Follow-up from our March session: Output materials

At the end of our March session (which was really good!) our guest facilitators, Maria & Richard Maguire, committed to typing up the output from the session.

Richard & Maria also typed up some comments and insights from the session and also some information if you are curious to learn more about the Technology of Participation (ToP).

1. Most people seemed to be amazed how quickly the group was able to put together their extensive brainstorm into a common picture and discern major directions in which we are working towards a more collaborative, just and sustainable society, already now and in the future.  The diagram in the bottom right corner shows that the group had a strong sense that truth and integrity are essential for all that we do, especially at this time, and has centre stage for change in other areas. The two top circles indicate that they saw enabling future vision and action as fundamental for impact. The elements on the bottom of the diagram highlight four major directions for supporting this to happen: Ensuring a safe space and affirming diversity, thinking outside the box, sharing stories and using multiple approaches and sensory experiences.

2. In real situations participants would  further discuss their first chart to reveal insights and might make slight adjustments about where to place the individual cards. Conversations might surface intriguing implications for many areas and new ideas in answer to the initial question or topic that could be added to as appropriate. The "Consensus Workshop" process of the Technology of Participation (ToP) is structured as well as fluent to capture ideas and decisions at the time. It supports cooperative thinking and action at any level of personal and group development and is best used on an ongoing basis. Anyone can learn to use it beneficially by themselves or with a group. The facilitator is challenged to trust the people and the method and help the group see connections beyond separate parts and create an integrated picture of the situation they are focusing on (the title of topic of the workshop)

3. We have used this and many other processes of the Technology of Participation (ToP) for several decades in our consulting and training work, for change management tasks, strategic planning, conflict resolution and life directions, often in combination with other tools and techniques and are still offering both training and consulting. You can also learn more from books such as "Winning through Participation" by Laura Spencer, "The Workshop book" or "The Art of Focused Conversations" both by Brian Stanfield or "Transformational Strategy" by Bill Staples (the latter is available as a pdf through

https://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000621811/Transformational-Strategy.aspx

Some pieces are on our website, hopefully added to in the near future. For training through us and others or related info please call us on 02 9896 3839 or 9896 3904). 

‘Liberating Facilitation: How our facilitation can contribute to a more participatory, just and sustainable society’ with Maria & Richard Maguire | Monday 14th Mar 2016

The Facilitators Network exists to give opportunities for participants to continually, generously and honestly share experiences, processes and learnings to increase their effectiveness in this growing field of work.

Most of us chose facilitation not primarily for its financial benefit but because it makes sense and is needed in more and more settings. Some of us experience ourselves and notice in others a growing dissatisfaction with aspects of our current social-political and economic systems. As facilitators many of us do not only want to do a great facilitation job on every occasion but also make a difference regarding the big issues of our time, such as economic inequality, social and ideological conflicts and environmental degradation.

Many of us are committed to participation and inclusion and wonder how to grow our effect towards a more just, sustainable and even joyful society. 

This highly participatory workshop “Liberating Facilitation” will bring together our individual and collective wisdom on what we are already doing in our facilitation work or have seen others doing that releases change in such direction. 

You will go home with a product that affirms what you already do, encourages you to try out additional small or big steps and with a process to successfully use in many situations in your life and work. 

You will experience a method of the Technology of Participation (ToP) which you can explore further through books and trainings offered through Unfolding Futures and others. The 300 page book from 2014 by Bill Staples "Transformational Strategy- Facilitation of ToP Participatory Planning" is available as an E-Book for US$3.99 at

https://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000621811/Transformational-Strategy.aspx

About Maria and Richard Maguire 
Maria and Richard Maguire are directors of Unfolding Futures, a company focused on facilitation and leadership development in its consultancies and training. They founded the Sydney Facilitators Network as a community of practice in 1992 and guided it for 12 years. For 30 plus years they have worked with many organisations in government, business and community in Australia, and previously in Europe and the USA, with stints in so-called developing nations. They have always understood their work and company as a “social enterprise, a market based venture with social aims” for all involved. After achieving financial independence they increasingly have supported or initiated community organisations to extend their impact and cooperation to create common good and received awards as community leaders. 

Venue:
University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Jones Street, Ultimo corner Thomas Street. Room 5.580 Level 5, Building 10, Take the lift to level 5, cross the atrium footbridge, walk straight ahead to room 580.

Time:

From 5:30pm to 7:30pm sharp | No RSVP - Just turn up | Donation $5

Blog www.facilitatorsnetwork.blogspot.com

Enquiries | Eoin Higgins  eoin.p.higgins@gmail.com : 0407 411 684

Facilitating YOU – Self Leadership for greater impact as a change agent with Godwin Vaz | Monday 8th Feb 2016

In this ‘VUCA’ age of constant change, the key to creating transformational change is You – your awareness, adaptability and your True Self being expressed, supported and continually expanded.  If you have a desire to transform your results, energy, relationships and/or more profoundly impact the systems you work in, then this session will resonate.     

Come and join in this stimulating, interactive and thought-provoking session. We will experience and have a conversation on the following themes:

·         3 core elements of self leadership and how they link to transformative systems change

·         What’s beyond the approaches of ‘happiness’, engineered change and critical mass 

·         The importance of feeling lost and positively tapping into uncertainty and chaos

·         How to shift from driven, machine work to more energy and meaningful success

 

This session will also be useful for Senior Leaders, Transformational Change Agents, Senior Consultants, Visionary Creatives, and Transformational Coaches and Trainers.

 

About the Facilitator:

Godwin Vaz has been exploring, researching and working in the Transformational space for over 20 years. He has worked on projects in 14 countries in the role of consultant, strategy and culture advisor and executive coach. Some of his clients include Singapore Airlines, Itau Bank (Brazil), Infosys, ANZ, Federal Express, McKinsey and Co., Oracle, Microsoft and many more.  He has most recently been working with senior government officials in Kenya and Ethiopia, developing their capability in Transformational Leadership, Change Management and Culture Development, to better achieve their country’s vision.

Godwin will be hosting a program on transformational self leadership for change makers on 27 February 2016, in Sydney. The ‘Lead Your Life’ workshop is an opportunity to experience Godwin’s unique and ‘chaordic’ Multidimensional Learning Systems™ (MLS™) methodology for sustaining transformative change.  You can find out more about him here or visit his site here.

 

 

Venue:
University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Jones Street, Ultimo corner Thomas Street. Room 5.580 Level 5, Building 10, Take the lift to level 5, cross the atrium footbridge, walk straight ahead to room 580.

Time:

From 5:30pm to 7:30pm sharp | No RSVP - Just turn up | Donation $5

Blog www.facilitatorsnetwork.blogspot.com

Enquiries | Eoin Higgins  eoin.p.higgins@gmail.com : 0407 411 684

“Innovation Wildcard” | Monday December 14, 2015 | 5.30pm | With end-of-year social

Do you have a new idea to try out with a receptive audience?

Do you have a short process that you want to practice before you do it live with a client?

Have you been considering taking a guest facilitator spot but want to get some experience with the group first?

Do you have a short process that is energizing and fun?

All these and more are what wildcard is for. You can be guest facilitator on the night for between 5 and 20 minutes.

Typically there is time for around 6 short sessions.

Wildcards are for everyone no matter what the experience level. They are unpredictable, engaging and always fun.

Wildcards are a great way to experience a range of ideas and tools from a variety of different experiences.

Wildcard sessions are organized dynamically on the night. Just turn up with your idea.

Everyone else just turn up to learn from the experience and have fun.

Xmas Social:

Please join us for networking, conversation and laughter afterwards at the nearby, very economical Pho Mumum Vietnamese Restaurant, No 16 Broadway, Chippendale (opposite the Big UTS Tower). Average meal cost only$10. See review on Trip Advisor

Venue:  [Our usual venue]

University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Jones Street, Ultimo corner Thomas Street. Room 5.580 Level 5, Building 10, Take the lift to level 5, cross the atrium footbridge, walk straight ahead to room 580.

Time:

From 5:30pm to 7:30pm sharp | No RSVP - Just turn up | Donation $5

Blog www.facilitatorsnetwork.blogspot.com

Enquiries | Greg Jenkins; gregjenkins@yahoo.com ; 0418 486 501 | Eoin Higgins  eoin.p.higgins@gmail.com ; 0407 411 684

Listening to words, and imagining meanings with Dr Colin J Harrison | Monday November 09th at 5:30pm

NOTE: change to regular format

For this month's session we will be offering a slightly different format.

In addition to our main session, we will offer a shorter session. This will allow greater flexibility to our members to share within the community.

To ensure we allow enough time for our facilitators we will begin a 5:30pm sharp! 

Our main session will be:

Listening to words, and imagining meanings, with Dr Colin J Harrison

In this session Colin Harrison will attempt to push the boundaries of the practice of facilitation. Using his experience as a communications specialist, he will use a number of novel techniques to explore the dynamics of group communication. He also believes that it is easier to change ideas through leading behaviour than the other way around: the session will therefore be highly interactive, with theoretical framing left until a short debrief at the end. The session will be unusual, interesting and sensorially stimulating meaning that you will all go home mentally exhausted (and sleep well!) 

 About Colin Harrison

Colin Harrison has worked as a university lecturer for nearly 20 years, predominantly in France. His academic background is in Ron Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar and Sydney Lamb’s Neurocognitive Linguistics (not NLP!) which are both frameworks for the analysis and understanding of human linguistic capacity grounded in perceptual psychology (CG) and connectionist neural networks (NCL).

He has benefitted from 20 years of diverse opportunities to apply this understanding to language and communications instruction, mostly at tertiary level in the US and in France. Recently he has returned to his homeland of Australia to establish his own consultancy company, Lucid8 Language Skills, which is focused on human communication and its central role in nearly all aspects of building and maintaining effective collaborative groups.

For more on Colin, see his website www.lucid8.com.au or to learn more about one of his upcoming workshops in Sydney CBD on 24th November go to http://ow.ly/TtfFi.

Our short session will be

"What's your voice telling about you?", with Michael Kelly

Why does your voice sound different on audio recording than when you normally speak?

In this short session Michael Kelly will tell you why you hear yourself differently to other people - and what you need to do, to understand what your voice is telling about you.

He will share two, simple powerful speaking techniques you can immediately use to upgrade your speaking impact

About Michael Kelly

Michael Kelly is the founder and director of Kelly Speech Communication. He is a business pitch consultant, executive personal communication coach and corporate communication consultant.

Michael is a leading body language and speech expert and holds a Master of Science degree in speech pathology. He writes a weekly blog post on all aspects of memorable listening, speaking and presenting.

His clients include iProspect, Commonwealth Bank and The University of Sydney.

To get a preview of Michael’s work here is link to his recent popular blog post analyzing the speaking of PM Malcolm Turnbull.

http://kellyspeech.com.au/m-turnbull-people-will-believe-your-certainty/

========================================================

Venue:  [Our usual venue]

University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Jones Street, Ultimo corner Thomas Street. Room 5.580 Level 5, Building 10, Take the lift to level 5, cross the atrium footbridge, walk straight ahead to room 580.

Time:

From 5:30pm to 7:30pm sharp | No RSVP - Just turn up |Donation $5

Blog www.facilitatorsnetwork.blogspot.com

Enquiries | Greg Jenkins; gregjenkins@yahoo.com ; 0418 486 501 | Eoin Higgins  eoin.p.higgins@gmail.com ; 0407 411 684

Facilitators Network | Monday October 12, 2015 | 5.30pm Looking for the hidden "good stuff" - an exploration with John Loty

Facilitators Network | Monday October 12, 2015 | 5.30pm Looking for the hidden "good stuff" - an exploration with John Loty How can we as facilitators overcome and help others overcome the anxieties, fears and tribulations that are rarely discussed but not so rare? According to Shirzad Chamine, author of "Positive Intelligence" only 20% of teams and individuals achieve their true potential...largely because of the "saboteurs" within. This session of the Sydney Facilitators will explore these concepts and discover approaches that will facilitate achievement of this elusive potential. This session will explore ways of applying a strengths-based and realistic approach to a solution of the actual problem/s by learning to see things differently ... by engaging in a collaborative and cooperative search for the best in any given situation, organisations, people and the world about us. Participants will also be introduced to the STOP tool, developed by W Timothy Gallwey in "The Inner Game of Work". About John Loty John Loty is an Appreciative Performance Improvement Facilitator and Coach who has been an industrial relations practitioner, a negotiator, barrister, mediator, general manager, corporate counsel, founder and Director of an RTO and enjoys assisting individuals, teams and organisations achieve their true potential. He is Chairman of Logistics Bureau (Australia's leading Supply Chain and Logistics Consultancy) and is a long term member of the Sydney Facilitators Network. John's current focus is on the possibilities and opportunities of employing the principles of Appreciative Inquiry to individual (as well as corporate) growth and development. He is the publisher of a digital magazine (Appreciate Performance Improvement Strategies that work) a free app available on iTunes for iPhone and iPad. His blog (Adapt) can be found at www.johnloty.com ======================================================= Notes from last month’s session: Last month Ian Colley ran an excellent session on the role of dialogue in the process of facilitation. During that session the group generated an output, in the form of many, many post-it notes! Ian has kindly typed up those post-it notes and provided an excellent summary of the evening along with some keen insights into nature of dialogue. It makes for good reading! ======================================================= News & Events 18th AFN Conference | Ballina 5-6 November 2015 Facilitating Wholeness www.afnconference.org.au ======================================================= Call for Guest Facilitators: If you have an idea or know someone who has an idea for a session at a Facilitators Network meeting in 2015 please contact Greg Jenkins 0418 486 501 gregjenkins@yahoo.com or Eoin Higgins 0407 411 684 eoin.p.higgins@gmail.com ======================================================= Venue:  [Our usual venue] University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Jones Street, Ultimo corner Thomas Street. Room 5.580 Level 5, Building 10, Take the lift to level 5, cross the atrium footbridge, walk straight ahead to room 580. Time: From 5:30pm to 7:30pm sharp | No RSVP - Just turn up | Donation $5 Blog www.facilitatorsnetwork.blogspot.com Enquiries | Greg Jenkins; gregjenkins@yahoo.com ; 0418 486 501 | Eoin Higgins  eoin.p.higgins@gmail.com ; 0407 411 684 ======================================================================= To either Join or be removed from this list email to Sydney.facilitators@gmail.com with either ADD or REMOVE in the subject area.

Facilitation: putting a microscope on process with Ian Colley | Monday September 14, 2015 | 5.30pm

Formal theories and methodologies provide a strong scaffold for facilitation, especially in the design stage. My favorites over the past few years have been Solutions Focus, Theory U, Design Thinking, Circle of Trust and a little dash of Marshall Rosenberg’s Non Violent Communication. Each provides guidance in designing meaningful events. Yet no theory guarantees success when the event goes live. People struggle with purpose, the tasks, each other, and the facilitator. I had a recent experience as a participant where the result from a group discussion was worse than each individual might have produced for themselves.

 

This session will put a microscope on table group/small group discussion. What can we, as facilitators, say and do (or not say and not do) to reliably generate useful dialogue? This session will explore this question and, to a lesser extent, the assumptions underneath the question. In particular, we will do some experiments with small/table groups in ‘fish-bowl’ role plays. Come, if you want to be part of the experiment, either as participant or observer. No results are guaranteed. Like life, really

 

About Ian Colley

Ian Colley is a facilitator of change and learning projects.  These mostly deal with ‘tricky’ issues – building common ground between diverse interests, solving problems, leading difficult conversations, creating clarity about uncertain futures (isn’t it all uncertain).

Over 20 years in consulting, Ian has led hundreds of projects in business, government and community settings. He has chaired a number of community liaison committees – for Barangaroo Development Authority, NSW Ports, Orica, Taralga Wind Farm.  Ian also teaches facilitation and leadership at the University of Technology (since 2005).

Ian’s current focus is on the possibilities (and limits) of dialogue.  He is passionate about teaching facilitation – helping other professionals stretch these skills in their everyday practices.

Venue:  [Our usual venue]

University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Jones Street, Ultimo corner Thomas Street. Room 5.580 Level 5, Building 10, Take the lift to level 5, cross the atrium footbridge, walk straight ahead to room 580.

Time:

From 5:30pm to 7:30pm sharp | No RSVP - Just turn up | Donation $5

Blog www.facilitatorsnetwork.blogspot.com

Enquiries | Greg Jenkins; gregjenkins@yahoo.com ; 0418 486 501 | Eoin Higgins  eoin.p.higgins@gmail.com ; 0407 411 684