What happens when 250 facilitators gather in one space?
IAF - The International Association of Facilitators is a very old institution dedicated to the building process facilitation practice across the world. Their India hub is very active. Though I had been following IAF for a long time, I finally decided to attend this year's annual India Conference. Totally volunteer led, it was a beautiful example of co-creation of an intentional gathering for a community of practitioners - with clear purpose; an engaging design that spoke to the participants' needs; a steady way of engaging folks right from when they registered; the physical space designed for connection, exchange & learning; and a warm energy of connection towards newcomers or veterans alike.
The sessions were led by a team of co-facilitators from within and outside the IAF community. I really appreciated that they allowed the space for non-IAF members to also submit a proposal along with a IAF member - and mentored by a CPF (Certified Professional Facilitator). I had the lovely opportunity to co-facilitate with my dear friend Rohit (a veteran host at IAF conferences) and introduce the beautiful Thinking Environment to 50 facilitators in one of the concurrent sessions. They also had visual illustrators for the whole Conference and produced this beautiful flashback.
I wanted to capture my learnings across my experience - the subtle ones and the practical ones
* Start with Self...I loved that the first interactive experience was with self. I learnt about the Cantril Ladder and the FLOURISH framework. It helped us on the table connect well (we discovered many of us are wishful swimmers and fluteplayers!)
* While IAF has a way to do things (sticky walls and ways of working for example), it was refreshing to hear the facilitators say that these should serve the purpose of the group and the session. One can facilitate with very minimal resources as we saw in quite a few sessions.
* The dance between process and outcomes... while some facilitators believed in "holding the process light and outcomes tight"... others believed "hold the process tight and let the outcomes emerge with the group..." This is also very contextual and each facilitator would need to mindfully navigate this dance as authentically and empathetically as possible. One thing was helpful to be reinforced for me was that when one is offering content advise/ input while facilitating - this needs to be considered carefully and with consent with the group. This aligned well with the component of information in the Thinking Environment - what needs to be shared in order to allow the group to do its best thinking.
* I experienced how beautifully facilitators engaged groups of 250, 80, 50 and 40. Each one had elements of a clear flow, individual reflection, intimacy of pair/ trio conversations, the larger collective energy boost, visuals in some form, and ease. While sessions started late in most cases, they almost always finished on time. This also was possible as facilitators build in this flexibility and time in their designs. Even in the impact stories section which were the most content heavy, the facilitators chose to begin with engaging us in some reflective exercises (stand up if...; reflection questions on the floor... pair conversations)...no use of any tech in many of the sessions...
* Facilitating across languages - Kavi and group's large group session was very insightful -
- they began by asking us to share in pairs an untranslatable word from our own language which we resonate with a lot... this already pulled us into the topic itself.. it made us look at our own language in a new light and also look at other languages were curiosity and wonder.
- After the initial small group check ins, they put up six beautifully crafted themes for us to choose from and collect practical facilitation tips. I chose the one one "reducing the supremacy of english without rejecting it..." others were around power dynamics, use of visuals, psychological safety etc. What I loved was the real examples people brought from their lives and their work. Sometimes just asking upfront, "how many languages do we speak in this room?" can be such a leveller.
- They then used an interesting voting process where each one of us had to list specific tips and get 5 votes to qualify our tip to go on the wall.
- We closed with some sharing of insights and the host group sharing their experience and challenges while designing the session.
* Facilitating inter-generational understanding - I was drawn to this topic.
- The facilitators started by asking everyone to pick up stickers that spoke to them - they had used AI to create stickers that spoke to different generations... this was exciting as people started saying "hamare zamane mein"... and there was some instant bonding...
- After this we played a game with different words (again those spoke to different generations).. and two teams had to compete to guess the right words. This was made me realise that there was so much about the other generations that I did not know...
- We dove into then trio storysharing around instances where we misunderstood another generation or someone misunderstood us... this went deep... was beautiful to just listen to each other sharing... healing almost...
- They nudged us to go deeper and discover what was the need that led to the misunderstanding.. we each wrote on cards and placed them on the sticky wall. This was healing too in a way... and someone observed how the needs seemed to be universal across generations...
- We closed out by sharing with a partner ways in which facilitators can facilitate dialogue and understanding across generations... some cool ideas came not just from work but from families too (e.g. social contract around playing music!)
* The journey through process facilitation ...
We had five parallel master classes to choose from and having followed Ajith I was keen to experience his facilitation. I loved the flow of the session - the chaos check in was interesting - while I also use it, he added some more components (e.g. touch the fingerpoint and talk with the 5th person....). I appreciated he started with whoever was there and honoured their time. We began with a rating scale about facilitator behaviours. I felt challenged by some of the questions and I was surprised to feel stuck to my point of view at one time. It was helpful to hear other voices and nudge myself to be open especially around shift in outcomes and offering my perspectives. It was interesting to use the rating as a way to connect each question with one of the IAF values. Ajith then took us through the IAF competencies in different ways. I loved how he used one visual and broke each one of its parts to explain each set of competencies. It helped me with understanding and retention. He made us work in jigsaw groups - I had not done this before - we first made a group of 8 people and as a group were assigned a sub competency. Then we each named ourselves A-G within our group. Then all As came together, Bs etc. They gave a 2 min update to others about their discussion. We then converged with our earlier smaller group and gave a short update. Ajith helped clarify a lot of my basics also like the difference between a tool, method and process. He also shared his STEP frame to help in contracting with the client. I loved watching him navigate the group dynamics with people of mixed experience and the questions that were coming.
* Being inclusive in smaller groups ...
I noticed in all the small groups I was in that we would resort to pop corn style quite automatically. I tried to nudge folks to follow sharing in a round - while it was awkward for some at the beginning, it actually became such a beautiful and rich sharing - a lot more ideas came, people had time to think and share.
* Emotional anchors ....
Every community has some special people who keep the group emotionally together... Nitin was the one in ours and he ensured that people gathered together in the evenings so music, poetry, dancing and some masti!
* Courage & Community
It was my first time taking the Thinking Environment to such a large group of people and that too fellow facilitators in a short time of about 100 minutes. Partnering with Rohit and being mentored by Trisha and Mrunal gave the right jumpstart. We were anxious about many things - would this be "exciting" enough, would this be "value" enough, would we do well in the time we had..... As Trisha reminded us that "people learn you"... we embraced what came and just went with our flow... the circle, the silence, the rounds, the thinking pairs... also brought a sense of ease and calm into the space... as one person said "I could feel the breathing in the sharing in the rounds...." Many people I spoke with said that this was the first time they had piloted their session design... this is the gift of a community to its practitioners.. a safe space to experiment, try, fail and learn...
Overall, it was a beautiful experience to be surrounded by everything facilitation....I felt a deeper connect to myself and my practice. I walked away with many many new connections. I will be back next year!
A very lucid narrative of the sessions and the groups that you interacted with, Mana. Reading through this was quite nostalgic for me. I am on the verge of qualifying as a conference junkie (having attended the ones in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Cochin earlier). This was larger in scope and coverage, and I was amazed to see the number of aspirant IAF members who had come to participate. Rubbing shoulders with the seniors and listening to the newbies, the two-and-a-half days passed so quickly, yet pleasantly. Once again, thank you for helping us relive the experience with your super-engaging narrative.
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