Tag Archives: London

Join a free facilitation meetup near you!

Are you interested in connecting, networking & learning with other facilitators and with others with an interest in facilitation in England & Wales?

Join us online, and at one of our free facilitation meetups near you!

The International Association of Facilitators (IAF) is a participatory organisation with around 1,600 members in over 65 countries, and 40 local groups including IAF England & Wales (IAF E&W). As a professional association we set internationally accepted industry standards, provide accreditation, support a community of practice, advocate and educate on the power of facilitation and embrace the diversity of those who facilitate. To connect with others elsewhere in the world see IAF worldwide.

We are now over 400 ‘IAF facilitators & friends’ in three regional meetup groups, including over 65 members of IAF and 15 IAF Certified Professional Facilitators (CPFs), spread throughout England.

Everyone with an interest in group process facilitation is welcome, including facilitators and others who use or commission facilitation, and IAF members and non-members alike.

Please RSVP now for one of our regular free facilitation meetups near you:

RSVP now also for a special one-off meetup on June 15 in London with Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge introducing Cynefin and implications for ‘complex’­ facilitation.

All three regional groups will join together again for an all-day, all-England & Wales meetup for International Facilitation Week, in Birmingham on Saturday 21 October.  Join & RSVP in whichever group is more convenient to you – London & SE, North or South West.

We are working with IAF to schedule an additional Certified Professional Facilitator assessment event in the UK in November or December – for more information and to express an interest with IAF, please follow the link.

Please take a few minutes to complete our online survey, if you haven’t already, to help to make IAF England & Wales and our free facilitation meetups more valuable to you in the future. A new IAF E&W leadership team of nine will meet face-to-face in late May, to review your responses and to plan ahead to grow and develop our network and activities further, so please let us know your feedback and ideas now.

Please connect with us online also, by joining over 140 IAF England & Wales facilitators & friends in our facebook group, and by following and tweeting with IAF England & Wales on twitter. Join us also in the UK Facilitation Network group on LinkedIn.

For further information or with any questions, please contact me.

Adapt • Invent • Evolve: reviewing the past to prepare for the future at #EuroComm17

Thank you to everyone who participated in my plenary session Facilitating transformation: reviewing the past to prepare for the future at this year’s IABC Europe MENA conference #EuroComm17 in London today.

In the session I demonstrated a participatory approach for a group to review the past to prepare for the future, by applying the ToP Historical Scan method to reflect together on the journey of development of the communications profession.

Here I am sharing some links to some resources and case studies that I mentioned during the session, and perhaps some that I didn’t, plus (below) some some tweets from the session the timeline we created:

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  • ToP Historical Scan (‘Wall of Wonder’) overview – pdf
  • The Art of Focused Conversation – book
  • Four steps to a universal principle of facilitation and learning – blog post
  • Facilitation case study: Celebrating 20 years with the European Training Foundation in Turin – #ETF20 – case study
  • Transformational Strategy: from trepidation to ‘unlocked’ – case study
  • Staff Away Day with George House Trust – case study
  • Reviewing the past to prepare for the future: #FacHistory in Copenhagen – blog post
  • #IAFEMENA17 conference, 13-15 October in Paris – IAF
  • ToP (Technology of Participation) facilitation training – blog
  • books and sticky walls – ICA:UK

Please share your own reflections in a comment below:

  • What can we learn from experience of the ever-changing and growing communications profession about how communicators might best adapt, invent, evolve and transform, as professionals and as a profession?
  • How might you apply this method, and facilitation more broadly, in your communications work?
  • What potential do you see for greater mutual learning and collaboration between facilitators and communicators, and for partnership between IAF and IABC?

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

Facilitating transformation: reviewing the past to prepare for the future at #EuroComm17

#eurocomm17

I am excited to be attending and presenting at this year’s IABC Europe MENA conference #EuroComm17 in London in March. It promises to be a fantastic opportunity for facilitation professionals to connect, learn & collaborate with their counterparts in the communications profession. Register now to join me, or contact me first to benefit from my ‘invite a friend’ discount code.

CCjkUYmXIAAZqK9.jpg largeIt seems that the time is increasingly ripe to bring our two communities and skill sets closer together. I was inspired by attending EuroComm15 in London two years to blog, in Power to the People, and the power of facilitation and communications in partnership, on the potential that I saw for greater mutual learning and collaboration between facilitators and communicators and for partnership between IAF and IABC.

#FacWeekChat 2015Since then I have collaborated with fellow IAF London member and past-IABC Chair Michael Ambjorn to engage members of both associations & professions on the question What does it take for people to align behind change? – first in a twitter chat and then in a webinar. Several IABC members have taken ToP facilitation training with me, joined IAF and even gained the IAF Certified Professional Facilitator designation. More recently IABC EMENA Board member Kasha Dougall has blogged on When communicators become facilitators, and IAF Denmark member Charlotte Ditloev Jensen has joined the EuroComm17 speaker list with her session Transformation from within: How facilitation techniques can expand the organizational impact of communication.

The theme of EuroComm this year  – TRANSFORMATION: Adapt • Invent • Evolve – is a key aspect of any ever-changing and growing profession. Presentations will cover everything from constantly reinventing ourselves as professionals, to keeping pace with technology, to navigating the ever-changing political, social and workplace landscape.

etf20In my own workshop, Facilitating transformation: reviewing the past to prepare for the future, I shall demonstrate a participatory approach for a group to review the past to prepare for the future, by applying the ToP Historical Scan method to reflect together on the journey of development of the communications profession. I will be joined by IABC past­-chair Michael Ambjorn of AlignYourOrg and Alastair Macphail of the European Training Foundation (ETF) to share a case study of the method in action “Celebrating 20 years with the European Training Foundation in Turin – #ETF20”  This project in 2015 won an IABC Gold Quill Award and an IAF Facilitation Impact Award. Participants will have an opportunity to reflect on how they might apply the method themselves. The session is adapted from my 2014 IAF conference session on the history of facilitation, in IAF’s 20th anniversary year, Reviewing the past to prepare for the future: #FacHistory in Copenhagen.

Register now to join me, or contact me first to benefit from my ‘invite a friend’ discount code. See you then!

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

Welcome to IAF England & Wales facilitators & friends’ free facilitation meetups!

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Welcome to IAF England & Wales of the International Association of Facilitators, and our IAF facilitators & friends’ free facilitation meetups!

iaf-ew-members-jul-2016We are currently around 300 ‘IAF facilitators & friends’ in three regional meetup groups, including around 65 IAF members and 12 IAF Certified Professional Facilitators (CPFs) spread throughout England.

Everyone with an interest in group process facilitation is welcome, including facilitators and others who use or commission facilitation, and IAF members and non-members alike.

Please RSVP now for one of our free facilitation meetups near you:

All three regional groups will join together for an all-day, all-England & Wales meetup in Birmingham on Saturday 22 October for International Facilitation Week 2016. Join & RSVP in whichever group is more convenient to you – London & SE, North or South West.

Two CPF facilitator certification assessment days are scheduled for December 12 & 13 in London or Birmingham – to register for this event and be assessed before CPF fees rise in January, act now to submit your Part 1 application before the 15 September deadline – see Becoming a CPF.

Please use the meetup groups to convene additional meetups wherever & whenever suits you, according to your own interests in facilitation – please let me or another organiser know if we can be of any support.

Please connect with us online also, by joining over 100 IAF England & Wales facilitators & friends in our facebook group and by following and tweeting with IAF England & Wales on twitter. Join us also in the UK Facilitation Network group on LinkedIn.

For further information or with any questions, you are welcome also to contact me as IAF E&W meetup organiser. I look forward to meeting up with you soon!

Free facilitation webinar – What does it take for people to align behind change?

Are you interested to learn more about facilitation, and ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) methodology in particular – in a free, one-hour, interactive online session that offers an experience of virtual facilitation as well? Please join me for my new series of free facilitation webinars!

Register now on Eventbrite for the next session on October 17 (postponed from August 15) and register your interest on Surveymonkey for future dates & times and topics to be scheduled. To review past session recordings and other outputs, and for provisional future dates & times and suggested topics, see free facilitation webinars.

2 300x600What does it take for people to align behind change?

Monday 17 October, 13.00 BST 

Scroll down for the session recording, materials & additional resources shared

In this session we shall explore what it takes for people to align behind change. This is the question that brought together 69 facilitation, communications and change management professionals over two one-hour twitter chats last October during International Facilitation Week 2015.

I shall be joined for this session by Michael Ambjorn, immediate past Chair of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and one of my London-based co-hosts for the twitter chats; and again by Sunny Walker of the Virtual Facilitation Collaborative.

We will invite you to share some of your own experience and insights on what can be done to help people to align together to make change happen. We will share six top tips and tools that were shared during the twitter chats, and how the 4-level ‘ORID’ model of ICA’s ToP Focused Conversation method was applied to structure the process. We will share examples of practical application including how over 1,000 IABC leaders were engaged, aligned and activated to extend the organisation’s reach and deepen its impact.

A particular aim for the session, as for the twitter chats, is to bring together facilitation, communications and change professionals, and all those with an interest in these fields, to connect with and learn from each other and to make connections and foster broader collaboration between our associations and between our professions.

Feel free to tweet with the hashtag #FacWeekChat!

Each session in this series of free facilitation webinars will be hosted in Adobe Connect for a highly interactive learning experience.

Each topic will be addressed by a short case study or other presentation, supplemented by links to further online material for later reference. Sessions will apply tools and techniques of virtual facilitation to help participants to engage with the material and the presenter, and with their own and each other’s experience on the topic. A short technical orientation directly before the session will introduce the features of the virtual meeting room and the tools to be used. A brief closing reflection at the end of the session will invite reflection and learning on the facilitation process and virtual tools as well as on the content of the session.

For full voice participation in the session for a more conversational experience, microphone rights will be available to up to 15 participants who are first to login and set up their audio. Others will be able to listen and interact via their keyboard alone.

Session materials & additional resources shared include:

Register now on Eventbrite, and register your interests on Surveymonkey.

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 IAF England & Wales’ free facilitation meetups in London and elsewhere.