Facilitation Stories

IAF England Wales
Facilitation Stories

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.

  1. 21 JAN

    FS74 Representation and Lego with Camilla Gordon

    In this episode Nikki talks to Camilla Gordon, a  process facilitator , about representation in Lego and her new “Figiverse” project. They talk about  How Camilla uses Lego Serious Play in facilitation The lack of representation within Lego  ‘I had people of colour seeing these more representative Lego pieces and had really emotional reactions to it, because people have never seen themselves in these pieces’ ‘It has become so normalised that particular identities don't get represented in different spaces’ Improving representation and access to more diverse Lego pieces ‘recognizing that these forms of representation shouldn't be separated from the more traditional Lego pieces, but actually should be a core part of those packs’ Camilla’s new “Figiverse” project including how it started and future plans A full transcript is below.   Links: Today’s guest: www.Camillagordon.co.uk www.Figiverse.co.uk To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter: Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team: Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript N.W  Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales Chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name's Nikki Wilson, and today I'm going to be speaking to Camilla Gordon. So welcome, Camilla. To get us started would you like to tell us a little bit more about you and what you do.    C.G Sure. So I am a freelance facilitator, and I'm a process facilitator. So focused on getting groups from A to B, I am what I would call sector agnostic. So work across a range of different sectors with lots of different clients and groups from unaccompanied children, refugees and asylum seekers all the way through to corporate boards, and part of my approach in doing that work is trying to facilitate processes that are more inclusive, kind of recognizing power dynamics and hierarchies and rooms. I'm really clear that I'm not a D&I facilitator. For me, that's just the core part of how I work, rather than it being a kind of defined piece. And so, yeah, I do lots of kinds of work, lots of different places, lots of different processes.   N.W  Great. And so the focus of today's conversation is Lego. So how and why do you use Lego in your work?    C.G So I'm a Lego Serious Play facilitator, or what I usually like to say, I'm trained in Lego Serious Play. I say that because I use elements of Lego Serious Play in my work. But I'm not wedded to it in a strict way, in relationship to the process and how it works. I like to take bits and pieces of different methods and tools to make it work for the group, and so use Lego in a range of different ways within the different processes that I run from using Lego Serious Play in its most formal sense, but also using Lego as a tool to explore different parts of conversations and in different ways.   N.W  And so while you like to use some Lego, I believe you noticed there was something that you didn't like about it. So could you tell us a little bit more about that?   C.G  Yeah, definitely. I started using Lego Serious Play about seven years ago, and one of the first things I noticed was the lack of representation within Lego. I saw lots of yellow faces, I saw lots of yellow hands, but I didn't see any representation of black and brown heads and hands. I didn't see any representation of disabled people. I didn't see representation in many ways, in the Lego that I was using.    Following on from that, I spent a lot of time looking for some of those pieces, looking for ways to bring representation into my kit, because the groups that I work with were because the groups that I work with are from a huge range of different backgrounds with a huge range of different identities. And on that journey, I realised part of the reason I didn't have that in my kit to begin with was because very little of it existed in the world. I ended up on Lego resale websites, talking to Lego dealers, and while there were a few representations of black and brown heads, a lot of them were double printed with happy and angry on either side. And I was very aware of the stereotypes and tropes that come along with racial stereotypes, and I didn't want to feature that in my kit. And in the end, I had to get them custom printed, so I bought a whole load of heads with the formal colour being reddish brown or medium Nougat, which is the term the colour definition from LEGO. I had to get them custom printed.    And obviously, recognizing representation isn't just about racial representation. I also spent a lot of time looking for other identities that could be represented. And looked at things like wheelchairs. They were also very hard to source and had only been released in one kit. And they were five pounds each for the ones that I could source and they were very hard to find. Looking for other forms of representation, things such as hijabs, different elements of different religions, different elements of different identities, they were virtually impossible to find. And so it became a bit of a mission for me to try and find more pieces like that. And I came across a statistic. These numbers are not the actual numbers but it was something along the lines of 8 to 10 times the number of yellow and white heads represented to the number of black and brown heads represented. So there was a huge disparity in relation to those pieces.    Part of the reason doing this was so important to me was there is a perception that yellow is a neutral colour and that yellow represents everyone. When I get asked this question, I usually respond by asking, there is an American cartoon, The Simpsons, and they are all yellow. What ethnicity would you say the Simpsons were? Usually I get a very clear answer back, if I don't, then I ask which of the characters in The Simpsons aren't yellow? And then we find characters like the shopkeeper Apu. And then it becomes even more clear that actually that isn't a neutral colour. And time after time after time in my workshops, I had people of colour seeing these more representative Lego pieces and at times, I've had, you know, really emotional reaction to it, because people have never seen themselves in these pieces. I've had young people in wheelchairs who have never seen themselves in these pieces, and I regularly hear things along the lines of, it's me, I've never seen this before, through to young people who have taken away models of themselves and keep them on their on their shelf, because they want to keep that in sight for them, because they have never seen it. And part of the reaction when I talk to people is less about seeing themselves, but the realization that they have never seen themselves because it has become so normalised that particular identities don't get represented in different spaces.    N.W  Okay and so, I mean, obviously you were already taking some action within your own kit, but then you've now decided to actually take this forward and do something wider and bigger. How did you decide to do that and to do something more with the work that you'd already done?    C.G Well, this has been something that's been set on my mind for two years, but I was really keen that other people should have access to these sort of pieces, from the perspective of particularly Lego Serious Play facilitators, to broaden the representation within their kits. But beyond that, I use Lego mini figure pieces at the start of almost all my workshops, whether or not I'm using Lego Serious Play in order for people to be able to build representations of themselves. What has come out of that is the number of people requesting those pieces and asking where I got them from, because they want access to them. And so over a period of time, it became really clear that people did want these pieces. And so I decided that it was important for these pieces to be on offer, not just for Lego Serious Play facilitators, but for facilitators in general, and if and when individuals want them, for families, for people who are not facilitators, and for youth groups who work with a range of identities in their spaces. And it was hearing from individuals again and again that they wanted access to these pieces that was this sort of catalyst for me moving forward with this and trying to make it happen.   N.W And so how did you decide how you'd approach taking it wider, as it were? I mean, so you said that before you get custom printed figures in the designs that you want, how did you decide to kind of approach taking it wider?   C.G Well, something that has changed over the last few years is Lego has improved the range of pieces that they offer. While they don't always feature in their kits, you can order them directly.    N.W Right.   C.G And so in me being able to access more pieces, it meant there was an opportunity to pull a range of pieces together to make, to make a product, to make something that would be beneficial to groups of people recognizing that these forms of representation shouldn't be separated from the more traditional Lego pieces, but actually should be a core part of those packs. As I say, I don't think we should be adding things on, they should just be the norm. Yeah, and so that was part of how I went about it. I did a lot of research around what pieces were available, and a number of pieces are actually no longer available. I had a number, I have a number of heads, black heads that feature Vitiligo. I can no longer find those on the Lego website. I also came across a piece with a cochlear

    22 min
  2. 19/11/2024

    FS73 Reflections on being Chair of IAF England and Wales with Jane Clift

    In this episode Helene talks to Jane Clift about her role as the Chair of IAF England and Wales. They talk about: How Jane got involved with the IAF and the facilitation community “the game changer for me was coming to my first IAF conference,I had never met so many people interested in facilitation” How Jane became the Chair of IAF England and Wales Highlights and challenges since becoming the Chair  The importance of the IAF and community events “I think there's been a recognition in our chapter, in our community, we can all learn from each other.”  And future plans for both the IAF England and Wales chapter and Jane A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-clift/ Email: chair@iaf-englandwales.org  To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter: Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team: Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/  Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript H.J 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 Helen Jewell, and today I'm going to be talking to Jane Clift, consultant, coach and facilitator and Chair of IAF England and Wales. Welcome Jane.   J.C Thank you very much, Helen. I'm very happy to be here.   H.J So I've got lots of questions for you, mostly about your role as chair, but before we do that, it'd be really nice to hear a little bit more about you as a facilitator and the type of work that you do.   J.C Very good opening question there. So I have facilitated in quite a wide range of contexts, and I think I was doing it before I knew it was called facilitation. So I'm currently have my own business, but I've also worked a great deal for organisations, originally in sort of technology and consulting roles. So I think I was setting up and running workshops well before I knew that there was a term called facilitator, or that facilitation was a thing. So I would say that my practice started very, very organically, very organically. It's   H.J It's funny, if I listen back to all the different podcasts we've done, we've done, I would say that that kind of thing is a real thread through all of them that people have kind of come into facilitation accidentally, organically, or discovered that it is called facilitation after they began doing it in the first place.    J.C Exactly, yeah, something that I've also, I've always really loved stationery and stationery shops, like I really, really enjoy going into rymans and places like that. So obviously, when you're working as a facilitator, you have got the best reason in the world to be stocking up on colourful stationery craft materials. So there's something about that aspect of it that I don't know,  just I've always really, really liked that idea of bringing, like, colourful stationery or objects into the workplace and having a reason to use them. And that reason is facilitation.    H.J I love it. That's a great reason. I am also a self confessed stationery nerd, so I totally, I'm totally on board with that. Is there a particular type of facilitation that you enjoy doing, or that you feel is your kind of forte? J.C So I've done a lot of facilitation around agreeing, like a strategy or a road map, or like, identifying things that are getting in the way. So one of the areas that I've actually facilitated on quite a lot is risk management, which is really an important topic if you're doing large scale programs or projects, which I've done quite a lot of in my career. So I actually really like that as a topic, whether you do that in person or online. I have done quite a lot of those workshops where you end up with a room covered in pieces of paper, covered in sticky, you know, in post its and so forth. But during lockdown, like many people, I became very adept at online facilitation, and that's probably the space that I've worked in the most over the last few years, and I, I really, really like that, and I'm amazed that it works, because you're connecting up people that can be all over the world, and you're just in this virtual space, and yet you can, you can make magic happen if you can facilitate it well, and I find that an incredible and unexpected gift that came out of lockdown. Having said that, there is nothing like the energy of being in a room with people. I also absolutely love that I had the great pleasure of being facilitated myself recently, large scale workshop, 30 of us in a room, all talking about something, and it was just so much fun. So I'm not sure I've really got a niche. I'm quite a versatile person, but I tend to be better with topics that are a little bit more creative or future oriented, or that are kind of attached to something that's happening right now. Hence the interesting risk.    H.J Ah, interesting, okay, and it's, yeah, also good hearing about that adaptability, which I think also flows through a lot of facilitators, practice or facilitation, and yeah, that whole movement online. I think it is amazing sometimes, as you say, to think how people can be connected online, but somehow, well, it's not somehow the magic happens. It's because we're brilliant facilitators.   J.C It is because we're brilliant facilitators and we can create a safe and a fun space. It's, it is incredible, and it's also something that you almost don't realise that you have a gift for until you get that feedback. Oh, that was great workshop. Oh, we made, you know, we made progress, or I felt I could speak up. During the lockdown, I volunteered as a facilitator for action for happiness, and I ran a monthly session, and each month we get to, oh, I've got to do that session again. Oh, like an hour and a half, and I go into it, and I had a co facilitator, and we'd be part way through the session, and the magic would start to happen. And you could feel, because lockdown was a very tough time for many people, and you could feel the magic of facilitation happen. You could feel people relax, open up, and at the end of the session, we'd always do this check in, and everybody without exception, every single one of those sessions we ran, people said, Oh, I feel better. All my energy levels have lifted, or I feel relaxed. And I just thought, wow.   H.J Yeah. And you get that real kind of lovely feeling in your body where you think, oh, yeah, this, this is, this is good. This is why I do this. Okay. And so you talk about, you know, your work, and then sort of almost discovering, I guess, that you are a facilitator, or that that's the thing that you can call what you do. When did you get more involved in the kind of the facilitation community and the IAF in particular. J.C So like many people who facilitate, I had been doing quite a lot of facilitation, without much formal training or orientation and without any awareness there was a facilitation community. So what kind of got me into the IAF was I, I'd been doing some team, like away day workshop, and I had, this is classic me, by the way, I kind of reinvented the wheel, not realising that there were lots of methods out there and and like ways of doing things. And after I did this workshop and probably kind of gave it far too much effort, I thought I actually need to get learn some technique here. I've got the interest, I've got the motivation, I've got the aptitude. I haven't got enough technique. So I went and did some training with ICA UK. I did, I think that their group facilitation skills course. And I think the trainer was Martin Gilbraith, who, at the time, I think, was very much a leading light in the IAF. And I joined the IAF, and then I kind of washed in and out of it a little bit. And when I started to get more involved was at one of the London meetups. That's, I think, when I started to become more actively involved. Realised it was a community. Realised that you could come gather, meet other people who facilitate and talk about facilitation. Wow, amazing, it's a thing.   H.J A big network of geeks where we get to talk about all of these tools and techniques and stuff and stationery, probably. And so you discovered, I guess then this community, what kind of drew you in more, what kept you going to, you know, maybe the London meetups or ?    J.C I really like, I like being part of communities. So even though I have my own business, I do like to collaborate with other people. I do like to be connected to other people. It's quite important for me. So there's quite a lot of community attached to coaching, which is another area I'm involved with. And I think once I identified there was community attached to facilitation, I was just interested in finding out more. And the meetups were definitely really good for that. And then the game changer for me was coming to my first IAF conference. I don't think I'd ever met, I had never met so many people interested in facilitation, all in one space. And also the diversity of practice was really, really, it was really inspirational for me. I had been toying with some more creative practices, not necessarily having the confidence to implement them. And at that conference, I saw people that were just going, you know, all in on their more creative facilitation practices. And I was like, wow. So I think it was that very first conference which really said, thought, these are my people, these are my tribes. We're all different from each other, and yet we've got this thing in common. And so it was the creative thing, a kind of curiosity about people, and I think another common thread was this desire to,

    36 min
  3. 15/10/2024

    FS 72 Working as an Internal Facilitator with Cath Brooks from the Environment Agency

    In this episode Helene talks to Cath about her role as Senior Engagement Advisor and internal facilitator with the Environment Agency (EA) Cath tells Helene a bit about the EA and the type of work they do. She explains how her role as Engagement Advisor includes facilitation and also how she works an an independent internal facilitator for other projects withing the EA. Cath gives some examples of what she really enjoys about her role as a faciliator including working with the public on a climate adaptation project and working alongside external independent facilitators that the EA also use. She explains that external faciliatators are often used when more complex conversations need to be had, or where there has been a breakdown of trust and someone independent is needed. She shares some insights as to how the internal facilitators network of aroudn 200 facilitators was set up and how she balances her work as Senior Engagement Advisor and facilitator.  She tells Helene about a role play technique that really made a difference and about how asking good questions are crucial to her work as a faciliator. Cath also talks about how she keeps her faciliation skills up including attending the IAF England and Wales conferences, and local IAF meetups and EA facilitator learning days. She also shares some advice for other internal facilitators.  A full transcript is below. Today's Guest Environment Agency - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) facilitationnetworkmailbox@environment-agency.gov.uk   To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter   Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/   And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org   IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team  Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/  Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helen Jewell, and my guest today is Cath Brooks, senior engagement advisor with the Environment Agency. Welcome, Cath    C.B Hi, yeah. Hi. How are you doing? Alright?   H.J I'm good. How are you?    C.B Yeah, good. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I'm Looking forward to it.   H.J It's really good to have you on the podcast. Okay, so I have a whole load of questions to ask you, starting with the Environment Agency. I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about what the Environment Agency does and what your role is?   C.B Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I hope that it'll inspire people. I've worked at the Environment Agency for almost 20 years, and I still absolutely love it. It's a great organisation. So we're a public sector organisation, and we aim, quite simply, to protect and improve the environment. We employ about 12,000 people, and some people work nationally across England, and then some people work in area offices. We've got 14 different area offices across England, so you either work on national issues or you work on local issues in one of our area offices. And I guess to create places for people and wildlife, we work on quite a lot of topics that people are deeply concerned about, and finding ways forward can be difficult on some of the issues, people have strong opinions about the environment and how we should be managing the environment quite rightly. So Facilitation skills are really important in that context, with some of the really difficult issues that we're managing. So some of those topics are things like managing major industry, making sure they're not polluting the environment, and waste, dealing with contaminated land, making sure water quality of our rivers and we've got enough water so water resources as well, working on fisheries, conservation and ecology, and my area that I work on is management of flood risk. So those sorts of issues are really interesting, and people have strong opinions about how we should be managing those issues. So there can be quite a lot of conflict, I guess, which is why facilitation is so important.   H.J And so then, obviously that's quite a broad even under the umbrella of the environment, that's quite a broad range of different areas, and in your particular area then, in your role as senior engagement advisor, what does that actually involve? Sort of before, obviously, I guess facilitation is part of that, but I know you also do it sort of separately as well. What does your main role? What does your main role involve?   C.B Yeah, so we've got engagement advisors. Obviously, the organisation's quite technical organisation, quite science and engineering led, but we also have engagement and communications experts within the Environment Agency, and I'm one of those. So I work alongside quite technical teams, and at the moment I'm working, I've worked in lots of different parts of the organisation, but at the moment I'm working in flood risk management, supporting our teams. I work nationally, and so supporting our national teams with big projects where there's, they're difficult topics, where people have strong opinions. And my job, my main job, is engagement planning. So we're whatever the project is thinking about what are our engagement aims? Why do we want to work with our stakeholders? Why do they want to work with us, making sure we're not just thinking from the perspective of the Environment Agency, my job is to help our staff to think about the impact it's going to have on on a range of stakeholders, and plan the best methods that we can for that particular project to work out, how can we get the best from our stakeholders? How can they get the best of us? How can we find solutions that work for all of us, not just for the Environment Agency?    So we try to avoid taking what we've called in the past the ‘decide, announce, defend approach’. My job is to help staff to be more, to sort of take a more ‘engage, deliberate, decide’, so to help have quality conversations about these difficult issues, really listen to our stakeholders, designing the right methods, really to help create that space for those quality conversations about what can be really difficult issues. And that's my job, is designing those sorts of engagement methods, if you like, and then facilitation sits really nicely alongside that.    H.J And so when you do that facilitation, I as far as I understand, you're part of an internal facilitators network. How, how did that kind of come about? When was that set up?    C.B Yeah, that's right. So when I joined the Environment Agency, back in 1996 we didn't have many people who worked in engagement roles or facilitation network. So we started really by setting up the engagement roles and setting up training for staff around comms and engagement and how to do that engagement planning like I've just talked about. And very quickly we realised actually there's another set of skills that that we need to develop as well, which is facilitation. So when you are designing methods that involve dialog, you know having facilitation skills, having skills to be able to design those interactive sessions in a way that you're making the most of that time when you've got your stakeholders in the room is really important. And it's quite a different skill, actually, than just engagement planning, being able to design a face to face or an online session where you've got people in the room making the very best of that time. So we're all really busy. Our staff are busy, our stakeholders are busy. So making the most of those opportunities, that's why we developed the facilitation skills courses.    So first of all, we started off by getting some expert engagement professionals in to help us design facilitation courses that were for in-house facilitators. And then very quickly, and within about 18 months, we realised that people were going on the training, really enjoying the training, but then struggling to apply the training in their day jobs, because, you know, you could go a couple of months and not use it. And we very quickly realised that if you're going to facilitate, and you have to do it quickly, you have to do it very often, and you need, you need to support each other. So we set the network up to give people safe space to be able to facilitate internally. So to develop people's skills and create opportunities to be able to facilitate not in your day job. So that's why the network was set up, was to, so people could put forward a facilitation request and get someone who wasn't their day job, they went and practised their skill outside their day job, which, which means you can facilitate in a more pure way which was, which has been fantastic. It's, it's worked really well.   H.J And I want to ask a little bit more about that, actually. But before I do, I just wanted to pick up on the differences between engagement and facilitation, and where you see the differences being?   C.B yeah, I do think they're quite different skills. So I think being able to do good engagement planning across a project, you think we've got big projects that might go on for years, and they're quite technical. You need to understand the, you know, the technical context of that bit of work, what the business objectives are, what the engagement objectives are, what best methods we can apply, you know, to help people to engage with us, and for that to have an impact on on the decision making, that's quite different. You could do that, and then you can realise in that process, there's usually going to have to be some kind of series of face to face events. But the person doing that engagement planning might not necessarily have this skill to be able to run that face to face con

    35 min
  4. 17/09/2024

    FS71 Chapter Chat with Jan Lelie IAF Netherlands

    This episode is one of our quarterly “Chapter Chats” where Helene and Nikki talk to a member of the leadership team from another IAF Chapter.  Today’s guest is Jan Lelie, founder of IAF Netherlands.  Outside their IAF role Jan is a facilitator with a background in experimental physics. Key topics from the conversation include:  How Facilitation and the role of Facilitators has changed over time What Jan has learned and continues to learn from other facilitators “you have to practice what you preach. When I go to an IAF conference, I will do a workshop of myself and I also work with other facilitators to see and to learn from each other” How the IAF Netherlands Chapter was established “ we wanted to have a certification process, and at that time, it was only in English… ”                we were the first organization which offered certification in their mother tongue.” Topics and themes of past IAF Netherlands conferences The IAF Netherlands Initiative: ‘diverging conversations through facilitation’ “We wanted to know, where did you make the difference? What was the turning point?”            “a suggestion of one of our facilitators that we should have a kind of year book” Ways the IAF Netherlands brings people together  A full transcript is below. Links Today’s Chapter https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/netherlands   Today’s guest:  Contact Jan by email IAF-netherlands@kpnmail.nl   To find out more about the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to facilitation stories, the community podcast brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. I'm Helene Jewell.   N.W And I'm Nikki Wilson.   H.J And this episode is one of our quarterly chapter chats, where we talk to people leading other chapters in the IAF global community. We ask them about how they see the status of facilitation where they are, and the history, priorities, current projects and aspirations for their chapter. Today, we will be talking to Jan Lelie, facilitator and founder of IAF Netherlands.    N.W So welcome Jan. So to start off with, could you tell us a little more about yourself and the work that you do Jan?   J.L Yes, of course. Well, I facilitate, and I said, I've always facilitated. I worked for six weeks as a consultant in 1984 and then decided that it was not for me, and that any situation requires all the participants to be in the same room, in the same place, and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. And find out actually what the problem is about. So I studied physics, experimental physics, and there I learned that the definition of the problem is part of the problem. So in most of the situations, people have a, how shall I say, the rudimentary idea of their problem, and then they start to implement a solution. And when the solution doesn't work, the solution actually becomes a problem. So you're asked to get a solution implemented which is not the solution to a problem, so it will never work. And I started out in IT, information technology and communications, and there, often IT is not a problem, it's a solution that doesn't work.   H.J  And so you have been part of the IAF for nearly 30 years, I think. How have you seen the practice of facilitation and the role of facilitators change in that time?    J.L Well, first of all, I think that everybody facilitates. It's like everybody communicates. So facilitation, in my experience, is about making connections. It's how you connect with people, how your relationship works, and from there, and everybody connects with each other, only like with communication, nobody has been trained into effective communication and in effective facilitation. So most people work from an expert position, like a consultant or a trainer or even a moderator, and facilitation, in my opinion, is a different paradigm, a different way of dealing with relationships, and the only way to progress is to to learn from each other in working as a facilitator and facilitating. So that was one of the reasons I went to an IAF conference in London in the end of the 1990s which was organized by the IAF, and because we had a computerized brainstorming solution, we wanted to show and also I already had organized a group of what we call moderators, a network of moderators. And then I learned that what I was doing was called facilitation.    H.J It's interesting. I think a lot of people have said that, that they, they didn't necessarily call it facilitation, or call themselves facilitators. They sort of discovered by accident that there was a name for it.    J.L I studied biophysics, and I used to call it catalysation. And the catalysation is what most of all biological systems rely on, catalysation. And catalysation, strangely enough, means breaking the connection. So facilitation means making, to make. And Li is a very ancient word which we can recognize in the word line. And line of Li is connection. So catalysation is breaking the connection. And in my way of facilitation, I'm always being aware of how to end the relationship, how to stop the relationship. I always facilitate with the end in mind, and that's what the catalyst does. The catalyst takes one molecule and another molecule, and tries to connect them, and then steps out of it and unchanged.    N.W And how learned over that time, and if you, if you kind of recognize that that original conference, that what you were doing was, was facilitation, what kind of other things have you picked up through being engaged with other facilitators over that time?   J.L What I do is practice makes perfect. So you have to practice what you preach. When I go to an IAF conference, I will do a workshop of myself and I also work with other facilitators to see and to learn from each other. Nowadays, at the conference we took about a quarter of an hour after a session, during IAF conference, to reflect on the session itself. What went well? What did you do? What can you do differently? And I think that is basically how I work. So it's still, I'm still doing training and courses, and then also what we learn together. I always say I cannot teach you anything. I can only facilitate your learning. And that's how I approach facilitation. Also, I try to be a facilitator’s facilitator. This might sound strange, but I will say the universe is my teacher. So the universe is very kind, and they offer you lessons. And the problem is that you, as I said, you cannot see the lesson until it appears, and then it's always in the resistance. So when you feel resistance against something, it's probably something you need to learn. And that is also what makes facilitation for most people very, I shall say, difficult or awkward, is that you have to deal with the resistance of a group or the situation, and let it be, not try to solve anything, but just like to see how it works out. If you see what I mean. Like I said, the universe doesn't have an agenda. So sometimes the lesson comes too early. Then you learn something, and you think, okay, thank you. And then sometimes the lesson comes too late. So then after two or three years, you realize, okay, this session, I happen to speak to a colleague facilitator yesterday, and she has problem in managing her team. And she said, it's difficult. And then I asked, What kind of difficulty? Is it difficulty? And then we remember suddenly a session we did, like 4, 5 years ago, what was a very simple technique by a Korean facilitator who I've invited of making bracelets of your, of what you find difficulty, and then put them on your arms and on your legs, or wherever you feel the difficulties, and then sit with them for some times, and then have a conversation with others who are also sitting with their difficulties and dealing with that. And that's where I work. You know, you get this, this method or this tool, and then you think, okay, just the opportunity will arise.    N.W Oh, excellent. I love that idea of sort of collecting things that you might use in the future, but not necessarily knowing where they will, where the need for them will emerge. I think that's probably something that a lot of us do, but not always consciously. So that, I love that example. It's great.   H.J I just want to think a bit or ask a bit more about that, the whole sort of community element, I suppose. And thinking about IAF and the IAF Netherlands and ask a little bit more about that. So you're current and past chair of IAF Netherlands, but prior to that, you were IAF Benelux. Can you tell us a little bit about how the chapter was established?    J.L Yes, in the, well in 1990s I met John and Maureen Jenkins. And Maureen had been, or was, was becoming Chair of IAF world, and they happened to work in the Netherlands, and they organized a conference in Amersfoort here in the Netherlands, and I joined the conference together with some colleagues. And during the conference, we decided that we should have a Dutch network of facilitators, and we started to create a foundation called IAF Benelux. And it was in a time when IAF didn't have any chapters, it was just IAF world, and you became part of what, in my opinion, was an American organization, and then we, well, we founded this, this, this network, and we organized events. I think the most important thing is what we did is local events,and a yearly conference and also I went to the to European conferences. But the main

    34 min
  5. 20/08/2024

    FS70 Journaling, Writing and Facilitation with Claire Pearce

    In this episode Nikki talks to Claire Pearce about Journaling and Writing. Claire is a writer and facilitator who runs journaling and writing workshops and she also has her own radio show. They talk about: Why Journaling is a powerful too that facilitators could use themselves;         “Externalising the internal is probably my favourite expression to describe it” Claire's journey with journaling and how it has changed for her; How to start journaling and writing regularly;             “I think just start really small is my main bit of advice” How Journaling can be applied in facilitation work with groups;       “ It's kind of like whatever people share they're ultimately sharing something about being        human” The writing activities that Claire uses in facilitation; Facilitation tools and frameworks such as the GROW model. A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest:   http://ClairePearce.uk To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter: Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team: Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript N.W Hello, and welcome to facilitation stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson and today I'm going to be talking to Claire Pearce. So welcome, Claire.   C.P Hello, Nikki, thank you for having me.   N.W No problem. So first of all, um, could you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do?   C.P Okay, so I do lots of things, which I've, I've begun to reconcile myself with. So in terms of journaling, and writing, I run journaling and writing workshops. One workshop I do is more about just writing for fun. And I call it writing for fun, even though it's sort of morphed out of journaling, I'm using prompts and things to get people just to write freely and have a bit of fun with it, and see where their pen goes, which is great for if people are sort of blocked or just want to have a bit of fun writing, heaven forbid. And then the other leg is more sort of self help, I suppose. So I do a monthly workshops that has a theme, like in January, I always do my, what's your theme workshop? So what's your theme for the year? So we reflect back and we look forward and sort of develop a theme or get to something near a theme. So it's that kind of thing. So there's the two different kinds. But yes, they are all with the idea of getting people writing because fundamentally, whether you write,  journal or something in between, it's all good for you. At least it is for most people.    N.W And beyond that, obviously, I know you also as a facilitator. So is there anything else that you want to say about your facilitation?    C.P I guess, yeah, I do freelance research work. I really enjoy it. I love sort of learning about something completely new, kind of going, Oh, wow, this is interesting. And yeah, so I do that as well. And I do do an odd bit of coaching. And I do have my own radio show. But that is obviously a voluntary,not obviously. But it is a voluntary thing that I do, because I love it. What else Oh, and I write, I've written a few books, I'm writing a few more. And I'm just getting into copywriting. It's going to be another string to my bow, because I've realised I really enjoy it. So yes, lots of things, I'll probably be something else the next time I speak to you.   N.W I know that's that feeling Claire, don't worry. But today, we are going to be talking about journaling and writing.Both are something that facilitators might do on a personal level, also as an approach that we could use with groups. So thinking first of all about on an individual level, what is it that you feel makes journaling and writing so powerful?   C.P Externalising the internal is probably my favourite expression to describe it. And that's exactly what it does. And you know, I'm trying to find a way to capture that thing. You know, when people say a problem shared is a problem halved or whatever , there's something so true about that. And whilst it's not as powerful as speaking to a person, because that is the ultimate, you know, if you're struggling with something, or even if you just want to offload doing it with another person, there is something about the energy, I think, that passes out of you to somebody else that's different than if you write it down. But writing it down is the next best thing. And you can do it 24/7, because you've always got a pen and a piece of paper to hand. So you're not having to rely on it, I suppose it is a bit about self reliance, probably a part of my own personal journey with it. But yeah, just getting stuff out so that you can see it in a different way, you get a different perspective. And yeah, it just makes you feel better. And you can, you know, see things that you wouldn't have thought if you had just kept it in your head, you know, it stops the spin cycle. It helps you get a bit of respite, if you know if something is whizzing around in your head like that tumble dryer type effect. It gives you a bit of respite from that. And like I say, you look at it, and you get some different perspective. And just the energy of writing it, getting it out of you releases something, I think.   N.W Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. Listeners won't know but I'm a regular in your workshops, and really kind of learned the power of journaling over the past year and a half, two years. I think there's also something about the kinds of patterns spotting where I've probably identified things that come up again and again and again. And I have no idea that they were quite so regularly going to be coming up, you know, like, I knew that they'd been niggling away for a while. But when I look back, I think, oh, you know, how is that theme or things related to it continue to resurface, then there's a chance to kind of dig deeper into that.   C.P And also, depending on how you use journaling, and like you say, if you're the sort of person who will look back and reflect over a period of time, there's so much you can learn. You know, you can see you're likely to see themes and recurring patterns and recurring dynamics and start to see, oh, there's a one common thing here and that's me. So it's not saying everything's my fault, but it's starting to see that there's something about the way I'm reacting or creating something, you know, that is relevant. And yeah, but there's, there's so many benefits, we could spend probably hours talking about all the benefits.   N.W And so I mean, what's been your own journey with journaling? Have you always journaled or is it something that you've particularly found that has evolved over recent years?   C.P It's definitely evolved. I probably started journaling properly about, I'm gonna say 10 years ago, without overthinking it too much. But I was in therapy at the time. And my therapist recommended, it was called something like freeform writing for therapeutic something another at the Gestalt centre. I think she still runs it, actually. And I thought, Oh, she's just trying to get a course out of me. I was quite cynical, honestly, because I just thought, oh, writing is not my thing. Because my sister was always the writer and I was more sort of arty, whereas we've swapped which is really interesting over the years. So I went to this writing thing, thinking a bit, feeling a little bit. And I absolutely loved it. And I use some of what I experienced in that workshop as my inspiration for the way I run workshops, because there's a lot of pair work, and it's all about just getting stuff down and sharing it because we're all the same underneath. We've all got the same neuroses and anxieties, and, you know, hopes and dreams, you know, we're not as different as we think we are. And when you share with people, which is what I do in my workshops with the journaling, it's amazing how people connect, and it's almost like I can, I can see the relief sometimes with people where they're like, oh, it's not just me, you know, whatever it is. Sorry, back to my journey. So yeah, I did that a weekend and I just loved it. I made everybody I knew do writing with me, free writing, I suppose, essentially where you just let go into the pen and just keep going. And then I started the workshops. But yeah, so on a personal level, it was just that weekend, the stuff you know, and I always talk about stuff with a little asterisk, which is just all the pent up, unprocessed, unfelt, unacknowledged feelings, emotional responses, you know, all this stuff in me that had nowhere to go, I didn't even know it didn't have anywhere to go. But I realised during that weekend of writing, it's like oh wow there's stuff that needs to come out here. It was really dark. And there was a lot of swearing, and but it was all, you know, you could kind of just go for it. And I really got into it after that. So I'd say that was you know, I had a diary when I was a kid. But it was so dull. I kept one page of it just to remind me how dull it was. I had tea, I went to bed, went to school. It was so dull, I didn't get it. So yeah, and like you say, evolve it, you know, it has really evolved my journaling. And funnily enough, recently, I was reflecting, I haven't journaled anywhere near as much in the last year or so, but I've written a lot more. And I've sort of realised that my journaling has more evolved into writing. So I get the same, I think I get the same thing out of writing that I did out of journaling, it has definitely changed over time. Yeah.   N.W And so

    30 min
  6. 16/07/2024

    FS69 Social Presencing Theater with Rosie Cripps

    FS69 Social Presencing Theater with Rosie Cripps   In this episode Nikki talks to Rosie Cripps, a facilitator and evaluator who helps build social movements and evaluate complex systems, about Social Presencing Theater. They talk about: What Social Presencing Theater is, its origins and some of the tools and techniques that sit under it; The role of the facilitator in creating psychological safety and responding in the moment without knowing the details of the issue being explored; How Rosie first experienced Social Presencing Theater and what interested her about it; “with social presencing theater, you can get to the crux of the matter so quickly, and so, kind of precisely, and so clearly see what needs to change without barely exchanging any words at all.” A workshop that Rosie ran with Ann Nkune at the IAF England and Wales conference using the tool “Stuck”; “Some people said it made them not just think differently, but feel differently”. How this experience led Rosie to attending a recent Social Presencing Theater course and the learning from that experience; Rosie’s thoughts on how to take this forward, including a call out for collaborators; A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest: Rosie Cripps on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosie-cripps/ Today’s subject Presencing Institute: https://presencinginstitute.org/ U School: https://www.u-school.org/ Arawana Hayashi Social Presencing Theater website: https://arawanahayashi.com/spt/ Social Presencing Theater The Art of Making a True Move (book), Arawana Hayashi   To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript N.W Hello, and welcome to facilitation stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson (N.W), and my guest today is Rosie Cripps (R.C). So welcome Rosie.   R.C Hi, thank you for having me.   N.W So to start off with, could you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do?   R.C Yeah. So I'm a facilitator and an evaluator. I help build inclusive community-led movements and as part of this, so I've helped teach architecture students, Appreciative Inquiry, and I've been exploring the idea of universities as anchor organisations to help communities become resilient and self-sustaining. And I evaluate kind of complex, messy systems. And I usually do that using outcome harvesting, which uses lots of facilitation. So in summary, I kind of help build social movements and evaluate complex systems.   N.W Great. And so today, we're going to be talking about Social Presencing Theater. So for listeners who don't know what it is, Please, could you tell us a little bit more about it, and how a typical session might work?   R.C Okay, so this is very different from my day to day work. First of all, Social Presencing Theater uses mindfulness, movement, and reflection, to create quite dramatic shifts in perspective. So it can be used at an individual level, or with teams, with big organisations, or in quite complex systems around social justice issues, or climate change, or something like that. It was created by Arawana Hayashi, and she's a dance teacher. But it's mainly been applied across sectors by someone called Otto Scharmer. He's an academic at MIT and he basically coded what are the principles of innovation, and he turned them into a theory called ‘Theory U’. And that's all open source, because he wants as many people as possible to be tackling the complex issues of our time. But they together, Otto and Arawana, they co founded the Presencing Institute, and they use Social Presencing Theater as a means for helping people to progress past habitual thought patterns and into these principles of innovation in whatever context they're in. So I personally find Social Presencing powerful, because you can work through very kind of tricky issues where we might feel stuck or unable to move forward very quickly, sometimes taking you to a place of being more stuck. But at least you have different insight. But without having to reveal at any point, what the issue is or what the tricky situation is. And it can be also very bonding for the people who are doing it. So your group that you're working with, it's very bonding, even if you're working with a complete group of strangers.   N.W And so how might a typical session run?   R.C Yeah, a typical session. So this is tricky, because I'm new to it. And there's also lots of different methods that sit under it. Some individual based tools and techniques, and some are for very large groups. But they think the way that Otto Scharmer mainly uses it with kind of fortune 500 companies and big organisations is he uses something called 4D mapping, which was co created by I think Otto Scharmer, and Arawana. And people who also use organisational constellations, and people who use presencing more generally. And 4D mapping, basically, you map out a system using people. And then you sense together a different potential future for that system. So it allows you to see in kind of 3D what the system is currently looking like, and how it could potentially shift. And that can be really powerful. And systems mapping, because it's very malleable. I like traditionally in systems mapping, I would kind of draw out a system, and it's very fixed. Whereas in this situation, you're sensing together as a group, where are the opportunities for movement, and that can give a lot of insights into what should change.   N.W Okay. And so what would the role of the facilitator be in that environment? And how would that be different from other types of facilitation? Would you say?   R.C Yeah, I think, I think in that context, because you don't always know what the actual topic is, there's kind of two parts to it. So one is it's about making the situation safe, because I think generally, we're not used to moving as a society. We're not used to using movement and so the psychological safety is really important. And then the other aspect is you're going in blind. So you're kind of sensing the room as opposed to, in a normal situation, you can be kind of tracking the flow of the room by listening to people in their conversation them expressing what's, what's going on. Whereas in this context, it's much more about sensing what's happening in the room. And responding to that in that moment. So it's quite different actually supposed to be a lot more emotionally responsive to what they would normally be as a facilitator, I think.   N.W And, and as you've said, this is quite different to the kind of tools and techniques and facilitation work you'd normally do. So when did you first come across Social Presencing Theater? And what was it that interested you about it?   R.C So I was reflecting back recently about which of the workshops and where are the places in my life where I've had the biggest personal transformational shifts, and which have been the workshops that have made those shifts last, and they've all involved movement. And so there's two workshops I've been to in my life. The first was in my early 20s, which is kind of a week-long workshop which involved movement. And, again, involved no talking. And then I volunteered at the Never Done Before Festival, which is run by Myriam Hadnes’s community, and just stumbled across a Social Presencing Theater Workshop. And in that workshop, it was online, it was only like an hour, I think.  It was people from all over the world who had never met before. And yet, even in that very short amount of time, we just did some small movements.You know, just sat at my desk, and then also some group movements just in breakout rooms, and it totally shifted my perspective. And I felt incredibly close to the people that I'd been working with, even though I'd never met them before and it was all through a computer. So it kind of made me think, Okay, I'm personally finding this stuff really powerful and interesting. But is that you know, other people's experiences. And before kind of, like throwing myself into that, I guess I really wanted to explore that further, and see if other people were getting these shifts and transformations as well. Which is why, and then I started talking to Megan Evans, he's been a kind of mentor to me, and to Ann Nkune, who I know, to a shared love of Appreciative Inquiry and time to think. So I just literally read Arawana's book, and then suggested to Ann that we run a session at the IAF Conference, which we did this year. So that's kind of how I came to it, it's not been a planned route. But I found it personally very powerful. And it's also linked in to actually, after I had children, I started dancing. And I had a complete shift really, again, in my perspective, when I just I think I lived so much in my mind, when I started dancing, I had this dance teacher who didn't teach us kind of choreographed moves, he just taught us how our body wanted to move. And I didn't know if you can actually even call it dance, it's probably just me moving around terribly, but I found it really powerful and healing, just getting out of my head and into my body. And I think that's a lot of what this is about. It's about just getting rid of those habitual thought patterns and kind of living in our minds all the time. And being in our bodies and noticing that our bodies have a lot of wisdom and knowledge that we just waste, we just waste. And the thing I found with social presencing, is we spend

    24 min
  7. 18/06/2024

    FS68 Chapter Chat with Sara Tremi Proietti and Andrea Panzavolta from IAF Italy

    This episode is one of our quarterly “Chapter Chats” where the team talks to leaders of other IAF Chapters.  In this episode Helene and Nikki chat to Sara Tremmi Proietti and Andrea Panzavolta from IAF Italy.  They talk about How the chapter began in 2013 and the successive leaders since then; Initiatives to extend the reach of the chapter in Southern Italy: The co-leadership model used for the past two leadership terms;   “Our jobs are a little bit different. So it's very interesting because we see things from very different perspectives. And this is also always very, very rich, and something that I really, really recommend” (Sara on co-leading with Giacamo)   The Chapter’s Annual Conference- its volunteer-led model and support provided to people who’d like to run a session; Working collaboratively with other Associations in Italy; Twinning with other IAF chapters including Romania and Syria; Plans and aspirations for the future of the Chapter;  “we would like the chapter to be a point of reference at the national level for organisations who are seeking facilitator facilitation services or just want to learn something more about it” A full transcript is below.  Links  Today’s guests:  Sara Tremmi Proietti: saratremmiproetti@gmail.com  IAF Italy website: https://iaf-italy.org/  IAF Italy email: italy@iaf-world.org   Today’s subject  LinkedIn Article about Co Leadership by Andrea and Deborah: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stepping-leadership-iaf-story-deborah-rim-moiso-fmdwf/   To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter  Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/  And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org  IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team  Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/  Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/   Transcript   H.J Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. I'm Helene Jewell (HJ) and   N.W I'm Nikki Wilson (NW)   H.J And this episode is one of our quarterly Chapter Chats, where we talk to people leading other chapters in the IAF global community. We ask them about how they see the status of facilitation, where they are, and the history, priorities, current projects and aspirations of the chapter. Today, we're joined by Andrea Panzavolta (AP) and Sara Tremmi Proietti (SP), co chairs of IAF Italy, welcome.   S.P Thank you, Helene.   A.P Thank you so much for the invitation and also for your perfect pronunciation.   H.J Thank you so welcome to you both. And to start off with, we would like to know a little bit more about both of you and about the kind of work you do. So if you could tell us a bit about yourselves, that would be great.   S.P Thank you Helene. Okay, so my name is Sara, and I live in Rome, which is in centre of Italy. I have been working in public administration for over 10 years now, and for the past three years, I've been drawn to the world of facilitation, first attending a course and then starting to work also in in this field, public administration, I focused initially on economic programming, but then I turned more on teams like innovation and process optimization. So that's how I met facilitation, because during an office reorganisation attempt, we met a lot of conflicts and resistances and difficulties with our team. And so I understood that I needed to, you know, to discover and to learn something more about people, about relation, about group working. So that's how I met it and how I am.   A.P So may I introduce myself, and first of all, thank you for the invitation and for this amazing initiative, because I also listened to the past podcast and were very, very, very well done. I'm not the actual chapter leader. I was the past chapter leader with Deborah Rim Moiso. So thank you also, Sarah, who invited me to join you. And I'm an urban planner and the facilitator, of course, our 20 years that I practise as a facilitator. I'm a founder of the formative collective, that is a project that focuses on the team of non violent communication. And of course, we use the participatory techniques, methods. And I was awarded with the Platinum Award 2020 by the International Association of Facilitator. So I'm very proud about this, in a project that I follow it by region Emilia-Romagna, that is my region in the north of Italy, and the team was about the Community of Practice on participatory policy making. So that's all for me.   H.J Thank you. Really interesting to hear how you both got into facilitation and congratulations on your award too, Andrea.   A.P Thanks so much. It's a past award.   N.W Great. So today we're going to be talking about IAF Italy, which we know had its 10 year anniversary last year. So what can you tell us about how it started and how the chapters developed over that 10 year period?   A.P Yeah, thank you for the question Nikki .The Italian chapter born in 2013 on the initiative by Giancarlo Manzone and Gerardo de Luzengerger that I imagine you know very well. And from 2019 to 2021 was coordinated by Paola Martinez. That is another IAF member, very active. And since May 2021, has been coordinated by me and Deborah Rim Moiso. And now the coordinators are Sara Tremmi Proietti and Giacomo Petitti. And the chapter started to create collaboration between facilitators, and mainly to explain what the facilitator do. At that time nobody in Italy know the term, the word facilitator. And I was scared to present me as a facilitator, because nobody, nobody could understand what I did. So this is our first mission in that time.   H.J Thank you. Really interesting. Sorry, Sara, did you have something to add?     S.P Yeah, I would like to, just to add that the professional facilitator now it's spreading a little bit more in Italy, but still, we have a lot of resistance among organisations. And there is a great concentration of facilitators in the north of the country. So we are our initiative now is also to bring facilitation to the southern regions of the country. And we are quite pleased about an initiative that came from our members, which is a small initiative, because they just decided to have a WhatsApp chat called like facilitators from the South. And the nice thing is that this initiative came from a Canadian girl, who is a member who lives now in the south of Italy, and but, and she's a member of IAF Italy, and she formed this WhatsApp chat, and we are quite proud of this, even if this is a small step, but it does mean something for us.   H.J Wow, that's so interesting. And also that kind of organic movement of yeah, people starting up their own, yeah? Well, WhatsApp chat   S.P Exactly, exactly, yeah.   H.J  And I think what's interesting actually for us is, the more we do these Chapter Chats, we hear a bit of a consistent theme, actually, in this people don't really know what facilitation is. That certainly, when we spoke to Bogdan from IAF Romania, that was one of the things he was talking about as well. So it's definitely and in the UK. So it's definitely not, uh, not something, uh, specific to where we are, which is interesting. Okay, so, um, thinking then, uh, well building a bit on what you were saying, Sara about, you know, you've got some new initiatives. Can you tell us a bit more about the chapter as it is today?   S.P Yeah, sure. So the chapter today has about 30 to 35 members, as I was saying before, with the predominance in the north of Italy. So it's like 20 to 22, members in the north, and four of them are certified facilitators. So now we still have two co-leader, a co-leadership. It's me and Giacomo Petitti. We have been holding this role for a year now, so it's midterm kind of. And what we do is we basically carried on the work, the job that was began by Andrea and Deborah, because we hold monthly meetings. So it's pretty regularly. It's like the third Monday of each month we meet. And we also provided IAF Italy with a Zoom account so that we can, we could, uh, ensure you know this regularity. And this is a place, this is a moment of the month where people can meet and discuss and also participate in building and nourishing the community and to identify together goals and activities. So we wanted to be a participated chapter, no. So since we are kind of scattered among, you know, along the country, across the country, we cannot hold, like in person events so frequently. So we have our national event, which is held in Milan every year. So we keep it, you know, online, mainly. And then we we have, like, some activities, like, you know, things that we participate in, in events with other association for the promotion of the participation, or for the promotion of facilitation as well. Like, we went to an event last September in Bologna. So we travel a little bit, me and Giacomo sometimes. And then to, you know, to keep up with members, we have this WhatsApp chat, and then we have a sort of newsletter. We can call it like monthly, where we give, we keep them updated to with the international events and initiatives that are going on into the IAF Ward and yeah and that, that's pretty much it. And then we have, you know, like a specific also, activities that we were following, but maybe Andrea will tell you more later about it.   N.W And you touched on the kind of Co-leadership model that you follow. What do you, have you found works well in making that work when you're co leading?   A.P Yes, before the 2021 the chapter had always been led by an individual, but when Gerardo asked me to became the chapter leader, I was very scared. And in that

    43 min
  8. 21/05/2024

    FS67 - Public Dialogue with Suzannah Lansdell

    In this episode Nikki talks to Suzannah Lansdell about Public Dialogue.  Suzannah is a  freelance facilitator who also advises organisations on how to do public and stakeholder dialogue, particularly in the science and technology sector for Sciencewise.   They talk about Public Dialogue as a process bringing together members of the public with specialists and policy makers to discuss complex and controversial topics and gather public insights on the issues without necessarily coming to firm recommendations; “this is this is not a Focus Group. It's not kind of top of mind views. It's digging behind that”  How members of the public are engaged to take part; The role of a facilitator in Public Dialogue and how it’s different from other types of facilitation; Some recent topics for Public Dialogue including Embryo Research, Future Flight and the role of Data; The experience of participants and how this differs from other consultative processes;  “one of the key things about Public Dialogue as you give people the time to kind of wrestle around the issue and think more deeply.”  How information is shared with participants, including striking a balance on the level of detail and the importance of including a diverse range of specialist perspectives; Evaluation in Public Dialogue and the focus on monitoring longer term impacts from the process; Suzannah’s hopes and expectations for the future of Public Dialogue, becoming more embedded in policy making and democratic processes. A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest: Suzannah Lansdell on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/suzannah-lansdell-ab23a78 Today’s subject  Sciencewise: https://sciencewise.org.uk/  Involve Resources: https://involve.org.uk/resources/knowledge-base/resources  Involve Methods: https://involve.org.uk/resources/methods   To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter:  Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/  And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org  IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales   The Facilitation Stories Team:  Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/  Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/    Transcript N.W 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 (NW) and today I'm going to be talking to Suzannah Lansdell (SL) about public dialogue. So welcome, Suzannah.    S.L Thanks, Nikki, lovely to be here.    N.W Okay, so to start off with, could you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do.   S.L So I'm a freelance facilitator, I've been doing that for about 15 years or so. I started, and so how I got into it just as a bit of context, as it sort of helps a bit with the public dialogue is, I started working for an environment charity back in the 90s. And I was doing a lot of work then with businesses, convincing them that there were commercial implications around environment sustainability issues. But one part of that the charity had was also about consensus building, about how do you get different organisations to approach environment sustainability issues, that at that time in the 90s, were very kind of adversarial in a more kind of consensus based approach. And absolutely core to that was facilitation, as a way to, to break through that more adversarial approach. So then I started working a lot on that and I kind of cut my teeth on some of the big issues of the day, things like nuclear waste, oil disposal, oil infrastructure disposal, biotechnology. So some really kind of big issues where people were on opposing sides and a facilitative approach helped people to kind of have more constructive conversations and find a way through. So that's kind of where I cut my teeth. And then moving on, what I'm much more doing now is that I advise and I support organisations on how they do public and stakeholder dialogue, and particularly around public dialogue work for an organisation called Science wise, that looks at public dialogue around science and technology. But I also do some kind of keeping my oar in on the practice in terms of facilitating citizens assemblies, and other kind of processes involved with the public. And then a little spattering of training in facilitation and a little bit of kind of charity away days, but most of my work at the moment is around the kind of public dialogue in science and technology.   N.W Okay, great. And that was a very neat segue into today's topic, which is about public dialogue. So for listeners that aren't familiar with this term, what do we mean by public dialogue?   S.L I suppose in its simplest terms, it's a process where you've got members of the public coming together with specialists and policymakers and other stakeholders to deliberate and have conversations about usually kind of complex or controversial topics. And they do that over several hours, so this is not a focus group, it's not kind of Top of Mind views. It's digging behind that. So you give people a lot of time to think about the issues and to have conversations with those specialists, but also fellow participants. So probably people are maybe deliberating over 10 hours or a couple of weekends. It can be online, it can be face to face, it can be a bit of a mix of both. The key purpose is to get those insights from the public to feed into kind of a decision whether that be a policy or whether that be a strategy. And some people might have heard of the term of mini Publics, so it sort of fits within that frame of mini Publics. And we could talk a bit more about who's the public in this. The key difference that I see with public dialogue is that unlike, for example, citizens  juries or citizens assemblies, we don't usually ask people to come up with or vote on recommendations or come up with specific recommendations. It's much more that they're kind of invited to explore that issue and then there are insights that come from that, but it's not taking it to that kind of final this is what this group of people think and vote on.   N.W And so who would normally be the sort of Commissioner of the public dialogue who would bring those groups together?    S.L It would be a decision maker. So it'd be somebody that has some traction over that issue. It might be that they own the policy or that they own the strategy the public dialogue is feeding into. So that could be a government department, it could be a Research Council, it could be a regulator. So usually at that sort of level.   N.W And you touched on this a moment ago, but mini publics as it were, who normally would get involved in these, and how would they get involved?   S.L Yeah, so I think what's really important to know with public dialogue, or indeed any of those mini publics is that these are not public participants that choose to sign up, because they've seen it in their local paper or something, they are kind of randomly recruited to take part in this process. So what you're trying to do is to get a reflective group of the population to be part of these processes, and they're paid to attend. So you're getting over that slight bias that you might have, if you have a local meeting, for example, where just those people with the time and the inclination, and already with an interest in the topic turn up. So you're recruiting them kind of randomly, and that might be that they are approached on the street and it might be that they are approached through some kind of invitation. So usually, for example, on citizens assemblies, they're approached through a sortition approach, which is, you randomly receive an invitation through the post. Most public dialogues, it's recruited sort of on the street. And then you're looking for a kind of demographic, as I say, that kind of reflects the population, whether that be gender, whether that be where people are from, it might be things like whether the urban and rural split, it might be to do with the age profile, so that you've sort of got a little mini public in the room that you're having that conversation within.   N.W Have you got any examples of recent topics that you've seen covered in a public dialogue, just to bring that to life, I suppose.   S.L Well certainly. So the science wise work that I work on, it's, I mean, as you might expect, it's kind of around science and tech innovation, sorts of topics. So some of the recent ones have been things like embryo research, and where that goes in the future. Future flight technologies. So there's a whole new area of kind of innovation around future flight and what does the public think about where that might go? BioMed adaptation has been another one. Lots around kind of data, what do people think about data that is held on them or data that might be used? Where are the boundaries around that? And through things like genome editing in farmed animals, so a real range across that sort of science and tech space.    N.W So obviously, we've talked about the commissioners and the public involved in this, but this is facilitation stories. So what would you say the role of facilitators is in a public dialogue? And how, in your experience, is that different from other types of facilitation?   S.L So I suppose, obviously, there's the core basics of facilitation, that are the same, but I suppose, for me, the real the things that really stands out are that, absolutely, as with lots of other facilitation, your view on a topic has to really stand down you can't be seen to influence the process in one way or another. And when some of those topics they're very kind of emotive. Another thing is that because you've got a group of the public there, so I suppose those two things, you're li

    27 min

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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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