Action Learning Coach Workshop

Date: 12 & 13 August 2008 (Tue & Wed)

Time: 8:30am to 5:30pm

For People Who Want to:

• Understand the basic concepts of Coaching and Action Learning session
• Gain competence to be an Action Learning Coach
• Coach highly functioning Action Learning teams

A customized participant booklet will be provided.

Each participant will also receive "The Power of Action Learning" written by Dr Michael Marquardt.

Register on line at: http://www.fns.sg

Facilitating with Confidence

Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.

The best way to learn about facilitation is to do it.

Have you had a taste of facilitation?

Do you want to facilitate with confidence, or do you want people in your organisation to facilitate with confidence?

Do you want to work more effectively with teams, groups, or stakeholders?

If so Facilitating with Confidence is for you.

This is a rare opportunity to develop your facilitation leadership skills with Australasia's finest facilitators Anne Pattillo and VivMcWaters. They bring together the best approaches and techniques infacilitation. Facilitation is no longer an added extra, it is nowpart of every one's professional kit bag.

This very successful course has hit Melbourne by storm and is now being offered for the first time in Singapore from October 2008. We invite you to consider booking into one of the limited places on our Singapore program.

We believe that good facilitation is transformational - enabling individuals to work together for growth, development and change.

Facilitating with Confidence is an opportunity to invest in a set ofskills for modern working.

For a complete programme outline refer to: http://www.facilitatingwithconfidence.com/. We will provide a comprehensive web-based set of resources to complement the three 2-day interactive workshops.

To register, or if you have any questions, email Anne or Viv on info@facilitatingwithconfidence.com.

You may want to visit Viv's blog at http://www.vivmcwaters.com.au/ and podcast website at http://www.winkipod.com.au/

Defining Facilitation - Facilitation is Unlike Others

It is important that we understand the true nature of facilitation and the characteristics of a facilitator in order to differentiate this role from those of teachers, trainers, coaches, advisors, and consultants.

Only when we could define what facilitation is could we then be able to avoid doing things that could hurt the facilitated event and the final outcome arising from the event.

So, what is facilitation?

Bens (2005: Facilitating with Ease) suggests that 'facilitation is a way of providing leadership without taking reins'.

This is different from leadership. According to Smirich and Morgan (1982: Leadership - Management of Meaning) ‘leadership is about the 'management of meaning’, and that leaders emerge because of their role in framing experience in a way that provides the basis for action; that is, by mobilizing meaning, articulating and defining what has previously remained implicit or unsaid, by inventing images and meanings that provide a focus for new attention and by consolidating, confronting or changing prevailing wisdom.’

So, the leader gets involved in the conversation to lead the team while the facilitator stays out of the conversation all together but lead the team in another way.

And who is a facilitator?

A facilitator is someone who skillfully helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to plan to achieve them without taking a particular position in the discussion.

The facilitator will try to assist the group in achieving a consensus on any disagreements that pre-exist or emerge in the discussion so that it has a strong basis for future action.

There is a discription of faciliation in Chinese.

Source: China Facilitation Network

A Reflection on Facilitation

Hock Meng, the IAF Singapore Country Representative (2009), FNS Forum Manager(2009) and IAF Certified Professional Facilitator has these to share about faciliation:

A chance meeting with a friend in Nov '08 led me to an opportunity to do some sharing on what I’ve been doing for the past year. Being open and receptive to facilitation, he invited me to conduct a 1 day facilitative training workshop for his fellow mates in his community.

I thought about it for over a week and decided to let the participants do a short exercise of Tai Chi as an opener. When asked about what the team has learnt, the participants responded with, “Fluid, Co-ordination, etc...”. I reflected on the experience and drew many similarities between Tai Chi and the skills of facilitation. Here are a few of them.

One, the root of the two skill sets is derived from “Ease”. Facilitate came from the Latin word “Facillis”, which means ‘make easier’. My experience with practicing Tai Chi Chuan tells me that the execution of the moves is to be completed using energy derived from the core muscles. When facilitation is well executed, the result is one where the group feels that they had cleared the obstacles of working together with ease and that they did it all by themselves. When Tai Chi Chuan is well executed, the master uses the ease of tapping the power of his opponent to defeat him.

Two, both art forms are fluid and they flow with nature. A master facilitator reads the situation as it develops and makes adjustments to the process agilely to adapt to the changing nature of the discourse found in facilitated session. The Tai Chi master transits seamlessly and effortless between moves. Both masters are equipped with a big inventory of “moves” and ability to improvise to extract the necessary response from those they interact with.

Three, coordination is a must for both. Facilitation is planned in such a way that the atmosphere generated by the set-up of the venue, encompassing nature of the facilitation methodology used, and expanding capability of the equipment deployed are coordinated to deliver the desired outcome. Tai Chi Chuan involves a lot of hand and leg movements that can be coordinated to deliver that killer strike at a moment of notice.

Lastly, both skills seek balance. Facilitation, in totality, involves two general processes - divergence and convergence. These processes provide the participants the space to hear the viewpoints from others before arriving at a consensus on a particular course of action. One flows into the other. Tai Chi has two interrelated parts - “Yin” and “Yang”. The moves, in general, are stable; the left-hand movement is balanced with the right leg movement and the right hand movement follows after the left leg movement. All moves are executed with balance in mind.

In summary, when a facilitated session is well executed, the group is at ease in handling issues together. The session is smooth, seamlessly coordinated and balanced.

So, what is the belief system of a facilitator? Here is an attempt by my trainees trying to answer this fundamental question:

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 28 Jul and Updated on 23 Oct 2008 and 5 Jan 2009.

The portion entitled 'A Reflection on Facilitation' was written by Hock Meng and edited by Anthony Mok.

Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Art of Questioning

The Genres of Questions

In the course of our training career, we could have gotten our course participants to play an experiential game, do a workbook exercise, watch a training film, and act in a role play.

The purpose of these activities is to create opportunities for the trainer to debrief his participants. So, after watching a training video, the trainer makes an attempt to question his participants on what they had seen and heard, and though questioning, participants are encouraged to recall, think, and share their insights with others. In the process, they get inspired and learn new concepts.

What differentiate a facilitator from a trainer is that he uses questions more frequently and extensively in the course of his career. A facilitator needs to avoid boring his audience with the same ‘genre’ of questions and more importantly, uses different questions to ‘lead’ the interaction without taking the reins. This means his line of work calls for a greater range of questions to be used and a higher dexterity in applying these questions. For the facilitator, these needs have elevated questioning into an art.

There are many ‘genres’ of questions. Personally, I know of six. One of these, which we are very familiar with, is the ‘Fact-finding’ genre of questions. They come in the form of ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘how’.

Here are some examples:

‘What kind of roles each of these actors played in the video?’

‘Amongst the actors, who is the one that comes across as most defensive?’

‘When did John say ‘You are the source of our difficulties’?’

‘Where had this conversation taken place?’

‘How did Jamie resolves the conflict between John and Mary?’

You can see that this type of questions is very direct and is designed to verify data and to gather information about the current situation.

A lesser known genre of questions is the ‘Third-party’ questions. These questions are created by the facilitator to help his workshop participants express their personal thoughts and other sensitive information through projection.

Here are some examples:

Conrad Raj, in a recent article in Today, commented that the Government should take control of the bus and train services from the commercial entities. Otherwise we cannot have a world-class transportation system. What are your thoughts about his comment?’

‘Some people feel that the government should lower GST to boost retail sale in the country. How does that sound to you?’

There is some concern about the recent decision by the government to delay building projects. Can you relate to that concern?

You will notice that there are two parts in the structure of a ‘Third Party’ question. The 1st part is the quotation and this is followed by a question seeking the participant’s opinion.

Usually, facilitators use this genre of questions to avoid putting their participants in a corner because they may be sensitive about expressing their inner thoughts about a sensitive topic. By using an already expressed opinion from another person or taking a quotation from a published article, we could uncover the participant’s thoughts in an indirect manner and non threatening way.

So, instead of asking 'what you think about lowering GST to boost retail sale?', which is direct and threatening, we use ‘some people feel that the government should lower GST to boost retail sale in the country. How does that sound to you?’, which is indirect and non threatening since someone else has already expressed this need and any additional opinions on this subject would not identify the participant as being the 1st to raise it. His opinion is nothing more than a projection of a public opinion.

The design and implementation of this kind of questions needs a bit more finesse on the part of the facilitator. Thus, it is always good to create your 'third party' questions ahead of the facilitated workshop, and practice always makes perfect.

This article is written by Anthony Mok on 26 Jul 2008.
Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

More Volunteer Facilitators Needed....

Hello Facilitators,

It is not often we have the chance to practice our facilitation skills in Singapore. Here is another opportunity where you can horn you skills and increase your knowledge in facilitation.

Ai Keng has an event on 30th of Aug and she needs facilitators to facilitate the discussions there. The participants at this event come from VWOs, schools, corporates and grassroots.

The purpose of the event to get them to know each other, network, talk about the needs that they see in the community, share what they could do to meet those needs and to create a platform for them to collaborate and partner each other on projects to serve the needs of the community.

While the event is from 2.00pm - 5.00pm, the discussion is only about 40mins.

There will be a briefing session on the discussion process on 16 Aug (afternoon) or 21 Aug (evening).

Do contact Ai Keng at ai.keng@yahoo.com.sg for more information if you are interested.

Good luck.

Vounteer Facilitators Needed....

All Singapore Facilitators,

Here is an opportunity for you to share your facilitation knowledge and skills.

Hock Ming, a facilitator in Singapore, is looking for two Volunteer Facilitators (VF) for the Toastmasters' Club.

Here are the details:

Date: 26th July 2008, Saturday
Time: 12pm-6pm
Venue: Alexandra AIA Building.

Experience in Toastmastering would be a great value-add.

Please email Hock Ming @ dino_fuze@yahoo.com if you are interested to find out more.

Team Building Asia (Singapore) - Recruiting Facilitators in Singapore

Team Building Asia (Singapore) is currently looking to expand their pool of facilitators to work with them on programs on a project basis in S'pore (SEA)/Asia.

Interested experienced facilitators may contact Mr Kenneth Tan with your profile/resume, preferably including your expected rates (Full Day and Half-Day).

Kenneth KL Tan
Senior Consultant
Team Building Asia
Building the future....together

Singapore - T: +65 6226 2716 F: +65 6491 5255
20 Maxwell Road, #11-18 Maxwell House
Singapore 069113
kenneth@teambuildingasia.com

AUSTRALASIAN FACILITATORS NETWORK (AFN) CONFERENCE

26-28 November 2008

Pushing the Boundaries: Facilitation Frontiers

Charles Sturt University,

Bathurst,

New South Wales,

Australia

For those who are keen to go for this conference

Please see: http://www.afnconference.com.au

Singapore Facilitators Conference 2008

Singapore Facilitators Conference 2008

Rainbow of Facilitation

Come discover your facilitation pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

Registration opens!

Early bird closes 15 August 2008.

Please book early to secure your workshops:

Processes, methods, tools & techniques to take away!

• Large Group Facilitation methods and techniques - StoryWeaving, Appreciative Inquiry, World Café & Open Space


• Learning Organisation Principles- nature of humanity and generative conversations


• Experiential Learning - indoor strategy management board game


• Group Process Facilitation - transformational facilitation and visualising the service landscape


• Facilitative Training/Teaching - inquiry & problem-based learning, ingenuity


• Spirit of Facilitation - metaphors, poetry, reflections and coloured brains
  

11 Nov'08 Tuesday

Pre-conference

12 Nov'08 Wednesday

LG1 - StoryWeaving: Large Scale Transformation for the Girl Scouts of the USA - Lessons for the corporate world

LG2 - Open Space - Stories, Challenges & Possibilities - Lessons for Practitioners & Amateurs

Meet Christine Whitney in person in Singapore as she shares first-hand her designing and delivery experience in "StoryWeaving" - and its application in the corporate and education sector.

Discover how up to 15,000 Girl Scouts used a series of large-scale conversations, Open Space on Successful Council Practices, Appreciative Story Sharing, Stewardship Report Cafe Conversations, Self-organizing for Success, and Action Commitment sessions - as Digital StoryWeavers (girl scouts from 12-18 years old) captured and produced leadership stories from members of the US Girl Scouts Movement in this culture changing initiative called "StoryWeaving".

Laughter Yoga

Share + Learn Exchange (ShaLex)

13 Nov'08 Thursday

Thirteen exciting concurrent two-hour workshops to select from in the following track:

• Learning Organisation
• Experiential Learning
• Group Process Facilitation
• Facilitative Training/Teaching
• Spirit of Facilitation

14 Nov'08 Friday

Post-conference

Six full-day skills-enhancing workshops to select from
Watch this space for details - but book your diary now!

Registrations start in a few days...

Download detailed synopsis & register on-line at http://www.fns.sg/

Now you can pay with your credit card on-line too!

Would you like to be a facilitator at the ICA International Global Conference in Japan?

Dear All FFWians,

FNS, on behalf of Jo Nelson, likes to extend an invitation to you to facilitate a very exciting global conference on world development.

ICA International's "7th Global Conference on Human Development" is scheduled for November 17-21, 2008, in Takayama, Japan.

The subtitles give a sense of the potential: "An agenda-setting conference exploring the future of human development" and "Unlocking the Potential to Create a New World Together".

Jo is on the conference design team, and it is looking for volunteer facilitators for the event. Jo will be one himself. He likes you to be one, too. This is a volunteer role, so you must register for the conference, and will not be paid, but the experience will be amazing (and also add to your resume).

Jo has been a facilitator at ICA global conferences in the past, and the experience of working with a global team on topics that make a difference in our lives and in the world is unforgettable.

There are 10 big focus questions leading to a topic, each of which will have a group who will spend 2 full days exploring it.

These 10 focus questions are:

1. Effective Governance and Protection of Human Rights
2. Persistence of Poverty
3. Environmental Degradation and Climate Change
4. Sustainable Agriculture and Livelihoods
5. Violent Conflict and Social Disintegration
6. Access to Healthcare and Preventing the Spread of Disease
7. Literacy and Education
8. Consumerism and Over-Consumption
9. Disconnectedness and Barriers to Engagement
10. Private Sector Collaboration

Gender inequity is recognized as a cross-cutting issue

exacerbating each of these 10 challenges.

Depending on the number of participants in each group, there may be a number of sub-topic groups. The team will be using a number of facilitation tools at various points during the conference, including World Cafe, ToP workshops and strategic thinking processes, and many others.

There is a full day of site visits to community projects in Japan. And the last day will include vibrant reports from each topic group. The main conference languages will be English and Japanese but there will be translation for many more. If you can communicate in more than one language, that will be an asset. There will be an orientation and facilitator training on November 16.

You can find out more about the conference and register at http://www.japan2008.org/. This link will lead you to the conference information site, a place to participate in pre-conference dialogue on the topics, and a big "register" button. Registration on-line was easy.

If you are thinking about going to the conference and would like to facilitate, please reply to Jo so he can keep you up to date on developments in the conference planning.

If you know someone else who is going or might go, please forward them this invitation. They need lots of facilitators!

On behalf of:

Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson@ica-associates.ca>
Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP(TM) Facilitator
ICA Associates, Inc. 655 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON M4M 1G4
Ph. 1 416-691-2316, x230 Toll-free 1 877-691-1422 Fax 1 416-691-2491
Website http://ica-associates.ca
Cellphone 647 233 6910
Skype "jofacilitator"

The Medicine Wheels and Shamanistic Techniques in Facilitation

Looking for ways to improve your effectiveness as a facilitator?

Learn how The Medicine Wheels & Shamanistic Techniques could help you manage group dynamics and facilitate meetings/brainstorming better!

WORKSHOP DETAILS

Title: The Medicine Wheels and Shamanistic Techniques in Facilitation Workshop
Date: 17 Sep 08 – 19 Sep 08 (Wed - Fri)
Time: 8.30am-5.30pm
Venue: Orchid Country Club, Singapore(http://www.orchidclub.com)

P/S: Evening blocks on 17 & 18 Sep 08 from 5.30pm-10pm are optional – see program brochure for details

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• those caring for their own development, personally & professionally;
• anyone facilitating others - individually or in teams - in their line of work e.g. managers, team/project leaders & HRD professionals;
• 'intervention professionals' e.g. coaches, trainers, consultants & facilitators.

WHY SHOULD YOU ATTEND?

• How to 'scan' (sense/observe) your own energy and that of others.
• How to balance our own energy and energise ourselves when needed.
• The effect of thoughts and words on our energy and how to protect ourselves energetically.
• Influencing group energy in terms of both connectedness and vibration.
• Energetic preparation of a space to optimize its influence.
• Techniques for dealing with difficult moments and for improving Presence and focus.
• How to work with attention and intention, individually and in/with groups.
• Techniques for changing your own brainwaves, improving clarity, creativity, problem-solving capabilities and much more.
• Techniques for sharpening and enhancing perception.
• The Medicine Wheels: basic framework and applications in group dynamics and facilitation of meetings and brainstorming.
• Employing elemental energy for balance, movement and innovation in a group.
• How to apply all of this for our own development, in our relationships with family, friends, and colleagues and in our professional capacity.

WHAT PEOPLE IN THE KNOW ARE SAYING?

"Michal knows to present the workshops in an inspiring and gripping way. Her coaching and assessment during the workshop are of a very high level and have never failed to leave me with new insights and challenges in my life."

"In my years as a manager I have enjoyed some executive programs at top business schools like Fontainebleu and MIT as well as some of the best personal trainings in our country. The real impact, however, that you were able to achieve on the team and myself in a short period of time puts you in my mind right up in that league."

"All the workshops I've done with Michal have been pure joy. Not only that, they have brought me immense understanding of "how life works" and my role-(playing) in it. Michal is able to access an incredible font of knowledge as well as inspired intuition. She shares these in a way which makes the understanding gained accessible. I feel this is why her workshops have brought so much clarity to me and have had such an impact in my life, in very practical ways."

"With more than 15 years of experience in leadership development (as a retired Lt.Col.) I can truly say you are unique, no-nonsense, and very, very effective."

WHO IS THE WORKSHOP FACILITATOR?

Born in Israel, Michal has lived and worked on three continents. She studied mathematics, physics, psychology & social sciences and later trained in a wide range of holistic, natural and body-mind systems & modalities. Having treated and counseled hundreds of people, Michal's practice developed into a school for Human Potential Development, focusing on the ancient American Indian knowledge of the Medicine Wheels, the Toltec tradition, and Shamanic practices from all over the world and incorporating leading-edge (scientific) knowledge and techniques. In 1998, Michal was handed a Peace-Elder ribbon at the international congregation of Wolfsong.

Michal has 30+ years of experience in guiding and coaching individuals in various contexts and close to as many in facilitating groups and teams, with 'training the trainers' as her specialization for the past 12 years. Since moving to Australia, Michal has divided her time between the private sector and the corporate world, advising management teams of multi-nationals in Europe and the Middle-East, working with businesses, Government and Community organisations in Australia and presenting various courses, workshops and training programs. For the past 10 years she has further specialised in Emotional, Spiritual and Collective Intelligence, Complexity, Accelerated Learning and Training Program Design.

WORKSHOP INVESTMENT*

Early Bird Registration (by 9 Aug 08)
IAF Members S$990**
Non Members S$1,290
After Early Bird Deadline (after 9 Aug 08)
S$1,490 for IAF and Non-IAF members.

*Overseas registrants paying by bank draft or TT, please add S$30 for bank charges in Singapore

**IAF membership is USD85 per year for developing countries and USD175 for high income countries. In East Asia; Brunei, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Macau and Singapore are classified as high income and the rest of Asia as developing. Singapore members pay the Affiliate rate of USD165 as the local Facilitators Network Singapore (FNS) is affiliated to IAF.
http://www.iaf-world.org

REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS

Online at: http://www.fns.sg

Payment by cheque to:
Facilitators Network Singapore Pte Ltd
10 Anson Road
#03-09 International Plaza
Singapore 079903

REGISTRATION ENQUIRIES

Tel : (65) 9099-4655 or (65) 9833-3515
Email : admin@fns.sg