'The Art of Design Thinking: what it means and how it works' with Andrèz Coco | Monday June 20, 2016 | 5.30pm

As a facilitator your role is quite often to lead discussions and guide a group of people to a successful outcome. In some of these situations this might be about finding solutions for a specific issue. In these cases, using a Design Thinking process can really help with solving the problem by applying creative thinking from a critical and customer centric view. In a nutshell you could say that Design Thinking is using an activity-based process to co-create different ideas that lead to a customer-centric delivery based on the essence of the customer need.

In this workshop you will be introduced to the entire Design Thinking process: the key stages and some examples of tools you can use. In the second part of this workshop we will be putting an everyday case into practice: we will spend time on the 1st two stages of the process by working in smaller groups.

At the end of this workshop you will have a better understanding of:

-       what Design Thinking is

-       how the process looks like

-       how you can apply it as a facilitator

-       some tools you can use in the 1st to stage of the process

-       some practical insights in the 1st to stages of the process

Some useful videos:

What is service design: https://vimeo.com/88455206

What is design thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uilcaXYnluU


About Andrèz Coco

Andrèz Coco has been working as a Lead service designer and marketing strategy consultant for the past decade in Europe, Africa, South-America and most recently in Australia. Her degrees are in Marketing management & communications with additional courses in Design Thinking. She has worked with corporates, agencies, entrepreneurs as well as NGO’s. At the moment she works at Qantas Loyalty (Innovationlab) as a Lead service designer. She also supports the TEDx Sydney organizing team as their customer experience specialist. She was recently on of the panel guests at one of VIVID ideas vents on the topic of ‘The future of creativity’ amongst neuroscientists, artificial intelligence experts and fellow design thinkers.

Link to linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/andrèz-coco-8207662

Link to webpage: http://www.andrezcoco.com/ 

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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 2016 please contact Eoin Higgins 0407 411 684 eoin.p.higgins@gmail.com

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

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‘How to be more creative and more centered with Mindful Cooking™’ with Lina Mbirkou | Monday May 9, 2016 | 5.30pm

As a facilitator, you are probably dealing with people and organisations experiencing major and rapid change, over-scheduling and increased pressure to perform in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment. This leads to stress, poor decision making, lack of clarity, anxiety, and other negative impacts. While the practice of Mindfulness has been around for centuries, it has surged in popularity in recent years with highly regarded institutions such as Harvard, Monash and Melbourne Universities developing clinical studies showing that people who spend more time being mindful tend to experience clearer, more focused thinking, improved memory and attention, and heightened performance and achievement. Mindful Cooking™ is one the most effective ways to teach us to pay attention by using food as the object of meditation. It’s not about clearing the mind, but rather learning to gently bring our attention to the task at hand or the food in front of us. By having a mind-body experience, participants have better chance to integrate and embody the teachings they can use in their daily lives, and use every meal as an opportunity to practice and remind themselves to be in the here and now as opposed to being distracted, stressed or overwhelmed. Mindful Cooking™ helps train the mind and develop a sense of patience and appreciation. It’s also an opportunity to get back in touch not only with the food you eat but with every action you take in life. Although we won’t be cooking at this workshop, the interaction with the food provided is designed to introduce you to a mindfulness toolkit that you can use in helping groups become more aware of the beliefs and preconceptions that color and distort their perception of reality, by opening them up to the possibility of seeing things and other people clearly, as they are, without the lens of stories and expectations. You will walk away feeling calmer and more relaxed, with ideas about creating quiet and still environments in which people can observe and reflect on their own thoughts and behaviours,and tips about how you personally can become more self-aware, less reactive, and develop a greater ability to focus and enjoy life in general. About  Lina Mbirkou  Lina Mbirkou is a corporate wellbeing consultant, an intuitive chef and a certified yoga and meditation teacher, who is blending her extensive Moroccan culinary experience with proven stress reduction techniques to provide a taste of what mindfulness is and make it a delicious part of daily life. Lina Mbirkou has an MBA and a Master of Commerce and has pursued a corporate and academic career in Marketing and Communication before launching “Mindful Cooking” in 2015 to share her love for creativity, mind-body connection and good food… She will be offering a highly experiential one-day workshop in Sydney on the 26th June. This is an opportunity to deepen and extend your skills in facilitating mindfulness while learning to cook and enjoy an amazing Moroccan feast! For more information, please contact Lina on 04 66 322 399, by e-mail on lina@mindfulcooking.com.au or visit mindfulcooking.com.au You can find out more about Lina here and visit her website 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

Talking about Tough Issues, with the OBREAU Tripod with Don Dunoon | Monday April 11, 2016 | 5.30pm

As a facilitator, you’ll almost certainly find yourself dealing with tough issues, those that are prickly, messy, perceived differently by stakeholders, and often with a degree of heat attached. This workshop is designed to introduce you to a toolkit that you can use in helping groups and individuals converse about such issues productively. You’ll likely also find the method helpful in getting ready to talk about issues of concern to you, personally.

A proposition to be examined is that three default behaviour patterns tend to get in the way of effective conversations on tough issues: reacting to new information and experience, judging others negatively, and “dancing around” (side-stepping, smoothing over) difficult aspects.

The OBREAU Tripod is a counterweight to these default behaviours. “OBREAU” refers to three practices:

• Working from OBservation (noticing as far as possible prior to interpreting)
• Attributing REasonableness (allowing that others are reasonable)
• Speakingwith AUthenticity (saying what is true for you while keeping connections with observation and reasonableness).

·      The OBREAU Tripod can be applied in a variety of settings; for example, in supporting large group dialogue, executive coaching, and in leadership, team and culture development initiatives. The Tripod can provide a light structure to aid the emergence of greater clarity and shared meaning with virtually any multi-faceted issue.

In this session, we will apply the OBREAU Tripod as a large group in considering an issue, possibly a corporate controversy that has received recent press coverage. As well – and as far as possible within the limited time available – participants will be able to try out the OBREAU Tripod in helping them think through a thorny issue that matters to them personally, and discuss the results with colleagues.

You will walk away with ideas about enabling and facilitating more productive conversations, about creating safe environments in which people can speak up, and about how you, personally, can strengthen your own ability to engage effectively with others on tough issues.

About Don Dunoon

As an independent consultant, Don Dunoon has over 20 years’ leadership and organisational development experience. He is the author of In the Leadership Mode (Trafford, 2008), a book that frames leadership – as distinct from management – in terms of interventions to build shared meaning and elicit energy for change with contentious issues. He is the author of articles in international journals including one with acclaimed Harvard mindfulness researcher, Dr. Ellen Langer. Don is also developer of the OBREAU Tripod.

He will be offering a highly experiential one-day workshop, Facilitating Conversations for Shared Meaning on Tough Issues, in Sydney on 10th June. This is an opportunity to deepen and extend your skills in facilitating in contexts where people are dealing with issues they feel strongly about, particularly in helping groups move toward common understandings (as distinct from technical solutions) and in fostering group and individual development.

You can find out more about Don here and visit his website 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

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