Facilitation Stories  By  cover art

Facilitation Stories

By: IAF England Wales
  • Summary

  • Facilitation: the art of enabling a group of people to achieve a common goal. IAF England Wales brings you a show by facilitators, for facilitators and anyone interested in using facilitation for change. We'll share guest stories, experiences and methods. Plus, we'll bring you up to date on what's happening at our Meetups.
    ©2022 IAF ENGLAND AND WALES CHAPTER
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Episodes
  • FS 66 Facilitate 2024: Growing Together with Paul Brand
    Apr 16 2024
    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 ...
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    25 mins
  • FS65 Chapter Chat with Bogdan Grigore IAF Romania
    Mar 19 2024

    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

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    36 mins
  • FS64 State of Facilitation Survey and Report with Deborah Rim Moiso
    Feb 20 2024

    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 

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    39 mins

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