Tag Archives: training

Three dimensions of the facilitator role – a focused conversation

.

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.

==

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).

ICA International Board update, December 2013

Global BuzzThis post was first published in ICAI’s monthly bulletin the Global Buzz.

November has been a busy month for ICAI, and December will be busier.  We have been preparing for the three online regional gatherings and General Assembly scheduled for December – see below for further details, and please join us if you can!  Draft agendas were first circulated to members for consultation when the dates were announced in September, and revised drafts were circulated with further details this month.  Please ask for details if you are interested to join.

Also we have been busy following up the last few responses to the ICAI global membership survey that remain outstanding in advance of these meetings. We are grateful to the 34 ICA locations that have already responded, and are urging the last remaining locations to share their responses now.  Responses from the first 30 locations were circulated to members this month.  These suggest (among other things) that we have at least 152 full-time and 112 part-time employees worldwide, over 170 Board members and 251 ToP trainers; and that over 2,544 people were trained in 193 public ToP courses last year.  ToP training and group facilitation are the most common programme areas of ICAs (23 & 25 locations respectively) followed by education, leadership development and comunity development (20 locations each).

We have updated the global network email list according to the survey responses, and launched new ICAI groups on LinkedIn and Facebook as additional forums for discussion.  Working with the global communications team we have drafted a site map for a new, simpler & cleaner ICAI website to be developed next year.  Meanwhile the team has been working on the new December issue of ICAI’s Winds & Waves magazine.

The December regional gatherings & General Assembly are now only a couple of weeks away. Everyone with an involvement or interest in ICA worldwide is welcome and encouraged to attend and participate in the regional gatherings, so please join us if you can.  Voting at the GA will be restricted to one vote per statutory member ICA.  Please complete the doodle poll to see your own local times and to register for the meetings you plan to attend (scroll down for meeting aims):
·     Europe Africa – Mon 9 Dec 12 noon UK time
·     Americas – Tue 10 Dec 3pm UK time
·     Asia Pacific – Wed 11 Dec 10am UK time
·     General Assembly (GA) – Mon 16 Dec 12 noon UK time

Each meeting will last for up to 90 minutes, and each will be preceded by a pre-meeting 30 minutes in advance for orientation to the online meeting technology and for technical support.  The meetings will be held on Adbobe Connect, and log-in details will be circulated the week before.

Regional Gathering Aims
1. to connect ICAs and ICA colleagues with each other, and help to build & strengthen relationships between them
2. to share information and facilitate peer-to-peer support and collaboration among ICAs and ICA colleagues
3. to hold ICAI accountable to its members, and seek input & support to strengthen our global network and advance our global mission.

 General Assembly Aims
1. to take ICAI membership decisions, including approval of Associate & Statutory memberships
2. to take ICAI strategy & policy decisions, to direct the work of the Board and to guide & support the peer-to-peer collaboration among ICAs
3. to hold the ICAI Board accountable to the membership, including by receipt of an annual audited finance report.

My first 416 days as a freelance facilitator, 2012-13

National Freelancers DayToday is National Freelancers Day here in the UK, and so a good day I think to reflect on my own first year and a bit as a freelancer.  I did think that twice before, but on my anniversary on October 1st I was too busy with client work, and during International Facilitation Week (October 21-27) I was too busy with International Facilitation Week.  At 7am this morning I was working with Orla Cronin to facilitate an online workshop for worldwide contributors to a collaborative writing process taking place in South Africa this week, ‘Exploring the Real Work of Social Change‘, but apart from that I am happy to be having a relatively quiet week. So here goes. I have even updated my profile photo to mark the occasion – a new look for a new year.

London Mayor Boris Johnson is quoted as saying in support for National Freelancers Day that “taking the plunge as a freelancer is an immense decision that in many ways can appear daunting but it’s also a choice that’s brave, ambitious, fulfilling and rewarding“. My own decision initially was to work freelance to earn an income and keep my options open for a while, while deciding what to do next after stepping down as Chief Executive of ICA:UK after 16 years. I thought of it more as a sabbatical at first than as a new career, and after delivering facilitation, training and consulting services to ICA:UK clients all those years it did not seem particularly brave or ambitious. The immense part had been deciding to step down from my previous role. It was indeed rewarding and fulfilling, however, and soon enough I had decided that this was how I wanted to continue to work.

In that sense the process has been a little like the way my career as a whole began and then continued. I took a ‘year out’ after my undergraduate degree to volunteer with ICA in India in 1986, and 27 years later I am still with ICA and serving as volunteer President of ICA International. Working freelance is enabling me to do that now, and whatever other paid or unpaid work I want to take on, with maximum flexibility and minimum administration and overheads.  What’s not to like?

In my first year as a freelancer I have had the opportunity to deliver facilitation and facilitation training contracts in Dublin, Geneva, Moscow, Ramallah, Zurich and online, as well as around the UK and even within walking distance from my home base in London. The groups I have worked with have ranged from local community-based organisations to UN-mandated international agencies, and from global corporations to small consultancies and social enterprise start-ups (see also who I work with and how I work). This diversity is a major attraction for me – always stimulating, mostly challenging and never dull.

Having worked for years as well with public sector clients in the UK, these have been notable for me by their absence this past year. Notwithstanding David Cameron’s enthusiasm for freelancers (and entrepreneurs) ‘as the engine of our economy and economic revival’, it has certainly been a good year not to be reliant on UK clients, and especially not on UK public sector clients. Many years of international involvement and Board service with my professional association the International Association of Facilitators has been very helpful there, as well as long-standing relationships with ICA colleagues worldwide. I have Brussels, Geneva and New York to look forward to in December & January, and a number of mostly European prospects in the pipeline for after that, so I am happy to say an over-reliance on UK work does not seem to be a problem as yet. I would welcome more gigs that I can walk to as well though!

On deciding to establish myself in business as a freelancer I also joined PCG: the Freelancers Association (the people behind National Freelancers Day), and have found this invaluable.  I have experience of non-profit management and governance, including registering and preparing SORP-compliant accounts for a UK charitable company, but it has been a relief to be able to learn quickly and easily the particularities of company and tax law etc. as they apply to me now as a freelancer – and to discover just how less onerous it is to establish and run a private company with one shareholder, one Director and one employee.  For someone whose stock in trade is participatory decision making, it’s nothing short of revolutionary for me that I get to decide everything by myself, without consultation, and within much lesser constraints than I am used to.  I am proud to say that Martin Gilbraith Associates Ltd is now well and truly in business, and even has its new cloud-based Crunch accounting system up to date (quote ‘mg15641m’ if you join too, and we both get free vouchers).

Throughout this past year I have particularly enjoyed and appreciated the extra time I have been able to find for professional development, reflection, reading and writing.  I am pleased to have accumulated over 40 posts and 6,000 site views on this blog, and to have read many books (and many more than each of the previous years) and attended numerous events with IAF, at the RSA and elsewhere. I still aspire to make more connection between the professional development, reflection and reading and the writing, but happy for that to be a goal.

In the meantime, I enjoyed so much the opportunity to use my Arabic again on my recent trips to Palestine that I have joined an Arabic conversation meet-up group in London. That experience has also got me wondering more about the reality and prospects for participation and facilitative leadership in the Arab world generally, almost 20 years on from my own six years with ICA Egypt and my masters research on civil society and democtratisation, and with the revolutions of the so called ‘Arab Spring’ continuing to unfold.

Thank you for following, and please feel free to share your own reflections and comments as well.

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.

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.