Facilitation Stories IAF England Wales

In this episode Helene talks to Paul Brand, Director of Risk Solutions and part of the IAF England and Wales Leadership Team, Board member and conference team member.
They talk about 
The IAF England and Wales facilitators and friends Facilitate 2024 Conference (April 26th & 27th 2024) and what it is all about.
Who is on the organising team and what Paul's role has been
What is different from last year's conference
What kinds of sessions we can expect
What he is looking forward to
A bit about the participants some of whom are coming from outsde the UK
How the IAF England and Wales conferences have grown over the years and what makes them successful
"it is a bit like a buffet and having taste of this and a taste of that." "what really makes me happy about the whole thing, and inspired by it, is watching people enter into it and throw themselves into it. Watching them having conversations with people they've never met and would never meet and, and go away taking whatever it is they've taken from the conference".  A full transcript is below.
Links
Today’s guest was Dr Paul Brand
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drpaulbrand/
paul.brand@risksol.co.uk 
https://risksol.co.uk/ 
Today’s subject
The Facilitate 2024 Conference
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/facilitate2024-growingtogether-tickets-733547288687?aff=oddtdtcreator 
To find out more about the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter
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
Hello and welcome to facilitation stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helene Jewell and today I'm talking to Paul Brand,a management consultant whose work focuses on public policy.
He often works on long term engagements across entire sectors for multi organisation communities, and uses facilitation extensively in his work.
He's also an IAF England Wales board member, certified professional facilitator and a member of the conference planning team. Welcome, Paul. Good morning.
It is morning. It is morning. Good.
It is morning. It is morning. So my first question is just to ask you, really to tell us a little bit more about you as a facilitator and your involvement in the IAF.
So I came into facilitation like a lot of people, not quite realizing I was doing it, doing a lot of public policy consulting things, and needing somebody who would lead groups of people through discussions. And then that became a better understanding of what facilitation as a profession was all about. And that grew and grew over the years.
I did a long piece of work in the about 2011 2012, working with a very senior IAF board member. We did a lot of events together, and during that time I understood what the IAF was about and realized I needed to actually make my facilitation skills part of my professional development formally. So I did the IAF certified professional facilitator thing in 2012, which was quite a developmental experience in itself, and I keep that up to this day.
And then over the last four or five years, I've become more and more involved in the workings of IAF, in England and Wales particularly, and have also had the privilege of attending a couple of the european conferences in Paris and Milan, finding out how our colleagues across the channel do it. So it's been an arc of development. Yeah, an arc of development slowly, slowly coming further and further in.
An

In epsode Bogdan tells us about himself as a facilitator and trainer, what it means to be a playful facilitator and his journey into facilitation. 
He tells Nikki and Helene about how IAF Romania and how it all began, from joining IAF in 2018 to getting intouch with other facilitatrors in Romania. With the start of the pandemic 2 years later and everyone had more time he found out what was needed to start a chapter, and started IAF Romania with Bogdan as the Chair. 
Since 2020 the chaoter has grown to 27 members, with more facilitators wanting to be a part of the community. The growth has happened in terms of quality of events as well as numbers. 
Facilitation is not well known in Romania and not well known in organisations. 
Bogdan talks about engaging new people to the world of facilitation, organising events and enabling people to make connections and talks in more detail about some of the events they have hosted for example Open Space in HR. 
They also have a group mentoring programme and how that works.
They have two types of approaches - one for the community and one for the IAF Romania members. Most events are co-facilitated so there is a lot of learning. 
Some examples of the events are:
Training about having impact in online facilitation - Nelson from Portugal.
Pop up sharing around a particular topic.
Facilitators Studio - where someone can bring a new design to try out.
Facilitator Lab - helping two facilitators to create something together. An example of this is AI and facilitation. 
The core members of 10/12 come up with the ideas for all the events and build the ideas together.
They plan to have their first in person event - a facilitation festival in the autumn. 
Bogdan talks about collaborations with other IAF Chapters and explains how these have worked:
Twin Chapters with IAF Italy
Facilitation Lightening Talks, some of which were with IAF Ireland and IAF Italy
He talks extensively about the collaboration with IAF Japan and the 9 or 10 meetings that were needed to set this up and the cultural learning points. 
Helene asks Bogdan to talk about his role in IAF Europe and Middle East as part of the share and learn team and the benefits of bringing together different cultures and facilitation experience. 
Bogdan talks about what next for IAF Romania - elections, continued focus on mentoring, sending chapters from the Power of Facilitation book out in their newsletter which they have translated into Romanian. 
Bogdan lastly talks about his hope for the future and the facilitation festival. 
To contact Bogdan:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bogdangrigore82/
IAF Romania:
https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/romania
https://www.linkedin.com/company/iaf-romania-international-association-of-facilitators-romanian-chapter/?originalSubdomain=ro 
The Power of Facilition:
 https://facpower.org/2021/06/01/what-is-the-power-of-facilitation-and-why-is-it-important/ 
Lightening Talks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcOrr9Sj17U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tluzc03l4sM
Celebrating Diversity with IAF Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FctxQou8F9w
Find Helene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/
Find Nikki on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ 
Listen to our podcasts: https://www.facilitationstories.com/  
Email: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org
 

In this episode Helene talks to Deborah Deborah Rim Moiso from SessionLab about their recent survey and report.
Deborah shares her experience as a freelance facilitator and discusses her mentoring program with IAF and her passion for facilitating multistakeholder projects on nature conservation, climate change, and youth training.
She talks about how in 2022, the first global survey of facilitators was conducted by Session Lab, gathering data on who facilitators are, where they are, and their age. It was initiated by Session Lab to address the lack of data on facilitators, despite reports existing for other professions like UX design.
This survey looks at Facilitation trends and insights from a global survey. 
Facilitators were surveyed globally, with 1000 responses from diverse regions, including Japan.
The report was well-received, with new questions added to better understand learning pathways to facilitation, and feedback from contributors and experts.
Deborah talks about the role of expert commentators and how they condensed the data and provided insights, asking questions and challenging assumptions to open discussions and conversations.
Deborah describes some of the key findings from the report including Facilitation industry trends and AI adoption.
One standout reflection from the report is the generosity of the facilitation community in providing answers, despite the lengthy survey process.
Deborah discusses some of the other insights from the report including:
Online vs in-person sessions Facilitators delivering shorter sessions Representation, professionalisation and diversity The facilitation industry and accreditation programs The importance of including younger perspectives in the facilitation profession To contact Deborah: email deborah@sessionlab.com
To read the 2024 State of Facilitation Report: https://www.sessionlab.com/state-of-facilitation/?utm_source=IAF-Podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=sof
To help SessionLab promote the project: https://www.sessionlab.com/state-of-facilitation/promo-kit/
If you have any questions about the report or the data behind it, or want to contribute to the next edition, get in touch with us at state-of-facilitation@sessionlab.com.
Find Helene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/
Listen to our podcasts: https://www.facilitationstories.com/  
Connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories 
Email: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org 

In this episode Helene talks to Jamie Colston - father, facilitator, poet and systemic constellations practitioner about his work using Systemic Constellations, both Family Constellations and in organisations. 
He talks about how he got into the work in the first place, the training he has done and the practise he does and some of what he has coming up next.
He shares some examples of how he uses it and in terms of facilitation he suggests it is most akin to Open Space Technology. 
You can find Jamie here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiecolston/ 
Jamie Colston https://www.jamiecolston.com/ 
Centre for Systemic Constellations - https://www.thecsc.net/
The Whole Partnership - https://www.wholepartnership.com/
 
 
 

Today we’re introducing a new quarterly feature “Chapter Chat”. As many listeners know, the England and Wales chapter is just one of the many IAF volunteer-led chapters globally, all working within 6 regions across 65 countries. While all chapters are united under the IAF vision and operate in accordance to the IAF Code of Ethics they are all run in a slightly different way, and reflect the context they’re working within.
So alongside our episodes capturing individual facilitators’ stories, each quarter we’re going to chat to people leading other chapters, about how they see the status of facilitation where they are, and the history, priorities, current projects and aspirations for their chapter.
To kick us off, we have a special episode reflecting on a year of facilitation in the EME region, where Helene and Nikki talk to Tamara Zivadinovic Regional Director of the Europe and Middle East Region of the IAF.
Tamara talks about her own facilitation practise, how she got involved in IAF and her her journey to becoming Regional Director. 
She explains to Helene and Nikki what are your main responsibilities are as regional Director and what has been happening in the Region over the last year.
She talks about celebrating the many IAF volunteers and about her proudest moments as Regional Director.
Tamara shares what is coming up in 2024, her hopes for the region and finishes up with an ask for the members of the region.
You can contact Tamara on: rep.europe@iaf-world.org or find her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamara-zivadinovic-4975384/ 

In this episode Helene talks to Christine Bell about a session they co-facilitated for Facilitation Week.
They share some of the group’s thoughts on what authentic facilitation is as well as some of their own emerging questions on how to balance being authentic but remaining in control and whether authenticity can be learned or taught.
They also reflect on their first experience of planning and facilitating together and how liberating it was to deliver a session with no required outputs and without using some of the “usual” facilitation tools.
A full transcript is below.
Links:
Contact Christine by email: christinebell@centreforfacilitation.com
Find Helene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/
Listen to our podcasts: https://www.facilitationstories.com/  
Connect with us on Twitter: @fac_stories 
Email: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org




Nikki Wilson (NW)
Hello, and welcome to Facilitation Stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. In today's episode, Helene Jewell speaks to Christine Bell. 
 
Helene Jewell (HJ)
So in today's podcast, I am going to be chatting to Christine Bell, Director of Centre for facilitation. Welcome, Christine. 
 
Christine Bell (CB)
Hi, Helene, nice to be with you again. 
 
HJ
And it wasn't actually that long ago that I saw Christine, because we did a session together for Facilitation Week all about Authentic Facilitation. And that's what we're going to be talking about in today's podcast. But before I lead into asking Christine, lots of questions about that and doing a bit of reflecting, I just want to ask Christine to tell us a little bit about her facilitation practice. So what kind of work do you do, Christine. 
 
CB
I mainly work with researchers and innovators and looking at different ways of doing things, different approaches, trying to get them to collaborate with each other and kind of break down some of the barriers and get to know each other so that they can start to find out interesting connections between different bits of research and then mash it together to come up with something new and interesting, that breaks through some of the challenges that we're facing, environmentally, socially, etc. 
 
HJ
Right. Okay. And we have never actually worked together, but I think it's fair to say we know each other through the IAF, or through the larger facilitation community. Yeah, yeah, we've probably, we've probably met quite a few times on the different online forums. And then at the conference, I think the Conference this year was first time we actually met in person. And then and then we met in Bristol, because I was working in Bristol. 
 
HJ
So yeah, so our paths have crossed a few times and then feed somehow, you have this great idea about doing a session in Facilitation Week, and you thought “Ah yes I’ll ask Helene” 
 
Well, first of all, let's start with Facilitation Week, what is Facilitation Week?
 
CB
 Facilitation Week is a week of different activities designed for the facilitation community so that we can learn and develop from each other and explore different aspects of facilitation. And, and I was very conscious that my time is really quite limited, like, you know, with my time because of all the elderly care issues that are going on for me. So I give very little back to the community. So it felt like it would be quite a small thing for me to do and quite manageable to just offer to run a short session within Facilitation Week. So that was, that was the starting point. And then I learned because I also did that for the facilitation in person event in May. And I learned then because I got involved with another facilitator to run a session there, , actually, if you're going to do it, why not use it as a learning opportunity for myself to actually work with a peer that I don't usually work with, and just learn from that p