Oct 18, 2022
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or virtually anywhere podcasts are found!
This show is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton Jr.
Theme music: ‘Pretty Face’ by Una Walkenhorst.
Read transcripts for the episode below.
MEG
[INTRO MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast, where we talk about the revolutionary power of a learning-centered approach. Through this podcast, we hope to inspire creative thinking and provide practical tools and techniques to deepen learning through dialogue.
SHALU
So my name is Shalu Bhuchar. And I have been associated with the association when associated with the Association for, if I remember correctly, it’s been about five years in various capacities in India as a volunteer as the practitioner, as a facilitator, as a member. And now I am at the board as the director of marketing and communication. It’s a wonderful body to be with, we’ve got some great competencies, etc, which I’m sure we’ll be talking about as the session goes on. Well, over to you Gerardo.
GERARDO
My name is Gerardo de Luzenberger and based in Italy, and I’m a professional facilitator. I joined the IAF in 2004. So quite a long time ago. And I’ve been working with the Association for a long time. I’ve been involved in different roles in the association and up to now I’m the Director of Professional Development. So I’m just in some way overlooking and coordinating all the programs that we run all over the world about certification, recertification, endorsement programs, and of course, the learning and professional growth of our members.
MEG
Wonderful, thank you so much for joining me, both of you. It’s wonderful to have you and to have your expertise at this virtual table. So we’re going to start right off was Shalu, what you said, you already caught it, the six core competencies. So at IAF, you developed a set of six core competencies for facilitators. Can you tell us a little bit more about those and kind of the process for developing them or revising them. And really, Gerardo, I’d also love to hear about the programs that you use to really help people network around their skills and practice of these core competencies.
GERARDO
So we have six areas of competencies and basically the first two areas of competency, so A and B are related to the way you approach the design of a session. Okay, so how you organize and you do all the pre-work you need to do for a session. The second block is C and D, which is creating and sustaining a participatory environment and bringing the group to useful outcomes. It’s more related to how a facilitator can facilitate the group working and supporting the group work towards useful outcomes. And the last two, which are basically the E and F related more to your personal behavior, how you can keep on learning in this role, how you can keep on practicing what is the ethic of a facilitator? What do we do as facilitators to maintain our professional status and also to act with integrity and all these sorts of things okay. As you mentioned, Meg, these competencies came out from large battery of work than in the association from our members and been distilled in this way in those years also in because we put them in practice always we are always working with the competencies. And as I always say the competencies are the backbone of the IAF, okay, because whatever we do, whatever program we manage, we always refer to the core competencies to our code of ethics and our statement of values. Okay. So these are the three things which are really relevant. What is interesting, for example, our work has changed with the pandemic on all the work that we are now doing online. What are the things we are seeing changing also in this profession? It has been really interesting in the last year because we started to assess for the most important program of certification that we ran that is the Certified Professional Facilitator. We started to assess online that during the pandemic, while before the pandemic we were only assessing face to face and we were doing the face to face because part of the assessment is really a practice. So we have an assessment day which are or an assessment event now in which the candidate has to facilitate a workshop while assessed by our assessor in different roles. Okay, that’s, that’s the idea. And what we discover is that the competencies were still valuable, and they’re still in place, the one we were using in face to face also in online environments. So we just came to the conclusion after a while and after be working for a while with the idea that yes, the space where you facilitated different if it’s in the room or online, however, the competencies are the same.
MEG
Thank you for that wonderful background information. I really appreciate you sharing too the connection with the groupings within those core competencies, that’s very helpful to know. I’m curious, of course, you said that these competencies really stand true, they’ve passed the test of COVID of this very difficult time for many folks. But in addition, you’re also applying these competencies across many different cultures, you have 65 chapters, those are all across the world. What do you think it is about these core competencies that really crosscuts, the different cultures and settings and situations that you’re applying them in? Why do you see these as the six that are what it takes to be a successful facilitator?
SHALU
I think it’s because you could be from anywhere on the planet, right? The competencies, the way they’ve been worded. And anyone being a facilitator is less about the country that you come from, but more about who you’re being as a facilitator, so I could be from India and have my cultural tenets. And yet, when I travel across the world to facilitate, if I’m truly following my competencies, I’m able to connect with, communicate with and facilitate anybody at any level anywhere. The competencies stand free and clear of cultural tenets, while being mindful that cultural tenants exist. So if I were to just take, I’m just going to pick up one of the sub competencies and the behaviors there. And let’s say it says facilitate group self awareness about its tasks. And one of the bullet points there is vary the pace of activities according to the needs of the group. So if I’m, let’s say, I’m facilitating in Istanbul, and I know that people like to have a relaxed space there, and I know that they want necessarily want a coffee break at four o’clock. And then at six o’clock again, I know that I can pace myself accordingly. And similarly, let’s say I’m going to facilitate in America, and it’s more about let’s get a grab a cup of coffee, and let’s go chop, chop, quick, quick, quick, let’s get this stuff done, then I can very easily just mold my pace of activities there. So if one really truly goes into the depth of the competencies and the behavioral sub points, you will realize that they’re universal, you can’t use one of the particular competencies and their sub behaviors in a particular context or a particular culture. They’re just universal.
MEG
Thank you Shalu, I really appreciate that specific example that you shared, it just, it does truly shed light on how it’s it’s a universal concept that you then apply to the situation. So thank you for sharing that.
SHALU
You’re welcome.
MEG
How about you, Gerardo Is there anything that comes to mind for you?
GERARDO
From one end, I totally agree with Shalu. So, basically, the core competencies are such basic competencies and way of doing things that you can apply them all over the world. On the other side, we have a lot of diversity in our organization. So, we have members from the US and Canada, members from Africa from Italy, as I am or from east and far east, and we are also in China for example, and we have also really different cultural dimension in that. So, part of our job is also to be aware of cultural diversities and respect them and in some way also meet the need. Now, when we are working, so meeting the needs and then their capacity. In some other cases in the last years when working for example, on the revision of the competence, we have been asking ourself, is there anything that we can do also about cultural diversity? So for example, when you don’t talk about competencies, but you talk about more about methods and approaches, I have been in some way inquiring and investigating if we use more let’s say American or European methods, than other methods that have been designed or developed in other countries now, and we are now working trying to also try to increase this diversity in our organization. So for example, we have a lot of methods developed in Africa, from African members and, or in the African culture that we are starting to use also. And to make available to the community, we have a big database, we call it the methods library with over 600 methods that are in some way have been, I wouldn’t use the word certified, but they’ve been in some way assessed and co-developed by our members. And so you can access for example, this methods library, if you join the IAF and use those methods for you work
MEG
600 methods, that’s a pretty incredible library that you’ve got there. Can you say a bit more about how you turn these competencies into practice, both for your members and also for yourself as a facilitator,
SHALU
The competencies are not mere words and paper for us. So there are a few different ways that we actually look at bringing them to practice for myself, or for any one of us as facilitators who are using the competencies. I think, number one, it’s about being mindful to the point it becomes a way of being for us as facilitators. Our competencies are actually a great guide, not just the headers of the competencies, but if you continue to look at the sub points, and then the points within those sub- sub-points, which are actually behaviors, they inform the both the being and the doing of facilitation. So who am I as a facilitator, what am I doing as a facilitator? How am I doing it as a facilitator? So initially, of course, when you’re just beginning to practice, following the competencies, I know I have kept them right in front of me, like willingly on a piece of paper saying, Am I doing this am I doing this am I take taking care of this. And that is also something that I encourage all new/aspiring facilitators to do. There are actually a lot of people across the world who start out in facilitation as being learning trainers. And there are a lot of people who don’t understand or who don’t have knowledge/are not aware of that the work that they’re doing is actually facilitation. So let’s say let’s take any not for profit, for example. Very recently, I worked with someone in waste management. And what I realized was that they were educating they were getting people to understand how to segregate waste, how their waste could actually be recycled, and so on, and so forth. So they were facilitating a cleaner community by educating people on how to segregate their waste and how to do waste management. So instead of them just going and training people, which used to not elicit too much of a response, I worked with them on how they could use a couple of participatory processes to be able to get people in that community to start segregating their waste. It’s not just about facilitators in the learning room or learning trainers who then move on to becoming facilitators. It’s also about anybody in the general milieu of things who are involved in facilitating, is facilitating results, facilitating life in any which way possible. So our core competencies actually encompass everyone, it’s not just for people within the learning room. Bringing it back into the question that you asked as to how do we bring them in practice for ourselves and for our members? So like, I started out saying, do it consciously, till it becomes unconscious competence for you?
MEG
Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing all the many ways. I mean, everything, like you said, from literally having them in front of you for reference to to check yourself as you’re facilitating and say, like, Am I doing this? Am I following this thing that I’ve committed to, I love that. I also really appreciate your reflection that there are so many facilitators out there, who don’t necessarily call themselves or consider themselves, facilitators, but to have these kinds of competencies outlined and really empower people to take on that label and to recognize where they already have many of these competencies and just the day to day work that they’ve been doing and have the opportunity to really flesh them out and live into it more fully. So thank you for sharing all of that.
GERARDO
Appreciate it. For us, the competencies are something which is alive. Well it’s a living thing is not just something written on paper. It’s something we practice. What we have done with these competencies is basically to define some key standards that you can look at when practicing and the word practicing is important because practicing these things is strongly connected with doing. So you don’t simply understand or you know the competencies, but you practice the competencies every day. Part of the work we do in the association is to support each other in this practice by creating occasion when you can, for example, practice the competence with your peers, while doing a workshop for them and receiving feedback from your colleagues on how you’ve been working, what went well, what could be improved, these sorts of things. We also work with the competencies in a more wider way, when we organize conferences and events that can be in some way a showcase for practices we do around the competencies and around facilitation. And again, getting a feedback, inspiring the way other facilitator work and things like that.
MEG
Thank you, Gerardo. I mean, I think that brings to mind saying that we have in dialogue, education, that’s — how do they know, they know, they just did it. So it’s really this practice and doing it amongst your peers who are also professional facilitators who can give you that, that active feedback, that reflection, and opportunity for improvement. So thank you for sharing that process.
GERARDO
To me, yeah, one thing Meg. So for example, I am also an assessor in our programs. What is a beautiful of the way we work, also as assessors that when you are working, and you are assessing the facilitator, you’ll learn a lot from them, when assessing just because it’s a way also to review your way of working by seeing their way of working. And as I’m always saying, I did my first workshop in 1995. And in 1995, was quite common to have a group of people sitting for at most one day in front of a flip chart with a facilitator standing and facilitating the conversation. This is not possible anymore in those years now. So we use as facilitator much more the space, we use games, we ask the group to move, we do many other things. And of course, when you assess other colleagues, and you see them facilitating because you see them facilitating in a mock workshop, you learn from them, because you see also what the others in different parts of the world are doing with facilitation. So that’s a really big part of our job.
MEG
Yeah, I imagined that exchange of kind of people who are new to the facilitation world, and people who have come from different places all over the world, it really sounds like such a beautiful opportunity for networking and skill sharing and bringing in new practices to the world of facilitation. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So next, I’d love for us to kind of shift gears a little bit. At Global Learning Partners, we have what we call our six core principles for adult learning. And several of those are this principle of inclusion, the principle of respect. And I feel like these align really well with what I see a lot on IAF’s website and in your social media, really about this belief in the inherent value of individuals and this idea of inclusive participation that shows up all over your core competencies document that you have. So I would love to hear what could learning-centered facilitators in a training environment learn about participatory processes from IAF?
GERARDO
Well, first of all, let me say that I really agree with your impression regarding the principles that Global Learning Partners use now. So they are very aligned and in some way similar to our core competencies. So we also work about safety, we care about safety of the participatory environment. Of course, we work on inclusion, respect, and no judgement of what has been said. Relevance immediacy, we also use urgency call it sometimes and we consider all these things as part of also the engagement. So engagement for us, it’s not only something that you can work on by itself, but it’s also the product of all these other things together. What could be relevant for learning-centered facilitators in a training environment about our competencies and how to use them. So that’s probably the most relevant thing. So working with techniques, working with methods, working with different approaches, using them just not to deliver training or training materials or training contents, but to help participants to share, to build together a learning in the knowledge about what they need for whatever they are doing in that environment. We always believe that it’s important to promote a group reflection, not just an individual reflection, because it’s again, in this way, you enrich the quality of the learning experience in some way. Because one of the things we always believe as facilitator is that all the solutions are already in the room. Absolutely, as especially, that’s something that’s very important for us at GLP is this idea that when you’re in a room full of adult learners, there’s a breadth and depth of expertise that’s always going to be in the room and the learning is going to be enhanced by people being able to share and learn from each other. So you’re in good company there. I know, I know.
SHALU
So it’s brilliant, how your principles, they just blend in so beautifully with the IAF competencies. I think all of us as facilitators, even if we belong to different bodies, are focused on the right things, the right value systems, etc. It’s so beautiful, that they are just so similar and so alive. It kind of always reinforces my belief that if you understand facilitation, you could be with anybody, you could be with nobody at all, and you would still be able to live up to the same things. So it’s brilliant to have heard and to yes, have seen your core principles. One of the things that has happened beautifully over the past few decades, when it comes to learning is learning in itself has moved from more push, which is train, train, train, train, train, to pull, to involve, include. And in fact, if you were to look at your own core principle of inclusion, it is about participation. One way or the other. Of course, the definition may be broad, and it may have various aspects to it. But what is participation, participation or participatory processes is about making sure that all voices are heard, for example, all people’s ideas are included, all people are included, it shouldn’t matter what age, what race, what country, what educational background, etc, that you come from. Also, keeping in mind that people have different neuro linguistic capabilities. Keeping in mind, people have different preferences of how they like to participate. Keeping in mind that people also unfortunately, but in reality, a lot of times get boxed by the labels of I’m an introvert, I’m an extrovert, I’m a visual person, I’m a kinesthetic person, and so on and so forth. All voices must be heard, whatever the voice might be, wherever the voice might come from, and however soft or loud voice might be. That’s the beauty of participatory processes. We’ve got processes for problem solving, we’ve got processes for skill building, we’ve got processes for emotional connect, various and different kinds of processes that one can use and at different stages of the facilitation process. So you could have icebreakers for the learning facilitator, as much as you could have closing processes, you could have processes for brainstorming, you could have processes for convergence, for divergence, for bringing a group to really truly bringing out its group wisdom. Essential reason for having participatory processes, even in a learning environment, is because there is so much wisdom in a group. If there was a leadership team that was present in one of the facilitation sessions, and everyone had about 15 years of experience. And there were about 10 people, and the facilitator had 15 years of experience too, you’ve got 165 years of experience right there. So how do you cajole it out? How do you enhance it and how do you have it blossom? All you do is you kind of just nudge, cajole gently, move in a particular way, and the process takes over and the group wisdom takes over and the results sometimes are amazing.
MEG
Thank you for sharing that Shalu. I feel like all of the things that you’re saying I’m I find myself nodding I know you can’t we can’t see each other. But it’s truly like you said the just massive wisdom that you have, the years and years of collective experience when you start adding it up that way in the room. It’s truly incredible when you’re in a group of adult learners. And that’s something that you want to honor and recognize that we have the answers. Gerardo said we have the answers in this room, we just need to draw them out. So I wonder if you might be willing to share an example from your experience, perhaps the participatory process that you mentioned, you went through with the folks who are working in waste management, what does it look like in practice?
SHALU
Sure. So let me just go back into the session a moment. And we did this in the middle of December. Honors. So we started out Yeah, so one of the things that we had used over there as a process, of course, was the six thinking hats, which I’m well versed in as to what are the different ways that community could actually go ahead and make sure that their personal grievances with each other didn’t come in the way of them working together as a community. So it wasn’t just about them, segregating the waste in their own apartments in their own homes. It also had to do with what about the public areas? What about how would they manage parks, for example? How would they manage people who had pets, and you know, how they were actually not very clean about where the pets went for about their daily business, how they managed, how responsible were the pet owners for keeping the area clean, etc. So we did go ahead, and we started out with first looking at what those issues were, and we used a particular flip charting process over there. This was luckily in person and over- over zoom. So we use the whiteboarding method, and we use the flip chart method, we use both. But after we got the flip charting method out of the way, that’s when we kind of stepped into the six thinking hats method. And we said, Alright, so what do you need to do? I should have also mentioned that the flip charting process that we used was the five why’s, why has this happened? And why is this happening? So I’m sure you know of the five why process. So we use the five why’s, then we use the six thinking hats. And then after that, we use what is called the decision tree, which was to say, okay, so if these are our five opportunities that are coming up, or the five ideas that are coming through, which are the top three you guys want to work with. So we used a process called decision tree. So what all of these processes did was it took away the sting of those personal vendettas people had with each other. It took away the sting of the whole situation of, you know, I don’t want to listen to his idea, because this is his idea, or Mr. So and so is always talking their head off, and they’re not never letting anybody else speak. So I’m not gonna participate in the process. Because the facilitation was done in such a way that every single individual had the opportunity to speak, ideas became collective, rather than those of an individual. And so they’re actually being followed up until today. So I checked in with people, the NGO or the not for profit that had done the session, or that had invited me to help them with the session. And they are actually they’re pretty chuffed with it, because it’s still holding up. So these guys and gone back to their old ways of but he said then she didn’t do, they’re still carrying on. So the whole part of it stops becoming about an individual and it becomes collective wisdom, to take people to a particular outcome. And the outcome is also the bind is always greater because the outcome is coming from the group. It’s not facilitator driven.
MEG
Yeah, no one person can claim or deny an outcome if you really co created it.
SHALU
Absolutely, absolutely.
MEG
So thank you so much for expanding on that one example. It’s really, it’s wonderful to just hear kind of what that would actually look like and feel like in the space. And how it just describing and hearing the kind of how that participatory process can smooth out some of those, like you said, the tensions that exist in the room. And if everybody really, if you’re facilitating using strong techniques, and really holding those core competencies, then you can facilitate a smooth process that really leads you to an outcome that’s effective and holding up many months after the event itself. Yeah. As a- an international professional association, you all have members in over 65 different countries. Of course, you said already the core competencies really translate well into an online environment. But I’m curious if you’ve seen any trends in how people have adapted to working as facilitators, even in their techniques that they’re using through the pandemic, such as the growth of hybrid learning and rethinking these large convenings. So what trends have you seen amongst your members? And what do you see really coming through to the return to in person and hybrid.
GERARDO
The emerging trend that I’m seeing that the moment is for hybrid. So in some way, although in this moment, for example, there is a lot of requests for going back to face to face now that you say, Oh, we are tired of working online, so let’s go back face to face, then suddenly, you also receive the requests in the same but we can broadcast then the session. So people that cannot come to the meeting, they can follow online. And so this opens the real challenge of this time, which is going hybrid, okay, really, hybrid. And when I say hybrid I mean mixing the two environments. These will be also very relevant for conferences now. So for example, for conference or large meetings, we had this very nice experience before the pandemic, we were right before the pandemic, we were organizing our first Global Summit, which was, the idea was let’s convene all the people of our community from the 65 country in only one place for a large meeting. Okay, so we were working on that. And then the pandemic, of course, stopped everything. And we had to redesign that gathering. And we took a year to redesign the gathering. And we come out what we call the global summit online, which was a 24 hour around the clock meeting, organized for different time zones with the baton pass from one time zone to the other one. And that was a very inspiring, meeting beautiful, where we tested a lot of different things and where we had the chance to also to be really more inclusive and offer the meeting to our entire community, while for example, a face-to-face meeting, especially one global face-to-face meeting is not that inclusive in this sense, because it could be very expensive to join the place.
MEG
Yeah, especially when you have people coming from 65 different countries that really an online space really enables everyone to participate at some point in that 24 hour gathering. I’d love to hear a little bit more about what that gathering looked like online with the passing the baton between time zones.
GERARDO
Yeah, we organized the gathering, and you can still find online the program or the gathering on the on our website. We really organized the gathering in like in four different sprints. Okay, so we started with in Europe, then we went to Asia, and then Asia Oceania, and then America. And every time we had when the sprint was starting with an opening, and then a closure, passing again the baton to the other one. And we had members that stayed the 24 hours awake just to attend to all the gatherings. Because what is really beautiful is not, I mean, to join a session with members from your own in some way area or timezone. In this sense, we are much more used to see them or even online, but just having the chance to attend to a meeting, for example, with the Japanese chapter, or the Korean chapter, or with I mean Chinese, our Chinese colleagues, with the pandemic and this huge work that we did online, we started really to break the barriers of the borders and the frontier. So we started really, to meet according to your interests, and not your geographical place. I mean, not where your feet are- were touching the ground, [not just that]. And that has been really an enriching experience for all of us.
MEG
I can imagine. That’s wonderful. I love that image of breaking the barriers of the borders of your geography. It sounds like that’s one of the wonderful benefits of IAF structure is that when you were able to work within your chapter to to hone those skills at the beginning of the pandemic, and then the opportunities for that to spread out beyond IAF’s members into the organizations and clients that they work with is I imagine astronomical. I mean.
SHALU
It was and it continues to be; I’m so glad that you kind of picked up on that. It truly is. I mean, if I sit back, you know when you’re in it, because I was involved in the planning of the stages and then the communication of the waves and so on and so forth. And that time you would just go go go go, go go. You didn’t sit down and think about it. And when in just talking to you that whole rush has just come back to me saying, my God, we really achieved something. It was just very powerful. We were, suddenly I was doing an event in Delhi and I had people from Australia sitting through my session, or I had people from Malaysia attending my session, etc. So suddenly, it was one world. It was in the India chapter in the Malaysia chapter in the Canada chapter. No, it was just one world, all of a sudden, it was beautiful. I’m so so proud of that event. It’s the silver lining to the pandemic, if I may say so without sounding unsympathetic to what the pandemic has brought the world to. But truly just all of us convening together to be able to, number one, create; number two, manage; number three, attend such an event that was quite phenomenal. I say,
MEG
Absolutely. And, really, if we can’t, if we can’t find silver linings, even in the darkest of times, then what are we doing?
SHALU
Well, then that’s what’s truly being human, isn’t it?
MEG
Absolutely. Absolutely. I’d love to keep talking about that. But I do want to move us to our closing so that we can capture one final wisdom. So what is one final wisdom that you’d like to offer learning facilitators who are trying to really center this participatory environment and inclusion in their facilitation?
GERARDO
For me what one which is really important, it’s one of our sub competencies. And they always say this is the really challenging one for a facilitator. And I believe it could be also the real challenging one for the learning-centered trainer is trust the group, okay, trust the participants, which is something. I mean, we all know, in theory, and we all agree in theory, but what is really difficult is to trust the group when you are working with the group. And when you see things and dynamics that you don’t understand, or maybe you think they’re not in some way, going towards the direction you were expecting, they should go now. So that’s really challenging for anyone, for a trainer for a facilitator. And for me, this is really the most important thing to do.
MEG
Wonderful.
SHALU
I think I’m still learning. So one final wisdom from me, okay. But I feel that when you’re facilitator, just remembering that you’re not the center of it, all you’re doing is holding the space for magic to emerge from the people who are involved in the process, not forgetting that I feel that’s one of the biggest thing any learning facilitator can do.
MEG
Thank you so much for sharing that final wisdom. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate all of the examples and stories and just wonderful insights that you’ve shared throughout our recording session.
GERARDO
Thank you very much.
SHALU
Thank you for having me here.
GERARDO
Thank you very much for inviting me. And if you want to learn more about our organization, just visit our website, which is www.IAF-world.org.
MEG
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for tuning into another episode of Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast. This podcast is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton with music by Una Walkenhorst. To find out more about Global Learning Partners, whether it be our course offerings, consulting services, free resources or blogs, go to www.globallearningpartners.com. We invite you to sign up for our mailing list, subscribe to our podcast and find us on social media to continue the dialogue. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast player. [OUTRO MUSIC FADES]