Facilitation Stories – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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.
  
  

"A strong ending creates a feeling of completeness."

"Reflection without action feels unfinished."

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 engagement events, at some of the workshops, at some of the away days, we were kind of running ourselves and think. If I knew now, then what? I know now, there's a, I mean, I would've done things very differently and I think having these skills when you are working in organizations with teams is so.

Powerful. And um, and also at a board level, I mean, I did, I've sat on a couple of different charity boards and NHS as a kind of non-exec director, and I sometimes think about how formal and quite stale those meetings can be and how just some very simple. Facilitation skills that bring a bit of kind of like structure or powerful questions or moments for people to pause and reflect could really transform those spaces.

I mean, it is a big, , focus of my work at the moment is trying to. Bring facilitation skills into organizations .

Olivia Bellas I love that that aspect of, you know, helping people navigate essentially who, who need that skill, but might not necessarily know it yet. And actually coming onto that, then coming onto those nice techniques and sort of tips, .

Let's start going into this idea of workshops and, um, facilitated spaces and how actually we end them well, because I think there's a lot,, that we can talk about in terms of how we start well, and you know, all those different activities that we can get excited about in that core middle section.

And then there's that ending part. Which I know I'm guilty of, have maybe not dedicated enough time to, so that's what I'd love us to dive into a bit more now. Yeah. What's, what's kind of bubbling for you at the moment in terms of the power of endings in workshops?

Julia Slay  Hmm. Well, you are right. I mean, I have become kind of mildly obsessed with this topic and have, uh, looked, you know, looked and reflected on a lot of my own endings of workshops and trainings and events. And I'm also a regular participant. I mean, one of the ways I try and. Keep my practice fresh is by being a participant in lots of other spaces where I can be facilitated by different people.

So I've started, I've got a lot of kind of creativity and inspiration from some of those people as well. And I guess the reason I became so fixated on it is because I have had some really bad experiences of endings and they weren't catastrophic, but they were probably quite. Common. So, uh, let's go through Yes.

Some of those, yeah, I think we identify so well. I would say that they're, they're probably things that every, I don't, I know that on, on a bad day, my workshops would run like this as well. You run late, so not. You don't actually run late, but the session que, you know, it goes on and on and squeezes your kind of ending checkout time quite tightly.

Mm-hmm. So you might find yourself just with kind of three minutes to go to try and do a bunch of stuff. So I think it can feel well, I think. A bad ending for me feels quite rushed and, , not spacious, which is how I like my work to feel for people I guess relaxed in some ways.

If you have an ending that isn't closed, well, it can feel like you're kind of untethered. Like we didn't close everything that we opened. Um, there isn't time to process and reflect collectively. There might be individuals might well walk away and be reflecting there themselves, but there hasn't been a kind of collective moment, which is quite important in the way I facilitate.

And I'm really influenced by some of the neuroscience behind this, and in particular something called the peak end rule, which shows us that what people remember from events is the highs and the ends. And it is, it is. That, which I think has really got me thinking about how do I make sure that the endings are really powerful.

So I, I am kind of. Struck by if, if part of the intention of your work is to create an impact and I think the work that I do, which is often around a kind of more structured workshops and events, then the ending does really matter.

And there, I think there are several things that you can do to create a really powerful lending. And it kind of depends partly on what you're doing. The thing I all, I'm now trying much more to avoid is that kind of very rushed, three minutes at the end on Zoom, where in a panic I might say, okay, one word in the chat or one emoji and how you're feeling leaving this session.

Olivia Bellas And then it's just kind of over and which has its place, right. The checkout, those checkout words are lovely, but like you say, it's about, is it about ring? How do you ringfence that time, you know? Yeah. . And how much time would you give it? I, I guess depending on,, the session.

Julia Slay Um, yeah, that's a good question actually.

I mean, it does, I think, well, how do you ringfence it? One of the things I've started to do, two things I've started to do, I have found quite helpful. One, is to just be much more generous in my planning around how long to leave for the, for the ending. So in a one hour session, for example, online, I might angel leave 15 minutes and, and if I, if I ended up with 10, I'd be happy.

The other thing I've seen people do and I quite like doing now, is using buffer time. So in a workshop plan, deliberately planning in buffer time for either q and a extra breaks if people need them, a session to go on a bit longer or a bit more to at the end. And I don't think I've ever been left.

Too much time at the end. So my assumption is always, if there's time it can be usefully spent, right? Like it's like a helpful thing. And if you can finish five minutes early, actually they're gonna be love you. Yeah. They're gonna love you. It's like having a snow day at school or something. People are like skipping out.

Think I've got five minutes to make a cup of tea or hang up my laundry. Um, so. Yeah, I think I, I am more and more conscious about trying not to rush things or to do, I mean, one of the many activities I would do as part of a kind of ending section would be a checkout, and I think with the kind of one word in the chat, or share your reflection in the chat, it can be very effective if you don't have time to go around and hear people, but actually they don't have time to read it.

So often what I find is people are sharing these brilliant insights and we, as the facilitators are left. With them and we can read through them and go, oh, that's lovely. That's really interesting. But they're often just pinging it in and then heading out of the room. So it feels like for me, part of the intention of a checkout is that it's collective sense making and a moment of collective connection.

And if I'm doing like add something in the chat, they're not getting the benefit of that necessarily, unless they're being really diligent and staying and reading through everything.

Olivia Bellas So there's a, there's a connection part,, a social part I guess, remembering who's there, how we sort of started this very kind of human aspect.

I'm just thinking about. Um, the value of what meaning has been made, you know, kind of a learning transfer aspect I suppose that might more sit with training or is there a differentiation?

Julia Slay Well, yeah, , I do think, I feel quite strongly, and I know other facilitators will have different views on this.

I think, I feel that there is always collective learning. From almost any kind of session. And I don't, I don't think that's limited to training. I think that often we learn through hearing other people articulate things that are different to us or that validate something else, or sometimes it's naming something we hadn't that, you know, we hadn't even found the words for yet.

So there is, I think. In every, we are using the word session quite loosely here, but it could be a meeting, it could be a team away day, it could be, um, a planning session could be almost anything really. But the chance to talk about both, like the process and the content feels like an opportunity to deepen learning and to.

Yeah, I, I think to, to have a more kind of reflective space that mm-hmm. Is, is about learning, is about connection is about, I think about this sometimes with my quality improvement hat on, where I used to coach teams in the NHS kind of an hour a week in a GP practice, and we would always do a review at the end of the one hour meeting, which was just a very quick in five minutes.

What went well about the meeting and even better if, and everyone would share their, what went well and even better if, and through that we were making these micro adjustments to how we worked as a team. And how those sessions were useful for the team. So it didn't have to be a big whole scale three month review, although you could do that.

It was this kind of like slight tweaking, recalibrating, and a chance, uh, to just make things a bit a bit better. So I think I sometimes do think about it as both the process and the content. So, um, a checkout and a, and a process of reflecting can be, , both about. What did I learn today? What insights am I taking away?

What reflections am I taking away? And how did I feel this session went? What might we do differently next time? And I think there is often, for me, because I'm a coach and I know you are too, I quite like to combine reflection with action.. So that there's a reflective component and then there's a kind of, what action am I taking away, or what's my next step?

I also think there's a bunch of other logistical stuff that you do in an ending that's quite important. So there's stuff around kind of what's happening next, like where is, you know, what is the kind of next stage of this, if at all? , There's kind of sharing materials. Often I think we forget that participants we are with this is, I'm more in the space of if you're facilitating groups who aren't already in a team or organization.

They often are like, we wanna be connected and we forget that. We need to give them the space to have that conversation and figure out what they wanna do, where they wanna take their, their connections, if at all. , You might be running an evaluation. So often when we rush out endings, the evaluation or the feedback is the first thing that gets cut.

Olivia Bellas  I'd say probably some of the fluff ups I've had in terms of not ending as I would've liked to, are around this kind of feedback bit, , like it feels clunky to me. It feels like we've just sort of shifted from me and us to you, or you know, suddenly there's this kind of weird moment of like, oh, right now we are looking at the session, and what was the workshop actually?

Julia Slay  Yes. Yeah. And I think that's, and I think sometimes doing feedback or evaluations can feel quite well, it's like an admin task.

It's an admin, yeah. Everybody gets their phone out and they scan the QR code, or they get the piece of paper and the pen and it's a bit quiet and it does shift the energy and the mood. People might have been in this lovely, you know, reflections and connection space, and then suddenly you're like, and here's the feedback form.

And I do think it's really important to do it in the session because your data quality is so much better. , It's interesting which way round would I do it? I do a little bit of the kind of process evaluation, so what went well?

And I usually do that before the final checkout. I might, for example, if we've had a bit of a group agreement at the beginning, might revisit that and say a bit of kind of like, how did we do against this? Which bits do you think we really stuck to?

Which bits might we have slipped a bit on? What might you change for next time? So I probably would try and do that before I then did. And what's your final checkout? So I try to leave a checkout for the very, very end, and then I might just do one final. Grounding activity, and this is where people have such different skill sets.

You know, I ran a training on, I ran this first day of a trauma informed training that I'm doing with a group of psychotherapists. We ran it this week and they did a final grounding activity that was very somatic, very physical. It was a kind of body scan. That's not the kind of thing I ever really do because it's, it's not really part of my practice.

But I do sometimes you might cringe at this, I do sometimes read out like a poem or I might do something more physical, like a game. Like there's a lovely game, like a hand sink clap game. Oh yes. Which is a really lovely way to like build energy and just bring a bit of like movement back in at the end.

Uh, but again, you need time for these things. So you'll often be thinking someone, actually again, the theater person who was in this training I ran in November, she ran a fantastic activity at the end of one of the days, which was building a sound machine of facilitation. So it was like, oh, it was so cool, and it was like, for a minute I was like.

The, is the group gonna go for this? Because she was inviting people up to kind of make a motion and a noise, and there was about five seconds where I was like, Ooh, where's this gonna go? And then someone jumped in and then they all piled in and it, yeah, the energy just went from like 50 to a hundred in the space of 60 seconds, and that was all it took really.

Olivia Bellas Amazing that, this, brilliant, sound activity and the poem that you mentioned. Yeah. You know, we might put these at the start, right? Like they actually feel, like things that might be more familiar there when actually putting them at the end, or even thinking about topping and tailing, is there value in connecting that beginning and that end?


Julia Slay Well, it's interesting you say that because I, I mean, I said I've become mildly obsessed with this. One of the many things I've become a bit obsessed with is the concept of circularity and or what in improv and comedy they call reintegration.

So where you bring something back from the beginning at the end. Right. And I love this concept. I came across it, I did some training, last month in Berlin with chaos pilots around experience design, and they introduced this concept of circularity so that you do something at the beginning of an activity, at beginning of a workshop or an event, and then you bring it back at the end.

So in the training, they had this kind of little yellow. Airplane that you wrote an intention on and something just cut kind of a couple of prompts and then at the end we came back to that. So it's just a very, it's a very simple way of doing. It doesn't have to be, uh, elaborate. On um, Tuesday when, when we ran this trauma informed training, uh, one of the facilitator, one of the trainer team got people to write down anything.

They just wanted to park things that they just wanted to leave outside the space. And she gave them envelopes and paper and they put what they wanted to park in the envelope and they gave the envelope to her. And at the end of the day, she gave it all back and it was this lovely moment of like.

Actually, and, and I really have done that activity before and really experienced it as a participant, as like it mentally just shut off some of the noise. It was really powerful.

Olivia Bellas Oh, I love that. So you literally just put it in an envelopes and it's held by the facilitator during the duration and then it's. Given back and that's it. It's just as simple as that.

Julia Slay Yeah. And someone, someone was like, I don't even know if I wanna open. I'm not gonna open it now. You know, which is, you know, fair enough. Yeah. But it's be powerful. It's the physical embodiment of, of things. Right? Like it's one thing. And I do think it's also very powerful to say out loud, uh, I want to park X.

Yeah. But there is something I think even more powerful about physically writing it down, putting it aside and saying, I'm gonna come back to that at. Whatever, 5:00 PM today. And it's just, it's there and it's, you know, parked and the, and this kind of concept. I mean, that is, I think all just generally parking stuff and having a way to give people a chance to say, this is on my mind.

I need to just go with that is very powerful. But this concept of circularity I really love because I think it does do. Just help you achieve. One of the key things I think I'm looking for when I run workshops or events or training, which is uh, com kind of a completeness, a kind of, and it's not to say things have to be tidy or neat, uh, they, but it's, it's the kind of anchoring effect of bringing something full circle.

Olivia Bellas It's quite sort of reassuring, satisfying. Intentional as well, I'm just remembering I did one accidentally but I got that feeling as a facilitator.

So I had started the session and, . Had a picture up actually of just my hand, you know, with, with kind of five digits. And it was really just to remind me that I wanted in my intro to say five quick things about me and move on. And then at the end we ended up doing that debrief that I think, you know, where you draw around your hand and each finger is a of reflection prompt.

And although that was accidental, there was something that like has that sensation as well for the whole group. Participants and facilitator and I guess I, that just made me think a, another thought there is this sort of worry, fear of like ending, which might be another unraveling, you know, like how can we end well without it possibly going into a another direction.

Julia Slay Yes, and I am always aware, I mean, I can. I have heard facilitators talk about that as a fear before, and I think sometimes there are, there are certain phrases or words that I would probably avoid bringing in right at the end. Like, is there anything else you wanna talk about?

But I think there is something interesting because when you run the kind of process review reflection stuff, or you do a checkout that's more learning orientated, I think implicitly in the way we structure it, there's a boundary around it.

So even if someone says something quite revealing or challenging in terms of process feedback, like, oh, I actually didn't think we did that very well, or, I'm feeling a bit frustrated by the way this happened. , It's like the group understands we're not necessarily going into that now.

This is like insight and information, but we are not necessarily open up. So I think that there, if it's phrased and framed in the right way, it's naturally quite contained, even if stuff comes up and you think, well, that could be like a two hour conversation.

Whereas, yeah, I definitely have been guilty in the past and try not to do now. Saying to the group, and it almost sometimes can slip out. You know, you, you've done your checkout and then you kind of go, oh, is there anything else? And you're like, no, no, don't do that.

I think with teams who are connected to each other, uh, that can come up a little bit more. So someone will be maybe right at the end after they've done a checkout, oh, but we didn't talk about this. Or should we talk about that? And because they know they're gonna see each other again or later

It can just feel slightly different. , There's also something I think about acknowledging that. When we close a session, right, and we kind of end the session, but people will still be processing and reflecting sometimes for hours, days, and weeks afterwards. So their ending might not be for two weeks time. Um, and I'm curious, I've seen some facilitators try to.

Accommodate that by extending the ending and sometimes kind of sending an email a week or two afterwards saying, uh, would love to hear where your reflections landed on this. And it's almost like part accountability coach, part acknowledgement that they might have still processed quite a lot of insight post session.

, Or something I've started doing in the training I run because I had an experience of it that was really positive is, you know, you do a three day training and then. Two months later, or maybe six weeks later, have just like 45 minutes online to come back together and just do a bit of a kind of recap and review.

So acknowledging that there's lots of things that bubble up and learning and processing doesn't end when we shut the Zoom. And how can we think about our ending as a more extended version of that? Yeah, absolutely. The ending isn't necessarily just in that time that you've all spent together.

Olivia Bellas It can carry on and if you have scope to reconnect, brilliant. , That's not always the case. , Of course, and like you had said,, that next steps piece, , it will feel like it might, need to be heavily discussed with the client and where are they coming into it, , and that kind of ending, , might need to be sort of shared a little bit with, with, with others as well.

So I, I've actually got, a question and then I'm gonna ask you for one, so Uma and Sam, who were the other hosts, and I had a chat recently and we were saying, . Wouldn't it be nice to, , get some of our brilliant guests to share a question they'd like to pass on to the next guest?

So I'm gonna do that and ask you that, but first I've got a question that we wanted for you. So we're gonna start, and it's actually really connected to what we're talking about right now. , So the question we were thinking about was, , what meaning. Has been made for you, if any, as a result of the conversation we've just had now?

Julia Slay Interesting. Yeah, I think I, there is something I, um, mulling over about the very practical timing aspect and. How, how long is the right amount of time to spend on an ending? And that's like just hit home for me a little bit about, , how long would it take to do something really meaningful?

Could you do it in three minutes actually I dunno if it's quite the word meaning, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we can talk about the value of closing well, how we do it, but like you say, being really clear actually about it, having that dedicated time

Olivia Bellas Okay. So what question would you like to ask our next guest who, we don't know who it is yet, so it's a kind of, it's a surprise for everyone. Is there something.

Julia Slay I, I would love to know how their practice as a facilitator has changed as they have gone along their facilitation journey. So how has their practice evolved and changed?

Olivia Bellas  Love that. You know, I mean, it's almost a question I'd love to ask every facilitator I meet because I, I can see in myself the way it's totally changed over the years. Yeah. And I am very curious about that journey for others too. . And how it could, um, be fast sometimes and slow other times, you know, that sort of rate of change is just,, different every time.

Julia Slay Yeah. And how we unlearn things. I mean, I think there is some assumptions maybe that I had at the beginning of my facilitation. Career inverted comm when I first started, which I would, which have certainly changed and things I used to do that I thought were really important that now I, I hold much more lightly.

Olivia Bellas So, yeah, I'm very curious to, to listen to the episode and see what they say, what gorgeous that is. A lovely point of circularity actually. They're bringing in something from before. I think that's a lovely activity to do. Oh, well thank you so much for that question and the conversation today. Thank you. I know that's helpful for a lot of people.

Julia Slay Thank you. That was really lovely conversation.

Olivia Bellas Thanks for listening to Facilitation Stories - brought to you by IAF England and Wales. We like to collect stories, so get in touch if you have an idea - contact info is at facilitationstories.com There, you can Subscribe, follow, like the show so you get notified of new episodes.

This has been Facilitation Stories 

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."

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

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 of creating space where we're all able to talk about facilitation without competing with another facilitation style or another kind of way of doing things, because I think, well, I'll kind of start off, I might become precious about a certain way of doing things, and then I'll learn another way of doing things and think, well, actually, this really complements this way of doing things. And then you begin to see the gaps in everything that you do. I'm looking forward to creating a space where we can see how things complement one another, and that the enjoyment and what we get from it is shared with each other.

Olivia I agree so much with what you said, like, it's really exciting to hear because I think with facilitation, as we know, it's quite unusual, mostly how people have ended up doing this type of work. I hear the kind of stories of like a, you know, just as we've shared now, really quite different. And so those roots there are fascinating, and they reveal a lot and give you permission to do the things that you just said, Sam. Well, I'll try it like this, but then I can layer it with this and I can look at something else. Yeah. Facilitation exists in so many different ways, and that's what I'm excited about diving into and getting those stories in the least expected places. And with the people that maybe we hear less from. I suppose in facilitation is doing big work, but maybe quiet work as well. So yeah, would definitely love to hear from people who probably don't even call themselves facilitators, but maybe identify with some of the things already said.

Sam Umah, what comes to mind for you of what you'd like to experience and might be possible for the podcast?

Umah I'm quite interested to look at the breadth and depth of the different things that we have available to us, what's worked, and understanding what are the true challenges that we face. We do lessons learned, and it's quite nice to get a chance to ask detailed questions of right. So when that was a challenge, what did you do? And then delve into that. And through that conversation you unlock her. Well, maybe we could maybe we could try this. It becomes it evolves doesn't it? So it becomes a new way of doing things. Let me reiterate my process. I've done this workshop many times. Never once has my workshop ever gone the same way. Different people, different outcomes, different ways of doing things. Even the three of us together, we haven't covered everything. So that's why we bring guests in hearing from audiences. What is their reveal? Something that I've not thought of yet.

Sam To go a little bit deeper with a follow up question on that is what is it about your world of facilitation? What is it that makes you smile about it? What is it that gives you a spring in your step about facilitation?

Umah One thing personally for me is the variety I get to learn about new sectors when I'm facilitating. I could be sector agnostic and really get something valuable for them when I'm in the session, it helps piece the world together for me. I like the variety, I like learning. We're all lifelong learners. I really like that. And exploring what there is. It's seeing when someone is hesitant to say, should I put this idea forward? And you can see that they're a little bit uncomfortable. So we facilitate as facilitators, and they build the confidence and courage to put their idea forward. And then I see them see their team members contribute and grow that idea. Afterwards, they might take it away. They might develop it. You know, we're bigger than the sum of our parts type thing. So for me, that's really what makes me smile.

Sam How about you, Olivia? What gives you a spring in your step about facilitating or your world of facilitation?

Olivia So two things jump to mind. So firstly, I guess it's that sort of very unknown space that I'm realize I'm quite drawn to. So a lot of the facilitation work that I have done, when it's kind of in the community engagement space, it's very unpredictable. It can feel kind of complicated and complex and messy sometimes, but it's work that I really enjoy because I enjoy that kind of sense making part of it. And it's it's weird because it's definitely a kind of uncomfortable maybe space, but I really love navigating it, whether it's in the moment delivering or before that. When you're designing and you're like, what? How is this even gonna work out? And then it somehow the pieces come together. I guess it's also like you were saying as well, how that unknownness is experienced and transformed with the others, with the group then, because we all get that sense, don't we? I also just love the fact of what makes me really, really smile is that I can just go for it and really try things out. A lot of the time with safety, of course, within the group, but sometimes I've come away and kind of go, wow, I'm really glad that we tried this particular route with the group today, and it felt right to do it then. Pushing those boundaries of exploration, of creativity just really suits me as a facilitator as well. Just sharing like we are right now, because I think sometimes if we're honest, this kind of work can feel a little bit lonely. And I think just being really honest when there are fluff ups as well, it's just like it's not all brilliant. Like there's things that are like, uh oh, that was really weird or uh oh, gotta do that again in a different way, you know? And so I'd love to hear more of that as well in this podcast. What went well but what hasn't. And actually, like, can we just share that because we're all going through it. So I think that will bring smiles to probably many people's faces. Yeah. Sam.

Sam So what makes me smile, I think, is that I enjoy the freedom, particularly coming from full time employment and then deciding to move into freelance and self-employment and all the uncertainty that comes with that. So I think there's an aspect of that in terms of not knowing what I'm going to be doing is quite exciting as discovering what I am going to be doing. As I'm figuring that out and things come in. I do a lot of work with stories and lived experience and also story creation. And the ripple effect mapping work that I do is very much held within stories and appreciative inquiry, and the nature of that creates a lot of energy and a lot of connection, creating spaces that nurture relationship and spaces in which people are in relationship with one another is often a joy to experience and be part of. And what also makes me smile is creating space where people can make sense of their own stories by telling their stories, creating space where people can hear other people's stories or hear other people speak from where they're at to make sense of how they are feeling and make sense of what's going on for them. It's just always a privilege to be in a space that the impact of that and the power of that gives people their own agency in their own sort of citizenship. Kind of in that space as well. So I really, really enjoy that. And also I might do work, which is more around what might be termed as hosting, and that's about creating space for the collective wisdom to emerge from the room. And that's what shapes the decisions. I like creating spaces where I might not know what's going to happen and how it's going to happen, and being able to create space to work and fail, but be human in those spaces as well and be open going, okay, this isn't quite working, is it? And be able to name that within those spaces. So shared learning experience as well, that ongoing learning experience for me and listening to the tone of the group rather than listening to myself. It's really lovely being in those sorts of spaces.

Olivia I've heard it a little bit, but this hosting difference, and if you could expand a little bit on that, like what? What would you say is, is there a host and a facilitator might be different things or do they overlap?

Sam We can talk about what it means to me, and I'm and I'm conscious that we can get into some semantics here where where I start to define what facilitation is is, isn't. When I'm using the word hosting. For me, it's around where facilitating space for the collective wisdom of the group or the people you're with, and the energy naturally arises to be able to shape what might emerge, rather than what might be a more linear, focused thing. That sort of hosting approach, maybe within appreciative inquiry, relational relational practice. So it could be as simple as why was it important for you to be here? Or what is the crossroads you're at at this moment in time? And we speak to those questions and then take that back into the room and what is shared and what struck people then might shape the next question. And so it's a form of practice, but it's that gray space. And I caveat that with everyone will possibly have their own version of what that means for them.

Olivia That's so helpful. Thank you. I could feel myself going down a rabbit hole. I don't know if we want to jump into something a bit silly.

Sam But we did have a few personal trivia questions, the first of which was what do we do for fun?

Umah I have a puppy. He's a Saluki from Abu Dhabi, and for me he is the definition of fun and any time spent with him, I really value it. I quite like gaming, strategic games, board games and going for walks, which he definitely enjoys too. How about you?

Sam So I'm also quite. You made me smile. And we could we could quite actually easily just take over the rest of the podcast with this, with this now which is a danger. But I was going to say what I do for fun is board gaming. So for anybody who's listening to this podcast who's not a gamer, I'm not talking about monopoly. For those who may be uninitiated, early entry games might be things like Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne or Settlers of Catan. I meet up with a bunch of friends locally, and we just really enjoy playing board games together, and occasionally we'll book an Airbnb and play games for an entire weekend and enjoy that. So that's what I do for fun. Go to the gym quite a lot now, and that might not be fun for most people, but it helps. I find it really good head clearer for me just to kind of hit the gym every now and then and go for a run. Olivia, what do you do for fun?

Olivia Oh my goodness. Well, just listening to you both my cat whilst we're on the pet vibe. Ziggy she is very cool. She's fun for all the family. The other thing that came to my mind though, I don't feel like I do it loads and loads. It's just moving around and traveling actually. So whether that's within my kind of closest sphere or beyond. As my kids are getting a bit bigger, I'm sort of noticing, oh, I can actually venture out a bit more for fun. It's quite funny. It's around trash TV, so I'm gonna dive into it. I don't really watch TV as a as a general rule, but our household has just got into traitors. I felt quite uncomfortable about watching people be essentially quite like, duping each other and being quite mean to each other. Right? Because, you know, they've got to play the game. So this is kind of like a game where you're tricking people or trying to.

Umah There is a game, there's a game called Mafia, which is this .

Olivia So so you're watching these people like lying to each other. I found series one a really hard watch. Didn't bother with series two or three because I just thought I'm not going there. And then series four is on and it's the celebrity one. And as I'm watching it this time, I've got really into like all the biases, actually that are popping up. People are just making really weird decisions based on what, you know, because no one's actually got really any evidence. And so then it's brought up this kind of now it's more like an anthropological.

Umah Yeah, exactly. It's societal.

Olivia Exactly. Why are they saying that? It must be this guy? Because he's the smartest guy. What have you based that on? It's starting to come up. There's a few articles that people are going. Why isn't the media actually talking about a lot of the stuff that's happening, like first impression bias? You know, there's the kind of groupthink that happens. And, you know, you can start to relate this all to the work that we do.

Umah Exactly how it comes through in the workplace.

Olivia Absolutely. And so, you know, there's you can go really, really deep and into analyzing traitors, the TV show and seeing the parallels just with real life. And that actually you just look at these people and you think there are aspects that we enact as well. Just wanted to mention that as a kind of, you know, yes, it's a reality TV, but it's it's fascinating. Have a read of what's online around this kind of bias, because it's actually it's actually a little bit worrying that this is all sort of happening live on UK TV, and not a lot of people are talking about it yet.

Umah Because it's a microscope, isn't it, into behaviors and you look into it and then some of them might be quite not reflective, but you see an exaggerated version of it.

Olivia Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Do either of you have trashy TVs?

Umah I don't, I watch K-drama, but not trash TV.

Sam Sorry. What's a K-drama?

Umah Korean TV series. They're amazing.

Sam Oh, right. I'm not familiar with that. My trash TV habit is I'm now a sucker for Deadliest Catch on Dmax, which is the reality TV. There's twenty two seasons of them, and it's about the folks who go crab fishing on the Bering Sea, and it follows a handful of boats that go out and catch crab. It's on for like two hours every morning, and I watch thirty minutes of it whilst I have my breakfast. And bit by bit, I've just started to get to know the different characters. What I find fascinating in terms of observation of people is mainly men who are on the boat, dominantly men. I'd say ninety nine percent men, but just in terms of kind of how men are with one another in that environment, toxic masculinity and fear. And in each episode, you'd see the nuances in terms of how they evolve as people. I find myself tied to that little routine each morning as I start to find out about these fishermen, you go out and catch crab.

Umah I'll watch a clip after this. Recommend me a good episode to watch.

Sam I couldn't do that at first. I really didn't like it because I was put off by the toxic masculinity of it. Shall we finish with the most important question of humanity, as far as I'm concerned, is what's your favourite biscuit or snack if you don't do biscuits. I've introduced mine, but also say how I use this in facilitation myself. So my favourite go to biscuit would be a hobnob. Probably a chocolate hobnob. I also use this as an icebreaker exercise by inviting people to go around the room, shake hands, introduce themselves and say, what's your favourite biscuit? And I'm always struck in when I do this thinking, oh, this is going to be a little bit trite, a bit superficial, but what happens is everybody starts telling biscuit stories. And so the reminiscence that comes out from this activity is quite something. So with that, Olivia, what's your favourite biscuit?

Olivia Um, you know, just basically every biscuit on the planet. I like biscuits a lot, so I like auburn custard cream, jammy dodger. Like it's just. Yeah, I couldn't pin it down. But interestingly, as a warm up, I've experienced it. Rather I've been a participant and it was about sandwiches. And we also had to draw parallels to the sandwich that we've chosen in terms of describing our mood as well. And again, I find these ones that, you know, I still can't work out where I am with like warmers or icebreakers or whatever you call them, because there are some that don't work very well and some that work better. But I do find that anything that's like this, that's quite comforting. Sometimes it's just, you know, what was the last thing that made you smile? And that's usually going to be a positive start. The simpler the better, I think. But I'd love to come back to this because I know many people are very like, I am not doing an icebreaker.

Umah Yea, different preference, isn't it?

Olivia Yeah. What about you, Umah?

Umah Well, favourite biscuit again, Sam. It was really good that you mentioned that people start reminiscing because straight away one came into my mind and that was the malt biscuit, the one with the cow on and when I was a kid, whenever I was poorly, my mum would give me two of those. It was a bit of a comfort, like a blanket around me, and it felt so nice. I like that icebreaker. So, Olivia, what's the headline of what listeners can look forward to?

Olivia Circling back to the start of our conversation, we're interested in stories where we discover a bit more about how facilitators got to where they are. No one studied facilitation at school, did they? Like in a very formal way or pain like this pathway that's set. So understanding that and hearing more about all the different types of facilitation, that's what we can definitely look forward to that we're all committed to drawing out in the future conversations we have.

Umah Sam.

Sam Absolutely. People can look forward to a variety of stories, a variety of guests, and I think we're already shaping it is quite a human space creates a feeling of belonging and connection. It'd be great if we can create a sense that we're in the room with the listeners, and the listeners are in the room with us.

Umah Yeah, I think that's beautiful. For me, I would just build on that, really, and say shared enjoyment, the nerding out on different methodologies like you've already touched on hosting and facilitation, the difference just really getting into some of the semantics actually, and exploring some of that. I think you said it beautifully there, Sam, as well. So thank you. And I feel that's a really nice place for us to end our first episode together as your new host.

Umah Thank you for listening to Facilitation Stories, brought to you by

Umah IAF, England and Wales.

Umah Subscribe, follow and like so you can get notified of new episodes. If you have a story or an idea you'd love us to explore, you can reach us at Facilitation Stories.

Umah This has been Facilitation Stories.

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. Whereas 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.

N.W

Okay. And so you've mentioned that you ran a session at this year's IAF England and Wales conference,with Ann Nkune, and so could you tell us a little bit more about that?

R.C

Yeah, so I mentioned earlier, there's, there's quite a lot of tools that sit under social presencing theater. So our IAF conference workshop focused around a method called 'stuck' and in that you take a situation where you're not moving or thriving or something's not moving forward, or maybe you're just kind of stuck in your comfort zone and you you're not really willing to step out. And you embody that situation in whatever form you want to take. You form a statue and you call that sculpture one and then you kind of sense in your body you let yourself move to a different future. that wants to emerge through you. You move to a second position, and then you call that sculpture two, and you give each sculpture a phrase. And that in itself sounds very bizarre, but is very powerful. So for instance, the other day, I had a situation where I had to report a huge amount of data to a group of people. And I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed. And so I put myself in this stuck position where I had my kind of arms up in front of my head, and was almost crouching down, and my word was overwhelmed. And then I moved into a second position, which gave me a lot of clarity. And I had another phrase, which was, they need to make sense of it. And so I in my head, I've been getting stuck over and over with trying to make sense of all these overwhelming amounts of data, when in actual fact, it kind of shift the perspective straight way for me in that I didn't need to be making sense, but I just needed to be presenting them with data. So that's just an example of where you might use stuck. So we use stuck. And then you start off working through your own stuck practices, even from sculpture one to sculpture two. And then you extend that out as a group. So in our workshop, and in most social presencing situations, we don't at any point, know what issue someone is working through. So you'll do your sculpture one to sculpture two on your own, and then you extend that out as a group without explaining what it is that you're working through. And the other people in our group will help extend out our stuck situation. So they become other players in the system. And they help enhance that feeling of stuck, and also give a different perspective on it. So So in my situation where I was stuck with feeling overwhelmed with all this data, I might have someone standing in front of me who's representing all the hundreds of interviews that I've done. And then I might have someone stood behind me, who is representing the people that I have to show all this data to. And then we would move together as a group, so they wouldn't know what this issue is about at all, but they might look at me and say, You look pained or, or I'm seeing confusion, something like that. And then we'd all move together with no idea where each other we're going to move or any sense of where we should move, we just move wherever feels right at the time. And then we'll move collectively together into a second sculpture. And then again, they'll give their perspective on the situation. So they might say, you know, you look freed or relieved or something like that. And the other people's insights can be just as valuable as your own. And I think for me, and our IAF session, that was what people found most powerful is working through something as a group, without anyone in the group knowing what it was about, except for that one individual. And even though as a group members, for example, I've done this a number of times, even in situations where I don't know what the person's going through, I can personally find it very moving as well. I think just by moving together as a group is very bonding in itself and illuminating. So we did that at the IAF conference, we did this stuck on our own and then stuck as a group. And then we use time to think, to reflect on what those processes felt like to the groups involved.

N.W

Okay, and so you've mentioned, I think that this session was for you a bit of an exploration of how to use this. So what were your personal kind of takeaways from that session?

R.C

I think there were a lot of takeaways, actually. I think the main thing was that it was something other people found powerful. So I went in thinking, okay, is this just me, in fact, I was there the night before in my hotel, and I was thinking, Oh my gosh, what am I doing? Because I'm going to a conference I've never been to before, co facilitating with someone I've never met before, on a subject that I've only read a book about. You know,I didn't know whether this is going to be something that anyone else would get anything from at all. So the main takeaway was, oh, wow, okay other people are finding this useful as well. And I think having spoken to a few people after the conference, they said, you know, it's one of the sessions where they were able to go deepest. And again, I think that's because they didn't have to talk about anything that they were kind of working through. So as a facilitator that's quite strange because you're kind of blind to all of that. But it's really nice to be able to create a space where people can work through some quite tricky personal issues. So yeah, there was that, that it was helpful. Some people said it made them not just think differently, but feel differently. And that, you know, someone else mentioned that there's something that they've been talking to people about for months and months and months, and just couldn't see a way out of this situation that then had done that, and then could instantly see a way through. So I was like, Okay, great. I feel like it's, it's a useful tool. So that was the main thing. I also noticed that maybe it isn't for everyone, and getting the context is going to be right. And I think for Ann and I, we both kind of felt that we recognise that it was probably more powerful, like using movement is more powerful than we originally expected. And thinking about how we prepare the room for the emotions, it can trigger as well, I think is quite important. But yeah, just the overwhelming thing I took away was the kind of desire to experiment with other people more, to try it out with other people more. And so then that evening, I think went back to my hotel room and signed up to a course in Berlin to properly train in it.

N.W

Great. And so you've neatly led into my next question, really, about that course, and what happened on the course? And what did you learn there?

R.C

Yeah, so the course was a two day course with Arawana Hayashi herself. So that was really exciting, because she kind of founded it all. And it was with 43 other people from all over the world, actually, but mainly from Europe. I think there were four people from the UK. And we went through all the different types of techniques, which she describes in her book called Social Presencing Theater. And yeah, it was, it was just incredibly insightful. There were lots of different techniques that we tried out, some, you know, just on our own, some as a whole group of 43 people, some in small groups, all that can be used in different contexts. And again, I think by the second day all of us were just feeling like, why would you bother talking anymore? It just seems like such a waste of time, when you can kind of get so much clarity and connection with others in silence, you know, just by moving together. But it's called Social Presencing Theater, but it's not about theater, it is just about moving and embodying. There's no acting element to it. There's nothing theatrical actually about it at all. It's just a way of using, thinking with our bodies as well as our minds. Yeah. So the training was fantastic, gave me loads of ideas and met loads of connections, lots of people who were also thinking about using it in all kinds of leadership scenarios. And actually some massive issues about, you know, tackling climate change and deforestation in the Amazon and all these different frameworks, people using it for and all of them finding it ,yeah, a really interesting method of breaking just habitual thought patterns and approaches to situations and thinking about things really differently.

N.W

Okay. And so I know that you, you weren't on the course very long ago. So this might be a difficult question to answer. But what are your current thoughts on how you might take it forward and put it into practice? Yeah,

R.C

Yeah, so I think main thing at the moment, which is very much just a thought process, to help serve this, but Ann and I are thinking about experimenting, doing another session at London Lab, which is linked to the London IAF group. So we're thinking about doing that in maybe September or October. And I'm personally thinking about how I built it into my work with systems thinking and systems mapping. So it's part of the evaluation work I do, we do a lot of systems thinking work. And I think using it in that context is really helpful, because it's a really malleable way of looking at how we can change and shift systems, but also even the stuck practice, which is just within individuals. You know, through all my systems based work, the one thing that stands out is that unless we change people, you know, we can't change systems. And the stuck practice itself is a way of really helping people shift their perspective on their role within a system and what they can do individually to change things. So yeah, I'm thinking about how I can build into my work. And I'm also just looking for as many people as possible to collaborate with who'd like to experiment with Ann and I on this.

N.W

Great. And you mentioned earlier that in your IAF session, you combined this with time to think, are there other kinds of facilitation tools and techniques that you think could work well alongside social presencing theater if you're building this out into something you would use in other contexts?

R.C

Yeah, I would say on that, that Ann and I used time to think at the end of the session, and we were also thinking about it from an Appreciative Inquiry perspective, because that's what both of us use primarily in our work. Having said that, at the training, it really shifted my perspective, because I think one of the things which they tried to focus on with social presencing is, is moving out of these habitual thought patterns. So they just focus on what did you do? What did you see? What did you feel? And so I think probably, I wouldn't use time to think with it anymore, possibly, or maybe use elements of time to think that not, not use exactly the same principles. And I think that also relates back to the psychological safety element as well, you're never really conceptualising with anyone, what it is you're working through, maybe not even yourself. And I think that's actually helpful, because we get so bogged down in our thought patterns. So I think keeping it very just in the moment in your body, like touching, not overthinking anything is quite important with the process. So yeah, what tools would I use it with is possibly Appreciative Inquiry, maybe as a precursor to that. And then systems mapping and any group work where you're working through individual challenges collectively as a group, maybe it's support groups or something like that.

N.W

That's great. So if listeners would like to find out more about social presencing theater, where should they look?

R.C

Okay, so there's a book by Arawana Hayashi called social presencing theater. I think it's called The Art of Making a True move. There's also a website. So Arawana has a social presencing theater website, which is really interesting. And then there's also this wider context of 'Theory U'. So Otto Scharmer, and Arawana have a website called the U-school, literally the letter U hyphen school. And that gives a wider framework to the work as well, which is, they have loads of open source training as well, which is really interesting, if anyone was interested in that.

N.W

Brilliant and how about if people want to get in touch with you after this? Particularly as you've got a call out there for collaborators and fellow experimenters as it were.

R.C

Yeah, probably just LinkedIn is best for me.

N.W

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Rosie. That's been really interesting. And I hope to hear more about where you, where you take this forward. But thank you for sharing where you've got to today so far.

R.C

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And I look forward to hopefully hearing to some people who are interested in experimenting.

Outro

H.J

So listeners, we've reached the end of another episode of facilitation stories, the community podcast of IAF England and Wales.

N.W

If you'd like to find out more about the IAF and how to get involved all of the links on our website facilitationstories.com

H.J

To make sure you never miss an episode, why not subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use.

N.W

We're always on the lookout for new episode ideas. So is there a fabulous facilitator you think we should talk to?

H.J

Or something interesting emerging in the world of facilitation you think listeners need to hear about

N.W

Then send us an email at podcast@IAF-EnglandWales.org

H.J

We hope you'll join us again soon for more facilitation stories.

N.W

 Until then, thank you for listening.

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 experience. And we together were inspired by experiments in Co-leadership adopted by the global ecovillage network and and we not, we're not sure, but they may have too been inspired by the Kurdish democratic and federalism practices. So this was our approach, and it's very simple. Our co-leadership started, I don't know if now work at the same, but I think it's very similar. And any leadership position is taken at the same time by two people of different genders. So we suggest different genders, both are leader together. And you know, as IAF you need to have only one reference, one the chapter leader, but I was the person who did the senior tour. But for me and Deborah, we have the same power. And for me, was very important to share the season and to share also that after the meeting with the IAF International. And was very, very useful also to define the future strategy, also to when we decided to engage more members from the south of Italy, we decided together this and we decided to to have regular meetings with us, with me and Deborah. We call the coffee time meeting, or the beer meeting, the beer time meeting. So every week, we had a short meeting of half an hour to share ideas and also to share information that we took from from different meetings that we participate. So we shared also the duties you know about, to be a chapter leader. And so was a very good experience, and we suggested this managed model to all the chapters.

H.J

Nice, and for you Sara, does that, is it a model that feels nice working alongside somebody else?

S.P

Yeah, very much. I really appreciated this initiative. And when Andrea proposed me to take the role and told me that Giacomo was in as well, I was really relieved. I was like, Okay, now, now I know that I can do it like this. You know, in pairs. Yeah, I think it's very interesting to be together. And also you can, you know, divide activities, such as the previous one I was talking about, when you have to travel around. And also you can, you know, share meetings where you have to, that you have to attend, but mostly you can discuss and share fears and projects for the future. And also Giacomo and I have very different backgrounds. How are you know, we live in different places, in different type of communities, 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. So I'm really, really enjoying this. And also the nice thing was that at the last general conference, we kind of hosted the conference, which is organised by Gerardo every year. But also we decided to have a session together for a session. So we brought a workshop so we could test, you know, our Co-leadership in person and during work. So that's nice.

H.J

So it sounds great from sort of lots of different perspectives. And yeah, interesting thinking about that diversity perspective that you both bring two sort of different mindsets or different ways of facilitating to your leadership. And I can absolutely, having been passed England and Wales chapter chair, I can absolutely relate to that being a bit scared of doing it by yourself. So if you've got somebody to work alongside with that must feel really good. So the other thing you you've just mentioned again, leading us nicely onto, my next question is about your annual conference. It would be really nice to hear a bit more about about the how that works, about your plans and past conferences as well. You tell us a bit more.

A.P

Yeah, maybe I could introduce some themes related to the past conferences. And what I could say a lot of subjects. We started with 'the collaboration era' was the title of the first Italian conference. Was the first conference to make know better the professional facilitator, and to start also the collaboration with different professional you know. At the time, each facilitator was very jealous about his work ,his profession, because it was, was something very precious, so we decided to start collaboration to share experience methods and what what we know. In our conference, everyone bring his or her experience and the share methods could offer a free workshop so you have to share something of your professional experience also. And another theme that I loved, it was "where the donkey falls". So when you are a facilitator, you do everything very well, but when you start to converge to the, to take the decision, here come the problems. So how we could take good decision, how we could go in the conversing way and respect our participants or the group's members. And after that was very good for me, the covid free editions conference, because we shared all we learned in these months of pandemic situation also about the online. But were moment to share those feelings as professional, as individual, as a member of a family, and what does. Also the last conference we organised were about the facilitate in a few words, so no verbal facilitation. How to use the body, arms? You know, we are Italian. We could was very, very well para verbal. But you never stop to study. You have to improve your skills. So we decide to face this team. And the last in the in 2024 the team was neutrality in facilitation. I mean, it's possible to be really neutral as a facilitator in a group, how you can do to be natural, what methods, what you have to do before the groups works before the workshop or after, to be more neutral. And at the end, one of the most nice for me experience of the conference was the agile and facilitation conference that was there during the European Middle East, original conference of the IAF, so was a very, was an international conference. We mainly, not mainly, all the conference has been organised in Italian language. This was the only conference can I organise in English. Always in Milan was dedicated to Agile. So to work with an agile methods, and also to go in deep in the Agile methods that it's not only for person that work with computer and engineers but it's also good for design thinking, the facilitator. And I don't know if Sara wants to add something more about this experience?

S.P

Yes, thank you  Andrea, it was very exhaustive. Yeah, what I would like to add is more like a personal, maybe, point of view for in a way, because I, as I said before, I met facilitation three years ago. So I just attended a couple of conferences the last two. So the first one was, yeah, the one like facilitating in a few words, and that, for me, was really amazing, because I just met facilitation and I had no idea, like not no idea, but I was very young in facilitation. So experiencing facilitation through the body and through paraverbal was very enriching for me, because I could learn a lot and experiment on myself a lot. And the second one, and the very nice thing for me was that I was asked by Andrea, I think by Andrea, or by Delfino, I don't remember, to to facilitate the open space technology that we always have during the conference. And it was the first time for me, and that was absolutely amazing experience. And in general, the great thing about the conference is that it brings together very different people, and you get to know that, other words, you know, exist in facilitation. And this is something that being new. It's always you know, something to discover. So it's very interesting. And another thing that I would like to add is that in the this year, last conference, which was held in March, the one about neutrality, was organised in a slightly different way, because there was like a preparation path conference. And people were, are kind of supported and not tutored, but supported in their planning and designing of the workshops that they wanted to to offer. And these, and they were like, they were like feedback, attentions, so that people could improve and take care of, you know, details supported by by a team of, you know, facilitators, and these ensured great quality of of workshops during the conference. It was really, really, really high quality. And I believe that it helped also young facilitators to, you know, to offer workshops with less anxiety. I don't know how to say that, you know, so, yeah, that was really, really nice. I think

A.P

If I put up just a very practical thing that is not obvious, the conference is all organised by volunteers, and this is a choice, because the fee is very low, so it's about 180 or 150 euros. It depends about the year. So we want to be very open also to person that are not facilitator, are curious about facilitators or facilitation methods and stories, and that's all.

H.J

Sounds kind of similar to the conference that we put on in England and Wales, actually there's, yeah, definite similarities. Nice. Thank you.

N.W

Brilliant. And so I suppose building again on that kind of peer led nature of the work the chapter often builds collaborations and partnerships, both within Italy and beyond. So if we just start off with Italy, could you share some examples of some recent and current collaborations that you're involved with?

A.P

Yeah, thank you, Nikki for the question. Yes. When I became chapter leader, together with Deborah, we decide to enforce relation with National Association, because we understood that we have to grow, and to grow we have to enforce the relation to know more association that are interested in the same subjects. So mainly we did intervention to explain what I effectively do and what are the core competencies, support, facilitator, and, you know, just to present ourselves and to explain what a facilitator is. We invite all the members of different association to share information and objectives, to find common ground. So we work, in particular with IP two, that is an association in Italy that work on public participation. And if the members are more academic, are more are not professional facilitator, but like to work in the field of facilitator and the public democratic choices. So they are very engaged about what IAF is. And also, we decide to start collaboration with Association like Facilit Ambiente, that is an association, a private association that is offered by the Chamber of Commerce of Milan Monza Brianza Lodi. And it's a sort of service offered for preventing environmental conflicts through facilitation. So they trust in facilitation. They want to support and promote the facilitations approaches and also IAF approaches and the core competencies. So also we work with the open gulf consultation, that is the national consultation, that aim to engage citizens, normal citizens, in the decision related to the government. And there is a national platform, online platform, and you can vote, you know, like this deal, but it's a national platform. So very, very hard to participate because you need, you need to use a lot of personal data to vote before, but for us, was a must. As an international association, as a national association of facilitation, we have to speak also with the Italian government about these, these subjects.

H.J

Thank you. Sara, was there anything to add from you?

S.P

Yeah, just that this, we are with the associate association that Andrea mentioned, the Association for Public Participation. We are now reviewing the Participation Charter, which was elaborated, created 10 years ago. So after 10 years, this charter has been reviewed. And the Charter is a document promoted by IAF Italy, and this AIP through association with other associations that establishes principles and objectives and guidelines for promoting public participation in decision making processes and the process of reviewing this charter just ended. So we will present this work at the Festival of the Participation, which would be held soon in Italy. So we are quite, quite proud of this. And yes, in general, we try to connect with the associate Association in order to spread facilitation, and also to promote the recognition of the facilitator, facilitator profession in Italy, because this profession is not yet recognised here.

H.J

Amazing, Wow. Sounds like you've got lots and lots of Yeah, lots of work that you're doing, and perhaps lots more to do, just thinking about collaborations, but more specifically about the twinning that you've been doing with other chapters. I wanted to ask you a bit more about that. So we spoke to Bogdan, as I said before, from IAF Romania in a previous Chapter Chat and we know that you've twinned with IAF Romania, and you have started, I think, to twin with IAF Syria. And I just wondered if you could tell us a bit more about that.

S.P

Yeah, yeah. We, Giacomo and I, decided to carry on this, this initiative that was started by Andrea and Deborah with the Romania when but we did with this training with Syria. And it was a very, very enriching experience for us, because it could help us expand our horizon, you know, also beyond, beyond the Western culture. And so we had a series of virtual workshop, online workshop with with Syrian, in order to share knowledge, resources and best practices between our chapters. We had four meetings about the first one was like, like, the role of facilitation in post disaster recovery. And this was really interesting, because we exchange different stories, and we could see how different it was to, for example, recover after natural disaster. Like it was like in Italy, because we have, we had a few earthquakes in the last few years that and then we had to rebuild, you know, buildings and communities. Whereas in Syria, they had to rebuild after war, and then also after earthquakes. So we could share this experience, and we would see the differences and the great job that they did, and that we also tried to do here in Italy. And also it was very nice because each, each each meeting, the other meetings, were about the conflict management and cultural diversity. So it was, it was very nice to because there are, there might be great differences, you know, in culture, especially when you, when you compare Italy to Syria. So it really makes you think and reflect even out of the session. You know, you have to think about cultural diversity at the basis of the relation. I don't know how to explain it better. And it was nice because we had the chance to co facilitate. So it was an Italian and a Syrian facilitator. And so it was really enriching and but what I saw and what I really liked is that, because I did facilitate one of these meetings, and it was the openness and the human connection that we could find and share when doing something that we really liked. So it was something that went beyond cultural diversity and went beyond the barrier, also the language barrier that you can meet when you go facilitate. You know, maybe Andrea wants to tell us a few more about the Romanian experience.

A.P

But, yeah, sure. Just something to add about the idea, the idea, when we decide, with Deborah to propose this twinning during a meeting of the European chapter, we decide to propose a twinning that was composed about three, four meetings, thematic meetings. And of course, that will not take more than two years twinning, because, from our idea, also the Chapter must be in charge for two years. And every two years we want to change chapter leaders and as well, co chapter leaders. And so the twinning at this time about the Romania was amazing because was the first twinning so we decided together, also with bogdan and his and their colleagues, we decided also to share how it's different the professional facilitator in Romania and Italy. So starting from, what are your clients? What are your fees? And something very, very practical, but also if you work more in the private or public sector and what you did, what are your institution? So the line was to enrich each other with methods, but also take inspiration how to work in a different way with different clients that together are not you don't know. And so was very fun also to understand that we are in the same boat, so everything is the same in your nation. So a very good experience that I suggest to each chapter to start.

H.J

Thank you. So then thinking about, actually, I just wanted to pick up on one thing you were talking about there, the language, which obviously we as native English speakers have as the kind of luxury, if you like that, when things are in a shared language, they are often in English, which is quite easy for us. How does that, How hard or easy is that to for example, work with Romania, work with Syria and have to use for both of you to be using a language that isn't your own.

S.P

Well, actually, I mean, I do really like languages so and I think it's fun to when you meet someone who is not a native English speaker, to find your own vocabulary, like you build up your own vocabulary, which maybe it's not even English, it's not Italian, it's not Syrian, it's not Romanian, but somehow you understand each other, and that's fun. But I have to say that sometimes it can be a barrier, because, like maybe not all the, not all our members felt confident to facilitate in English. So, yeah, so you really need to encourage them that you will find a way to build up your vocab, vocabulary. And also, I think that during the sessions, there is this, at least for me, like, kind of worried that I may not understand well what people are saying, and maybe I my facilitation could be, you know, so and so. And so, you really need to trust yourself, I think, a little bit more, but also, and that's why I really like facilitation, you can always rely on your co facilitator, so if you or make a joke about it, so if you are two, if it's two, you know facilitators not speaking English as a native language, I think it's a lot easier to to manage that.

A.P

If I could share, I remember my first online meeting with the monthly meeting with the European Middle East, and I was so scared about the language, because I never studied English, so I learned by myself. So I was so scared or what, what I could say with these facilitators, so professional facilitator. And there was, I met Andrew Spiteri, you know, in a breakout room, and he was so polite, so friendly, that I was very relaxed. And after that meeting, I said myself, everything will be okay. Don't, don't, don't be scared. Don't worry about the English. And you can also use para verbal and don't speak.

H.J

Yeah,that's always a fall back, isn't it? Wow, yes, I've delivered training in a different language. Anyway, moving on. So yeah, looking ahead, what's happening in the near future in IAF Italy and yeah, how would you like to see things develop over the next few years?

S.P

Okay, so looking ahead, so our focus, I think, remain on strengthening the culture of participation and participation in general. For sure, public participation is, you know, something that is important for us. And also, yeah, having this thing that I mentioned before that having the professional facilitator formally recognised. So something, yeah, it's like to we would like, yeah, this profession to be seen and understood and recognised at a, you know, an institutional level. This is the general, you know, the frame. So in the near future, of course, there is the next general conference. I know it's we are a year ahead, but it takes a lot of work. And of course, the conference is organised by Gerardo, but it's in collaboration with the Chapter. So we are working on improving the model, the new method that we experimented last year. And so we want to see where it goes if we keep working on that. So with this preparation path, and try to trying to scout a little bit new facilitators and see if they want to put themselves to the test, you know. So that it can be the annual conference, can be a place where people, even less experienced facilitators, can can try it, can grow, can know facilitation better and know themselves better as facilitators. This is Yeah, in the near future. In the long term, I think we would like to, the Chapter to transform into a proper, real, like community, where facilitators can share, can support each other, can network and also create work opportunities together. We what we would like is that people feel free to ask each other for help, for support, if they are short of ideas or about a session or a method or something like that. Then we want people to rely on each other, and we want to facilitate this trust building process, I don't know. And also, 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. So we would like to be Yeah, like a subject, someone people facilitators and organisation can rely on and can go and ask for help or information.

H.J

Great. Anything else from you Andrea? Any other thoughts on the future?

A.P

Of course, you know, I'm not now the chapter leader, but I absolutely have some ideas. And Sara had said something very important for me, so support the facilitator and to give them visibility. Organise moment to present facilitator to clients, to to factories, to person that don't know facilitator, and have to know and have to use facilitator because it's better. And when you try facilitator, you ask to yourself, why I didn't do it before. So I want to that IAF Italy support also the professional part of the individual facilitator and for me, it's very important, because in Italy, we need to grow with numbers. And I mean, also in Europe, but in our case, we have to make grow the knowledge of facilitators.

S.P

I would just like to add that, I mean, my personal dream is also, of course, since I work in public administration, to bring facilitation in public administration, you know. So this is something that I try to do, you know, very, very small things in my everyday life, at work, but this is, it's more a personal dream this, but I would like to mention that as well, because I think we really need that. We do have, I think that facilitation is kind of entering institutions at a small, at the municipal level, so, you know, town hall level. But in the bigger institution which I belong to, I don't see that much, and I think we really, really, really need that. And also I think that for the for the chapter, something that we should try to, should invest on is young facilitators, of course, and this is also a campaign that IAF global is carrying on. We know that some of our members did join initiatives that have been carried on at the global level. And we are very happy about that. And I also, I would like to maybe this is also a personal, a personal dream. But I really like the share and learn idea, you know, the series that we have at the global level. And I would like that to have that maybe at a chapter level, maybe Italian, maybe even in a more structured way, maybe easier. So something that not felt like kind of overwhelming by people, but that can be, you know, a way to to exchange between peers,

N.W

Great, well, lots of big plans and you've got a big work agenda ahead of you, but it sounds like some, some great ambitions there, and really interesting different things that you're getting involved in. So just before we wrap up then, where should we go if we want to find out more about you and the IAF Italy Chapter?

S.P

We have a website, and then we also you can reach us, reach us at our email. So the website is, of course, www.Iaf-italy.org , and the email Italy@IAF-word.org so you can always write to us, we always answer and see, check our emails. And you can also write to me. My email is s.tremmiproietti@gmail.com and yeah, this is, this is our contact.

H.J

Thank you so much. So I think it just leaves us to say thank you for joining us today, Sara and Andrea. It has been really fascinating talking to you and hearing all about IAF Italy, past, present and future. And hopefully we'll get a chance to speak to you again soon.

S.P

Thank you. Thank you Helene and Nikki for the invitation. It was my first experience, and I'm really happy about it.

A.P

Thank you so much for the invitation.

H.J

 So listeners, we've reached the end of another episode of Facilitation Stories, the community podcast for IAF, England and Wales.

N.W

If you'd like to find out more about the IAF and how to get involved, all of the links are on our website, facilitationstories.com

H.J

And to make sure you never miss an episode, why not subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use

N.W

We're always on the lookout for new episode ideas. So is there a fabulous facilitator you think we should talk to?

H.J

Or something interesting emerging in the world of facilitation you think listeners need to hear about.

N.W

Send us an email at podcast@IAF-EnglandWales.org

H.J

We hope you'll join us again soon for more Facilitation Stories.

N.W

Until then, thank you for listening.

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 may well be closer to sort of 100. So there's a team of facilitators, you've got a group on your table, say if you're just a table facilitator of seven or eight participants, and they're public participants who, it's not like if you were, say, working in with an organisation where you might have a bit of insight as to who's going to pop up on your table, you might have people there who are really not confident in speaking or, or who might have literacy challenges, or who might have English as a second language. So you've got to sort of adapt to that group of participants that you have, and work with them to build their confidence to express their views about the sorts of issues that are under consideration. And then I think this notion that you're part of a team of facilitators, you're all doing the sort of similar process on separate tables, and that is part of a bigger jigsaw piece. So you sort of got to manage how your group is responding to those questions and that plan that you've got, and knowing that you need to kind of get to an output for that specific section, because it fits together into the whole jigsaw piece of the whole process. So I think that that's an interesting dynamic. It's not like you're there and you're kind of controlling the whole space. Of course, I'm talking there about a table facilitator and then there's the kind of facilitator who's kind of orchestrating the whole piece as well. I mean it's fascinating working with the public, that's the bit that I just find so interesting is giving people the opportunity to have their voice heard in these issues and people love it. But as a facilitator kind of getting to the point where people are comfortable to do that is interesting. 

N.W

Yeah, I mean, I haven't mentioned as we've been talking, but I have facilitated in these environments. And I think one of the things that I always find so fascinating is that you can have a whole load of different groups essentially following the same framework and process and they will come out with completely different things, or they will respond to the materials in completely different ways. And you've got such a close comparison, because they're all in the room together with half an hour, or whatever it is, and I just find that fascinating, or I've done some where I've done the same process two nights in a row with different groups. And literally, it's nothing to do with how I facilitated it because I was the same person. But yeah, so interesting to see how different groups respond to the material.

S.L

And sorry, I was just going to say. And also giving people the opportunity, because of course, you've got a mini public there. They, the participants themselves are meeting people that are from all sorts of different walks of life, and seeing how they reflect also on other people's contribution and how that adjusts their views. And again, that, for me, is 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.

N.W

Yeah, absolutely. And again, I mean, we've touched on this a little bit, but obviously, this can often be about quite complex subject matter, you've given some examples at the beginning, and the participants will have varying degrees of prior knowledge. So obviously, giving them some information is one of the key things in this, what have you seen works particularly well, in how you present that information to people and perhaps not so well? 

S.L

So yeah, absolutely, you kind of have to give people enough information that they can deliberate on it, but not so much and that for me is the real critical point is that it's boiling it down into what is the appropriate level of detail, participants don't need to have a PhD in the topic. And they very quickly, participants really quickly kind of get to grips with what the topic is. So for me, the really crucial things is that you have to have specialists from a diversity of perspectives. So that participants can kind of reach into the corners of the issues and what the different kind of takes are on that. And I know most of the time it is done through some form of kind of presentation. But it's really important to pick your specialists well, that they can talk in an accessible way or brief them well to do that, and make sure that you know what it is that they're saying, that you get to look at their slides beforehand and make sure that it is accessible. It's not kind of reams and reams of really detailed stuff. But other ways in which the worst sorts of information imparting are where you have a really long, dense presentation. So that's designed out. You tend to give it in small bite sized, probably no more than 10 minute type of talks, you layer up the sort of information that you're giving to people so that they've got these sort of bite sized chunks, and they're hearing from different perspectives. But as well as hearing from different perspectives, you sometimes in public dialogues, you can also interview people before the dialogue and put that into provocation, kind of cards or animations or sort of pictorial scenarios so that people can access the information in different sorts of ways. What's really crucial is that they hear from different perspectives, they get a chance to sort of question and interrogate that, and it's not in a kind of overly complex way. So that's the real skill of who's designing the whole process, is making sure that we're hearing the right sort of information enough for participants to get to grips with it, but not so much that they're just listening to reams and reams of presentations, because that's not the point. The point is not to kind of come out with an educated public. The point is, is that we want to hear what participants kind of deliberations and insights on having known enough about the topic.

N.W

yeah, and I suppose almost that instinctive reaction or whatever it is that they have picked out from a presentation that's most important for them is a valuable insight in the first place is that, actually what is it that they're taking away from all of the information they've been given? 

S.L

Yep. What's really nice is if you have the opportunity and the processes, which because they're run over a number of sessions you can often do this, is to ask participants also what might be missing or what they might have to revisit. And, again, if you've got a specialist sort of in the room, whether that's a virtual or real room, using them as a kind of resource to be able to pull on as well is really important.

N.W

Yeah, I think that we perhaps haven't made that clear that quite often those experts will give a presentation but then they are still available to chip in, to answer questions, to clarify bits. So that's really interesting, too. Yeah. And again, so while it's not unique to public dialogue, I think something that a lot of the processes involve is a really kind of structured evaluation. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? And how it sort of fits in the overall process?

S.L

Yeah, yeah and certainly for science wise public dialogue. So just actually, to really quickly scale back. So science wise supports government departments, research councils to do public dialogue and kind of mentor supports those organisations, but also provides some co-funding. So there's always an independent evaluation that sits alongside that public dialogue. And that both I think, quite uniquely, for this evaluation, it sits at the beginning, and it can give sort of formative input throughout the process as it's being designed. But also it produces a kind of summative evaluation at the end. So what is it that participants have felt? What is it that specialists have felt? So gathering all of that data like you might do, usually in a kind of evaluation. So it's more than just observing the sessions, doing a participant survey and reporting on that. And the other thing that I think is kind of really important is, again, certainly for science wise dialogues is that there's a sort of interim report when the dialogue report comes out. But then we go back or the evaluator goes back six months later, and says, right, what was the impact of this public dialogue? And that, to me, is really, really crucial so that you know where has it influenced? You said at the beginning, that this was going to be something that inputted into this policy, or that inputted into this strategy. Six months on what has happened? Have those impacts happened? Have other things happened that have been as a result of that public dialogue process? 

N.W

And I suppose with that in mind, have you got any examples of where you've seen really specific big changes that have come out of those that you can sort of share? So obviously, a lot of them are still in progress.

S.L

Yeah, sure. Well, I suppose the one that quite often is, is quoted and this is going back a little way. I mean if you look at the science wise website, there's always the evaluation reports are up there as well. And they, certainly the more recent ones, kind of capture those impacts. So it might be that it's led to a whole raft of new social science research. But one of the ones particularly that's quoted is around something called mitochondrial transfer, and this was quite a controversial area of research. A public dialogue was held which helped inform. Then the recommendations of what was the human fertilisation embryology authority, the HFEA , who regulates all of that, and that then fed into changing the law on what was allowed in terms of this mitochondrial transfer. Whilst they would have done other stakeholder work, they would have listened to what experts thought about this, actually hearing about what the public thought, whether this was the right way to go, what were the sorts of limits? What were the red lines? What sort of conditions should be in place? Formed a really kind of core plank of then what that recommendation and ultimately, the kind of law change signifies. So it can have some big impacts and what I see a lot with public dialogue, and we'll kind of think about this into the future is, lots of government agencies, or any key decision making authority is really familiar with thinking about how they involve their kind of traditional stakeholders. But thinking about how they really hear from what the public thinks is a more tricky area for them to grapple with. So public dialogue provides one route in which they can really understand, what do the public think about this having had a bit more time to think about it. What drives their concerns or their hopes or their aspirations around this particular topic? And that, for me, is always the missing pieces, like, how are we hearing the public voice in this new development? Because it's not a given that that will always happen. 

N.W

And so, I suppose building on that then, are there particular trends or developments that you're seeing happening currently or on the horizon for public dialogue? Where do you think it could go?

S.L

So I mean, I hope, and I think that there will be a move towards this. Rather than this being something that is a sort of almost optional add on, or specifically for some topics that are quite high profile, or kind of think that they might be controversial, but actually, it becomes a much more embedded part of both policy and strategy. So that rather than 'Oh, crikey, we need to think about doing a public dialogue', but it's something that's just automatically built into the policy strategy development process for those topics. So it's not saying that it should be used in every circumstance, but that it's much more kind of part of the normal suite of tools that policy makers will be thinking about, that there's that check. Oh, hang on a minute, how are we thinking about public voice? Do we need to do a public dialogue? Do we need to do some other kinds of, you know , how are we going to get that public insight into the development of our policies? Doing public dialogue is about making better decisions by getting public insight into that process. I think the other thing that I would just say is that I think increasingly, whilst the approach is about making better decisions, better policies, I think it will become more clearly linked with sort of a democratic process that ultimately, certainly, if we're talking about science and tech, whether we're talking about climate change with, for example, citizens assemblies, on climate change,that these are things that are affecting people, participant people day to day. If there's a new science or tech development, it's helping us and a lot of that research is funded by the public. So where's the sort of right, almost for the public to have a more considered, say, in the development of those areas?

N.W

And I think what you say there is interesting as well, because obviously a lot of this is technical information. But in the main, there are ways that people find it does relate to their day to day life in some way. And I think that's another quite important tool potentially, is making it feel like something that people have a grounding in their daily life,even if they don't know all of the technical details, isn't it? So they can deliberate with their own perspective on that?.

S.L

Absolutely, I mean, those examples I gave before, they're about the food that we eat, or about the impact of climate on our infrastructure. They're about what we think is right, or how far science should go. If we're looking at AI, or we're looking at these exciting, but also fast developments that are happening in science and tech, there has to be, and this is why I talk about quite often with the people thinking about commissioning, it's got to align with social values. If it's really out of step with that, I think we saw that a lot with GM in the early 2000s, then people start getting really concerned about it. So what's right? What's wrong? Or how should it go? Where are the sorts of red lines? What are the sorts of conditions under which this technology should develop? could develop? shouldn't develop? Understanding that for a policymaker, or for strategies is kind of gold dust really.

N.W

Excellent, well, I mean, it's all so fascinating, we could probably talk all day about it, but 

S.L

Just scratched the surface .

N.W

Exactly. And with that in mind, if listeners want to find out more about public dialogue, what would you say the best places to look?

S.L

So I would say there's two. Obviously, I've talked quite a lot about science wise, and sciencewise.org.uk is the website,there's a lot there about public dialogue, but also lots of reports from previous public dialogues. And then the other place that I always kind of point people towards is the involve website. So if you just Google involve, and particularly, I think it's involve.org.uk .Particularly their methods and Resource Bank section. So the methods obviously covers lots of methods, but their resource section there is super useful and that will also touch on things which we haven't delved into as much here, sort of citizens assemblies, citizens juries and other sorts of, kind of public participation processes.

N.W

Right. And we can put those links in the show notes as well. And, and if listeners would like to find out more specifically about your work or get in touch with you, what would you suggest?

S.L

Look me up on LinkedIn as a start. Okay, that's probably the easiest, easiest place really.

N.W

Well, we'll put that in the show notes too. So thank you so much, Suzannah, for your time and your contribution today. It's been really interesting to chat to you. 

S.L

Thank you, Nikki. 

N.W

Thank you again. Have a lovely day. Bye.

Outro

So listeners, we've reached the end of another episode of facilitation stories, the community podcast, IAF England and Wales.

If you'd like to find out more about the IAF and how to get involved all of the links on our website, facilitationstories.com. 

And to make sure you never miss an episode, why not subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use? 

We're always on the lookout for new episode ideas. So is there a fabulous facilitator you think we should talk to or something interesting emerging in the world of facilitation you think listeners need to hear about send us an email at podcast@IAF-EnglandWales.org

We hope you'll join us again soon for more Facilitation Stories.

Until then, thank you for listening

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 do you think about me doing a session? Would it be okay? I'm not that experienced as a facilitator, and I'm really new to IAF, so we encouraged her to come over and go for it. She was really quite frightened when she turned up on the day. She was brilliant.

It was a lovely session. It was really, really good, because one of the things that happens is everybody coming to this conference in the past, they realize that they've been on the other side of this. So there's a willingness to explore new ground with someone who's been trying to facilitate something and encourage them and go along with their process and their game or whatever it is.

So it becomes a very positive place even to try something completely new, even if you're very nervous. And I'm sure that will happen again this year. We'll have someone doing that.

And I know I've always felt, when I've gone to the conferences before, really felt that actually, that it's quite, the phrase is a little bit overused, safe space to actually explore and experiment and have a go. And it's a really supportive community, isn't it? So, you know, nobody's going to turn around and go, oh, no, I didn't like that. You know, there may be some reflective comments and all the rest of it, but it's all very, very supportive.

So, yeah, if you are jumping in for the first time, and that's an intentional sort of cultural feel of the conference that I think we've tried to maintain certainly since, I mean, the first one I went to was 2019, and that feeling was already there, you know, and when you've got people who are everything from, you know, the kind of work I do in the public sector with being industry clients, but we've got people who are deeply involved in social. Social interaction, you know, social issues of mental health, all those kind of areas, or they're working with people in deprivation. You've got people working in the private sector, and there's an openness to say this is interesting.

It's not the kind of work I do, but I really found what you did there really thoughtful, and maybe I can translate that back into my world. That's one of the things I love most about these two days. And I guess that's facilitation in general, isn't it, though? It's such a broad array of different, you know, there's so many different ways to look at it, different takes on it.

So it's really nice that there's that appetite to kind of bring that huge range together in one place. Nice. Okay.

And are you able to. I know you're doing a session, aren't you? I was just going to say, could you maybe give us one or two, a flavor of one or two of the sessions you think are coming up? Tell us about your session, maybe from the four tracks. I know there are people coming and teaching particular skills.

I think we've got someone doing some of the ICA facilitation technique stuff and demonstrating some of that. There are people. There's one.

One. Someone's going to do something on the thinking organization, which I'm pretty sure is based on the work of Nancy Klein. Go Google, Nancy Klein thinking organization.

We're going to do one myself and one of my fellow resolutions, Helen and Amelia Wakeford, who's also in the IAF group, we have found as a little trio that a lot of what we're doing now could be put under the very, very broad umbrella of systems thinking. It's thinking about how different parts of an organization fit together to do something, getting people out of siloed organizations in local government or central government or charity, whatever. And it's a big focus in the public sector now, particularly from the chief scientific advisors.

So we're going to do a session that looks at the breadth of what falls under that umbrella of system thinking, everything from rich pictures right the way through to people who actually put numbers and money and things into them. We'll have a little go and we'll probably go into the area of what if the system is complex, or we'll talk about wicked problems and stuff like that. How far can you go with this, especially? Maybe you've got limited time and energy and money and actually start to deal with the complexity in systems rather than simplifying it out and then ignoring it and then wondering why it doesn't work.

Well, it's because you took all the complexity out of it. So that'll be a fun hands on session, and it's something we do a lot of. Brilliant.

I think I quite like the look of your session, actually. The program is coming out for the conference very, very soon. It's being formed up now, so very soon it'll be on social media and everybody will be able to see what's going on.

Great. Okay. What specifically are you looking forward to? I think you sort of mentioned a couple of minutes ago that, you know, that the whole sort of diversity of different, you know, seeing lots of different people doing different types of facilitation.

But what else are you looking forward to from the conference? Probably don't say it being over and you not having to organize it anymore. No, that's not really a big thing. Everybody's tired on the Saturday night.

Yes. Content side. I like the fact that over the weekend I can go to something intentionally that I think I know nothing about what they're going to do.

It's going to be completely alien. Let's go and see. Let's go and play.

Let's go and explore that. And whenever I do that, something completely different to what I do, I always come away with maybe two or three bullets. And I'm thinking, that's really interesting.

I can use that in what I do. The second thing, and I'm going to give you three. Good to have threes.

Second thing is I love watching other people do it. I know people at the conference, but then you go and watch them do a session, and there's always something to learn about it could be the style they do it, the way they talk about it. It could be the method.

It could be this way. I love watching other people facilitate because we don't always get to do that. You know, so often you have to do your stuff and do your way, and watching anybody doing it the way they do it gives you some interesting things to learn.

And then the last thing is, because of the nature of the conference that we've talked about, I'm just really enthused over two days to watch people eating and drinking, if you like. I don't mean the food, I mean the content of the process, the energy we put into organizing it. There is a lot of energy in putting the content together.

But 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. We will never know all the things, but I've really enjoyed over the three or four I've been involved in, watching the people go in, eat effectively, eat and drink the context of the experience, and then go away full and enthused.

And then you watch the communications in the weeks afterwards on social media, on LinkedIn or whatever, you're in contact with them and how the buzz carries on. And, you know, last year we had 70 people. This year we've got 100.

We haven't even announced the program yet. That is word of mouth. A lot of it is people who came last year or the year before and have said they're coming and have told somebody else, and now they're coming, too, which I think is brilliant.

And that says quite a lot about us as a community. I think about how we kind of interact with each other and how we talk about all this stuff. And I do remember thinking about that, your sort of third thing you're looking forward to last year, certainly feeling that energy, and you're right, that buzz afterwards.

And it is a very energizing and, you know, slightly exhausting as well. But there's always two sides of the same thing, but that sort of real energy, feeling very energized. And then, as you say, yeah, just talking about it for ages afterwards and meeting some amazing people, it's a really great space to do that.

Okay. And thinking about the people then that are coming. I think this year we've also got quite a few people, or some people at least, who are coming from outside the UK, quite a long way outside the UK as well.

We're, of course, immensely privileged in running a conference in English as our home language. And never forget that english people, how privileged you are about to have that in that. That means other people, if they've got English as a second language, can come and join in, which is more challenging.

I would be really challenged this week at the conference in Italy because that's going to be in Italian. So we often had people, I remember people coming from Holland last year with Belgium and one of the others. This has been very interesting.

There's someone coming from, if Italy, Tanzania, South Africa, Hong Kong. And we might have somebody coming from one of the Middle east chapters. We're not quite sure.

These are people who've got to get visas to come to the UK. They can't just jump on a plane and come. Those are the four or five.

I know about. There might be others because I haven't seen the full ticketing list. And these are people who want to come and get some of what we've been talking about before and take it home.

So I talked to people last year from one or two other countries. One of their objectives of coming was to say, we've heard about the way this conference runs. We'd like to come and experience it and then maybe take a bit of that back and do that where we are.

And one country particularly, I don't think it had a conference for some years, and this year in May, they're doing one day as a start, but they're going to do that. Another, they don't know they're doing conferences in their country, and they've taken bits of what we've done and said, oh, yeah, we could do a bit like that as well, mold it to their own culture and their own local needs. So that's a real privilege to have people coming in for those reasons.

That's amazing and really good that those people and other people presumably see it, see this conference and see, you know, what's been happening over the last few years when we've been doing conferences as something that is, I don't know, maybe inspirational, maybe, you know, it's something that other people can take something from, as you say, which is really exciting. So it's not just the day or two days. It's got legs.

It's, you know, reaching out a lot further. I went whatever year it was, I went to the european IAF conference, all the european chapters in Milan. And so because it was a european conference, they did it in English, not in Italian.

Normally they do it in Italian, and it had a very similar feel in some ways. They were obviously tapping into some of the same things that we're seeing as valuable in terms of their choice of venue and the way they ran it and stuff. This very, very open approach to conference for facilitation, I think has some real payoffs, real benefits.

And so I think this is about maybe the 7th or so England and Wales conference that we have put on, because I remember quite a few years ago there being sort of large meetups that have slowly, over the years, morphed into actual big conferences like this. And I know there have also been several IAF european conferences as you just sort of talked about. Obviously, they've grown.

They've become, you know, it sounds like they've become definitely more of a, you know, people know about them a lot more. You know, what do you attribute this success to. Why do you think the, if England and Wales conferences are successful, have become successful, hopefully continue to be successful? There's probably a few things.

One is it's easier to do this if you've got a single common language and a big pool you can draw on. So that's easy. There's been a series of leaders in IAF, England and Wales since way before my time, who have started to foster this idea of the conference.

It's only one of the things IAF does, does the podcast and meetups, and this kind of thing being something that the local chapter in the country sees not as a gathering just for the members. It's not a club meeting. It's part of the expression of the IAF aim of promoting the power of facilitation and promoting professional development for facilitators.

And so it's become very intentionally IAF England and Wales, and friends, and the friends are as important as the members in this, in terms of their contribution to the event. So it's a community, it's based around the IAF England and Wales chapter, but it's got a large open tent at the sides. The comparison I did, someone said a little, it's like going to a music festival.

Go to Glastonbury, there's the people who are in the tent. If you go to the big tents of Glastonbury, there's always another 4000 people just around the tent, and they're enjoying the concert and taking part in it as well. And they're just as much a part of it, even though theyre not, or not yet perhaps members in that sense.

But weve got people deeply involved in the conference programme who are not IAF members, but theyre deeply committed to the if England and Wales and friends community. And thats been an intentional principle, at least back to 2017, 1819, somewhere around there. And so its done from an attitude of generosity and giving, you know, as the eye of England and Wales, not as a, a club, and you must be a member.

And all this kind of thing, which we love people becoming members, we love people using the professional development in IAF. I do it all, but it's a possession then to give, not to hold it all tight. So makes it a little bit messier, a little bit untidy, and I think all the better for it.

But if we avoided all the messiness and untidiness, we'd never do anything. We'd have an association that was, you know, constantly trying to work out where its next ten members came from. And I think that always.

It does feel like that's always been. Ever since I've been part of IAF, certainly the England and Wales chapter, there's always been quite an inclusive way of doing things. So all the meetups, you know, invite other people, you know, it's never been an only member's sort of way of doing things.

And I think it's really nice because also, facilitation is huge, isn't it? It's got, as you say, where's the tent stop? That concept reflects the nature of the job we do in facilitation as well. And, you know, some of those people, if you think of it like an onion, people come in, some people come into the edge of it and come to a conference and they go away. We never see them again, or they come to a meetup.

And some people get much closer in. Some people are very embedded in the if England and Wales and friends community, and some of those people become members. We also get people who become members of IAF and come to the community through that door.

And one thing I always say to people about membership is come to receive and to learn, but come to give. If you look at the IAF competencies and principles, quite a few, quite a bit of it is about what you're giving to the profession of facilitation and encouraging other people, particularly, obviously, as you go on and perhaps gain more experience. And you never have a bigger shovel, as they say, when you start giving to a thing like this, you always get back more than you shuffled in.

Definitely. No, it sounds really exciting. I'm really looking forward to coming, and I'm really looking forward to meeting some people I know and chatting about stuff that, you know, we know about.

And also, I think, more importantly, meeting people that I don't know, hearing new stuff, hearing about new ways of doing things. I think it's great that there's, you know, there's four different tracks and four different options. I am going to struggle to decide what to put on my buffet plate because I always do.

But, yeah, really looking forward to it. Thank you so much, Paul, for talking to me today. Any last plugs? Anything else we need to know about the conference before, before we wrap up? I think the big question we're having at the moment in the conference group is, what on earth do we do if more than 120 people want to come next year, what would we do? But that's a problem.

For further down the line, the program is pretty much done. We're now getting into the stage of there's a list of small things that need to be done, like what do we need to print and all that kind of thing. But it's just been wonderful to see the people booking in and the variety of people.

It's one of my most enjoyable weekends of the year. Yay. I'm really excited.

Well, I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you so much. Thank you, Helen.

Good to talk to.

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/