Tag Archives: Group Facilitation Methods

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!

Announcing ToP Group Facilitation Methods training in Brussels, 20-21 May

MG ToPEventbrite - ToP Group Facilitation MethodsI am excited to announce this public course in Brussels, 20-21 May 2014.

Introducing the foundations of the Technology of Participation (ToP) approach, two powerful techniques for structuring effective conversations and building group consensus – 2 days

“How can I have more purposeful & productive conversations, bring out the wisdom of a group, encourage feedback between people, and reach shared awareness in meetings? How can I generate and weave together a diverse range of ideas, develop creative solutions and build a group consensus?”

Group Facilitation Methods provides a structured introduction to the ToP Focused Conversation and Consensus Workshop methods, which form the foundations of the ToP Action Planning method, Participatory Strategic Planning and other applications.

This May 20-21 course in Brussels is scheduled in partnership with Social Platform, the largest platform of European rights and value-based NGOs working in the social sector; and it is provided under license with ICA:UK, the participation & development charity.  It was at my last course with Social Platform in Brussels in December that I piloted Three dimensions of the facilitator role – a focused conversation with video.

BOOK NOW, recommend to a friend, or contact me with any questions or for further details.

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Also coming up, and subject of a future post – Group Facilitation Methods and Participatory Strategic Planning, April 2-3 & 5-6 in Moscow (in Russian with interpretation), in conjunction with the 5th annual Russian Facilitators Conference.

Three dimensions of the facilitator role – a focused conversation

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I used this great little 4 minute video in a Group Facilitation Methods course in Brussels yesterday (to be repeated as a public course in Brussels in November), to launch a conversation on the role of the facilitator and to demonstrate the ToP Focused Conversation method in the process. The group of 18 were mostly staff members of a variety of European-level social NGO networks, supporting their member NGOs to learn, collaborate and campaign together. It produced a rich conversation and a great demonstration of the method, and many insights that we were able to refer back to again and again during the remainder of the course.

I shall certainly use the video and my conversation questions again, so I thought I would share them here for others to try as well. If you use them, please do let me know how it goes for you!  I allowed 20 minutes for the conversation, which worked well for us. We pretty much followed the sequence of questions as shown below, although by the interpretive level the conversation has taken off such that I used the questions to steer the conversation rather than to stimulate it.

The video is by the International Institute of Facilitation and Change (IIFAC) and is now available also in multiple languages.  For more on the ToP Focused Conversation method, see the ICA:UK ToP method overview (pdf) and Brian Stanfield’s ‘Art of Focused Conversation: 100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace‘. When I first shared the video in an earlier post, I quoted John Miller of ICA Associates on his experience of using the video for a Focused Conversation with a high school class in Canada.

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Objective level questions

1. What words and phrases do you recall from the clip?

2. What images do you remember?

3. What people or characters?

4. What else about the clip did you notice, such as sound, colour, design?

Reflective level questions

5. What particularly surprised or intrigued you in the clip?

6. Which ideas were most familiar to you?

7. What reminded you of your own experience of meetings that you have designed and facilitated, or participated in?

8. What other metaphors for facilitation come to mind for you?

Interpretive level questions

9. How well do these three metaphors capture the role of the facilitator in your experience? What would you add?

10. Which of these three dimensions is best understood and appreciated in your own situations?

11. What aspects of the facilitator role would you most like to learn and practice more? How?

Decisional level questions

12. What is one insight from this clip or conversation that will you take away and apply in your own work?

13. Who would you like to share this clip with?

See also Facilitation, and how it can add value. and my 2017 free facilitation webinar:

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.

EU-funded places available on ToP facilitation training next week!

Facilitative Leadership and Group Facilitation Methods for Social Cohesion and Gender Equality

Two places have become available at short notice on an EU-funded facilitation training to be held next week, December 9-14, in English & Spanish in Madrid, Spain.

The course is titled “Facilitative Leadership & Group Facilitation Methods for Social Inclusion and Gender Equality“, and is organised and delivered by ICA Spain with ICA:UK.

For full details, please download the course information and practicalities (pdf), and for enquiries and bookings please email catalina@iac-es.org or info@iac-es.org.

The course starts Monday 9th at 17.00 and finishes Saturday 14th, at 13.30. ICA Spain will be glad to cover the 750 Euros course fee. Participants are asked to cover their own accommodation, meals and travel (round trip). If interested they could discuss these expenses.

The course is designed for people responsible for facilitating multicultural and interdisciplinary groups more effectively within educational, social, political, cultural sectors; for team leaders and managers dealing with social inclusion and gender equality policy making; and for youth and community workers and social development agents responsible for implementing social cohesion and gender equality policies.

Comments from the evaluations of last year’s course include:

“…. a solid and intelligent combination of professional competence and personal drive and engagement. Great attention to detail was evident from the logistical organization to the high quality of delivery.” (Participant from Switzerland).

“Excellent course, excellent facilitation, truly an opportunity to learn valuable skills. Highly recommend it.” (Participant from Spain).

“It was an excellent course both on providing knowledge and skills on the topic.” (Participant from Greece).

“What stood out especially was the trainers’ attention to each particpants’ professional development and the strong participatory elements.” (Participant from Germany).

“The approach was very successful because we had moments of theory, demonstration and practice of the new methodologies. We had the opportunity to participate in some cultural and study visits which make us connect with the contents of the course and know more about the host country.” (Participant from Portugal).

ToP facilitation training at your place – and free places for you!

Register now for public courses in EventbriteAre you interested in taking or commissioning ToP facilitation training – but you don’t find any scheduled public courses to suit you, and you don’t have a group large enough to make an in-house course cost-effective?

I’d be happy to talk with you about scheduling a partnership course with you, at your place wherever you are – please contact me.

If you can provide a suitable space for the training, or perhaps venue & catering and trainer accommodation as well, then you could enjoy a number of free and/or discounted places for you or your delegates. We would only need to recruit enough fee-paying trainees between us by an agreed deadline, to make up the numbers and the budget to confirm the course. Depending on the location and the deadline I may be able to recruit those extra people myself, and handle online registrations and payments. If you can recruit more people from your networks, and if you can handle registrations and payments, then you could have more free or discounted places and maybe a shorter lead time as well.

If you choose one of my regularly scheduled public courses listed below then there will be less risk of cancellation even if you can’t recruit many people yourself. If you have particular training needs and you can recruit others who share them, then we could develop and schedule a course tailored to meet them.

I deliver in English only and in English with simultaneous interpretation. I draw on the worldwide ICA network to provide ToP training materials in many languages, and to arrange for experienced local ToP trainers to deliver with me (or without me) in many languages.

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.

Register now in Eventbrite for my own upcoming public courses in London & elsewhere and see ICA:UK for additional courses offered by fellow ICA:UK Associates online and elsewhere. To arrange an in-house course for your group please contact me.