Facilitation Stories

By: IAF England Wales
Listen for free

  • 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
    Show More Show Less
Biographies & Memoirs Career Success Economics Social Sciences
Show More Show Less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
Episodes
  • FS 72 Working as an Internal Facilitator with Cath Brooks from the Environment Agency

    FS 72 Working as an Internal Facilitator with Cath Brooks from the Environment Agency
    Oct 15 2024
    In this episode Helene talks to Cath about her role as Senior Engagement Advisor and internal facilitator with the Environment Agency (EA) Cath tells Helene a bit about the EA and the type of work they do. She explains how her role as Engagement Advisor includes facilitation and also how she works an an independent internal facilitator for other projects withing the EA. Cath gives some examples of what she really enjoys about her role as a faciliator including working with the public on a climate adaptation project and working alongside external independent facilitators that the EA also use. She explains that external faciliatators are often used when more complex conversations need to be had, or where there has been a breakdown of trust and someone independent is needed. She shares some insights as to how the internal facilitators network of aroudn 200 facilitators was set up and how she balances her work as Senior Engagement Advisor and facilitator. She tells Helene about a role play technique that really made a difference and about how asking good questions are crucial to her work as a faciliator. Cath also talks about how she keeps her faciliation skills up including attending the IAF England and Wales conferences, and local IAF meetups and EA facilitator learning days. She also shares some advice for other internal facilitators. A full transcript is below. Today's Guest Environment Agency - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) facilitationnetworkmailbox@environment-agency.gov.uk 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 of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helen Jewell, and my guest today is Cath Brooks, senior engagement advisor with the Environment Agency. Welcome, Cath C.B Hi, yeah. Hi. How are you doing? Alright? H.J I'm good. How are you? C.B Yeah, good. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I'm Looking forward to it. H.J It's really good to have you on the podcast. Okay, so I have a whole load of questions to ask you, starting with the Environment Agency. I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about what the Environment Agency does and what your role is? C.B Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I hope that it'll inspire people. I've worked at the Environment Agency for almost 20 years, and I still absolutely love it. It's a great organisation. So we're a public sector organisation, and we aim, quite simply, to protect and improve the environment. We employ about 12,000 people, and some people work nationally across England, and then some people work in area offices. We've got 14 different area offices across England, so you either work on national issues or you work on local issues in one of our area offices. And I guess to create places for people and wildlife, we work on quite a lot of topics that people are deeply concerned about, and finding ways forward can be difficult on some of the issues, people have strong opinions about the environment and how we should be managing the environment quite rightly. So Facilitation skills are really important in that context, with some of the really difficult issues that we're managing. So some of those topics are things like managing major industry, making sure they're not polluting the environment, and waste, dealing with contaminated land, making sure water quality of our rivers and we've got enough water so water resources as well, working on fisheries, conservation and ecology, and my area that I work on is management of flood risk. So those sorts of issues are really interesting, and people have strong opinions about how we should be managing those issues. So there can be quite a lot of conflict, I guess, which is why facilitation is so important. H.J And so then, obviously that's quite a broad even under the umbrella of the environment, that's quite a broad range of different areas, and in your particular area then, in your role as senior engagement advisor, what does that actually involve? Sort of before, obviously, I guess facilitation is part of that, but I know you also do it sort of separately as well. What does your main role? What does your main role involve? C.B Yeah, so we've got engagement advisors. Obviously, the organisation's quite technical organisation, quite science and engineering led, but we also have engagement and communications experts within the Environment Agency, and I'm one of those. So I work alongside quite technical teams, and at the ...
    Show More Show Less
    35 mins
  • FS71 Chapter Chat with Jan Lelie IAF Netherlands

    FS71 Chapter Chat with Jan Lelie IAF Netherlands
    Sep 17 2024
    This episode is one of our quarterly “Chapter Chats” where Helene and Nikki talk to a member of the leadership team from another IAF Chapter. Today’s guest is Jan Lelie, founder of IAF Netherlands. Outside their IAF role Jan is a facilitator with a background in experimental physics. Key topics from the conversation include: How Facilitation and the role of Facilitators has changed over time What Jan has learned and continues to learn from other facilitators “you have to practice what you preach. When I go to an IAF conference, I will do a workshop of myself and I also work with other facilitators to see and to learn from each other” How the IAF Netherlands Chapter was established “ we wanted to have a certification process, and at that time, it was only in English… ” we were the first organization which offered certification in their mother tongue.” Topics and themes of past IAF Netherlands conferences The IAF Netherlands Initiative: ‘diverging conversations through facilitation’ “We wanted to know, where did you make the difference? What was the turning point?” “a suggestion of one of our facilitators that we should have a kind of year book” Ways the IAF Netherlands brings people together A full transcript is below. Links Today’s Chapter https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/netherlands Today’s guest: Contact Jan by email IAF-netherlands@kpnmail.nl To find out more about 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. N.W And I'm Nikki Wilson. 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 for their chapter. Today, we will be talking to Jan Lelie, facilitator and founder of IAF Netherlands. N.W So welcome Jan. So to start off with, could you tell us a little more about yourself and the work that you do Jan? J.L Yes, of course. Well, I facilitate, and I said, I've always facilitated. I worked for six weeks as a consultant in 1984 and then decided that it was not for me, and that any situation requires all the participants to be in the same room, in the same place, and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. And find out actually what the problem is about. So I studied physics, experimental physics, and there I learned that the definition of the problem is part of the problem. So in most of the situations, people have a, how shall I say, the rudimentary idea of their problem, and then they start to implement a solution. And when the solution doesn't work, the solution actually becomes a problem. So you're asked to get a solution implemented which is not the solution to a problem, so it will never work. And I started out in IT, information technology and communications, and there, often IT is not a problem, it's a solution that doesn't work. H.J And so you have been part of the IAF for nearly 30 years, I think. How have you seen the practice of facilitation and the role of facilitators change in that time? J.L Well, first of all, I think that everybody facilitates. It's like everybody communicates. So facilitation, in my experience, is about making connections. It's how you connect with people, how your relationship works, and from there, and everybody connects with each other, only like with communication, nobody has been trained into effective communication and in effective facilitation. So most people work from an expert position, like a consultant or a trainer or even a moderator, and facilitation, in my opinion, is a different paradigm, a different way of dealing with relationships, and the only way to progress is to to learn from each other in working as a facilitator and facilitating. So that was one of the reasons I went to an IAF conference in London in the end of the 1990s which was organized by the IAF, and because we had a computerized brainstorming solution, we wanted to show and also I already had organized a group of what we call moderators, a network of moderators. And then I learned that what I was doing was called facilitation. H.J It's interesting. I think a lot of people have said that, that they, they didn't necessarily call it facilitation, or call themselves ...
    Show More Show Less
    34 mins
  • FS70 Journaling, Writing and Facilitation with Claire Pearce

    FS70 Journaling, Writing and Facilitation with Claire Pearce
    Aug 20 2024
    In this episode Nikki talks to Claire Pearce about Journaling and Writing. Claire is a writer and facilitator who runs journaling and writing workshops and she also has her own radio show. They talk about: Why Journaling is a powerful too that facilitators could use themselves; “Externalising the internal is probably my favourite expression to describe it” Claire's journey with journaling and how it has changed for her; How to start journaling and writing regularly; “I think just start really small is my main bit of advice” How Journaling can be applied in facilitation work with groups; “ It's kind of like whatever people share they're ultimately sharing something about being human” The writing activities that Claire uses in facilitation; Facilitation tools and frameworks such as the GROW model. A full transcript is below. Links Today’s guest: http://ClairePearce.uk 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 and today I'm going to be talking to Claire Pearce. So welcome, Claire. C.P Hello, Nikki, thank you for having me. N.W No problem. So first of all, um, could you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do? C.P Okay, so I do lots of things, which I've, I've begun to reconcile myself with. So in terms of journaling, and writing, I run journaling and writing workshops. One workshop I do is more about just writing for fun. And I call it writing for fun, even though it's sort of morphed out of journaling, I'm using prompts and things to get people just to write freely and have a bit of fun with it, and see where their pen goes, which is great for if people are sort of blocked or just want to have a bit of fun writing, heaven forbid. And then the other leg is more sort of self help, I suppose. So I do a monthly workshops that has a theme, like in January, I always do my, what's your theme workshop? So what's your theme for the year? So we reflect back and we look forward and sort of develop a theme or get to something near a theme. So it's that kind of thing. So there's the two different kinds. But yes, they are all with the idea of getting people writing because fundamentally, whether you write, journal or something in between, it's all good for you. At least it is for most people. N.W And beyond that, obviously, I know you also as a facilitator. So is there anything else that you want to say about your facilitation? C.P I guess, yeah, I do freelance research work. I really enjoy it. I love sort of learning about something completely new, kind of going, Oh, wow, this is interesting. And yeah, so I do that as well. And I do do an odd bit of coaching. And I do have my own radio show. But that is obviously a voluntary,not obviously. But it is a voluntary thing that I do, because I love it. What else Oh, and I write, I've written a few books, I'm writing a few more. And I'm just getting into copywriting. It's going to be another string to my bow, because I've realised I really enjoy it. So yes, lots of things, I'll probably be something else the next time I speak to you. N.W I know that's that feeling Claire, don't worry. But today, we are going to be talking about journaling and writing.Both are something that facilitators might do on a personal level, also as an approach that we could use with groups. So thinking first of all about on an individual level, what is it that you feel makes journaling and writing so powerful? C.P Externalising the internal is probably my favourite expression to describe it. And that's exactly what it does. And you know, I'm trying to find a way to capture that thing. You know, when people say a problem shared is a problem halved or whatever , there's something so true about that. And whilst it's not as powerful as speaking to a person, because that is the ultimate, you know, if you're struggling with something, or even if you just want to offload doing it with another person, there is something about the energy, I think, that passes out of you to somebody else that's different than if you write it down. But writing it down is the next best thing. And you can do it 24/7, because you've always got a pen and a piece of paper to hand. So you're not having to rely on it, I suppose it is a bit about self reliance, probably a part of my own personal journey with it. But yeah, ...
    Show More Show Less
    30 mins

What listeners say about Facilitation Stories

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.co.uk reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available