Facilitation Stories
IAF England Wales
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Facilitation: the art of enabling a group of people to achieve a common goal. IAF England Wales brings you a show by facilitators, for facilitators and anyone interested in using facilitation for change. We'll share guest stories, experiences and methods. Plus, we'll bring you up to date on what's happening at our Meetups.
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Sep 20, 2023
FS59 - A new Chapter
After over 100 episodes spanning 4 years, Pilar Orti is stepping down from her role as co-host on the Facilitation Stories podcast. In this special episode, Pilar joins regular co-hosts Helene Jewell and Nikki Wilson to reflect on her time on the show and what comes next.
How It All Began
The idea for Facilitation Stories emerged organically at an in-person meetup hosted by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) back in 2019. Pilar had given a talk on using podcasting to build community and connection in remote teams. Afterwards, some attendees suggested starting a podcast for the chapter. Pilar agreed to help get it off the ground.
Along with Martin Gilbraith's support, Pilar worked with Helene and another co-host to produce the first 4 episodes and establish a regular cadence. After some early experimentation, they settled into releasing 1 episode per month. The organic, unstructured nature of those early days established the podcast's informal, conversational tone that continues today.
Why Listeners Connect
A big part of the podcast's appeal is its sense of community. As Pilar says, it feels like "listening to your friends." Most facilitation podcasts focus on tips, tutorials, and sales pitches. Facilitation Stories stands out for spotlighting members of the IAF England and Wales community sharing stories and learning from real life experiences.
The hosts' genuine enthusiasm, warmth, and enjoyment comes across in every episode. According to Pilar, her favorite episodes are the unscripted conversations between two or more co-hosts. The rapport and natural interactions make listeners feel like they're right there in the room.
Evolution of Facilitation During the Pandemic
Pilar, Helene, and Nikki reflected on how facilitation has changed over the past few years, accelerated by the pandemic. Virtual facilitation has become more ubiquitous and accepted. More organizations recognize the need for facilitators to help guide productive online meetings and events. Hybrid events also present new challenges facilitators must adapt to.
On a skills level, facilitators have had to expand their digital literacy and learn to facilitate exclusively through a screen. Soft skills like reading the virtual room, fostering connections, and keeping energy levels up become even more crucial.
Co-facilitation partnerships have also blossomed as the complexity and demand increases. Facilitators increasingly team up with those outside the profession who bring complementary expertise.
Key Takeaways
A few key themes emerge from Pilar's time on Facilitation Stories:
Start simple - When launching a new podcast, focus on consistent execution over production value. Get the first 10 episodes done to build momentum.
Rotate roles - Swap hosting and production duties between team members. It keeps things dynamic while building everyone's skills.
Personality matters - Let your authentic style and personality come through. This attracts the right listeners who connect with the content.
Find your niche - Targeting a specific community makes it easier to grow an engaged audience, as demonstrated by the show's IAF focus.
Value enjoyment - Do it because you find joy in the process and camaraderie. Passion shines through and makes it worthwhile.
What Comes Next
While sad to say goodbye to Facilitation Stories, Pilar is embarking on an exciting new chapter. She shared some of the creative pursuits and professional projects she'll be focusing on:
Developing an audio course on asynchronous communication
Exploring the comics medium and using visual storytelling
Continuing fiction writing and other literary projects
Building her podcasting expertise through new shows and helping others level up their podcasts
Authoring books on topics like co-hosting or using Trello for podcast production
After years of client work, training, and teaching, Pilar is ready to put more energy into generating original content and productions. She remains as passionate as ever about podcasting and plans to start new shows in addition to advising others.
When asked if she had any parting wisdom, Pilar expressed full confidence that Helene and Nikki will continue taking the podcast to new heights. She may no longer be there, but the strong community built on Facilitation Stories will carry on
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Aug 8, 2023
FS58 Facilitating Dialogue Spaces with Jindy Mann
Welcome to Facilitation Stories, brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF.
In today’s episode Pilar Orti talks about running circles (spaces for dialogue) with Jindi Mann, founder and facilitator of Leader Brother Son and coach and organizational consultant at The Selfish Leader.
Jindy recently ran the Men at Work survey as part of his work with Leader Brother Son, where he works with groups of men. The work has the potential of benefiting mental health and diversity. The Men at Work survey in particular, was a way for them to gather some insights into the male experience at work. In particular, it highlighed what men find hardest to talk about at work and what can help them show up more fully at work.
To explain the roots of his work, Jindy talks about his early life, growing up in a British Indian family, his two business degrees and masculine cultures in the business world. He came to realize that he had an opportunity to work with this, as he was seeing the same thing repeatedly: the idea of taking up this role of "man" without interrogating what that means. Alongside some other coaches, Jindy started offering free online groups two and a half years ago. They’ll be starting their 10th group in early August.
There is a short application process for joining the groups. Intersted participants first make
an enquiry on the company's website, and this is followed by a short conversation to align expectations and understand the principles behind the sessions. There are typically, eight to twelve people in each group and at least two facilitators in each session.
As the work comes from a personal space for Jindy, he often feels the tension between leading or guiding the group and just allowing the space to be what it is. Jindy and the other facilitators are not the ones who have the answers, they are not defining what a man should be or what Masculinity is, but they are holding the space by contributing and holding the principles and the shape of the conversation, rather than telling it where to go.
Throughout this work, Jindy still feels that tension of when to take some sort of action as a facilitator or when to contribute or when to say anything. He uses the coaching acronym WAIT – why am I talking?
Jindy has started to refer to himself more explicitly as a "facilitator" when starting doing this work with men, but he has used facilitation in different ways in his consulting career.
As to how the work with the circles and his co-facilitation have evolved, Jendy shares that when the groups started they introduced specific topics for discussion, but soon they started to invite the group to say what it wanted to explore. He shares some of the theories and practises that have influenced him including the idea from Wilfred Bion of that there are thoughts present in the group, but they haven't yet found a thinker.
It can sound almost mystical, but the unconscious is always present, is always active in a group. And collectively things can emerge in a group.
(For more on this read any of Jung or Freud’s work and Experiences in Groups by Wilfred Bion.)
Jiindy has trained as a facilitator with Way of Council and in the conversation he shares his experience there and its overlap with psychodynamic theory.
Jindy talks about his co-facilitators Aaron, Mark and Russell and how they met, and how they all bring something slightly different and have different influences. But that they have an important chemistry between them.
The team are not taking their work into organisations. The work here will be different as the dynamics in organisations will be different than in an open group. People there will have assumptions about each other, and there will already be a sense of status and hierarchy.
Jindy shares the pros and cons of doing these groups in person and online and about AI in coaching and wraps up with a couple of broad reflections: firstly, the conversation about men and masculinity is growing. Secondly, there is an increasing need for great dialogue and for great facilitated spaces for all of the things we're facing as a society.
If you want to find out more about Jindy's work, you can go to Leaderbrotherson.com. And also you can also check out his other organization called The Selfish Leader.
He is on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jindymann/
Men at Work Survey https://www.leaderbrotherson.com/resource/men-at-work-2023-survey
Leader Brother Son https://www.leaderbrotherson.com/about
You can connect with Pilar Orti on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/pilarorti/
Listen to our podcasts:
https://www.facilitationstories.com/
And connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories
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Jul 11, 2023
FS57 Open Source Facilitation with Perle Laouenan-Catchpole
In today's episode, Nikki talks to Perle Laouenan-Catchpole, an Amsterdam-based facilitator and experienced designer. Perle shares the origins of Perle's award-winning, open-source workshop that aids individuals in identifying their personal climate action.
Perle discusses the importance of open source in facilitation work and the impact it has on personal growth, relationship-building and work perception. She firmly believes in the need for collaborative and shared resources in addressing pressing issues like climate change. T
he discussion also touches on different platforms for sharing open-source material and how they can be leveraged by other facilitators.
Links:
Website https://helloperle.com/
Perle's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/perlelc/
Session Lab Template https://www.sessionlab.com/templates/find-your-climate-sweet-spot/
Nikki's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/
Here's the transcript of the conversation:
NIKKI
Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson and my guest today is Perle Laouenan-Catchpole.
Welcome Perle. For listeners that don't know you, could you start by telling us a little bit more about you and your work?
PERLE
Yeah, absolutely. So, I am Perle. I'm a workshop facilitator, moderator, experienced designer and aspiring spoken word artist. It's something I have been pushing myself out of my comfort zone to do for a while now. And I'm based in Amsterdam. I was actually born and bred in Cornwall, so you'll notice a very British accent on me, and I've been living in Amsterdam for the past twelve years and have the great joy of co-parenting a five year old daughter. And yeah, that's about me.
NIKKI
Excellent. And so the inspiration for this episode came from a post you made on LinkedIn saying that you'd won a thing for a workshop you've designed. So, first of all, could you tell us a little bit more about what you won, and how that came about?
PERLE
Yeah, absolutely. Well, to give you a little bit more context about my work, so I went freelance in January and I was working as a full time facilitator before that. And over the past couple of years I really recognized that my skill as a facilitator is facilitating large groups online and that opportunity doesn't come along very often. So I started seeking out communities that could use my skills and landed on a community called Work on Climate, which is a 20,000 strong community of individuals trying to find climate work in climate or transition their roles into climate work.
And I facilitated a workshop for them using Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson's Ven diagram. That basically similar to Ikigai, which is the Japanese concept for finding purpose, helps you identify your personal climate action. So that workshop, 200 and something people turned up for it and it was incredible.
And the workshop design, I then submitted to a contest hosted by Session Lab, which is a facilitators platform, and then won in one of the categories. And I was just really happy to see that workshop then become an open source template for other people to use. So that's how I ended up writing a post on LinkedIn saying I want a thing.
NIKKI
Well, first of all, congratulations Perle, that's great news and you just touched on it there. But one of the things that had really caught my eye about that post was that you said that you'd made it into an open source template. So I wondered if you could tell us a bit more about how open source features in your facilitation work.
PERLE
Yeah, absolutely. And I'd say I kind of categorise it in two ways, because as a facilitator and experienced designer, I rely hugely on open source materials. I'm constantly seeking new ways of doing things, new concepts, new exercises. So I'm leaning on other people's open source material all the time - and then that then encourages me and it inspires me to do the same. And I actually believe that facilitation is an abundant skill set.
We need more Facilitators in the world. We need it in our organizations, in our teams. And I fundamentally believe that if we can support one another to grow those tools, that mindset, that approach in our work, then the world is better for it. And yeah, I just believe there's enough work for all of us. So why keep my skills, my knowledge, my understanding of how to facilitate to myself, if we can kind of trigger other people to do more with their work too, especially when it comes to climate?
NIKKI
Excellent. You've talked a little bit about kind of drawing from other people's work as a key tool for yourself. But how did you first start working in a way where you were sharing more of this information? And how do you go about that?
PERLE
Yeah, I feel like that it kind of reinforces some of my key values as just a human being, where I aspire to be and try to be open and kind and authentic anyway. And then I have had the pleasure to work for many organisations and companies that do the same. So they either are open to partnering with lots of different partners to achieve their goals or providing services that increase access to global needs such as health care and education. So in a way, my value system makes me seek out organisations or types of work that allow me to be an open source minded person, I guess.
NIKKI
So thinking a bit more about what impact opening up and sharing your own work has had on you, could you tell us a little bit more about that? How has it affected how your work is perceived or the relationships you build, those kind of things?
PERLE
So I truly believe that if you're open with your work and your approach to work and you are authentic in that process, then you attract the same types of people and opportunities back. And I also have a fundamental belief that we are able to grow with each other. I'm not somebody who works very well individually. I really work better when someone else is able to spark my energy, grow my energy, add to my ideas, add to my body of work. And I know that I am valuable for other people in that way. So if we kind of can approach facilitation with that kind of mindset, then we only make it better for people receiving that facilitation.
So yeah, it's just a belief system, I guess. And I'm feeling the benefits of it because I meet incredible people, I work with incredible people and I do a job I love.
NIKKI
And so, I mean, personally, I'm really a convert to the benefits of open. Now, I was before this conversation, but you've even convinced me more. But I think when I first started to become more aware of this way of working, it felt a bit counterintuitive. And you've said that you yourself have more recently gone freelance. And I think there was a sort of mindset around, if I give too much away, how will I justify charging for the things that I do want to? And also always being aware of things like risk of copyright and ownership. And for any listeners that are kind of grappling with some of those ideas, even if they've heard about the benefits from you, what would you say to them to kind of reassure them or convince them to give it a try?
PERLE
Yeah, I actually want to just first acknowledge that it's a very real feeling, right? Because it took me a second to press that button and submit my template to be open source, because in the end, well, anyway, that is a free workshop that I'm offering so a couple of hundred people could join it without any monetary benefit to me. So I was already making that choice for it to be open source. And yeah, it's a workshop that I could have monetized. But I also believe there's different types of level of my work that I can monetize and there's other types of work that I can open out to people to learn myself, learn what works, what doesn't, and test new concepts, test new ideas. And so I use often my free workshops or my open w…
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Jun 13, 2023
FS56 Facilitating a Multi-Faceted Project with 4 Facilitators
In this episode, Pilar talks to fellow podcast team members Helene and Nikki, along with Penny Walker and Shanaka Dias about a global, hybrid process they facilitated together, running over 4 days with multiple languages and timezones.
They reflect on planning in advance, adapting in the moment and working well as a team.
The full transcript is below.
All of the team can be found on LinkedIn:
Penny Walker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pennywalker/
Shanaka Dias https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanaka-dias-8765b51/
Helene Jewell https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/
Nikki Wilson https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/
Pilar Orti https://www.linkedin.com/in/pilarorti/
And you can find all of the links to IAF England and Wales on the Facilitation Stories website:
https://www.facilitationstories.com/
SPEAKERS
PO – Pilar Orti
HJ – Helene Jewell
NW – Nikki Wilson
PW- Penny Walker
SD – Shanaka Dias
PO 00:03
Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of facilitators also known as IAF. My name is Pilar Orti and I have the absolute pleasure of recording today with not one guest, not two, not three, but four. So first of all, let me introduce fellow co-hosts of the show Helene Jewell, hello, Helene.
HJ 00:26
Hello, nice to see you.
PO 00:30
Nikki Wilson. Hello, Nikki.
NW
Hello.
PO 00:33
And I then like to welcome back to the show Penny Walker who first appeared in episode two of this show. So welcome back, Penny.
PW 00:40
Thanks very much. It's lovely to be here.
PO 00:43
And finally, first time guest and someone I've never chatted to before Shanaka Dias, welcome to the show.
SD 00:50
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
PO 00:52
So to have some proper introductions, I've asked each guest to prepare just two lines to introduce themselves. So we're going to say the same order in which I introduced you so that you'll know when it's coming. So Helene Jewell, we'd like to introduce yourself.
HJ 01:06
Hello,I'm Helene. I'm a freelance facilitator based in Bristol, and I work cross sector with all kinds of clients and Yeah, mostly team organisational development and strategy stuff.
PO 01:18
Excellent. Thanks, Helen and Nikki Wilson.
NW 01:21
Hello, I'm Nikki, I'm based in Essex and I run a social purpose business focusing on facilitation, research and strategic support. And as a facilitator, I particularly enjoy working on Deliberative Public Eengagement projects and Action Learning.
PO 01:39
Thank you. Thanks, Nikki and Penny Walker.
PW 01:42
Thanks, Pilar. I'm Penny. I'm an independent facilitator based in North London, and my specialism, I suppose is working with clients to have more effective conversations about tricky things. Maybe because they're complicated or there's conflict, or there's multiple parties. And those conversations are mainly about sustainable development topics. It might be climate change, it might be biodiversity loss. It might be I don't know social enterprises coming together. So those kinds of conversations. Yeah.
PO 02:14
Thanks, Penny, and Shanaka Dias.
02:17
Hello, I'm Shanaka. I'm based in London. I'm a freelancer. I work in the social sector with charities and foundations. And I guess my specialism is bringing people together to firstly have difficult conversations and to look at ways to come together around measure mission and vision and strategy.
PO 02:40
Thank you Shanaka. Thank you very much. Right. So the reason we have you all together for this very special episode, and we're really testing the platform as well, is that you all facilitated a trilingual hybrid session back in January 2023. Is that correct?
PW
That's right.
PO
Yeah. So I'm going to be discovering what you did along with the listener and what your challenges were. So let's start with how did this collaboration start? And maybe Penny, you can kick us off?
PW 03:12
Thanks. Yes. So I'm trained to use a particular process called the Organisational Mapping Tool, which is something that is promoted by the Ford Foundation, a philanthropic funder based in the US, and one of the grantee organisations needed to use this tool as part of the grant conditions, and because I'm on the list, they came to me and they said, could you run this for us? And they said it’s a little bit complicated, because we're going to it's going to be hybrid, and we know this, and I was not very comfortable with that. And I said, “Well, that is you know, it's going to cost you more, we're going to need a bigger team. And you know”, they said y”es, that's fine, we're comfortable with hybrid£. And they said, “Oh, and by the way, we also need to do it in three languages. So and by the way, we would like to have other meetings going on, kind of with the people who are in the room together over the time”, so I knew that I needed a big team. Nikki has worked with me before using this particular process once so I thought that she would be my first kind of “go to” person and I know that Helene had a great time helping out make the IAF England and Wales conference hybrid a couple of years ago, so I thought, I wonder if Helene will be up for being on the team. And then I asked I asked them who else they knew who they thought might be up for it and Nikki recommended Shanaka so that was how we came to be working together.
PO 04:42
Nice. Oh, I love that because of the you some of you have worked together there was a new elements into the into the four so I love it. Excellent. Nice and who were their participants then? If one of you feels like giving us just an overview of who they Were where they were located. And just a little bit of the logistics around the event. Helene.
HJ 05:05
So the participants were the staff from this organisation. And they were based in several different countries. And I can't completely remember which countries they were based in, but we had probably, Penny may tell me, I'm wrong, half of them in the room, and another half in different countries over Zoom. And so yeah, it was bringing their different different staff members from within the organisation together.
PO 05:34
And the people who were online, were they in their other countries together and online or individually online,
NW 05:41
I think it was quite a mixture, mostly on their own. Some of them were in the same country, but not sitting in a location together.
PO 05:50
Okay, so at least you had that and Penny can you do remember the countries of the participants?
PW 05:59
So we had some, we were working across multiple time zones, which was another kind of design challenge. So we had some people in Sub Saharan Africa, we had some in South America. I'm not sure if the people who were in kind of Asia Pacific managed to join us. And the other interesting thing about it was that we had some people who started online, and then were able to join us in the room, and vice versa. So there was someone who tested positive for COVID, partway through who went from being in the room to online. So that changed, so we needed to have really good understanding of who our participants were. And each morning, we would sit down with our key kind of client liaison and find out who was going to be in the room and who was going to be online, and what languages they were comfortable speaking in so that we could think about how we might do breakout groups, I can see Helene is rubbing her eyes, even just at the memory of it.
HJ 06:58
It's funny, because on the one hand, I sort of I remember, you know, I loved the challenge of being kind of quite, you know, think on our feet and all the res…
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May 23, 2023
FS55 From Working for the European Commission to Independent Facilitator with Sue Bird
In this episode of Facilitation Stories Pilar is joined by Sue Bird, who is a European public affairs specialist and facilitator.
Sue ran a session on facilitating for government at the recent IAF conference. She talks about how pleased she was to be able to attend the IAF England and Wales conference in Birmingham recently, and how it was great to be able to meet fellow facilitators and understand how they're running their business, how they do facilitation. She talks about how she does both European Public Affairs consultancy work AND facilitation.
Sue reflects on a session she attended at IAF England and Wales about structuring your facilitation business. She set up her own business a year ago, following her 30 years work for the European Commission in a number of different policy areas, and in funding programme management. She wanted to set up a business that would play on these strengths and use the training she has received in the Art of Hosting and Participatory Leadership with the European Commission. She used this in her job to help in team building process, strategy development and other areas while employed with the Commission. She still helps them out in this way still as an “Active Senior”.
On the topic of how well embedded facilitation is into the European Commission, Sue mentions that the tools they use at the European Commission are well known tools, such as the World Café. She thinks that facilitation is about marrying passion and profession.
Sue talks about the very generous training offers in the European Commission and how she was attracted to facilitated meetings and realised that this was something she really wanted to get trained in. The Commission trained people to a good enough point to try them out as internal facilitators. Her facilitation work was in addition to her ordinary 40 hour week.
Sue describes the different types of work that she is able to offer now and how facilitation links into the public affairs she gets involved in.
Pilar asks how facilitation in government might be different to other sectors.
Sue explains that there are political processes that affect these different organisations and that being involved in politics is a very human experience. She talks about how uncertainty can arise and how there is often pressure on public officials. She also talks about when there are changes in the working environment and how reorganisation of services can happen every now and then. When change is in the air, there is quite a bit of uncertainty and, as in all large organisations, people’s opportunity to influence what they do is limited.
All of this will affect how people show up to facilitated sessions and how a facilitator needs to manage this.
Pilar asks whether when working with people in government, people might not be able to be as open.
Sue says that there would probably be a minimum amount of openness but that it will be up to the procurer of the service to set the scene. The facilitator will need to build up a trusting relationship with the client.
On the subject of working as a facilitator in an institution with people of different nationalities, Sue mentions the possible challenge of language. She will be soon facilitating a session in French, and although she is fluent, this will be harder work. International organizations tend to create a culture of their own, and there's a certain understanding that broadly facilitators need to accept that and work with it.
Sue shares a little about her role with the IAF Belgum chapter and their 24 members. They have two different types of meeting each month. The focus of one of them is on sharing tools that educate, while the other is called a “Facilitators Studio”, where people can experiment. One recent topic has been different decision-making tools.
To connect with Sue Bird on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-bird-037311129/
You can connect with Pilar Orti on Twitter https://twitter.com/PilarOrti
Listen to our podcasts:
https://www.facilitationstories.com/
And connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories
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Apr 11, 2023
FS54 Falling Back in Love with Appreciative Inquiry with Ann Nkune
In today’s episode Nikki talks to Ann Nkune about her rediscovery of Appreciative Inquiry.
Ann is a facilitator working with charities, social enterprises and the public sector helping people to increase their impact and be sustainable. Her work over the last 10 years has been parent friendly start up and career development programmes for women operate in the environmental and social impact sector.
Ann describes a Linked In post that she recently wrote about Appreciative Inquiry (AI) where she was able to connect with other AI enthusiasts to talk to about it, help her work through the complexities and challenges and think about what more she could do when facilitating. And how she had fallen back in love with it having not used it for a while.
Ann talks about the premise of AI and how most theories of change are about identifying a problem or risk. Whereas AI says that change is much more likely to happen when people understand where their strengths and the strengths of an organisation are, and can have a level of enthusiasm and optimism that change is possible. So AI increases the positive energy that comes from a group even when there are tricky things so they can see their way through the difficulties.
She describes some examples of AI and the process which starts with a topic and going through 4 stages; DISCOVEREY (proud/pivotal moments and skills and qualities), DREAM (allows people to step back and see the big picture and how she encourages people to be creative) - Ann shares an example of creating playdough toilets! DESIGN (what is the reality and what are the options) and DELIVERY (commitment to action and major projects that are required to get to the dream stage).
Ann tells Nikki how she had rediscovered AI in lockdown when doing goal setting online. She remembered how she first started to use it several decades ago and how she was initially quite cynical about it, but that AI gave the people she was working with a new perspective.
She shares her observations and different uses; for individual discussion e.g. mums of young children as a way of capturing their strengths, bringing together people in teams to build relationships in new ways. She describes how energising it is in a group and to be visionary even if they don’t think they are.
Nikki asks how her thinking about it has evolved....Ann says she has a recognition that where situations are complex and there is anxiety or conflict that there needs to be a pre-briefing, something that happens pre-process so that people have an opportunity to vent and get things off their chest, and process so they can decide what is crucial to bring in and what can be left out, and to understand what is going to happen in the process.
She also describes how she discovered Time to Think by Nancy Klein and the thinking environment and how this requires a particular type of listening and questioning. Operating the AI process using thinking environment principles really improves it. She also considers conflict and Non Violent Communication as a potentially something to use before AI. She is also a fan of mindfulness as a way of preparing for these conversations.
Nikki asks about the preparation and getting to know the context when using AI . Ann says she doesn’t do this as much as she used to when she felt she needed lots of facts. But now she needs to know that people are in the right frame of mind to do the process. She prepares well but doesn’t get too bogged down in the details.
Ann shares some examples of using AI – individual work with women who have taken the leap from prevaricating to putting something in place and taking practical steps (using AI and the Lean Canvas). In terms of organisations she has done quite a few team building sessions, building relationships between board members and staff, allowing them to work more effectively.
To connect with Ann Nkune on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-nkune-6a08b211/?originalSubdomain=uk or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bloomsburybeginnings/?hl=en and her webasite is: https://bloomsburybeginnings.org/
You can connect with Nikki Wilson on Twitter @NiksClicks
Listen to our podcasts:
https://www.facilitationstories.com/
And connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories
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Mar 14, 2023
FS53 A Co-facilitation story with Paul Kelly and Caroline Jessop
In this episode Pilar talks to Paul Kelly and Caroline Jessop about co-facilitation.
Caroline is a facilitator based just outside Winchester. She describes herself as a creative facilitator and enjoys the things that leave people upbeat and energised.
Paul is the founder of Pandek Group which is a Facilitation, Training and Coaching business based in the South West specialising in bridging the disconnect within organisations. He uses Lego Serious Play as one of his facilitation tools.
Paul and Caroline have recently worked together on an away day that focused on the disconnect within teams in a professional organisation. They had already had a conversation about wanting to do some work together when this piece of work came up.
Caroline describes herself as a born collaborator and how she and Paul have similar expertise but different styles. She felt this piece of work was quite serendipitous and had space in her diary to explore the “gritty” brief.
It was also a learning opportunity for them each to experience someone else working and their different techniques. Challenging, questioning, evaluating and rationalising, and reflecting on their own practise.
An example of this was in writing the plan and the level of detail, the order of the process.
Paul’s way of thinking about co-facilitation is that:
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You can get someone to support you and for example get materials ready. Or they can act as a backup if there is illness or emergency.
*
You can have co-facilitation when you are taking turns to deliver even though there may be one person leading on contracting, delivery and design.
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Joint facilitation – includes everything that is co-facilitation but the design is done together too.
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Collaboration facilitation - All of the above including the contracting and even sourcing the work in the first place.
You need to have an open and honest conversation about whose brand you are going under in the first place.
Paul and Caroline’s collaboration followed the following stages
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Meeting with the client to pitch together – this was quite organic, and they both asked questions to get a broader understanding of the brief than they might have done on their own.
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Putting together a headline plan – Caroline was keen to use a particular methodology that she included. This was followed by some tweaks and discussions with the client.
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Paul then took the lead on making it come to life and they used SessionLab to add structure to the plan.
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They were able to ask each other probing questions to check the plan.
Prior to this piece of work, they were both on the IAF England and Wales conference planning team together and Paul also worked as part of a team of facilitators when Caroline brought in several facilitators for a piece of work.
Caroline has co-created sessions with a number of people and says this broadens your perspective, and the diversity of experience teaches you things you didn’t know that you didn’t know.
Creating the outline for them was okay but the client needed more detail and several iterations of the plan. It helped that two people were listening and gave clarity and confidence in what they were proposing.
Caroline and Paul were on WhatsApp, behind the scenes during the meeting with their client and this created a good flow of conversation between them. Being listened to by multiple people by the client is always a good thing.
They did the budget conversation live online with the client and they were able to use Whatsapp to do this. They had had a previous conversation about budgets and knew the suggested rate in advance.
Throughout this project, Caroline and Paul learned that:
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You need a growth mindset if you are going to work in front of a peer and take the feedback. This is a good challenge to have.
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Balance of clarity over how you would do it and the benefit of doing it that way needs to be as ideal as it can be for the client and this can be tough to hear that someone else may do this differently.
Because of the complexity of the piece of work it was important for them to have had a chance to recharge and share what they did and to discuss when it got really tricky.
Here's some advice for someone who is going to co-facilitate or work with another facilitator for the first time:
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Do it – you are learning as you are doing.
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Listen with positivity – there are different ways of doing things it’s your opportunity to share as well as experience them.
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Jump in and try it.
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Be mindful of what the client is asking for.
Connect with Paul Kelly: Info@pandek.org - https://pandek.org/
Connect with Caroline Jessop: Caroline@clearmeetings.co.uk - https://clearmeetings.co.uk/
And you can connect with your host, Pilar Orti on Twitter. https://twitter.com/PilarOrti
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Feb 28, 2023
FS52 Learning to let go, Shoop and the IAF conference 2023
In today's episode, Helene talks to Catherine Wilks about her experience of running a session at last year's conference. They talk about The Shoopery, working on instinct and play, adapting the plan as you go along, the power of letting go and the plans for the April 2023 conference.
Catherine was introduced to the IAF and the idea that she may actually be a facilitator by Cat Duncan Rees (IAF England and Wales Treasurer).
She set up the Shoopery with Pip and Alfie. Having met at a Mental Health organisation and used mental health services themselves, they realised that there was the need for something to happen in between waiting for appointments. They developed lots of different ideas and workshops and realised they were good at helping people let go.
Enter “the Shoop”. Everybody’s Shoop can be different – which Catherine describes as positive, upbeat, out of your comfort zone experiences. When people experience their shoop, they say that at the point of letting go they are comfortable with being themselves.
People don’t just want to cope with life, but live. Through their sessions, Catherine and her colleagues help bring things out that may have been squashed for a while and this helps people know that they matter.
"If you know that you matter, that changes everything in life."
At last year’s conference, everybody ended up talking about lemons. Catherine explains what the lemons were about, the “toy of the conference”, and she talks about wanting to make surprising things happen.
Their session at the conference had 3 times more people attending than expected and so they ended up running it outside. The aim was to try out lots of different things and to get to the point when people start to bond and trust each other and learn to work as a group.
Throughout the session, they had conversations about what letting go feels like, what gets in the way and what helps. The aim was to do something that you didn’t think you would do through little Shoop nudges.
Catherine has learnt that actually she is a facilitator and that the conference is a really wonderful space to test things out. She felt everyone was really supportive and she now feels part of the community.
She has volunteered to help organise this year’s conference which is at a Quaker House in Birmingham this April 2023. Tickets are already selling and lots of people are talking about it – the forms are also out now for submitting their session ideas.
Catherine will be doing another session at this year’s conference about awakening instinct. She is excited about the conference themes around professional development and peer support and talks about how facilitation is such a diverse field that there are those who don’t call themselves facilitators, but are using facilitation in their work.
Find out more about Catherine at https://www.theshoopery.com/ and on Twitter
And connect with Helene via Twitter too.
Find out more about the IAFEW conference in April and get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/facilitate-2023-celebrating-and-sharing-the-diversity-of-facilitation-tickets-493851401837
And connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories or https://www.facilitationstories.com/
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Jan 17, 2023
FS51 Exploring play in climate conversations with Lucy Hawthorne
In this episode Nikki talks to Lucy Hawthorne who for the past year has been experimenting with bringing playfulness to conversations about climate.
Lucy is a facilitator by trade and an environmental campaigner by background and has been exploring the link between playfulness and climate action for around five years.
In the latter stages of her campaigning work, Lucy was at her most successful, including involvement in the ban on fracking in the UK, but was also at her most jaded. She was becoming adept at political maneuvering but not really shifting people’s hearts and minds, and began to think about how to engage people more deeply in this important subject. As she moved into facilitation she began to look for the antidote to the lack of deep engagement and realised that people were being scared into action, but crushed into apathy. Maybe plan was the antidote.
Lucy has spent a lot of time thinking about what play means and how it is both a set of tools and a mindset. The project hasn’t developed in quite the way Lucy expected but the end point is roughly where she was expecting.
Initially Lucy thought this might be like a research mission looking at different elements of play and climate, systematically interviewing people and writing up findings, and at the end of the year, she’d have a pseudo evidence-base on the benefits of play in climate action. But being playful and iterative about the process, Lucy has found other ways forward, asking the same questions but being less methodical about recording the evidence and dived quicker into action, prototyping and testing the concepts and principles out with people.
Lucy uses Lego a lot in this work as it has a low barrier for entry. It’s familiar for people and Lucy describes it as the “trojan horse”, getting people in as they think it’s fun and whacky but then having conversations that are fun but also serious and at times quite profound.
She is also interested in play more generally, and talks about techniques such as improv, drama and art as different mechanisms of playfulness. Lucy is particularly interested in how to get people involved in a conversation that they generally avoid, or avoid having as deeply as they could do. Lucy tries to use tools that make it easy to get started.
Nikki asks Lucy what prompted her to put the ideas into action. Lucy feels this isn’t really a choice: climate action is urgent and theory isn’t very useful, there’s a need to give things a go and iterate to see what works. It’s also about Lucy embodying in her practice as a facilitator, the things she’s talking to other people about. For Lucy, playfulness is about curiosity, experimentation and going with the flow which is counter to her experience as a campaigner. She’s pushed herself to give things a go, to run events and have conversttions with people that previously would have terrified her- and counting that as playfulness.
They move on to talk about how Lucy has used a prototyping approach. Her first event posed the question “How playful is the climate movement?”, and this helped set up different avenues of enquiry for Lucy, both on how people relate with climate change but also how they relate with play as adults. She’s found a network of people who’ve helped to “chew the process through”. She then started iterating workshops, online and in person, using Lego Serious Play for different audiences, and looking at different aspects such as emotions and blockers to action She’s also done in-house company events and lectures, talking about principles around play and how it might relate to climate action.
Nikki asks about the challenges and opportunities of using a physical medium such as Lego both on- and off-line. Lucy has found the kinds of conversations people have had have been different. Face to face conversations have generally catalysed a sense of connection, but because online is slightly more independent, people have noted a high level of quiet reflection. Lucy also notes that with the online work has allowed the reach of the work to be much wider, involving participants globally.
Lucy talks about some of the logistical challenges, using second hand lego as far as possible and finding ways to incentivise people to return it. It’s also a challenge to work on in 2023 as she’s keen to make this accessible to people whether or not they have Lego at home, wherever they are in the world. Lucy has enjoyed the online sessions but also feels there’s nothing like being in a room with a table full of toys.
It’s been a rich year of learning for Lucy, mainly that there is “just something about play” and the word “play” that is different to parallel words. Lucy’s convinced that if she changed the wording it wouldn’t be as effective. She’s found it seems to appeal more to women and this is something she wants to unpick further. She’s also found these freeing, playful techniques are most effective when talking about the difficult emotions associated with climate change, and “moments of stuckness”. From this learning she now understands her mission to be how to make it safe, light and fun to talk about climate change, so that people can engage more deeply, honestly and creatively with the subject.
Lucy and Nikki do a live demonstration of some mini Lego Serious Play exercises building on the metaphors that are the basis for Lego Serious Play.
Lucy is curious to continue exploring her role in how to support people to make faster progress and move into more radical action. Lucy is ready to launch Climate Play as an organisation in its own right and will now be diving deeply into this work, particularly helping businesses to solve climate blockers and how to partner with other people working to the same ends and help them increase the impact of their work. There will be a full series of events, more in-house workshops and exploring the broader principles of what it means to have a playful mindset.
Links:
To find out more about the Climate Play project: https://www.climateplay.org/
To attend future events:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/lucy-hawthorne-founderfacilitator-climate-play-29888274577
LinkedIn for Lucy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne
Nikki on Twitter: @NiksClicks
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Dec 13, 2022
FS50 Wrapping Up the Year Reflecting on Our Meetups
We wrap up the year talking to three hosts of our Meetups to find out what's been going on in their regions: what common themes have emerged throughout the year and their plans for 2023.
Join our Meetups in person, or online (you can join any region when you join online!).
https://www.meetup.com/iaf-facilitators-and-friends/
01.41mins Helene Jewell tells Pilar Orti what’s been going on in the South West facilitators meetups.
12.38mins Megan Evans, co-host of the Wales/Cardiff meetup with Tanya Nash tells Nikki Wilson about what they’ve been up to.
15.46mins Adrian Ashton tells us all about what him and other facilitators have been up to in the "We are Northern" meetup - it involves plenty of zoom selfies that you can follow through #IAFMeetup.
Connect with our guests on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-evans-consultant/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-nash-7576b837/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianashton/
And follow Facilitation Stories on Twitter @fac_stories
Nikki Wilson is @NiksClicks on Twitter
Pilar Orti is... @PilarOrti
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Nov 8, 2022
FS49 Two lenses on photography and facilitation
Today we have a treat for you: Nikki Wilson interviews two guests who use photography as part of their facilitation practice. Gianpietro Pucciariello and Chris Chinnock.
Our first guest is Gianpietro Pucciariello, who returns to the show after appearing in episode 15. Gianpietro’s working life in the UK is divided into two: he’s a start up founder and a sole trader that covers many roles. He supports mission-drive individuals and communities to building social environmental impact communities and ecosystems.
For this he uses creativity and innovation practices, coaching focus conversations and collective learning experiences.
His last project is called From Lens to Self, through where he connects learning from different areas in his life. He’s developed for others a 3hours outdoor walking self-development journey, using photography for self-exploration. Participants can use their cameras or phones to take photographs to visualise their problems, using metaphors to connec…
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Oct 17, 2022
BONUS Incorporating asynchronous communication into team facilitation
Happy Facilitation Week everyone!
We are releasing this bonus episode to celebrate all things facilitation.
In this episode, which we've borrowed from the 21st Century Work Life podcast, Pilar talks to Simon Wilson about how he incorporates asynchronous communication into his facilitation processes - and the challenges this brings.
You can see the full show notes over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/asynchronous-collaboration-facilitation
To get in touch with the team behind Facilitation Stories, head over to https://facilitationstories.com/
or you can follow the podcast through @Fac_Stories on Twitter.
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Oct 11, 2022
FS48 How to have a conversation with clients about whether a workshop should be in person or online - with John Monks
For this episode, Pilar is joined by John Monks to talk about how to have a conversation with a client about whether your event or workshop should be in person or online.
John is a facilitator, and partner of Curve. He coaches CEOs, and has digested his practice of many years into the book Closer Apart: How to Design and Facilitate Brilliant Workshops Online, which he's co-written with Lizzie Shupak. https://www.closerapartbook.com/
John’s always been passionate about helping people connect with each other in order to collaborate and solve problems, and this drives much of his work. Through facilitation and training facilitators, he looks for “where the edges are” and new ways of helping people to collaborate. Using technology is part of looking at new ways of working.
John started as a consultant - freelancing and in a large firm, where there were many opportunities to develop his skills in how to run meetings and help people collaborate. In parallel, he trained as an…
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Sep 13, 2022
FS47 Facilitators and the Sustainable Development Goals with Tanya Nash
In this episode Nikki talks to Tanya Nash. Tanya is the Founder of Future Clarity. She is a facilitator, coach, trainer and researcher and works with people in the sustainability field or organisations looking to make sustainability one of their core organising principles.
Tanya is also one of the hosts of the IAF Wales and Cardiff meetup. Her and Nikki reflect on a discussion that took place at one of these meetups, focusing on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The 17 SDGs form part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development - a commitment made by the United Nations in 2015 to Peace and Prosperity for People and Planet. Tanya highlights in particular the 16th - focusing on peace, justice and strong institutions - and the 17th - recognising that none of the goals can be achieved without working in partnership. They are a common set of goals that all countries which have committed to them can work towards and measure themselves against.
Tanya explains the significance of…
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Aug 9, 2022
FS46 From Event Organiser to Facilitator of Facilitators
In today’s episode, Pilar talks to Myriam Hadnes, facilitator and host of the Workshops Work podcast and founder of the Never Done Before festival.
Myriam first realised she was a facilitator after she read Priay Parker’s "The Art of Gathering". Her perception of facilitation has broadened since then: she now thinks more of having the mindset of a facilitator as she’s doing less and less pure facilitation, and more training and nurturing of facilitators.
Maybe it’s more a question of identity and how you do what you do eg in a conversation, being present, listening, making sure the other person is heard etc.
Myriam has created a home for facilitators. The Never Done Before festival grew out of a feeling that there was nothing new in the events that Myriam attended. In 2020, Myriam set up the festival, online, with the only “rule” that those leading sessions had to do something they hadn’t done before. She invited previous podcast guests to run sessions.
The festival w…
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Jul 19, 2022
FS45 What we've learned from running a hybrid conference
In this episode Nikki talks to Helene about the recent “Re-Facilitation Conference”. This was a hybrid conference with around half of the participants meeting in person and half Zooming in. The conference had three streams - one fully in person, one fully virtual and one designed to be hybrid, joined by people in the room and those joining virtually.
They start by talking about the evolving team including a core group of Hilary Topp, Camilla Gordon, Cat Duncan-Rees, Adrian Ashton, Paul Kelly and Paul Brand who helped with the tech, and some who helped at various points including Caroline Jessop, Nicola Morris, Gary Austin, Lee Button and Megan Evans.
They then talk about the planning process and the fact that a combination of uncertainty due to COVID and a curiosity about trying it out, led to a decision around the end of 2021 that this would be a hybrid conference. One of the first things they thought about was the theme “Refacilitation” . The conference then evolved from th…
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May 10, 2022
FS44 Understanding How Neurodiversity Affects Workshop Participants' Experience
In today’s episode Pilar talks to facilitator Paul Kelly. He’s going to be running two sessions at the IAFEW Re-Facilitation conference on 13th-14th May 2022 in Birmingham and online. His first session will be on “Collaborative Consensus”and the second will be a facilitated discussion around neurodiversity.
(A note to readers on the website: we have some gremlins playing around with our text here. Apologies while we sort it out, and oh the irony given the topic of this episode...)
Paul first talks about how he got into facilitation and then about his interest in Neurodiversity.
"Neurodivergent" is used to describe a variety of conditions and Paul emphasises that having conversations with people, allows sessions to be more inclusive.
Paul shares some of the ways that people might engage differently from the starting point is that we all have different ways to interact with the world.
When facilitating, sometimes simple things can make a difference. This can include…
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Apr 12, 2022
FS43 Facilitation in the Agricultural Sector
In this episode of Facilitation Stores, host Helene Jewell is joined by guest Lisa Morgans
Lisa is a vet, researcher and facilitator. She is Head of Livestock at Innovation for Agriculture – an independent knowledge exchange charity based in England that works to bridge the science-practice gap and support farmers as they transition to a more sustainable, resilient and productive farming system. Lisa has a PhD in participatory action research and before that worked as a veterinary surgeon in a mixed veterinary practice in Cornwall.
Lisa talks about the variety in her role, from project management to facilitating knowledge exchange activities and translating policy into information for farmers. Also, part of her role is training vets in facilitation skills as they are such good skills to have.
Over this episode Helene and Lisa discuss the methods used in Lisa’s workshops, which follow the principles of participatory action research and farmer led innovation. They discuss the simi…
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Mar 15, 2022
FS42 Designing the Space for Others to Learn in Conferences
In this episode Pilar welcomes two guests.
First she talks to Adrian Ashton. They start talking about Adrian’s relationship with facilitation and how over time he’s become more involved with the IAF and hosts the North of England meetup. He talks about some of the highlights of running the group. They’ve experimented a lot with location, themes, topics and guests. Adrian highlights the variety of people that join the meetups but that it’s always a safe and relaxed space to reflect together. Topics have ranged from dating to cows to spreadsheets to props.
Adrian sometimes gathers notes on the themes discussed and shares them on social media. This amplifies and captures the learning for themselves and facilitators of the future.
They go on to talk about Adrian’s awards. One with current pride of place is “non employee of the week” from a Facebook community “Being Freelance Friends”.
Next Pilar and Adrian talk about the IAF Conference taking place in Birmingham, UK o…
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Feb 15, 2022
FS41 Making Workshops Work with Penny Pullan
In this episode Pilar talks to Penny Pullan, Director of “Making Projects Work” and author of “Virtual Leadership: Practical Strategies for Success with Remote or Hybrid Work and Teams”, just out in its second edition, and in 2021, “Making Workshops Work: Creative Collaboration for Our Time”.
Penny explains that Making Workshops Work was originally contracted and due to be published in 2016 but then the pandemic hit and she focused on writing the book to help people, not necessarily certified professional facilitators, who needed to collaborate.
Penny talks about seeing her role as a catalyst for collaboration, making it easy for groups to do the best work they can do.
They move on to talking about when Penny first called herself a facilitator. Penny explains that it began when she was running a session for a group where a Senior person said in front of everyone, they were going to leave at lunchtime if the session didn’t improve. Penny opted to give the group a break…
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Jan 20, 2022
A note to say we're still around and haven't podfaded...
Just saying hello, we'll be back with a proper episode soon. Let us know you're listening!
We're @fac_stories on Twitter
Check out facilitationstories.com
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Nov 30, 2021
FS40 The Endorsed Facilitator programme and the Challenges of Inclusivity
In this episode, Pilar talks to Anish Hindocha, who has recently taken the IAF Endorsed Facilitator assessment process. They talk about Anish’s experience through the process and then move on to talk about the challenges of being truly inclusive.
(You can check out an earlier conversation they had, in episode 08 of Facilitation Stories. https://facilitationstories.com/fs08-what-happens-at-our-meetups-and-first-steps-in-facilitation )
Anish is a change consultant with a passion for culture transformation. He started using facilitation through his work as a business analyst, bringing teams together. He progressed to bringing different people together, with different opinions and helping them to solve problems together. At the same time, he created a Meetup for Spanish speakers wanting to practice English and viceversa, which also brought in another level of facilitation.
Anish started looking at the IAF's endorsed route when he became freelance. He realised that a lot of the…
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Nov 9, 2021
FS39 Growing as a Facilitator through the CPF Certification Process
In this episode, Pilar interviews Helene Jewell CPF about her experience of going through the CPF Certification Process as someone already experienced in facilitation.
Helene has been working for 7/8 years as a freelancer, with a background in international development and Speech and Language Therapy where she started doing training and working with groups.
Pilar asks Helene what she did to develop and continue learning before becoming certified.
Helene talks about the ICA UK training courses and other training courses she has been on, networking with other facilitators, IAF meet ups and conferences (Helene is the Chair of the IAF England and Wales board), structured learning and finding out from others and watching other facilitators.
Helene talks about a growing awareness of what CPF is, that initially cost put her off and that being around others who have done it have nudged her forwards. She was encouraged by Simon Wilson, and Trevor Durnford (who mentored her through the IAF m…
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Oct 12, 2021
FS38 David Bishop Introduces the New Ireland Chapter
Today’s host is Nikki Wilson, talking to guest David Bishop, bilingual trainer and facilitator, based in France.
David’s adventures in facilitation started about 10 years ago, when he was training managers on presentation and negotiation skills. His own practice took him towards being a meeting host, and a facilitator (though he wasn’t aware of that term at the time).
He’s been with IAF for 3 years, which he joined because he wanted to support the great work they were doing. Celeste Brito (who guested in episode 15 of this show) asked David to become part of the IAF Europe and Middle East.
David’s been running the Facilitation Insight series, which takes place the first Thursday every month, 1700 UK time, where facilitators share their experience on different aspects of facilitation and the business side of being a facilitator. An opportunity for facilitators to learn and share.
He’s also organising “The Business of Facilitation” for IAF members, set up after m…
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Sep 14, 2021
FS37 The Power of Facilitation - a panel discussion
In this episode, Pilar talks to three of the co-authors of the book The Power of Facilitation, which was released this summer of 2021. Our conversation today is a little bit different, as it's an edited recording of the meetup that took place on 7 July 2021, a panel discussion with the authors, with contributions from the other attendees.
The three panelists you'll hear from are Martin Gilbraith, who co-authored The Power of Partnership Between Facilitation and Communication with Michael Ambjorn , Héctor Villarreal Lozoya who wrote The Power Of Facilitation For Team Development and Chitra Chandrashekar, who contributed with an illustrated summary to some of the chapters. And if you want to download the book, you can find it over at the book's website https://facpower.org/
Asking questions were Mike, Susannah, David Bishop, Jane Mitchell and Penny Pullan, who has recently published a book herself: Making Workshops Work, Creative Collaboration for Our Time. I hope she'll be able to…
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Aug 10, 2021
FS36 From Scottish Retreats to Unleashing Potential through Liberating Structures
We have two guests joining our host Nikki Wilson in this episode: Steve Yorkstone, talking about IAF Scotland and Ewen Le Borgne, who talks about process literacy with Liberating Structures.
Steve Yorkstone, tells us about how he got involved with the IAF and how he's ended up running the IAF Scotland chapter.
Since he's taken the baton, Steve has set up a website for the chapter, where people can sign up to the mailing list and receive updates about what's going on.
https://www.iaf-scotland.org/
Steve and some of the other members of the chapter are coming up with many ideas about how to develop the chapter.Steve works in a university, facilitating as part of his job in process improvement, and so he's keen to hear from people who use facilitation in all sorts of ways.
A retreat in the Scottish Highlands (or a castle in Spain!) for people to take the time to focus on what facilitation is and how to learn from each other, is one of Steve's ideas. Meanwhile, he's hoping to brin…
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Jul 13, 2021
FS35 Facilitating Outdoors
In this episode Helene talks to Alex Williams Lead Trainer and Facilitator for nature-based learning at Muddy Feet.
All Alex and her team’s facilitation is outside, taking groups of all ages out to urban and rural wild spaces encouraging nature connection.
Helene asks why Alex chooses to work outdoors. This is largely as the focus of the work is
linking people to their environment. It started when Alex did Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in the Philippines . There all planning and group work was outdoors. She then returned to do environmental projects in Manchester. This involved taking communities out to look at, and engage with their environment and think about how they could improve it.
Helene recalls training before her own VSO, much of which was about using the natural environment, rather than using things that were inaccessible to people.
Alex still uses all natural resources such as sticks, leaves and pebbles, although this can depend on the e…
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Jun 8, 2021
FS34 Facilitation Worldwide with Vinay Kumar
In today’s episode, Pilar and Helene both join a conversation with Vinay Kumar. Vinay is Chair of IAF Global, based in Bangalore, India. He is a Certified Professional Facilitator, Coach, Organisational Development Consultant, Founder of C2C and host of podcast “Shiny Happy People”.
They start by discussing how in 2006 Vinay began calling himself a Facilitator and became interested in the IAF. They talk about what changed in his practice as a result of starting to call himself a Facilitator. He explains how he began to learn and design more for the human dynamics of facilitation, creating a safe environment and then using methods that enable equity for everyone to participate. He also believes he became a better observer.
They then explore the impact of hierarchy and what Vinay puts in place to allow everyone to be involved. Vinay talks about how he adapts the tools to the context, for example being very explicit that senior stakeholders speak last in brainstorming and reinforc…
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Jun 2, 2021
FS33 Changes to our Meetup Groups
This is a short, bonus episode to let you know about how we've changed the organisation of our Meetups over at Meetup.com. See below for more details.
Join us here: https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/
Next set of meetups: Tuesday, June 8, 2021
Midlands facilitators monthly online coffee meet-up
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/events/jswzjsyccjblb/ Wednesday, June 9, 2021
South West facilitators monthly coffee meetup
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/events/lcgzjsyccjbmb/
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
UK & Ireland facilitators virtual coffee meetup
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/events/sthkjsyccjbtb/ Friday, June 25, 2021
Ireland facilitators networking & learning meetup (from our friend group Ireland Facilitators and Friends) https://www.meetup.com/IAF-Ireland-facilitators-and-friends/events/278401212/
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We are glad to be able to share with you a change that will make finding and attending the va…
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May 11, 2021
FS32 Back to Facilitating Face to Face
In today’s episode, host Helene Jewell talks about returning back to face-to-face facilitation after a year spent moving facilitation online due to the pandemic.
Helene first talks to Camilla Gordon, freelance facilitator, trainer and consultant, and a winner of an IAF Facilitation Impact Award, about her experiences about face-to-face facilitation in the past year.
Camilla talks openly about her need to be with clients face to face, as she wasn’t built for an office job, or to be stuck behind her desk. She also talks about how ensuring people keep distanced in sessions goes against everything she believes in as a facilitator who is bringing people together.
During their conversation Camilla talks about the practical steps that she took to ensure that the space was covid-secure. That included having the right materials for each person, as well as ensuring that the workshop was delivered in the most appropriate space. She also talks about the need to design the process around peo…
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Apr 13, 2021
FS31 Clean Language & Metaphor
FS31 Clean Language and Metaphor
In today’s episode, host Nikki Wilson takes a deep dive into clean language and metaphor, and talks to three guests about their uses of them in their facilitation practice.
First Nikki talks to Judy Rees about how she discovered clean language and metaphor and how they feature in her work today.
Judy started exploring the use of metaphor as a child, when her father was studying its use in education. Following reading the book “Metaphors We Live By” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson as a teenager she then talks of her further exploration on metaphor and clean language during her career as a journalist.
Judy talks of her experience of using clean language as a key part of her engagement with freelance facilitation clients. Using a combination of clean language and metaphor allows her clients to express their needs for their requirements, which in turn allows Judy to understand whether she is the right person for them. She also talks about how sh…
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Mar 9, 2021
FS30 The IAF's CPF Certification Process and How It Has Been Adapted Online
In today's episode, Helene Jewell talks to Lindsay Sumner and Simon Wilson about the IAF's Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) assessment process and how it has moved online.
Lindsay Sumner (CPF M) is the IAF Director of Certification Operations. She shares with Helene her own certification process, which was a testing one! The process continues to test facilitators skills and processes. There is writing, interviewing and observation involved.
CPF is an in-depth peer review of their facilitation knowledge, experience, skills and practice. It's a multi-staged process which takes about three months. The IAF's philosophy is "test to pass", that is, that everyone is given a fair opportunity to show their skills.
Stage 1 involves reviewing the documentation. If there is not enough evidence yet, they won't be invited to Stage 2.
What about becoming a CPF Master?
Once you are a CPF, you can re-certify by writing about your practice over the last four years, to show that you are…
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Feb 9, 2021
FS29 Planning, Working and Leading Adventures Together
This episode features three initiatives from members of the IAF England and Wales Chapter.
First, Nikki speaks to Mike Clargo about “Leading by Adventure”, a series of weekly adventures of around 15 minutes each, to offer people a different perspective. They talk about where the idea came from, and how Mike was struck with the thought that we need something to support us to engage with change as a game, having fun, while building skills for the future.
Mike tells Nikki about some of the adventures so far, and what’s to come, revealing that having generated ideas from his network, he has two and a half years of weekly adventures ready to share!
Mike explains how to find out more and get involved, simply by signing up at leadingbyadventure.com to begin receiving a weekly inbox adventure and to see the adventures that have already taken place.
Next, Pilar reminds us about the range of meetups run by the IAF England and Wales Chapter, all currently online and open to Facilitator…
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Jan 12, 2021
FS28 Exploring Metaphorum with Judy Rees
FS28 Exploring Metaphorum with Judy Rees – Show Notes
Today’s episode starts with an overview of upcoming IAF meetups from Pilar, with a specific invitation to join a Networking and Learning Meetup at 9.30am GMT on 20th January, hosted by Helene Jewell and Sue Windley following up on a session Helene ran in International Facilitation Week on making online events accessible.
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-South-West-England-facilitators-and-friends/events/fpkdvrycccbrb/
We then move on to a conversation between Nikki Wilson and Judy Rees, reflecting on the fifth “Metaphorum”, a 13 hour virtual event focused on Clean Language and Metaphor which took place on 4th December.
Judy has been running Metaphorum as it’s “benevolent dictator” annually, and she first explains to Nikki how the idea came about and moved from an idea into action. Judy reflects that her initial interest came from learning about “Open Space” and deciding to experiment with taking this online, with…
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Dec 15, 2020
FS27 Facilitation for Online Celebrations
Helene Jewell hosts this episode about the skill of online facilitation and the importance of Facilitation to make your celebrations go with (or without) a pop!
We also have two voices from our virtual coffee meet-ups: Gordon Mullan and Jane Mitchell share their thoughts about online facilitation following the IAF conference in October. And Helene introduces the new England and Wales IAF Board, and thanks the outgoing Chair and Treasurer!
Two Twitter handles for the coffee inserts: @gordonmullan and @janemitchcomms
Helene’s first guest for this episode is Claire Mays.
Claire has a background in facilitating health promotion and is has recently re-engaged with “the facilitator in her” during lockdown – lots of opportunity that wouldn’t have had if not for the pandemic!
Since April – Claire has been part of an online facilitated programme that has engaged over 200 people as part of the Barts NHS Acute Trust shielding online programme.
Barts Shielding Community was start…
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Nov 17, 2020
FS26 We Review the IAFEW Annual Conference - Online
In this episode Pilar talks to the rest of the podcast team (Vic Hopkins based on the Cambridge Suffolk border, Nikki Wilson in Danbury in Essex, Helene Jewell in Bristol and Cat based in the North West) as they celebrate and reflect on the IAF England and Wales on line facilitation conference. We also hear from Penny Walker, Chris Massey, Jamie Colston and Fiona McBride – it’s a great episode!
The team start off with a big cheer for Susannah Raffe who lead the conference organising team. Then Helene talks a bit about the behind the scenes organising and how it all worked including using Basecamp for the team to communicate when planning, having a point person each day and using the Meetup platform to schedule the sessions.
Cat commented on the variety in the week but also that she could identify a thread about what it means to be a facilitator going through the whole week. Vic noted that it felt like a “living breathing programme” as influences were taken from one session to…
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Oct 18, 2020
FS25 Our Conference Has Gone Online and We're Being More Pirate!
In today's episode, Helene Jewell talks to TWO guests!
First to Susannah Raffe and then to Cat Duncan-Rees and the episode focuses on the IAFEW Conference 19 - 23 October 2020.
These show notes include a transcript, below usual summary.
On Twitter, we are @fac_stories and @HeleneJewell https://curatorsofchange.com/
You can register now: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/annual-conference-2020-the-power-and-practice-of-facilitation-registration-97307526431
There are concessions available for IAF members, and those in need of support.
Susannah Raffe
Susannah is a facilitator, compassion advocate and climate communicator, and co-host of London Meetups. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter:
https://twitter.com/SusannahRaffe
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susannahraffe/
https://susannahraffe.com/
hello@susannahraffe.com
And bravely heading the planning of the conference, which of course this year is online.
Susannah focuses on helping people have better conversations about c…
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Sep 15, 2020
FS24 The Future of Facilitation Survey with Paolo Martinez
In this episode Pilar is joined from Italy by Paolo Martinez, an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator, Leader of the IAF Italy Chapter and Partner at “Futour” who empower people and organisations to design a just, sustainable and joyful future through the power of facilitation.
They start by talking about how the Italian Chapter adapted to the early stages of COVID by organising a virtual Open Space every Saturday afternoon using Qiqochat. This “COVID free” meetup ran for 2 months usually with 4 facilitators supporting each week.
The main focus of the conversation is a survey Paolo shared in June on the IAF Slack channel, which gained 116 responses from facilitators across the globe.
(To join the IAF conversation on Slack, follow the link https://join.slack.com/t/iaffacilitatorfriends/shared_invite/enQtODY4NDM0NDM4ODY4LTA0N2FlNWU4M2Y4NWZmZjM4OWRhZmM2N2Y2ZThmNmZjMjI4MzY2OWQ3ZjRiYzllZTYzNzY0MDllZTRiZGUxNzk )
The survey was undertaken in collaboration with Mika Aaltonen i…
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Aug 17, 2020
FS23 Facilitating Meetings for Introverts
In this episode Helene talks to Jon Baker about introverts.
They start off by discussing Jon’s passion for scuba diving!
Jon talks about his work with leaders in organisations, who want to get more from their team, and about his survey where he discovered that about 1/3 of people say that they are not fully productive in business and that most of these are introverts. He describes the different ways that he works with people in businesses to help introverts.
Helene asks Jon about statistics for introverts and extroverts and about what distinguishes people who identify as introverts.
Jon talks about “people energy” and some of the neuroscience behind it which may mean that introverts get more exhausted by people energy than extroverts. He also talks about how introverts process internally and extroverts externally. From these two main features people often think things about introverts, for example that introverts are quiet.
Helene asks what kinds of things facilitators need…
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Jul 20, 2020
FS22 Voices from the Meetups
Today's episode is a short one, but with plenty of voices, from the June Virtual Coffee Meetup.
You can find out more about these meetups here:
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/events/tjqzrrybckbcc/
We are going to move to a monthly schedule, we'd love to continue releasing episodes every two weeks, but we can't cope! So, if you want to help us, get in touch. podcast@iaf-englandwales.org
This episode contains some reflections and even some tips from: Bímpe Odú
Bimpe's channel: The Bee-Hive
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzvn_YxPVJg4z3poBTC_v3
John Ogier https://twitter.com/johnogier
Martin Gilbraith https://twitter.com/martingilbraith
Clare Pearce https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairealisonpearce/
Jonathan Bannister https://twitter.com/jlbLDN
and your host for today, https://twitter.com/PilarOrti
Find out more about us:
https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales
Twitter: @IAFEnglandWales; use #iafpodcast
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Jul 6, 2020
FS21 How the Faciliation Profession is Changing with Trevor Durnford
In today's episode, Helene talks to Trevor Durnford Co-Founder at Facil Profundo, Certified professional facilitator and until January of this year Chair of the International Association of Facilitators. He is based in Uruguay.
But before that, don't forget to check out the online meetup Facilitate the Future we Want on 17 July 2020, organised by two of the voices from last week's episode, Cat and John. Join here: https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/events/271496819/
Trevor talks about the biggest changes he's seen since 1993, when he first started facilitating: asking teams on the shop floor to contribute to continuous improvement conversations. Trevor tends to work more in Leadership and Culture now.
Over the last few months, Trevor has been investing in kit to be able to deliver high quality virtual sessions, even though he was already used to the medium. It's great not to get as much on a plane, even if you like traveling!
Him and colleagues have found them…
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Jun 22, 2020
FS20 Various Voices: Climate Hub, Creating Space to Reflect, Working with Interpreters and Async Facilitation
In this episode we bring you a variety of different voices from different facilitators on a range of different topics.
The Evening Learning and Networking meet up on 24th June which is all about “Selling you and your work” https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/events/268955074/ this link will also take you to some of the other meet ups going on too.
The first of the voices in this episode is Susannah Raffe who tells us about the first IAF England and Wales Hub (the Climate Hub), followed Rachel Phillips, who attended the Hub launch meetup and talks about how much she enjoyed meeting other facilitators and how helpful this was. This Hub is about sharing knowledge, stories and insights into facilitator’s roles in tackling the climate crisis. The launch of the hub recently included neutrality vs advocacy and consider the role of the planet as the client.
There is an IAF Slack and one of the channels is #iaf-ew-climate-crisis
https://join.slack.com/t/iaffacilitato…
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Jun 8, 2020
FS19 From Facilitating through Theatre to the Online Space
Helene interviews Pilar Orti from Virtual not Distant, creator and co-host of this IAF E&W podcast, Facilitator and trainer specialising in online collaborative processes, podcaster, author and voiceover artist (she is the voice of Xuli on the Go Jetters).
Pilar starts by recounting her facilitation journey which started with the theatre company that she ran for 10 years. She went to a conference where Toby Wiltshire (from the Trestle mask company) was talking about using theatre in corporate training. This eventually led her to do her first away day using theatre exercises as a facilitation tool.
She eventually moved away from this, finding it hard to describe what she did and getting people to take the “drama” seriously and understand what it was really about.
She describes how she started to look more into organisational behaviour theory and find out how she could run workshops on leadership and change. She started to work on-line as she was travelling a lot, initially runnin…
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May 25, 2020
FS18 Working in Different Languages
Sharing stories about working with different languages in the room.
Helene Jewell, podcast co-host and freelance facilitator based in Bristol, Martin Gilbraith (CPF facilitator and trainer and consultant based in London – who also took part in Episode 7 on facilitation values), Simon Wilson has been running facilitation company for 20 years CPF working internationally and in the UK, based in the Peak District.
The podcast starts with some examples of working with people who speak different languages.
Simon shares a story about working with a UN agency 5 years ago doing a mix of facilitation and training over 20 sessions. Virtual sessions using Webex platform in English, French and Spanish and Simon co-facilitated all of these. He talks about his different levels of competence in these languages and the different dynamics and energy. He used Google Translate to help him and when he was speaking in English which was often not the native language for many participants he had to keep…
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May 11, 2020
FS17 How Facilitators are Adapting to the Virtual Environment
In this episode Helene Jewell interviews Nicola Morris who together with Penny Walker conducted a survey to find out what facilitators feel they need at the moment, during the times of Covid 19.
Participants of the IAF virtual coffee meet up in April 2020 reflect on what they got from the session, what is going on for them at the moment, facilitation with family members, the difficulty of building in the experiential element in virtual facilitation and “deep participation”. Also facilitation of community groups, the steep learning curves and feeling okay about not knowing how to do it all. The facilitators talking were:
* Penny Walker, London
* Koren Stark, Dublin
* John Varney, Yorkshire
* Orla Cronin, Manchester
* Paul O'Raw, Dublin
* and finally, from Susannah Raffe, London
Nicola Morris then talks to Helene about her journey into facilitation and how she has always used facilitation in some shape or form. Her current career was catalysed by early redundancy and i…
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Apr 27, 2020
FS16 Training Internal Facilitators with Pinar Akkaya
In today’s episode, Pilar talks to Pinar Akkaya about how she supports organisations by training their internal facilitators.
Pilar met Pinar for the first time at an IAF conference a couple of years ago and has since done some work with her.
The next IAF conference is on 16th and 17th October – get in touch if you are interested in offering a session. At present this is still going ahead but is being closely monitored in relation to Covid-19.
Pinar first talks about her facilitation journey. She started off assisting her professor when she was a student in his strategy workshops and then worked alongside him after she graduated.
She then went on to work in Human Resources and continued facilitating before starting out working for herself.
She now works as an international trainer, teaches at the European School of Economics in London and works as a facilitator. She mainly works with big multinationals across Europe.
She is also a part of the APM (Association of Progress of…
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Apr 13, 2020
FS15 Being Mentored as a Facilitator
In today's episode, Helene talks to Celeste Brito and Camilla Gordon about their experiences of being mentees as part of the IAF Global Mentorship Programme.
You can find out more about it here: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/global-mentorship-program
In the introduction, Pilar mentions the next IAF Learning Online Meetup - you can register here: https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/events/268954892/
You can find the links to all the IAF England Wales Meetup Groups here: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales
To start with, we hear from Gianpietro Pucciariello
https://makesense.org/en/
www.appymaps.com
Twitter @gpinuk
09.45mins Helene talks to Celeste Brito about her experience of being mentored by Penny Walker.
Twitter: @britoc01
21.55mins Helene talks to Camilla Gordon about who might benefit most from being mentored
You can hear more from Camilla in episode 11, and follow her on Twitter @camillagordon
Hosts' Twitter handles: @HeleneJewell…
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Mar 30, 2020
FS14 What Does it Mean to be Nimble in Facilitation? With Rebecca Sutherns
In this episode, Helene Jewell talks to Rebecca Sutherns, author of Nimble: A Coaching Guide for Responsive Facilitation about how she became a facilitator, and what she's learned through her practice about remaining nimble and responsive during sessions, when things don't go as expected. (Hint: it involves plenty of preparation!)
To find out more about the IAF England and Wales chapter (the group behind this podcast) check out https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales
Get in touch via podcast@iaf-englandwales.org and follow us on Twitter @Fac_Stories
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Mar 22, 2020
FS13 Voices from our Virtual Meetup
These are challenging times for facilitators - in this bonus episode, we hear insights from Jonathan Bannister, Paolo Martinez, Koren Stark, Claudia, and Grant Cockerell.
If you need the links to the meetup pages, head over to https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales - remember that these meetups are great ways of learning informally from each other, through conversation.
And if you're looking for more structured learning events, there are quite a few out there now, for example Martin Gilbraith and Judy Rees are running a workshop on Tues 24th March on Promoting Inclusion in Online Facilitation https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/promoting-inclusion-in-online-facilitation-tickets-94598146603
1 April, IAF Global is organising a webinar, on
"COVID 19 is impacting your business? How about Digital Facilitation as an alternative"
and Paul Nunesda is putting that together
https://www.iaf-world.org/site/events/covid-19-impacting-your-business-how-about-digital-facilitation-al…
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Mar 16, 2020
FS12 IAF Voices and Facilitating Hybrid Meetups
In this episode, we hear from three people who attended one of our last virtual meetups, and one of our co-hosts, Pilar Orti, talks to Judy Rees about their recent experiment organising a "hybrid" meetup.
Find out when the next virtual meetups are happening:
https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales
We also have some listener feedback from Anuschka who wanted to know how to join the IAF Slack.
https://join.slack.com/t/iaffacilitatorfriends/shared_invite/enQtODY4NDM0NDM4ODY4LTA0N2FlNWU4M2Y4NWZmZjM4OWRhZmM2N2Y2ZThmNmZjMjI4MzY2OWQ3ZjRiYzllZTYzNzY0MDllZTRiZGUxNzk
If you have something to say about a recent IAF meetup, or anything else we say on this podcast, do emails us over at podcast@iaf-englandwales.org
Pilar reads the message from the IAF Chair and Board, regarding the COVID-19 situation.
A reminder that, in uncertain times like the current ones, you can connect with other fellow facilitators, through this podcast, Slack and our virtual meetups.
Conversation with…
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Mar 2, 2020
FS11 Getting started, Self-care and Fulfillment in Facilitation with Camilla Gordon
Camilla Gordon is a freelance facilitator trainer and consultant specialising in working with marginalised groups and communities.
She talks to Helene about how she got into facilitation, how she “fell into it” and the links between theatre and facilitation.
She talks about the type of facilitation she does and how she takes a create and playful approach to her work. She works a lot with young people that have voices that are not being heard enough and how she us able to use her facilitation skills to make sure people are listening. Camilla also does a lot of strategy work to help organisations take a bottom up approach.
She talks about the differences and similarities working with adults and young people and how the approaches are the same but the delivery is slightly different. She uses Lego serious play quite a lot, but also how she likes to take what works from different methodologies and mix them with more creative approaches.
Camilla has been working with the Refugee Yout…
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Feb 15, 2020
FS10 Thoughts and Reflections from Meetups and What's Coming Up
Step into this episode brought to you by IAF England and Wales, with co-hosts Helene Jewell and Pilar Orti, plus three other voices, in both text and audio.
Helene and Pilar celebrate the podcast's tenth episode, and how it's bringing "facilitators and friends" together in the asynchronous audio space, beyond the meetups, and linking the meetups. All meetups are listed here:
https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales
Alison Knight sent us some thoughts about the last meetup she attended in Bristol. Find out more about the IAF South West England meetups, and look out for the next learning meetup in Bath on 14 May.
Alison mentions this book by Anna Sheather's 'Coaching Beyond Words - Using Art to Deepen and Enrich our Conversations'
At the latest Bristol meetup, Helene and others discussed does it matter what we call ourselves: coach, facilitator... is it linked to our identity, our marketing?
Listeners: what's the difference between group coaching and group facilita…
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Feb 3, 2020
FS09 First Year as Freelance Facilitator with Hilary Topp
In this episode, Helene talks to Hilary Topp about one of her favourite facilitation methods, why (and how) she got into facilitation and her involvement with Citizens Assemblies.
Hilary Topp is a facilitator and coach and host of the IAF meet ups in Midlands and the East of England and IAF England and Wales board member.
She tells us how she first got into facilitation and that although she hasn’t yet done a whole year as a freelancer how much she is enjoying it.
She uses a variety of facilitation methodologies but in particular likes using ORID from the ICA Technologies of Participation approach, and tells us a bit about how she puts in into practise.
Although she enjoys all kinds of facilitation her favourite pieces of work are strategy reviews and she talks us through some of the ways that she does these.
Hilary tells us a bit about citizens assemblies and a related participatory democracy process (a People’s Panel) she was involved in last year, and a bit about the role o…
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Jan 20, 2020
FS08 Voices and Stories from our Facilitation Meetups
If you haven't yet done so, please take a few minutes now to complete our survey - to help to make IAF England & Wales and our facilitation meetups more valuable to you and to others in the coming year:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T9MSZZJ
In this episode, we hear from our IAF England & Wales Meetup organisers, and attendees! Plus, an impromptu conversation with a new-ish IAF England & Wales member.
You can find links to all of our meetups here: We hear from a multitude of voices: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales
First, we hear from Anish Hindocha, sharing what he got from the first meetup he attended.
We hear from Nicola Morris, Martin Gilbraith and Adrian Ashton, and messages from Amanda Stott and Joyce Matthews, about the meetups they host and why they host them.
We hear from attendees to the meetups. Rose Beauchamp tells us what happened at the last Bristol meetup, and we hear from participants at our last online coffee meetup.
We end with a 12 min…
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Jan 6, 2020
FS07 The Importance of Values in Facilitation
Martin Gilbraith is a facilitato, trainer and consultant, and Chair of the IAF England and Wales board. He started hosting IAF meet ups about 5 years ago and has been facilitating since 1986.
He is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF), an ICA Certified ToP Facilitator (CTF) and experienced lead trainer and licensed provider of ‘ICA’s ‘ToP’ facilitation training and a Certified Scrum Master (CSM).
Martin talks about the importance of values – both personal and IAF values which talk about the collective wisdom of the group.
He says that what you believe has an enormous impact on the group.
Martin talks about defining values and how the IAF values resonate with him and his involvement with developing the ICA UK values.
Values are what is important to people and what drives them, and are important to be able to define what is meaningful and important to them.
He told us about taking decisions not to do work that conflicted with his values, mostly around contracti…
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Dec 16, 2019
FS06 Learning from Your Network and the Unexpected with Gary Austin and friends
In this episode, Pilar talks to Gary Austin about what learning opportunities he's found during his 30 years as a facilitator.
But before that, we have a roundup of what's happening at the different Meetups from:
Susannah Raffe, @SusannahRaffe
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-South-West-England-facilitators-and-friends/events/266488389/
Peter Nelson
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-North-of-England-facilitators-and-friends/events/266488388/
Hilary Topp, @HTFacilitation
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-Midlands-East-of-England-facilitators-friends/events/266488390/
Megan Evans @megan_evans1
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-Wales-facilitators-and-friends/events/266488391/
Also check out what some of our other friends are doing:
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-Ireland-facilitators-and-friends/events/266488392/
https://www.meetup.com/IAF-Scotland-facilitators-and-friends/events/266488393/
Check out Gianpietro's sketch @gpinuk, so that link will also be in the show notes,
Gianpietro https://twitter.com…
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Dec 2, 2019
FS05 Discovering the Joys of Facilitation with Megan Evans
Megan Evans is a consultant, facilitator and trainer and host of the IAF meet ups in Wales.
Megan describes how she first got into facilitation quite a few years ago, experiencing it as a participant and then being “roped in”.
She was inspired by being asked what she and other people thought, and not just being told. Fascinated by the skills and style and started to get more and more involved in doing it herself.
She worked for Participation Cymru – the aim of which was to spread participative and facilitative techniques across Wales throughout different organisations.
Megan uses a lot of facilitative methods to ensure everyone’s voices can be heard.
She talks about it being stressful “in a good way” and what she loves about facilitation, particularly when the group is engaged and don’t notice the facilitator anymore.
She describes the best learning as coming from others and how important it is to watch others facilitate. She also goes on training, reads books and d…
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Nov 18, 2019
FS4 Lee Button and His Journey as a Certified Professional Facilitator
Lee Button is a freelance facilitator and Senior Partner at WeAreBPG.
Lee tells us how he first came across facilitation, when he was part of a session run by someone who was leading a group process, enabling those present to create the content, and how that led to Lee taking his first steps in developing himself as a facilitator.
Having some "stamp of approval" was important for Lee, so he describes how he went about his training, starting with The Patterson Centre in Chicago.
On his return to the UK, Lee thought, "There must be others doing this here..." and he found the IAF.
It's the joy of seeing others come alive to their own knowledge and solutions, even though he doesn't understand the context and content of what they're discussing, that drove Lee to pursue a career in facilitation.
Lee explains how he sees where he sees the value of accreditation and how he sought the group where he could be part of the conversation and learn from his peers - guess what, his journey d…
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Nov 4, 2019
FS3 What We Learned at the IAF Mega Meetup in Birmingham
Helene Jewell and Pilar Orti discuss The IAF conference (18th/19th October 2019 in Birmingham)
2 days and an evening which included: Human map, Client Panel Interviewing, Parallel Sessions, Open Space (inspired), Dine Around
We hear from James at Session Lab @notjamessmart talking about the sessions he attended.
Some of Helene’s and Pilar’s highlights:
The panel interview – 3 clients from 3 different organisations, interviewed by Gary Austin with additional questions from the audience. It was great to hear from the panel and question them live. Lots of different aspects were discussed including not underselling the whole package of facilitation and the benefits of the pre and post work.
The panel discussion was useful in terms of helping everyone to understand how to explain to clients who “don’t get it”. They were advocates for the profession. They also talked about co-creation by using an external and internal facilitator together.
The human map – organised by Hi…
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Oct 21, 2019
FS02 Facilitation and Sustainability with Penny Walker
Get in touch! We’re @IAFEnglandWales or @Fac_stories on Twitter.
Helene Jewell talks to Penny Walker Facilitator, Coach, Consultant and trainer in change for sustainable development. She's the author of two books and has contributed to a whole variety of other publications.
Connect with Penny on Twitter @penny_walker_sd or through her website https://www.penny-walker.co.uk/
Penny tells Helene about how she started working as a facilitator, through her work with Friends of the Earth, the environmental pressure group, as a campaigner and then moved across to managing the team of people who provide support to local Friends of the Earth support groups across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. These were mostly volunteers and many of them came from a community development background. It was them that first introduced her to facilitation – meetings that were pleasant and got somewhere.
Penny became interested in the grey areas between people and organisations that were taking very…
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Oct 7, 2019
FS1 Introducing Facilitation Stories and IAF England Wales Meetups
Get in touch! We’re @IAFEnglandWales on Twitter. In this first episode, we introduce the show and the IAF’s England and Wales Chapter.
We also let you know you how you can get involved, because one of the aims of the show is also to help the community come together beyond the MeetUps, and for those of you who can't attend the Meetups, to find out what's going on in them!
We talk about what do we mean by facilitation?
It’s a lot of different things to different people but is essentially helping groups of people to have more effective and productive conversations. Better and more inclusive conversations guided by a facilitator.
The applications of facilitation beyond "facilitating a meeting".
Facilitating a meeting can make you think of sitting around a board room table, but it is so much more. Facilitation could be team away days, strategy sessions, creative thinking sessions, ideas generation, problem solving, stakeholder engagement for example.
Facilitation is such a broa…
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