Posts

The Art and Science of Facilitator Patience

Several colleagues who are relatively new to facilitation are having me reflect on the concept of patience and compassion. I’ve also been thinking a lot about a term “art and science” I learned from the ICA Associates Canada course called, The Art and Science of Participation. Patience is an art and science. In my own…

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Oops…When the Facilitator Does Not Get the Product the Group Needs

Everyone has bad facilitator days when the group did not get the outcomes or specific product they needed. No worries. It happens to me all the time. Well, more rarely these days but a lot in the early days…So what are you to do about it? My mentor, Bill Staples of ICA Associates, Canada helped me…

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Move Out of the Boxes in Virtual Meetings

We’ve been in virtual meetings for 8 months or more depending on when you started your virtual meeting journey. Most of us are still sitting in Zoom boxes or Microsoft Teams meetings without having the delightful experience of what the technology is offering us. This blog hopes to remind you that we can take the…

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Facilitation and Democracy – Can they inform each other?

Recently with all that is going on with the pandemic, racial protests and federal presidential elections (November 3, 2020) in the US, I’ve been thinking deeply about what democracy means to me. How is facilitation related to democracy? Is there an essence of facilitation that might give me solace when democracy seems to be seriously…

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Powerfully Resilient Virtual Teams – Lessons from Global IAF Leaders

Over the last 2.5 years, an international team of 15+ IAF facilitators including graphic/visual practitioners from five continents and 8 time zones have been co-designing a book called The Power of Facilitation. I wanted to share the incredible process that we went through together as an example of facilitators working together as a powerfully resilient…

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Will Online Meetings Become a Whole New Offshoot of Facilitation?

All of us have experienced a new norm of online meetings. Like the split tree photo in this banner, I believe online facilitation will become as important and as normal as face-to-face meetings. Maybe even more so. Thus, our mission is to become as skillful facilitating in the online as the in-person environment. And, if…

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Why Facilitators Need to Talk About Race

This month I’m continuing on the topic of race (a social construct which has complex origins and often, harmful consequences) and facilitation.  In full disclosure, I am not a full-time facilitator of racial dialogues. I have had many occasions to hold these conversations in groups because it comes up in strategic planning, or team-building/conflict interventions….

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When the Facilitator Must NOT Be Neutral

It’s been a month since we last wrote our blog. The tree embedded in the banner represents some big things the human race is finally speaking about on a global basis – race inequity and other forms of oppression.  In many parts of the world there have been demonstrations about race, specifically triggered by deadly…

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ORID Can Light Your Way Through the Next Phase of COVID-19

The Focused Conversation is the mega method underlying all of the Technology of Participation (ToP) methodologies. It helps the facilitator be very clear on what product or understanding you want the group to have as a result of your conversation. This is called the rational aim (RA). And somewhat unique to most methods, it is…

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Uncovering Opportunities – A Facilitator’s Early Response to a Global Shutdown

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, some of us are finding lots of opportunities to offer our skills and services as process facilitators.  And others are not. I want to acknowledge that both are true right now.  And neither is better than the other. It just is. Nonetheless, I also want to emphasize that there are…

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