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 own exploration of feminist, anti-racist and anti-oppressive facilitation this past couple of years.
These sessions are free and open for anyone to attend. The session will last 60 minutes and consist of a facilitated conversation using the ToP Focused Conversation (ORID) method, followed by a brief run through of the method used. The sessions are run by different members of the ICA:UK facilitation community, including lead trainers, trainee trainers, and past participants of our courses in their own style, around topics they have chosen.
In addition to participants learning from each other about the topic, the sessions will serve as an introduction to the method for those new to ToP and will be a useful reminder of the method for those who have already attended our popular Group Facilitation Methods course. Participants may opt to go on and take further training (either online or face to face) and/or continue to learn and share as part of a community of people using facilitation.
The session will be recorded, with the recording being publicly available after the session is over. If you do not wish to be identifiable, we will give you the option before we start the recording to turn off your camera and change your screen name.
Join us to connect, share & learn – register now at ICA:UK.
For recordings and other outputs of my own previous online Focused Conversation sessions and other free facilitation webinars, see free facilitation webinars.
Thank you again to all those who attended this session yesterday, and especially to IAF Belgium for the invitation.
This session introduces a simple but powerful and versatile model that can be applied as a tool and even as a guiding principle. It can help facilitators to engage and empower their groups with greater confidence and versatility, to better enable them to make the change that they are seeking in the world.
The session is equally suitable for newcomers to facilitation and for experienced facilitators who are new to ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) methodology, and those who would like to deepen their understanding of the ToP ‘ORID’ model as a design tool.
The session is adapted from one originally delivered at the 2015 IAF Europe MENA conference in Stockholm, that has since been repeated a number of times both face-to-face and online.
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.
Thank you again to the hundred or so people that attended today’s free facilitation webinar, in all or in part, and especially to IAF Oceania for the invitation and to Stephen Berkeley and Anna Carr for co-hosting with me. Here below you will find the session recording and other outputs.
In this session the method was adapted to accommodate the number attending, using only the basic tools within the Zoom platform – audio, video, text chat, break-out rooms, screen sharing and polling.
For more on ICA’s Technology of Participation and facilitation online, register now for these further upcoming training & learning sessions:
Group Facilitation Methods Online – Introducing the foundations of the ToP approach, two powerful techniques for structuring effective conversations and building group consensus – a series of 6 x2 hour sessions, next from 22 June to 2 July(NEXT WEEK!)
Introduction to Facilitation Online – Introducing the role of the facilitator and the ToP approach, plus some key tips & tools, 2.5 hours, next on 8 July & 8 September
Facilitating Virtual Events Online – Learn about and practice ways to make online events participatory, engaging and productive – a series of 7 x2 hour sessions, next from 15 September to 8 October
We all know that online is just not the same as face-to-face, right? And that for some things, maybe, it will never be as good. But when, or for what, can online be better?
“We ran a conference in Teams (and it was better than the “real” thing)” wrote Dr Robert O’Toole NTF of the University of Warwick this week.
“Technology facilitated a more inclusive meeting than is usually possible in person. Best facilitation ever, more equal interaction than at any other meeting, no flights (climate thanks us). Virtuality rules!” wrote particpants in a 3-day online event of over 100 delegates that I facilitated myself recently.
The recording, slides and chat transcript follow here. Thanks also to Heather Collins for her LinkedIn post and Carolyn Xie for another beautiful sketchnote!
Thank you again to the 250 or so people in total that attended today’s free facilitation webinar, in all or in part, and especially to my fellow trainers of the ICA:UK Facilitating Virtual Events course Megan, Dawn, Orla, Alan, Nileen & Ester Mae for co-hosting with me – see our profiles. Here below you will find the session recording and other outputs.
This was the second of two sessions scheduled in partnership with ICA:UK as part of its new Online Focused Conversation Series: Taking time to connect, learn and reflect.
The aim of all these sessions is for participants to connect, share and learn with others sharing their interest the topic, while experiencing ICA’s ToP Focused Conversation method.
In this session the method was adapted to accommodate the number attending, using only the basic tools within the Zoom platform – audio, video, text chat, break-out rooms, screen sharing and polling.
For more on ICA’s Technology of Participation and facilitation online, register now for these further upcoming training & learning sessions:
Free facilitation webinars – next up “When is online better than face-to-face?”, next week on 17 June
Introduction to Facilitation Online – Introducing the role of the facilitator and the ToP approach, plus some key tips & tools, 2.5 hours, next on 8 July & 8 September
Group Facilitation Methods Online – Introducing the foundations of the ToP approach, two powerful techniques for structuring effective conversations and building group consensus – a series of 6 x2 hour sessions, next from 22 June to 2 July
Facilitating Virtual Events Online – Learn about and practice ways to make online events participatory, engaging and productive – a series of 7 x2 hour sessions, next from 15 September to 8 October
For details of remaining sessions of this series with other ICA:UK lead ToP trainers, and to register for those, please see the ICA:UK Online Focused Conversation Series.
Our meetings, workshops and events, our world, are increasingly moving online – now more than ever! So as leaders and facilitators we must be prepared to move with them. Virtual sessions can have advantages over face-to-face, but disadvantages too – not least, shorter attention spans and greater potential for distractions. How can we keep people engaged and focused when meeting online?
Monday, 16 January 2023, 13:00-14:00 UK time
These are the questions that have guided my own exploration of feminist, anti-racist and anti-oppressive facilitation this past couple of years.
These sessions are free and open for anyone to attend. The session will last 60 minutes and consist of a facilitated conversation using the ToP Focused Conversation (ORID) method, followed by a brief run through of the method used. The sessions are run by different members of the ICA:UK facilitation community, including lead trainers, trainee trainers, and past participants of our courses in their own style, around topics they have chosen.
