Facilitator Competencies

The Power of Self Reflection

This month’s blog is super short. Let me share with you what our gifts to you are this month. I had the honour of presenting to IAF Indonesia Chapter. Lidia Rusvita, (she just completed her Endorsed Facilitator IAF designation – congratulations Lidia!) took the lead on this and is a member of our Gold Academy…

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Deepening Your Facilitation with Metaphors

As many of you know, I love to use metaphors in my facilitation events, workshops and social media.  Recently, I was invited as a guest facilitator to present a workshop with Jorie Wu and Jackie Chang with the CP Yen Foundation, Taiwan on the power of metaphors in facilitation. They summarized nicely the key points…

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Facilitation: Relax and Trust the Process

Many of you know my love for the environment and outdoor adventure, and pushing the edges of my physical and psychological limits. In our new Victoria, BC, Canada environment by the sea, I have decided to make the sea my friend and playmate. I am getting to know it as best as I can. Thus,…

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Finally – Your Very Own Complete Professional Facilitator Development Library

We did it. We worked for years to make facilitator user-friendly content. Now we hope you will benefit from it in some new ways. This blog shares a bit of a story about my journey (and my collaboration with Eileen) and where I am now. Sorry – not much on technique today.  BUT rich on…

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Self-Reflection Using the ToP Focused Conversation Method (ORID)

Many of you have been working with the Focused Conversation method or ORID for short. The acronym ORID as you may recall stand for the four levels of thinking that a facilitator can use to help the group track together. By tracking, I mean creating a sense of flow, alignment and focus for a group…

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Meeting the Impossible Strategic Planning Request

In this blog, I meet with two esteemed colleagues, Leah Hopton from Vancouver, Canada, and Teck Kwang Loh from Singapore. We discuss the various ways that we’ve approached strategic planning. I introduce the typical ToP Strategic Planning model and talk about where it’s different from most planning frameworks.   Part 1: Strategic Planning Introduction  …

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The Facilitator: Sage on the Stage or Guide on the Side?

In one of our recent public courses to teach facilitation skills, someone used the phrase “sage on the stage or guide on the side”. I think they were having an aha moment about the job of the process facilitator. It is not to be a lecturer or the wise knowledgeable expert, but a person who…

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From simple to sophisticated… virtual facilitation tools and tips you must try!

Contributors: Dr. Manal Alnaimi, Saudi Arabia Mireille Beumer, Netherlands Grace Tan, Singapore Today’s blog is going to have a lot of links. My purpose is to inspire you to get outside of your comfort zone and try new things. If you are “stuck” in this in-between world of in-person and virtual, perhaps you need some…

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Dealing with Conflict During COVID (or any other time)

Featuring guest blogger: Gabriel Begin (our son) Last week, our son led part of our family in a structured discussion so that we could have some quality sharing together. We haven’t seen each other in almost a year. The older adults present had all been vaccinated. I did not realize until today, that he was…

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How to Build a Successful Virtual Facilitation Team

I just participated in one of the most profound and interesting team experiences of my life! It took place in just under two years.  The project came out of a client request to train 25 healthcare leaders (later called the Enable learning cohort) in Saudi Arabia in the art and science of process facilitation.  The…

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