E&W podcast I was interviewed on The Importance of Values in Facilitation. Helene Jewell wrote in the show notes:

Martin talks about the importance of values – both personal and IAF values, which talk about the collective wisdom of the group. He says that what you believe has an enormous impact on the group. Martin talks about defining values and how the IAF values resonate with him and his involvement with developing the ICA UK values. Values are what is important to people and what drives them, and are important to be able to define what is meaningful and important to them.

He told us about taking decisions not to do work that conflicted with his values, mostly around contracting with the client.

Martin started working with ICA as a volunteer and his first workshop involved creating a personal timeline as a personal reflection tool. He talked about a book by John and Maureen Jenkins (founder members of IAF) – 9 disciplines of a facilitator – leading groups by transforming yourself. All about understanding your own values. A phrase from Maureen that resonated with Martin “however good a facilitator you are […] your most powerful tool as a facilitator is your own interior condition”.

See also about me, how I work, who I work with and recommendations & case studies, and please contact me about how we might work together. Please do not delay before contacting me – the earlier I hear from you, the more chance that I will be able to help and the more helpful I may be able to be.

Register now on Eventbrite for my free facilitation webinars and regularly scheduled ToP facilitation training courses in London and Brussels.