FS61 Authentic Facilitation with Christine Bell Facilitation Stories

In this episode Helene talks to Christine Bell about a session they co-facilitated for Facilitation Week.
They share some of the group’s thoughts on what authentic facilitation is as well as some of their own emerging questions on how to balance being authentic but remaining in control and whether authenticity can be learned or taught.
They also reflect on their first experience of planning and facilitating together and how liberating it was to deliver a session with no required outputs and without using some of the “usual” facilitation tools.
A full transcript is below.
Links:
Contact Christine by email: christinebell@centreforfacilitation.com
Find Helene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/
Listen to our podcasts: https://www.facilitationstories.com/  
Connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories 
Email: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org




Nikki Wilson (NW)
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. In today's episode, Helene Jewell speaks to Christine Bell. 
 
Helene Jewell (HJ)
So in today's podcast, I am going to be chatting to Christine Bell, Director of Centre for facilitation. Welcome, Christine. 
 
Christine Bell (CB)
Hi, Helene, nice to be with you again. 
 
HJ
And it wasn't actually that long ago that I saw Christine, because we did a session together for Facilitation Week all about Authentic Facilitation. And that's what we're going to be talking about in today's podcast. But before I lead into asking Christine, lots of questions about that and doing a bit of reflecting, I just want to ask Christine to tell us a little bit about her facilitation practice. So what kind of work do you do, Christine. 
 
CB
I mainly work with researchers and innovators and looking at different ways of doing things, different approaches, trying to get them to collaborate with each other and kind of break down some of the barriers and get to know each other so that they can start to find out interesting connections between different bits of research and then mash it together to come up with something new and interesting, that breaks through some of the challenges that we're facing, environmentally, socially, etc. 
 
HJ
Right. Okay. And we have never actually worked together, but I think it's fair to say we know each other through the IAF, or through the larger facilitation community. Yeah, yeah, we've probably, we've probably met quite a few times on the different online forums. And then at the conference, I think the Conference this year was first time we actually met in person. And then and then we met in Bristol, because I was working in Bristol. 
 
HJ
So yeah, so our paths have crossed a few times and then feed somehow, you have this great idea about doing a session in Facilitation Week, and you thought “Ah yes I’ll ask Helene” 
 
Well, first of all, let's start with Facilitation Week, what is Facilitation Week?
 
CB
 Facilitation Week is a week of different activities designed for the facilitation community so that we can learn and develop from each other and explore different aspects of facilitation. And, and I was very conscious that my time is really quite limited, like, you know, with my time because of all the elderly care issues that are going on for me. So I give very little back to the community. So it felt like it would be quite a small thing for me to do and quite manageable to just offer to run a short session within Facilitation Week. So that was, that was the starting point. And then I learned because I also did that for the facilitation in person event in May. And I learned then because I got involved with another facilitator to run a session there, , actually, if you're going to do it, why not use it as a learning opportunity for myself to actually work with a peer that I don't usually work with, and just learn from that p