Facilitator Development
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…
Oops…When the Facilitator Does Not Get the Product the Group Needs
Everyone has bad facilitator days when the group did not get the outcomes or specific product they needed. No worries. It happens to me all the time. Well, more rarely these days but a lot in the early days…So what are you to do about it? My mentor, Bill Staples of ICA Associates, Canada helped me…
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…
Will Online Meetings Become a Whole New Offshoot of Facilitation?
All of us have experienced a new norm of online meetings. Like the split tree photo in this banner, I believe online facilitation will become as important and as normal as face-to-face meetings. Maybe even more so. Thus, our mission is to become as skillful facilitating in the online as the in-person environment. And, if…
Why Facilitators Need to Talk About Race
This month I’m continuing on the topic of race (a social construct which has complex origins and often, harmful consequences) and facilitation. In full disclosure, I am not a full-time facilitator of racial dialogues. I have had many occasions to hold these conversations in groups because it comes up in strategic planning, or team-building/conflict interventions….
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…
Celebrating Black Female Facilitators
In the U.S., February is African American history month. It began as a celebration of contributions by African Americans at a time when those contributions were not remotely recognized. This month is meant to be a tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity and oppression in achieving full citizenship in American…
