Facilitation Stories

Todays episode explores the evolving relationship between facilitation and hosting, highlighting how both practices can create transformative spaces for individuals and communities. Peter Pula shares insights from years of cultivating community through participatory dialogue and generative journalism. The conversation delves into the distinctions between facilitation often structured and outcome driven and hosting, which embraces emergence, deep listening, and co-creation.   They talk about:  The difference between facilitation and hosting The use of time triads and deep listenting in group practice Learning from mistakes and adapting when things dont go as planned Moving from command-and-control to particpatory approaches Quote highlights "I feel like I am participating in the unfolding of human evolution and the evolution of community, and I don't know how that can do anything but make you smile." "And by naming the failure it becomes something else and it becomes… Something powerful… "  "Before it was a passion. Now it feels like an essential work." Links Todays Guest The Subsidiarist https://peterjpula.substack.com/ Citizen Studios https://citizenstudios.mn.co/about Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterpula/ Website: www.peterpula.com Cultivating Community Gatherings (free): https://www.tickettailor.com/events/peterpula/1786857 Todays host: Sam Moon: Faciliator www.linkedin.com/in/theboymoon123 Edited by:  Cassie Austin Leaderful Action To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-englandwales.org 🌐 https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales _______________________________________________________________________________________________________   Transcript: Sam Moon & Peter Pula Sam: 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 Sam Moon, and my guest today is Peter Pula. Peter is the founder of Axiom News, generative journalism, the Peter Borough Dialogues, and a proud member of the Generative Journalism Alliance. These days, he's mostly concerned with, in his own words, my beloved cultivating community going on six years now, and where I first met Peter during the first few weeks of COVID when I joined an online global gathering of folk exploring how we could be together apart during what was to become very uncertain times with long periods of lockdown. Peter crafted a space from which people shared experiences and stories where deep relationships began to form and has continued to do so amongst the community that first got together and others who have joined since. So honoring that my own facilitation journey has been shaped very much through Peter's commitment to life given approaches of facilitation, it is an absolute pleasure to welcome you here today, Peter, and on that note, and before we get into some juicy questions, please introduce yourself, who you are and what you get up to in your world of facilitation. Peter: Who am I? I think I will say today that I am a person who deeply cares about the wellbeing of humanity. I'm a person who's. Gravely concerned with the prevailing trends at the moment, and I believe that hosting and facilitating people in dialogue that brings to the surface. Their deepest gifts, talents, intentions, and passions in a way that encourages us to be differently together, might at one time have been a nice to have and now it's a need to have. So I'm fully committed to the practices of facilitation and hosting. With the view to, well, for me it's a calling and a critically important one. And that's why I'm glad to be here talking with you, Sam. 'cause we've travelled for a number of years. We've got a lot of, water under the bridge, a lot of experience under our belt. And, we've traveled through some of those crises together in community held in a certain way. And so I think we could say that's also what I'm up to. Sam: Thank you, Peter. You put that, in a really lovely way. And we've got some questions that we're gonna explore together, but if I can just invite you to expand a little bit more on, your experience of facilitation and hosting and how you have made a distinction between the two and how you hold those. Peter: When you look to the definition of facilitation and facilitator, there's not much there that I wouldn't say also applies to hosting. I think in a lot of practices though, there are some differences, and it might be sort of a spectrum where my idea of the practice of facilitation is that when facilitating, we are inviting people into a fairly, predetermined process and trying to bring them along to more of a predetermined outcome than you might be if you're hosting, it might be a learning outcome, for example, we want, by the end of this process for everyone to be able to say, speak French or to understand a business process or to have come to some understanding about how to better manage their relationships with their peers. And then way on the other side of the spectrum on hosting, I think there we are then trying to surface what's most alive for each person in the room. With a view to exploring and discovering almost endless possibilities. But, then ensuring that each one of the possibilities that actually wants to manifest is nurtured in a way, by the way, we dialogue and connect and decide so that they actually can come to fruition. I think there might be a little bit more wildness and willingness in hosting than there is in facilitation, I think they're arts that are closely related, they're in the same family. And I know as hosts sometimes there are moments where I absolutely must facilitate almost with an iron fist. Knowing how and when to make that call is part of the hosting art. Sometimes a super clear process is necessary. Sometimes a process set is co-created by the participants who have some skill in how to be present to one another is also necessary. So I don't think it's a, it's not an either or, it's a spectrum and there is a relationship between the two ideas. But I feel like in practice they are slightly different ideas. Sam: I really like how you describe, the wildness and willingness, that can take you into the labyrinth of hosting and discovering what's alive. Whilst also what you are saying is recognizing that facilitation process where it needs to be tighter is also about recognizing when it's important to do that around certain things, rather than being wedded to a certain way of doing something, it's about understanding when one needs to come forth, and in terms of where your, start from and where you want to go. Peter: If I could, Sam, there might be one other distinction, and it would be interesting to test this with your listeners and their experience because, I don't move in circles where we describe what we do as facilitation. So I could be completely wrong about this, but there has been some discussion in the hosting arts world around one of the suggestions that, in hosting, it's considered a very important principle that as a member of a hosting team, you also participate in dialogue, and in many facilitative sessions, it seems important that the facilitators stay observant and outside of the dialogue. So I'm just wondering if that's a distinction that holds true, or if it's not actually the case. Sam: I think it's a really good question, Peter, and I think there are different views within that, depending on the ideology that it's coming from. And I know there is that conversation that takes place around, is a facilitator neutral or not. And there's clear opinions on both sides of that, but I think in terms of the experience that we've had together and in those spaces, I would agree that the host becomes more part of that conversation and is involved in the dialogue. But it's about not influencing it. And I think for me, I probably stand on the side of that, lean more into using questions to draw things out rather than put myself forward. Peter: Right. Sam: I also find that when I put myself forward, it can deaden the air a little bit as well. Take the life out because, unless invite invited to teach, don't teach. Peter: Yes. Beautifully said. Sam: So what I wanted to kind of touch on, what is it in your world of hosting and facilitation that's making you smile at the moment? Peter: Well, you know, Sam, you mentioned in your introduction, this space we've been holding together for the last five and a half years. It's come to be known as cultivating community and for whatever reason we've been, that's every fortnightly on Fridays. For five and a half years, we've seen probably 600 different people join that space. There's a core group of, maybe 12 or 15 that come very, very regularly, and another extended group of maybe 45 or 50 that drop in, come and go, who, you know, take comfort in just knowing that the space is there. It's the group of us has started to talk about how, not only have we become a community spread across several continents that are quite committed to the community and to each other, it's, also, been spoken that it's also a practice field for how we be in community differently.  From that, I've had the delight to hear from a number of members of that community. Their lives have been changed by being part of that, to such a degree that they're also bringing these practices, into their own communities and morphing and changing them to suit their own skills and ways of doing things like improv, for example, these are adjacent practices that, work to the same principles and grow together. And that group has been in so much practice for so long. It's a blessing for me, one, to be part of the community, but two, to see the effects it's having on people's lives and in the world. And three, because we're in practice so much, I can also as a host, fully partic

In today's episode, Olivia is joined by Julia Slay, founder of Facilitation 101, to explore an often-overlooked part of facilitation: how we end sessions well. With 15+ years' experience across social policy, consultancy and learning design, Julia shares her journey into facilitation and what sparked her growing fascination with powerful endings. They talk about: Why endings matter,and common mistakes at the close of sessions — rushed checkouts, lack of closure, and clunky feedback moments. How to design meaningful endings, using buffer time, reflection, grounding and action planning. The power of circularity too. Extending the ending beyond the room, with follow-ups and reconnection sessions.Plus creative closing practices, from body-based grounding to sound and movement.     Quote highlights "A strong ending creates a feeling of completeness." "Reflection without action feels unfinished."     Links Today's guest: Julia Slay, Founder, Facilitation 101 https://www.facilitation101.co.uk/courses?tag=Intensive https://myfreelancelife.substack.com/?r=b48m9&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-slay-aa02b240/    Today's host: Olivia Bellas - Coach, Faciitator, Learning Experience Designer  https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviabellas/ To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-englandwales.org 🌐 https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales   Transcript Olivia Bellas Welcome to facilitation stories. How do facilitators end up in the profession? What methods and techniques can we learn together? And we discover it all in this community Podcast, brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Olivia, and today I'm talking with Julia. S. Julia is the founder and director of Facilitation 1 0 1, which began in 2023 after a simple request for a two hour session, which turned into a three day intensive. This is the course that now distills everything she wishes she'd known when she first started facilitating previous to all of this. She held a range of different roles, across social policy and charities, meaning now 15 years of experience designing and leading workshops, strategy sessions, and learning programs. So everything from away days and team development to full strategy. Retreats and international events. And in my opinion, also I must follow on LinkedIn for her generous and human sharings on navigating the world of facilitation. Julia, it's great to have you. Welcome. Julia Slay Oh, lovely to be here. And that was a very kind, generous introduction as well. Wow. Yeah. Thank you. Olivia Bellas Well, welcome. Welcome. So really looking forward to chatting today, and I know that we have a focus area. Mm-hmm. Which we will get into. So that focus area is looking at endings in workshops and why they're valuable, how we can do them. But for that, I wanted to kick off with, something that makes you smile. So thinking about your world of facilitation at the moment, what's making you smile? Julia Slay Mm, well, lots of things. I often feel like I have somehow landed doing a job that doesn't really feel like work. And surely that's like the dream. Well, it is for me anyway, that it's, , each day mostly. There are some small exceptions that mostly I feel really. Energized, focused, joyful with the work. But something that does always make me smile is when I'm running the training side of the work, I do the facilitation training through facilitation 1 0 1, and I'm in a room with really brilliant facilitators who often come from quite a wide range of disciplines, and they bring in their experience and I get to see and learn from them. Which is, which is kind of the. For me, one of the secret joys of running training is that you are learning all the time as well. And there was a course I ran a couple of weeks ago and someone who comes from a kind of theater background and has done a lot of work with, um, theater of the Oppressed was running an activity with the group and I just. Had a smile all over my face. She did an incredible job. And I kind of walked away thinking, yeah, I mean, I got to learn something new today that I've never seen before, and I absolutely loved it. So that, that brings me a lot of joy in my work at the moment. Olivia Bellas Hmm. Yeah, so you get the opportunity to, to have multiple smiles because of all of those, different perspectives of facilitators you are encountering. And actually, I'm quite. Intrigued by that. So you had someone from a theater background. , What other kinds of facilitators are you encountering? Julia Slay Yeah, well it's, it's getting much more diverse. Mm-hmm. I would say a year ago I was primarily working with and training people who were freelance. So, uh, self-employed, , people who often had a combination of kind of coaching, consultant facilitator roles. They had what I would call capital F facilitation. So they were kind of identifying and marketing themselves as a facilitator and much more. Now, certainly in my orbit, I am meeting people who. Talk about themselves as using facilitation skills, but they are not necessarily,, freelance and they're they're often more kind of internal. I have had people recently coming on training from the navy, from big tech companies, from um, you know, kinda team leaders and senior managers who are thinking a lot about, , the way they run their team meetings and their away days. I'm really enjoying seeing people connect with the skill and, , making connections between the work they do and facilitation skills and being able to see how. Powerful it could be when they brought it into their orbit. And I've also, I guess, I mean I do, as you said at the beginning, I do a lot of LinkedIn posts. I spend quite, quite a lot of my time on there, and I have really enjoyed. Getting more international exposure through that. Um, and, and seeing and learning from people who are applying facilitation in very, very different contexts. Um, some brilliant facilitators in, uh, New Zealand, in North America. We had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about some facilitators in Mexico who you had connected with, and I'm very keen to get their names from you as well.  Quite a lot in South Africa and in India. So I'm really, I, I feel like. You know, I'm very exposed to a, not even Eurocentric, like British centric way of thinking about facilitation. And I think through LinkedIn I'm . Learning a lot more about different, , countries, different , cultures and how they approach facilitation as well. Olivia Bellas  But you made a really interesting distinction between facilitation as a skill and I think probably. There's also the facilitator as a, a job or a role as, as well. , So I think it's, it seems like people are noticing the value of those skills in particular a lot more, , which is really, really exciting. And. And so how, how did you get here? Very interested in that. Lots of different paths and journeys I know facilitators have had, , to get to where they are. . Can you say a bit about . Yours? Julia Slay Yeah. Well, I. It, it was, I think, I think I know very few people. In fact, I dunno if I know anyone who woke up one day and was like, I wanna be a facilitator. So I think like lots of people, I kind of came into it by accident and was using the skills before I really knew the word existed. But, , I came through two roots. I think one was, well, maybe three. One was I had done a lot of work in my. Twenties working in a kind of think tank and consultancy, running training and workshops. So a lot of those workshops I would never have used the term facilitation. We talked about kind of hosting round tables and running events, but really we were trying to make them much more participatory to bring in structure, to bring in, you know, interesting ideas about how to prompt thinking and dialogue. So there was the kind of training, and I did some train the trainer training at that point in my life. And then I did some coaching training and went quite deep into team coaching and quality improvement coaching. Um, and that to me, there's like a very fine line between group coaching and facilitation. You know, that's quite blurry . , So those were I guess, the two skill sets that felt very facilitation adjacent. And then, , when I left my last kind of quote unquote proper job, which was at the Greater London Authority, so the GLA kind of policy role there, I went freelance and was labeling myself as like a strategy research policy consultant. Actually what people started employing me for was facilitation. And uh, people started saying, can you facilitate this away day? Can you facilitate this strategy process? Can you facilitate this community of practice? And one day I remember changing the signature on my email and thinking, you know, I didn't even know this word existed two years ago, and now apparently I am one. So it was almost kind of. By by accident. I guess it was the main skill I was using as a consultant, and I do think a lot of people who are freelance consultants are using facilitation skills, whether or not they call themselves a facilitator, that is like a really core skillset for them. Olivia Bellas I think a really interesting point you made was that exactly, there's lots of people that are essentially doing this kind of thing already without necessarily knowing it and giving it a name. And actually you mentioned the GLA, which is where we actually met and we're working there. And similarly. Working in social policy, community engagement, doing this work around better conversations and kind of dynamics between groups, but not, not necessarily having a label. Julia Slay And, and I would say not necessarily having as much skill or structure as I would've liked. I certainly, I definitely look back now at some of the en

In today's episode, the Facilitation Stories podcast returns with a brand-new hosting team — Olivia, Sam, and Umah — who share their stories, inspirations, and hopes for the next chapter of the podcast. They talk about: Why they joined the Facilitation Stories team and what excites them about podcasting as a way to connect facilitators and share learning. How their diverse backgrounds — from healthcare and construction to creative arts, community engagement and youth work — have shaped their facilitation practice. The power of collaboration and curiosity in creating spaces for reflection, learning, and human connection and what underpins their hopes for this podcast series And, of course, an important conversation about pets, TV guilty pleasures, and favourite biscuits! 🍪 "It's about creating space where people can make sense of their own stories — and find belonging in shared spaces." "Sometimes, facilitation is about slowing down, thinking, and making time for the conversations we don't usually have."     Links Today's guests are the hosts themselves: Olivia Bellas https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviabellas/ Sam Moon https://www.linkedin.com/in/theboymoon123/ Umah Ganeshalingam https://www.linkedin.com/in/umah/ To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 Email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org 🌐 IAF England & Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales     Transcript Helene 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 Helene Jewell and for the last time I am introducing the podcast because I'm going to be passing the baton onto this wonderful new team. We have Sam Moon, Olivia Bellas, and Umah Ganeshalingam. In this episode, you're going to hear Sam, Umah and Olivia talk about their hopes for the Facilitation Stories podcast, some of the work they all do, the kinds of things they're interested in hearing about, and the conversations they're hoping to have. And it just leaves me to say thanks to everybody that I've worked with on this podcast. Pilar Orti, who started the whole thing, Nikki Wilson, we worked together for ages and it has been absolutely fantastic working with both of them and to Rena Kosh as well, who does all the graphics and stuff that go out alongside the podcast and pretty much everybody else that's been listening, all the guests we've had over the last few years, it's been fantastic. Umah Thank you, Helen, and thank you to you and the team for everything that you've done today and handing it over so nicely to us. Helene Good luck to you all. Sam We'll be standing on the shoulders of giants. Thank you Helen. So I'll kick off with the question. What brings you here, Olivia, to the new crew,  why was it important for you to be here? Olivia Podcasting as a format really works for me, so it's definitely a medium that I enjoy for work, for fun. The idea of being part of a crew, a team, building a podcast is really, really exciting to be a bit more behind the scenes. I remember I was at the IAF conference in April in Birmingham earlier this year and seeing this call out to see who's interested. And that was one reason. And then the other reason was actually I tend to collaborate a lot. This year, I haven't been really up until that point and was like, oh, what's missing? And it was that feeling that I was actually, as a facilitator, doing lots of solo work, which I think has value sometimes, but I was really missing more closer collaboration with others. Yeah. What about you, Sam? Sam I think it's curiosity, which is often very much my kind of North Star towards things and serendipity and an interest in being with others, exploring and discussing what I enjoy and the room and the space to do that with others, and also an excitement and interest in talking about, talking with and sharing conversation with other people who are in the facilitation world. And I think just the opportunity to play with those ideas and experience other people's experiences. Learn a little bit about this realm of podcasting, which I'm not massively familiar with myself. I'm here with openness to the curiosity of what is possible. Really. So Umah,  come to you. What brings you here, and why was it important for you to be involved in the IAF podcast as a as a new crew member? Umah Mine all started with a conversation with Paul, where I had joined as a IAF member and as part of the intro, he spoke to me about the IAF, the podcast and said, oh, if I'm keen, I could be involved in it. And almost the day I joined as a member, I say, yeah, I'll happily get involved with the podcast too. And then it was about finding other people to do it with us, and he mentioned it at the conference, which unfortunately I couldn't attend, but I'm hoping to attend this one. Coming up, in terms of my why at work, it's quite delivery. Whereas this for me is a place where I could slow down a bit, have the space and time to have conversations, think about why we're doing things. Is our approach the right approach? How do other people do things and do a bit more of that philosophizing really, that we don't always get to do? But the thing is, by exploring this with both of you, with our guests in the future, and also the audience who's listening in, it's just really good to get different viewpoints and build that community. I think that's quite key for me. Olivia I think it's really interesting around sometimes we well, we often get caught up in the doing and the delivery side of things, and it is about looking at what is it we do. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But yeah. What's my follow up question. Is there a kind of area of facilitation that you're particularly interested in, or is it more about sort of your discovering, you know, through your practice. Umah I've had quite a few different career changes. So I started off as a clinician and I was seeing pediatrics and adults with hearing and balance difficulties. And how you communicate is key in terms of the impact on their the diagnosis, the management of it. And it's how can we make them feel comfortable, give them that space to explore and ask the questions. So it's facilitating them through this process, right. So I initially started with patient experience journeys that kind of facilitation. How can we make the process better. And then afterwards I had a career change, went into construction and it became more about customer experience or passenger experience when I did airports. It's interesting that you asked me that, Olivia. So before it was the journey, whereas now it's the community, the group. What's the common? People have different needs and different things to attain. At the moment, lots of people are off in different directions. What is the commonality? It's changed that way for me. How about for you? What's your area of practice right now? Olivia And that's a good point right now adding that bit. I think it does change quite a lot. I've also dipped my toe into quite a few different working worlds. I've come from creative sector, arts culture, worked with artists a lot, and I've brought that into government spaces, charity spaces, public dialogue and also thinking about making teamwork more enjoyable, easier. But I bring a lot of play. So a lot of that kind of creativity, which is naturally how my brain works. But how do we use that as a way into the workplace? I mean, there's a lot of science and evidence that backs up that using playful approaches Really helps us in terms of fresh thinking. So I'd say at the moment I do use a lot of serious play in my work. I do use a lot of other kind of practices like walk and talks, visualization. So that side of things is where I'm focused right now. Umah Yeah. Sam, we've spoken a lot about, for example, our why. What is it that you're hoping that us together on the podcast is going to do? Sam That's a good question. My kind of world of work has been twenty five years or so in youth and community, sort of focused. So a lot of my facilitation is kind of through that, through that lens. And I'm earning the last year or so have gone full time freelance by myself. So I've been on a journey of figuring out what it is that I do in that new world. So I'm very much on that story of kind of discovery, but finding myself working a lot in the sort of community Subcommittee film co-production, lived experience, but also being drawn and developing work around kind of impact through means called ripple effect mapping. I'm very much pulled into different things and then began to get get interested in what makes me smile and what creates the energy. So I'm still very much in this discovery stage, but it's also interesting as a kind of work through things is having to remember to be me and follow the things that I like to do and create and facilitate in the way that I wish to facilitate and follow my own path. It's very easy to kind of be looking at all the amazing things that other people are doing and going, oh, that looks great, I should be doing that. And you forget to actually do the things that you do well. Focus on those on those things. And when I remember that and lean back into the things that are me and that I do, the world opens up and I find myself in spaces doing really exciting things and creative pieces of work, which then lead into to other things like this in terms of the opportunities the podcast brings and what we'd like to explore. I'm really interested in speaking to a whole range of different types of facilitation, and really looking at ways in which people can talk about what they're passionate about and what's important to them. But I'm also interested, because of my own passions in facilitation within the community world and other sort of sectors, like that kind

In today's episode Helene speaks to Farah Egby and Cigdem Saka-Jackson about Agile.   They talk about: Agile as a set of working practices that prioritises people over processes and tools; Farah and Cigdem's previous work and journeys into Agile facilitation; The roles and functions that the "Scrum Master" and "Kanban" play in Agile; Roles and techniques in Agile facilitation and tips on how to do it; "I think you need to care. You have to be a caring person. I definitely don't believe it is, it is a rule book and just a set of applicable guidelines. You have to care about the people you work with and the team you're working with". How Agile can be applied in different contexts including personally. "There are things that you can also apply to your own life individually, you can stop and have a moment to reflect, even if you don't do it with a formal process". Links Today's guests:  Farah Egby:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/farah-egby/  farah@tuntara.co.uk Cigdem Saka-Jackson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%C3%A7i%C4%9Fdem-saka-jackson-7885a111/ cigdemsaka@gmail.com 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/

In this episode Helene talks to Andrew Spiteri, Regional Director of the IAF Europe and Middle East Region. Andrew tells Helene about himself as a facilitator, the kind of work he does and his background with IAF. He became regional director at the start of the year and shares a bit about the work he has been involved in so far, his roles and responsibilities as director, and what he would like to see in future for the region and beyond. He tells us about the regional conference in Romania in November 2025 and about what he most loves about facilitation. You can contact Andrew at: rep.europe@iaf-world.org And Helene at helene@jewellfacilitation.com To contact the podcast team: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org Transcript   H.J Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcasts brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. I'm Helene Jewell, 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 how they see the status of facilitation where they are, and the history priorities, current projects and aspirations for their chapter. My guest today is Andrew Spiteri, IAF endorsed facilitator, consultant and elected Regional Director for the Europe and Middle East, EME region of the IAF for 2025-26. Andrew accompanies diverse groups, associations, entities, NGOs and also faith based organizations, and also often works in international settings, helping groups in collaboratively formulating vision, strategy and action planning activities. Andrew comes from Malta, is a resident in Brussels, and is in Italy for long stretches during the year. Welcome Andrew.   A.S Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.    H.J Every time I speak to you, you're globe trotting somewhere.   A.S That's right. Yeah, that's right.    H.J So tell us a little bit about you as a facilitator, and the kind of work that you do?   A.S That's, it's always difficult because to start, because it's, it's so fascinating facilitation. And I think I was doing facilitation for many years without actually knowing it was facilitation. So I love to help groups work together, and what I really love is to give space to each and every person, because to manage to help that everyone contributes. Because I really believe everyone, even those who are apparently not well prepared, well suited or appear to be like a lot of the time. But I think everyone has a gift to gift and facing that challenge of helping take away all what, what blocks this, this, this participation, and creating climate where people can collaborate is really something I love, and so that's what I try to do in my facilitation. I work a lot with groups, associations, sometimes even with companies, but I would prefer normally NGOs or even associations, which could be very small or very big, international, with all the challenges of culture differences and cultural differences and even age differences. So, yeah, that's a bit what I'd like to do, and what I do usually.   H.J Brilliant. And I think that thing about doing facilitation, before you know, it's called facilitation, is definitely a common theme, certainly, I think, back on all the podcasts we've recorded, and I think that's one thing that comes out in nearly all of them, fascinating. Okay, and so very international. What language do you facilitate in? Mostly, is it English?    A.S   Yeah, basically it's English. Not only, I know English, Italian, Maltese, evidently. So sometimes I do it in Italian. It depends on the group. I've just come from, Vienna. I had five sessions, very intense, and basically they were all in English. I had simultaneous translation in German. Most Viennese understand very well, and even speak English quite well. So it depends on the context, on the place, on the client, let's say, on how you organize. Yeah.    H.J   Wow. Sounds like you have a very diverse practice, which must be completely fascinating.   A.S   I remember once I was, like, two years ago, I was in Poland, and so this organization, sort of, they were, they knew a lot of Italian more than English. So I had two headphones, sort of from one headphone I would speak, a headphone with a microphone, and I would speak in English, sorry, in Italian. And they would they would hear me and translate in Polish. And from the other headphone, I would hear what the other people were saying in Polish translated into Italian. So it was like good, yeah.   H.J  Wow, that's the ultimate in a simultaneous translation. Blimey. Okay, so I should add multi-talented linguist to your list of skills, by the sounds of things. So I'd like to know a bit more about you know IAF and I know you've been involved for quite a while, so when did you become a member of IAF?    A.S   So that, yeah, yeah, it will go back to what you were saying before that for many years, or for many for some time, most of us actually don't know we're doing facilitation. Probably it's because facilitation is so new and even so not known so much. So I found myself in Italy for a long time helping organize big events, but not just the logistical part, but especially the content part, not the content in the sense of Creating Content content, but in helping like the group using their content to work together. And I was continually searching for, I was sure there was some sort of thing, some organization, some shared knowledge on this. And then when, finally, in 2018 I moved to Brussels, I got to know about the IAF Belgian chapter, and I was really excited. They have, they have, and it's still ongoing, a monthly meetup in Belgium. And it's, uh, being so particular in Belgium because, especially Brussels, because it's a real international city, because of all the institutions, NATO and the EU and 10s of 1000s of people who basically speak English as a common language. So the IAF chapter does all its things in English. And I started frequenting that. And I remember I never missed a meeting. It was like so important. And then in 2019 there was the Milan Conference. And so it was set then from then onwards, I nearly immediately became a member and and prompted onwards. It's history. It's sort of, it went on now.   H.J   Once you start finding out about all these things that go on within IAF and the wider community, you sort of slowly become more and more involved. Nice. And I realize, although I'm going to ask you in a bit about your role as regional director, I'm not actually sure, are you part of a particular chapter, given that you sort of, you're a little bit of a nomad. You move around quite a lot.    A.S   Yeah, actually, I still am part of the Belgian chapter. Actually, I got elected together with others on the IAF the Belgium board, so I'm a member in absentia, because, I mean, I know they meet regularly. I don't have lots of time, but I do give them all the support needed, like all the others, actually, but I have a soft spot for Belgium, I must confess, evidently, yeah, so, so that's, that's what I do.   H.J  Great. So officially, part of IAF Belgium. And what kinds of things have you been involved with? So obviously, you've been going, you know, you started going to the meetups in Belgium, and it sounds like you went to the Milan Conference. What else have you been involved in, either as a participant or part of organizing?    A.S  So, so yeah, these official meetings. I mean, the Belgian reality is quite interesting, because the meetups are like, there are two or three different types. Like the basic is where there is someone who specialized in some methodology or something he's been doing, or she's been doing for many years, and they hold a session where they share all their knowledge. And another type of session would be where there's someone who's learning, maybe a new method, and would create a safe space, where they use us as guinea pigs, sort of and, and then at the end there's also, there's always a debrief.  And then the in both of these, it's so interesting, because you get to widen your knowledge of how to help groups with facilitation, yeah. Another point I forgot to mention, in my activities, I am finding myself staying quiet for long stretches in Italy, because most, some, most of my clients, are in Italy, actually. And the Italian chapter, I'm very much in contact with them. I know them, most of them, personally. They've just had this Friday and Saturday, their annual conference. It was a real big success. I had a work in Vienna, so I couldn't go there. But last year I went. It's always a really interesting event. So they don't hold monthly meetings. But for example, I got to know there is a group in Padova, in Padua, which meets every two months. They call it Facilitator Playground for one morning, and they do many the same as we do in Belgium. So every time I can, I go up and stay with them and support them, participate. So yeah, it's giving this back up is really essential. Because in these meetings, you find big community building between facilitators. You find a pool of learning with shared knowledge between facilitators and you and encourage each other, you get to know, maybe you get to know, people with whom you could actually work later on. But on the whole, you become friends with others, and I think that's a real big it's something. It's not nothing. It's a when we help each other, and you get to know differences, which can become a gift, because you widen your your personality, your knowledge, your approach to things, yeah.   H.J   Yeah I really love that about the IAF and just the sort of wider community as well, hanging out with other people that really love to talk about facilitation and, and all its kind of broad, you know, broad aspects, different aspects of it, and, and, yeah, you're right. You sort of, you do start to make friends and start to build up those relationships, and it's really nice. And I

In this episode Helene talks to Bianca Jones - Award Winning Mental Health & Anti-Racism Training Provider, MHFA England Associate and Founder & Managing Director of EDP Training, Paul Brand- Facilitator and Management Consultant, Director at Risk Solutions and IAF England and Wales board member and Cat Duncan-Rees-  Facilitator and founder of Curators of Change and also an IAF England and Wales board member.  She starts by asking Bianca to talk a bit about the work she does and what led her to develop EDP and the Race Ahead training She asks Cat and Paul about what led the IAF England and Wales Leadership Team to ask Bianca to deliver this training course online in October and about their key takeaways. Cat and Paul talk about the RA4F special thread at the IAF England and Wales conference Facilitate 2025 this year and where the idea came from?   Bianca shares some examples of specific impact or changes she's seen in a facilitator's approach after attending Race Ahead Bianca gives some more details her session at the conference and the training course she is offering the day before. All the guests then talk about why a focus around racial equality at the conference is important and why active race awareness matters in facilitation and what anti-racism might look like for facilitators. The guests also talk about their hopes for longer term initiatives in teh facilitation communicty around anti-racism. To book onto the RA4F course on 24th April 2025:  To book onto the Facilitate 2025 conference   To contact Bianca - bianca@edptraining.co.uk To contact Cat - cat@curatorsofchange.com To contact Paul - paul.brand@risksol.co.uk To contact Helene: Helene@jewellfacilitation.com    To contact the conference team: conference@iaf-englandwales.org 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 Helene Jewell, and today we're going to be talking to Bianca Jones, Cat Duncan-Rees and Paul Brand. Bianca is an award winning mental health and anti racism training provider, MHFA England associate and founder and managing director of EDP training. Paul is a facilitator and management consultant, Director at Risk Solutions and IAF England and Wales board member and Cat is also a facilitator, founder of curators of change, and also an IAF England and Wales board member. Welcome everybody. So nice to see you all. Okay, so we've got a little bit of introductory stuff out of the way. I am going to dive in with my questions, and my first one is to you, Bianca, tell us all. Tell us about the work that you do.   B.J Oh, thank you so much. So I am Bianca Jones. I run a company based in Bristol called EDP training, which stands for Empower developed people, although we deliver training all over. We are eight years old, and we started by delivering Mental Health First Aid training. I retrained with Mental Health First Aid England, and through my work, I saw that there was massive inequalities in the workplace with black and brown people or racially minoritized individuals is the language that I will use, and I wanted to do something about it. So I started pulling together the race ahead suite of courses all around race, equity and allyship, to help people really understand what they're being an ally to. And that's been since 2020. We've been delivering our race ahead suite of anti racism and allyship courses .   H.J Great, and what kind of people come to these race ahead training courses?   B.J So first of all, anybody can sign up, because we have digital options as well, and anybody who's interested in kind of racial inequality. But we started focusing at corporate organisations, so mainly businesses, but I work with so many different types of organisations, small organisations to really, really large you know, with over 500 people, we work with charities as well, nonprofits, and we have lots of different options for if it's just an individual that wants to do some training, they can access our digital self-led options. And then we also have a train the trainer, because other trainers wanted to be able to train in this course and be able to deliver it as well. So we started that in 2022 in September, I believe. So we've currently got 15 other instructors out there that are delivering the race ahead suite of courses as well, but we tried to have lots of different options to make it accessible for anyone that wants to learn about this very important and vital subject.    H.J Wow. So it's not just you. In fact, there's quite a large group of you then.   B.J Absolutely taking over, spreading the message with the mission of race equity and allyship.    H.J Fantastic. Okay, and I've met you before, along with some of the IAF leadership team, because you delivered your race ahead training course to us, didn't you? And so I'm going to turn to Kat and Paul now to just remind us, or remind me, and let everybody else know how this came about. How did the IAF leadership team come to engage Bianca and be participants in her training course?   P.B We started having a conversation about a number of things to do with racial discrimination and minoritization out of the back of our two most recent conferences. And we were looking at a whole range of stuff about, you know, how racially balanced was our actual community? How comfortable were people from different backgrounds in that community? And we had some conversations, you know, because not everybody was entirely comfortable. And people had some experiences they thought, well, that could have been a lot better. And really, we started to think about whether we should have some kind of initiative across our community of IAF England and Wales and friends, that we could invite people to join, to do some self work in this area. Think about how it affects our work as facilitators. And we thought that the first step we should take was as a leadership team, or at least parts of the leadership team actually engaged with that ourselves, and we had a contact who knew Bianca. And so about eight of us had two or half day online sessions with you, and started to think about that as the kernel of something we might spread more widely, and I think we'll talk about later in the podcast. So yeah, but very much the sense of, well, we had to start with us before we start thinking of leading something with other people.   H.J And Cat I know you were involved in a lot of the conversations that led up to this, and for you, I think it was something that was very important that we did. Wonder if you could tell us a bit more about that and how we got to where we got to?   C.D Yeah, absolutely, really important Helen. I think for me, just picking up on what Paul sort of said around the conference, I think this first really started to come to light post COVID I think it's important to say when we started to bring people together. So there's a heightened awareness anyway, coming out of that post COVID period, and the world is looking and feeling very, very different. And, you know, we did a hybrid conference in Birmingham few years ago, we went on to do another two in Birmingham. We've got conference coming up this year, but over the previous three conferences, there's been a steady kind of build up of us trying to diversify that community, invite people in to do some very different sessions to really push the boundaries in terms of what we mean by inclusion for the facilitator community. I think, as well, and maybe this is a whole other podcast in itself, that idea of neutrality and how can we as facilitators really genuinely stand for, stand alongside those who are from minoritized communities, Race being one of those minoritized communities.    So some of the feedback from conference has been quite hard to digest. We know we haven't always got it right, but as Paul said, what we really want to do is start with ourselves as a leadership team and a board in order to be able to have the knowledge and the insights that we need to confidently be able to get alongside people who are coming into our spaces. I say our spaces, actually we want it to be, you know, their space, and for them to be really much a part of it. And how can we also challenge back in the broader facilitated community, because there is a huge lack of awareness. And I think that's something that's taken me a little bit by surprise, my own lack of awareness in that, not just the lack of awareness of other people, but as I'm growing in confidence and awareness of why this is so important, it's helping me to have the confidence to be able to challenge others. And I think that's where we're at now in terms of conference, and not just conference, actually, Paul will talk a little bit more about that. It's, you know, what we're committed to as a community over the next 12 months and beyond, in terms of really pushing that and diversifying things even further, and helping people to understand why this is so important, whatever spaces they're in.    H.J And before we jump into talking a bit more about conference, actually, I just wanted to quickly ask both of you about your key takeaways from the training, because I know if I go back and think about part of the training there was a bit of an action plan at the end, and I go back and I think about all that. I think wow, there was a lot in there and for me personally, I learned so much. But I just wondered if I could ask each of you, maybe Cat first and then Paul, for a couple of your key takeaways from Bianca's training?   C.D Yeah, I think my key takeaway was, one of them was, you know, really that commitment and willingness. In terms of a training session, you know, the people who came to those online sessions in themselves, or quite a diverse group of people in terms of gender, race, age, was notable as well and experience, you know, longevity as a facilitator, and how long people hav

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 implant on the hair, I had to order those from a Lego dealer because I could no longer source them directly from Lego. And s

  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, desire to make an impact in the world, but in quite a practical way.   H.J It does, I recognize that feelin

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 content, and sometimes actually, we do need a completely independent facilitator.    So there might b

 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 thing for most Dutch people is they like to work in Dutch. And that is the other thing we organized from the IAF Benelux, we wanted to have a certifica

  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 for any facilitators listening who haven't tried journaling before, or perhaps are doing it but aren't aware they're doin

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 so much time talking especially you know, as in groups, as facilitators, we see so much talk and conversation

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 period I had less time to dedicate to the association. So I asked to Deborah Rim Moiso to help me, and she joined, and she was very happy to join this experie

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 likely to be part of a bigger team. So the number of participants involved in a public dialogue might be, it might be 30, but it

In this episode Helene talks to Paul Brand, Director of Risk Solutions and part of the IAF England and Wales Leadership Team, Board member and conference team member. They talk about  The IAF England and Wales facilitators and friends Facilitate 2024 Conference (April 26th & 27th 2024) and what it is all about. Who is on the organising team and what Paul's role has been What is different from last year's conference What kinds of sessions we can expect What he is looking forward to A bit about the participants some of whom are coming from outsde the UK How the IAF England and Wales conferences have grown over the years and what makes them successful "it is a bit like a buffet and having taste of this and a taste of that." "what really makes me happy about the whole thing, and inspired by it, is watching people enter into it and throw themselves into it. Watching them having conversations with people they've never met and would never meet and, and go away taking whatever it is they've taken from the conference".  A full transcript is below. Links Today's guest was Dr Paul Brand https://www.linkedin.com/in/drpaulbrand/ paul.brand@risksol.co.uk  https://risksol.co.uk/  Today's subject The Facilitate 2024 Conference https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/facilitate2024-growingtogether-tickets-733547288687?aff=oddtdtcreator  To find out more about the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter 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 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 Helene Jewell and today I'm talking to Paul Brand,a management consultant whose work focuses on public policy. He often works on long term engagements across entire sectors for multi organisation communities, and uses facilitation extensively in his work. He's also an IAF England Wales board member, certified professional facilitator and a member of the conference planning team. Welcome, Paul. Good morning. It is morning. It is morning. Good. It is morning. It is morning. So my first question is just to ask you, really to tell us a little bit more about you as a facilitator and your involvement in the IAF. So I came into facilitation like a lot of people, not quite realizing I was doing it, doing a lot of public policy consulting things, and needing somebody who would lead groups of people through discussions. And then that became a better understanding of what facilitation as a profession was all about. And that grew and grew over the years. I did a long piece of work in the about 2011 2012, working with a very senior IAF board member. We did a lot of events together, and during that time I understood what the IAF was about and realized I needed to actually make my facilitation skills part of my professional development formally. So I did the IAF certified professional facilitator thing in 2012, which was quite a developmental experience in itself, and I keep that up to this day. And then over the last four or five years, I've become more and more involved in the workings of IAF, in England and Wales particularly, and have also had the privilege of attending a couple of the european conferences in Paris and Milan, finding out how our colleagues across the channel do it. So it's been an arc of development. Yeah, an arc of development slowly, slowly coming further and further in. And obviously we're here today to talk about the about conference. So let's start off with the kind of, the basic stuff. So IAF England and Wales conference in April, I guess. What do we need to know? The dates, where it is, what is it all about? So it is Friday and Saturday, the 26th and 27 April. And for quite a few years now, we've done this Friday Saturday mix seems to balance that. Some of the people, depending on their work and professional lives, some of them can, you know, share those two days, rather than it being two days out mid week or two days at a weekend. It is in Birmingham it is at a venue called the Priory rooms, which is quite close to the middle of Birmingham. It's very easy to get to, and it's two full days, the Friday and the Saturday. It is quite broadly based. We had about 70 people last year. As of yesterday, we've got 100 people coming this year, and we're going to have to cap it at 120 for venue reasons, which is a really nice, really nice set of challenges to have. That is. That is. So there are a few more tickets. We are recording this a little bit before the conference, obviously, but there are, at the moment, a few tickets left. It's about 20 whole two day tickets left. We have to stop it at 120 because just moving that many people around the venue, because of the safe of it, becomes a limit on that. You can book single day tickets. So even after full tickets closed, there might be some one day tickets left. There's about ten or 15 people coming on one day or the other, but most people are there for the two days. Fantastic. And so obviously, a lot of work goes into organizing the conference. I know that we worked quite closely together doing the hybrid conference of years ago. Tell us a little bit about the organizing team. Who's on it? What do they do? How have you kind of made things work from behind the scenes? So the conference team is all volunteers. Obviously, everything in this group is. It is so two thirds people who are also on the England and Wales leadership group. So they have wider interest in the if group and some people who just do the conference. The core of it, of course, is the people who put the program together, which is a team of three or four people. And so this year, with this sort of numbers, we're running four parallel tracks during most of those two days. And there are four very, very broad sort of types of session. They're all interactive sessions. There's no big lectures at this conference, but there's a thread which is learning facilitation tools, techniques, skills, that kind of thing. There's a thread which are sessions which are about growing and personal development and reflection. There's a thread which is about work and business, professional development, everything from how to run a business, because quite a lot of people are freelancers in this thing, as opposed to working in house. And what the differences are there, even down to, you know, how do we think about charging for our time, depending on the context? And then we've got a fourth thread this year, which is actually on the whole area of diversity, inclusivity, lived experience, and what do we need to learn as facilitators in this generation about how we handle those issues, even if that's not the topic of the discussion. You might be doing a session on something very engineering or very management based, but how are you managing diversity, inclusion and dealing with people's lived experience in different areas? So there's quite a variety of stuff. There's four parallel tracks. There's no big lectures. There's some opening and closing sessions and any sense of how many. You probably do know this, I expect it's written down somewhere. But how many different sessions are there altogether? 30 ish, because we're running, apart from the opening and closing each day, we're running four tracks all the time from, like, from when we set off on the Friday morning until Saturday afternoon. And there's a closing plenary, so there's about 30 dishes to take from the buffet and you can go to about a quarter of those. If you. If you went to a session in every slot, you could go to about a quarter of that number. But then there'll be other ways of accessing some of that material and talking to other people and stuff. So it is a bit like a buffet and having taste of this and a taste of that. That sounds like there's so much to choose from and that's the important thing, isn't it? You're not sort of channeled in a particular direction. You can choose what you want to suit you. I would say what's quite interesting, because I was at a session this morning talking with some of the session leaders. We've got quite a few people who are not only coming for the conference for the first time, but they're jumping in the deep end and are doing a session and this is their first contact with IAF. So that's quite exciting and quite brave of them. It is. I was going to ask, actually, how many people doing sort of offering sessions have not done it before? Because some people do offer sessions sort of fairly regularly at the IAF conferences. We counted it up last year and we reckoned it split about a third. A third? A third. A third of the people were, you know, connected into IAF. They were probably members, they were involved in something, that kind of thing. There was about a third who we might count as IAF friends. They. This wasn't their first IAF event experience. They. Maybe they come to meetups or they'd been to a previous conference or they knew somebody. And about a third of the people last year, they had just heard of this conference, they just heard of IAF and they came along, and that was their first baptism of fire, if you like. So I don't know if the balance is the same yesterday, but there's certainly, there's that breadth coming that's really nice and really good that there's sort of some, I guess, old hands, if you like, that are sort of really familiar with. Very politely put, helen, very experienced facilitators who are coming back to share their wisdom again and some new faces. My really strong memory last year was a young woman who came from another country. We'll talk about that in a minute. She contacted us very hesitant, said, I'm not from the UK. I studied in the UK. I want to come over and see my university friends. I want to come to the conference. What 

In epsode Bogdan tells us about himself as a facilitator and trainer, what it means to be a playful facilitator and his journey into facilitation.  He tells Nikki and Helene about how IAF Romania and how it all began, from joining IAF in 2018 to getting intouch with other facilitatrors in Romania. With the start of the pandemic 2 years later and everyone had more time he found out what was needed to start a chapter, and started IAF Romania with Bogdan as the Chair.  Since 2020 the chaoter has grown to 27 members, with more facilitators wanting to be a part of the community. The growth has happened in terms of quality of events as well as numbers.  Facilitation is not well known in Romania and not well known in organisations.  Bogdan talks about engaging new people to the world of facilitation, organising events and enabling people to make connections and talks in more detail about some of the events they have hosted for example Open Space in HR.  They also have a group mentoring programme and how that works. They have two types of approaches - one for the community and one for the IAF Romania members. Most events are co-facilitated so there is a lot of learning.  Some examples of the events are: Training about having impact in online facilitation - Nelson from Portugal. Pop up sharing around a particular topic. Facilitators Studio - where someone can bring a new design to try out. Facilitator Lab - helping two facilitators to create something together. An example of this is AI and facilitation.  The core members of 10/12 come up with the ideas for all the events and build the ideas together. They plan to have their first in person event - a facilitation festival in the autumn.  Bogdan talks about collaborations with other IAF Chapters and explains how these have worked: Twin Chapters with IAF Italy Facilitation Lightening Talks, some of which were with IAF Ireland and IAF Italy He talks extensively about the collaboration with IAF Japan and the 9 or 10 meetings that were needed to set this up and the cultural learning points.  Helene asks Bogdan to talk about his role in IAF Europe and Middle East as part of the share and learn team and the benefits of bringing together different cultures and facilitation experience.  Bogdan talks about what next for IAF Romania - elections, continued focus on mentoring, sending chapters from the Power of Facilitation book out in their newsletter which they have translated into Romanian.  Bogdan lastly talks about his hope for the future and the facilitation festival.  To contact Bogdan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bogdangrigore82/ IAF Romania: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/romania https://www.linkedin.com/company/iaf-romania-international-association-of-facilitators-romanian-chapter/?originalSubdomain=ro  The Power of Facilition:  https://facpower.org/2021/06/01/what-is-the-power-of-facilitation-and-why-is-it-important/  Lightening Talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcOrr9Sj17U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tluzc03l4sM Celebrating Diversity with IAF Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FctxQou8F9w Find Helene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ Find Nikki on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/  Listen to our podcasts: https://www.facilitationstories.com/   Email: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org  

In this episode Helene talks to Deborah Deborah Rim Moiso from SessionLab about their recent survey and report. Deborah shares her experience as a freelance facilitator and discusses her mentoring program with IAF and her passion for facilitating multistakeholder projects on nature conservation, climate change, and youth training. She talks about how in 2022, the first global survey of facilitators was conducted by Session Lab, gathering data on who facilitators are, where they are, and their age. It was initiated by Session Lab to address the lack of data on facilitators, despite reports existing for other professions like UX design. This survey looks at Facilitation trends and insights from a global survey.  Facilitators were surveyed globally, with 1000 responses from diverse regions, including Japan. The report was well-received, with new questions added to better understand learning pathways to facilitation, and feedback from contributors and experts. Deborah talks about the role of expert commentators and how they condensed the data and provided insights, asking questions and challenging assumptions to open discussions and conversations. Deborah describes some of the key findings from the report including Facilitation industry trends and AI adoption. One standout reflection from the report is the generosity of the facilitation community in providing answers, despite the lengthy survey process. Deborah discusses some of the other insights from the report including: Online vs in-person sessions Facilitators delivering shorter sessions Representation, professionalisation and diversity The facilitation industry and accreditation programs The importance of including younger perspectives in the facilitation profession To contact Deborah: email deborah@sessionlab.com To read the 2024 State of Facilitation Report: https://www.sessionlab.com/state-of-facilitation/?utm_source=IAF-Podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=sof To help SessionLab promote the project: https://www.sessionlab.com/state-of-facilitation/promo-kit/ If you have any questions about the report or the data behind it, or want to contribute to the next edition, get in touch with us at state-of-facilitation@sessionlab.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 

In this episode Helene talks to Jamie Colston - father, facilitator, poet and systemic constellations practitioner about his work using Systemic Constellations, both Family Constellations and in organisations.  He talks about how he got into the work in the first place, the training he has done and the practise he does and some of what he has coming up next. He shares some examples of how he uses it and in terms of facilitation he suggests it is most akin to Open Space Technology.  You can find Jamie here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiecolston/  Jamie Colston https://www.jamiecolston.com/  Centre for Systemic Constellations - https://www.thecsc.net/ The Whole Partnership - https://www.wholepartnership.com/      

Today we're introducing a new quarterly feature "Chapter Chat". As many listeners know, the England and Wales chapter is just one of the many IAF volunteer-led chapters globally, all working within 6 regions across 65 countries. While all chapters are united under the IAF vision and operate in accordance to the IAF Code of Ethics they are all run in a slightly different way, and reflect the context they're working within. So alongside our episodes capturing individual facilitators' stories, each quarter we're going to chat to people leading other chapters, about how they see the status of facilitation where they are, and the history, priorities, current projects and aspirations for their chapter. To kick us off, we have a special episode reflecting on a year of facilitation in the EME region, where Helene and Nikki talk to Tamara Zivadinovic Regional Director of the Europe and Middle East Region of the IAF. Tamara talks about her own facilitation practise, how she got involved in IAF and her her journey to becoming Regional Director.  She explains to Helene and Nikki what are your main responsibilities are as regional Director and what has been happening in the Region over the last year. She talks about celebrating the many IAF volunteers and about her proudest moments as Regional Director. Tamara shares what is coming up in 2024, her hopes for the region and finishes up with an ask for the members of the region. You can contact Tamara on: rep.europe@iaf-world.org or find her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamara-zivadinovic-4975384/ 

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 person kind of share best practice together, because then it's actually a developmental experience for me, and not just me doing a free bit of facilitation. And a free bit of, you know, I can facilitate and design facilitation all day long, and that's my job, but to actually to do it with a peer that I don't usually work with just makes that more, it's more fun. And it's more developmental as well. So, yeah, so you came into my mind, because I thought, oh, yeah, I'd like to work with Helene. I think it would be fun.    HJ It was so nice, it was like "yes, of course", like, and I think it's true that Facilitation Week is that there's loads of different sessions, and they're hosted by loads of different people all over the world. So in a way, there's that opportunity to explore and connect, and it's fairly low risk. It's a really nice way to sort of get to know people.   And yes, I remember your session that was for the May conference, I think,and so  I was quite quite pleased. I thought, well, this is a nice opportunity, because we've connected a bit online. We've been to those meetups and the conference together. And yeah, I thought, Well, this sounds like a good idea. And I know originally, you kind of thought about two different things. I can't remember.    CB Yeah, I can't remember what the other one was. But you jumped on the authenticity and when, because I went "I'm vaguely thinking this authenticity". And I think that was because I just finished my last piece of work for the summer, which had been avert a hybrid conference, and someone had commented about my style and approach and how different and distinctive it was to other online facilitator that they'd worked with. And I think I was reflecting on that and recognising actually, that is, one of my strengths is that I can be in the virtual environment, and I feel natural in that environment.    HJ So yeah, I remember you sending an email and thinking about these two different options. And the authenticity stuff really jumped out at me, I think, partly because a lot of the time when we talk about doing sessions, for you know, things like Facilitation Week, I think it's really easy to jump to sort of tools and techniques and sharing that kind of stuff. But I was really intrigued by this, because I thought it's something quite different. But also, I wasn't quite sure where it might go. And I'm quite, I'm always quite keen to try and explore things and see sort of what what could be. So I think when you suggested that, I thought, "Great, that's a good starting point. Let's, let's jump in there and and have a little go and see where it goes". And it's probably fair to say that that was, that was the way our planning worked a little bit.   CB Yeah, it was, I think it was, it was a little chaotic. And then I think I had, I had a quiet period, it was just before the beginning of August. And so I started, I intellectualised about it, which is how I often go. So I did some research. And I started like pulling out all this stuff on authenticity. And it wasn't really, it kind of just made it feel quite sterile. And I thought that's not really it. That's not what I'm talking about here. Then my kind of as happens in the whole of this year, my mum went into hospital again. So I was back into a crisis period. So I didn't have much time to think about it. And so then when you got back from your holiday, we were kind of scrambling around going "right, what is it we're trying to do?" And that's when I came up with the title.    HJ It was, "Am I? Can I?  Should I?, which I think actually intrigued people in itself. So I think that was great that it was such a sort of organic. That's nice. Yeah, but it just Yeah, did it just appear? Or did you spend a long time thinking?    CB No, no, I think it just I went for a bit of a walk. And I just, and it kind of came to me. And it was because this, the way of these things is you often have to come up with your title for the marketing before you've really thought what the session is going to be about. So I didn't want to kind of make it too prescriptive that we would then have to fit into. And I think as I was thinking about it was those dialogues, those kinds of things about what am I actually authentic? You know, is that what I'm coming across here? When people say to me about how I come across as a facilitator and how relaxed they feel with me, is that about authenticity? And then the kind of what is it I do to become authentic? So that's the kind of learning piece? And is it something that you intuitively do? Or is it something that you can actually learn to do? And then the "should" bit was because I think mainly because I was going through that crisis with my mum, as you know, and, you know, there are times when I've had to just put the face on. And you know, internally, I'm crying. And actually, I've got to kind of be out there being positive and engaged Whilst this is going on in the background. And I'm worrying about it. And so, you know, in some ways, is that true authenticity, if we're having to put a bit of a mask over to our feelings? But actually, should I really be truly authentic with a big group do 60 people need to know all my emote stuff that's going on? They just like me to get on with my job and facilitate.    H Yeah, and it's so intersting, because I know, when we were talking about, you know, what do we what is this session gonna be like, what do we need to put in there, we did have a lot of conversations about that kind of stuff. And I know for from my side, it has been suggested by a couple of people that, you know, like you perhaps I'm quite, I don't know, quite energetic, perhaps quite personable in my facilitation style, quite, maybe quite relaxed, but that sometimes I need to maybe dial down my energetic-ness, that kind of outward enthusiasm for a session, let's say, because that doesn't fit with the session, because the tone of the session needs to be different. And so for me, that was one of the questions that I know, I brought into our discussions