Thank you again to the 95 who shared their experience and insights so generously at this free facilitation webinar, and to all the 247 who expressed an interest by registering for the session – as for our May session, we are excited again that the topic and the session generated so much interest!
Scroll down for the recording, and the slides and other outputs…
What does feminism bring to facilitation, and what does feminist facilitation look like? How can I ensure that my own practice as a professional facilitator is more effectively and explicitly feminist, anti-racist and anti-oppressive?
These are the questions that have guided my exploration of feminist, anti-racist and anti-oppressive facilitation this past couple of years. For more on that, see Exploring feminist facilitation.
As Social Inclusion facilitators, we share the same school of thought and continue to seek understanding and practicality due to the awareness that genuine participation is an essential means to effective group, community, organisational and societal leadership and development. Feminism offers a more realistic and practical application to inclusive facilitation.
Are you practicing or exploring feminist facilitation yourself, or are you interested to do so?
Join us on a journey from a conceptual understanding of feminism, leadership and facilitation to how we can apply these in practice as professional facilitators and as leaders more broadly.
This online session is free and open to everyone. It is convened by IAF Social Inclusion Facilitators in partnership with ICA:UK, We Are Feminist Leaders and the Collective. It is a repeat of a session delivered in May, somewhat adapted for Facilitation Week in September by Monica Atim, Martin Gilbraith, Megan Evans & Dawn Williams. Whether or not you joined us May, do join us to further the conversation in September!
Registrations are not limited, but the room capacity will be limited to 100 this time. The May session attracted 700 registrations and 200 attendees, so to secure your place in September please arrive early for the session and join the waiting room until start time.
Facilitation Week is a participatory experience that inspires synergy and celebrates the act of group facilitation. Held in the third week of October each year, it’s purpose is to showcase the power of facilitation to both new and existing audiences, and to create a sense of community among facilitators and their groups worldwide. To join in as a participant, facilitator or sponsor, see facilitationweek.org.
The mission of our #FacPower book project too is to promote the power of facilitation worldwide. So, what better opportunity could there be for us to share a brief update on how we have been working to do just that, and how you can get involved?
The #FacPower story so far…
our journey began in 2018, when a global team of IAF Certified Professional Facilitators (CPFs), members and others first came together with a vision to contribute chapters and visuals to a book illustrating specific aspects of ‘the power of facilitation’
since then we have published all the chapters as blog posts as well, one every two weeks, accompanied by posts to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – see also contents and social
the book has been downloaded more than 6,000 times by more than 9,000 website visitors in more than 100 countries, and more than US$1,250 has been donated to the IAF Bursary Fund – we are especially grateful to our generous donors
we are excited to have had expressions of interest from colleagues keen to work on translation of the book into languages including Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, and to develop new editions including print-on-demand, an audio-book and a podcast series.
How you can get involved
Please…
download and read the whole book, or whichever chapters interest you most
rate the book on Goodreads, and add a brief review there – that will help many other readers to find it
share your reflections and questions on your own website, blog or social media with the #FacPower hashtag and a link to facpower.org, and mention or tag the relevant contributors – let’s deepen and broaden the conversation together
if you have your own blog, podcast or other publication, contact us to arrange an interview or online session with one or more of our contributors
contact us if you are interested to translate of all or some of the book into your own language – see our translation page for what support we are ready to offer and what we will expect from you
contact us if you are interested to share your skills to help us to develop new editions including print-on-demand, an audio-book and a podcast series
How will you celebrate and promote the power of facilitation this year? Check out the global schedule of events at www.facweek.org, and you will not be left short of ideas!
I started out as a facilitator in 1986, with my first training in the ICA ‘Technology of Participation’ (ToP) methodology that has been my facilitation speciality ever since.
All of this time I have worked remotely, in and with geographically distributed groups, as well as face-to-face. I have been using online technology in this work for as long as it has been available.
I have never sought to make online facilitation a particular speciality, however – until now, of course. I have not made LEGO® Serious Play® a speciality either, in spite of having enjoyed a long and distinguished early childhood career in LEGO®!
I believe that a facilitator is first a facilitator, and only second an online facilitator or a LEGO Serious Play facilitator. I believe that the keys to mastering facilitation lie in the values and the stance of the facilitator, the competencies and the disciplines, rather than the space or the platform, the methods or the tools.
I know Sean, and that he is a competent, experienced and accomplished facilitator. Questions are the primary tool of every facilitator, and I know that he asks good questions and that he asks them well. In an early meetup of IAF England & Wales, in London in perhaps 2013, he posed the question: “Is there such a thing as a universal principle of facilitation?”
It didn’t take me long to think and respond that, in my own facilitation at least, there is certainly something approaching that – the ‘ORID’ model underlies of the ToP Focused Conversation method and the ToP methodology as a whole.
I know that Sean has since integrated this approach in his practice, and in his previous book ‘Mastering The LEGO Serious Play Method’. I was sufficiently inspired by the metaphor of ORID as a universal principle that I blogged about it then and have used it in my training ever since.
Many facilitators have rapidly developed a speciality in working online this year, as Sean and I have as well. Some have done so more quickly and easily than others, and some with greater enthusiasm. Most, in my experience, have had reservations about some of the very real limitations of online facilitation. Only recently I think more of us are becoming belatedly more aware of some equally real limitations of face-to-face, and some real advantages of working online.
So, it is not only LEGO Serious Play practitioners that might take heart and find inspiration in the many innovations that Sean shares in this book. There is much here for all of us to learn from – not least, the rigour and creativity with which he has designed ‘a digital process that uses bricks’ [substitute your preferred tool or method here] ‘rather than an analogue process poorly rendered online’.
I’ve heard it said that, in online facilitation, every participant brings their share of the meeting room with them. This is a challenge for LEGO Serious Play practitioners perhaps more than most, and one to which this book rises admirably.
As Sean makes clear in his Guiding Principles, success in achieving outcomes rather than just engagement through facilitation comes largely from the planning and preparation, and from the capacity to divert nimbly from the plan when the moment requires improvisation.
All of this can be considerably more complex and difficult online than face-to-face. So, if this is what can be done with LEGO Serious Play, think what else can be possible online!
Finally, we are in the midst of a climate emergency, as well as a public health emergency. I believe that the two are not unrelated, and that they demand new ways of connecting, communicating and collaborating that are less carbon intensive as well as more COVID-19 secure, and that are more creative, compassionate and empowering as well. I believe that facilitation has a central role to play on the latter, with bricks as well as without, and that designing and delivering facilitation well online must play a part on the former.
I have witnessed an extraordinary flourishing of creativity and innovation among facilitators in response to the pandemic and lockdown of recent months, and an extraordinary generosity of sharing of it as well – largely, of course, online.
I am delighted to see this valuable and timely new book enter the fray, and just in time for International Facilitation Week! I am proud to be able to welcome you to it, and grateful to Sean for sharing it.
Buy the book, online of course, from Serious Work.
See alsoabout 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.
We are excited to announce the draft programme of our IAF England & Wales Annual Conference on the theme “The Power and Practice of Facilitation” – October 18-19 in Birmingham, for International Facilitation Week #FacWeek 2019.
Register now for both days, or just for Friday or Saturday. An additional 25% off all rates is available to IAF members – please ask for the promotional code if you have not received it. If you are not yet an IAF member and would like to join, you can save a whopping 25% on your first year’s membership if you buy it when you register for both days.
Join us to celebrate and promote the power of facilitation, and to connect, network and learn with other IAF facilitators & friends from across England & Wales and beyond – full details and registrations are at https://iafewfacweek2019.eventbrite.com/.
See alsoabout 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.
There have never been more opportunities to network with other facilitators and learn about facilitation, near you – now in more than a dozen towns & cities throughout England & Wales and online as well.
If you are a facilitator or use facilitation in your work, or if you are just interested to know more, do take a moment to join one of our 5 regional groups and RSVP now for a free facilitation meetup near you.
If you have already attended or if you are a regular, read on to find out what’s new and how to get more involved.
“A brilliant initiative – a great way to build your faciliation skills whilst networking with like-minded sorts” –Neil Fogarty
“Setting out as a facilitator on my own was a scary decision but I have met so many great people through the meet-ups… Its a really wonderful community to be a part of!” –Camilla Gordon
“There’s a generosity and love of learning which makes these meet-ups special. And a surprisingly wide range of people and ways that they use their skills” – Penny Walker
The first IAF England & Wales ‘facilitators & friends’ meetup group began 5 years ago now with monthly evening meetups in London, and was joined 3 years ago by the South West and North of England groups. That’s when we launched our England & Wales Leadership Team and established our pattern of monthly local morning coffee meetups, quarterly regional afternoon learning meetups and an annual all-day learning meetup for all-England & Wales during International Facilitation Week (#FacWeek) each October. Last year we were joined by the Midlands & East of England group, and our local coffee meetups extended from London, Bristol & Leeds to Birmingham, Oxfordshire, Manchester & Warwick as well. We are grateful to all our volunteer hosts & session leaders and everyone else who has made all of this possible.
Since our new IAF England & Wales Board was elected last year we have raised our ambition, and now we have adjusted our pattern of meetups accordingly – and identified some new volunteer leadership opportunities as well.
Our new ‘at a glance’ monthly schedule shows the new pattern of meetups, including new monthly local coffee meetups in Cambridge, Cardiff, Newcastle, North Wales & Winchester, and online as well. Click on the image above to enlarge the schedule, and note that if the first day of the month falls midweek then the first Friday may come before the first Monday!
The new pattern will also include afternoon learning meetups in more regions but less frequently in each. Already the schedule shows 3 per year in the South West and two plus our new Annual Conference in the Midlands & East. These will be joined by 3 per year in the North, and ultimately Wales. In London our bi-monthly afternoon learning meetups and evening drinks meetups will shift to quarterly, and be complemented by new evening learning meetups as well.
Our 2-day annual conference“The Power and Practice of Facilitation”, 18-19 October in Birmingham, will extend our previous all-day meetup for International Facilitation Week. You can expect a diverse range of highly interactive, peer-led parallel sessions to choose from, common to previous years, plus this year:
an opening keynote session on Friday sharing stories of the power of facilitation from the client perspective
a facilitated ‘Open Space’ session on Saturday to raise and address topics of your own, and/or to attend repeats of a few of the most popular parallel sessions
networking dinner & drinks on Thursday & Friday evenings
a prize raffle on Saturday afternoon including free facilitation kit, free personality profiling, free facilitation books and training, and more!
Discounts are available for early registrations until 30 June, and an additional 25% off all rates is available to IAF members. If you are not yet an IAF member and would like to join, you can save a whopping 25% on your first year’s membership if you buy it when you register for both days. See IAF: who we are and what we do (below) and learn about IAF membership.
We will be expanding our Leadership Team this year by inviting all our local meetup hosts to join us – online in Basecamp and (when they are available) for monthly zoom calls, and face-to-face in Birmingham on June 20 – in conjunction with a Midlands & East regional afternoon learning meetup.
We are also keen to welcome new members to our volunteer Leadership Team. Please contact us if you may be interested in any of the following opportunities in particular:
Regional meetup group organisers for the North of England, Wales and London & SE regions
Meetup hosts for new local coffee meetups in Brighton, Devon, Leeds, Liverpool, London & Nottingham – or wherever you are!
Podcasters to join our brand new new podcast team.
Or, please let us know how you would like to get more involved – for more information and to contact us, please see IAF England & Wales.
Please join us online also in ourFacebookand LinkedIn groups and by following on Twitterand Instagram – using the hashtag of course! #IAFmeetup
See alsoabout 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.
Monday, 11 September 2023 – 1.00-2:30pm UK time
These are the questions that have guided my exploration of feminist, anti-racist and anti-oppressive facilitation this past couple of years. For more on that, see Exploring feminist facilitation.
