Facilitator Competencies
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…
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…
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…
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…
The Art and Science of Facilitator Patience
Several colleagues who are relatively new to facilitation are having me reflect on the concept of patience and compassion. I’ve also been thinking a lot about a term “art and science” I learned from the ICA Associates Canada course called, The Art and Science of Participation. Patience is an art and science. In my own…
Move Out of the Boxes in Virtual Meetings
We’ve been in virtual meetings for 8 months or more depending on when you started your virtual meeting journey. Most of us are still sitting in Zoom boxes or Microsoft Teams meetings without having the delightful experience of what the technology is offering us. This blog hopes to remind you that we can take the…
Facilitation and Democracy – Can they inform each other?
Recently with all that is going on with the pandemic, racial protests and federal presidential elections (November 3, 2020) in the US, I’ve been thinking deeply about what democracy means to me. How is facilitation related to democracy? Is there an essence of facilitation that might give me solace when democracy seems to be seriously…
Uncovering Opportunities – A Facilitator’s Early Response to a Global Shutdown
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, some of us are finding lots of opportunities to offer our skills and services as process facilitators. And others are not. I want to acknowledge that both are true right now. And neither is better than the other. It just is. Nonetheless, I also want to emphasize that there are…
The Importance of Pauses in Process Work
I rarely pause in my life. My family would attest to this fact. Yet life goes better with pauses. I have learned this the hard way. In process facilitation, pauses are an incredibly important part of the entire agenda. If you don’t pause at the right moments, you miss the opportunity for such things as…
Facilitator Math – When You Need to Use Numbers to Get Better Results
Most facilitators are not really into math, but you may need to be. I keep discovering how important it is to watch numbers and patterns (the underlying structure of math) when you are conducting a facilitated session. Here are two quick tips to get really good results. One is something all facilitators seem to get…
