IAF Canada Tour – Facilitation Training

Last Thursday and Friday I was in Vancouver at UBC, attending the IAF Canada Tour Workshops. (IAF stands for International Association of Facilitators). Below the cut there are reviews of the workshops and scans of my graphic notes from the sessions. Both sets of graphic notes are merely the “highlights” of the workshop since much of the content was captured in the books the workshops were planned around. (It’s kind of one of those “you had to be there” sort of things – sorry for being exclusionary).

Managing Facilitated Processes was delivered by Marian Pitters. The content was driven by the book (same name as workshop) which is available for purchase here. We were given a copy as part of our workshop registration. The workshop covered pretty much all of the organizational and practical details of putting on successful meetings, conferences, workshops etc. From initial contact to post-meeting followthrough, the workshop and book provided tools that I can use and customize for my own practice. Since I’m generally not a highly detail-oriented person, this book will be a very useful prompter to keep me safe from the “uh ohs” and “darn its” that inevitably happen when organizing events. One of my favorite sayings is, “if you’re going to fly by the seat of your pants, you’d better have a darn good tailor” — this book is the pattern by which I’ll be able to keep things on track.

Making Questions Work was delivered by Dorothy Strachan, based on this book (see bottom of the page). It opened with a very healthy and meaningful discussion about core facilitator values and what it means to be in a participant-observer role. We used a variety of small group exercises to explore the five process frameworks Dorothy provides in this book for opening and closing a session, enabling action, thinking critically and addressing issues. The book provides 1800 questions you can ask to groups to promote discussion that is on-topic and relevant to outcomes. I really appreciated the honest, open way that Dorothy shared her knowledge and experience from 35 years of facilitation, without being self-important. It inspired me to continue my journey and development as a professional facilitator.

Tags: Graphic Facilitation, IAF, training