While facilitating a day-long or week-long learning event, setting aside some time for a “check-in” can give participants the pause they need to process and prepare for what’s next. It allows them to reflect, re-energize, and reconnect before jumping back into a...
Safety is a profound way of showing respect for the learner. - Jane Vella Trauma-informed practices are all the rage across disciplines as we learn more about trauma and how it impacts so many of us. Even while traveling on an airline recently (hardly the bastion of...
Every teaching or meeting situation is unique and offers its own challenges. I work in rural Africa and have found the follow seven tools especially helpful for engaging community members. Use appreciative inquiry. In every community some things have worked well. It...
Safety and respect are key to ensuring community engagement. This is as true in rural Ghana where I work, as it is in most places in the world. Here are some tips that I have found helpful for the African context: Understand the cultural dynamics. It is important that...
During the first day of the Foundations of Dialogue Education course and many other Global Learning Partners learning events, we ask participants to identify guidelines that will support each other’s learning. The generated lists usually include expectations about...
Adults learn best when respect, safety, inclusion, relevance, immediacy and engagement are all present within the learning experience. A distillation of years of educational research, these six core principles are the building blocks of Dialogue Education™. Effective...
In her recent book The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker impels us to prepare well for our gatherings. She reminds us to probe with questions such as: Who is this event for? What do they most want to get from it? Whether preparing for an executive leadership retreat, a...
“Remember that your authority over other human beings is an artificial construct.” [1] I’ve been asking people about their core values and characteristics when they are at their best for over 20 years. I was introduced to this practice through the field of...
I work in a closed society. My colleagues do as well. In fact, we are all from the country in which we work and are passionate about what we do.
Download as PDF Download Feedback Process + Tool Cultivating a culture of healthy feedback – receiving and offering it – takes time and intentional work in multiple areas. It can begin during onboarding and run through to the exit interview. Leaders can model healthy...
We call each other ‘family’. So, you can imagine how happy we were to reconnect after three long years of the Covid pandemic! We are staff and partners of Episcopal Relief & Development. On February 7-11, 35 of us gathered in Accra, Ghana from seven countries...
A colleague from Kansas recently told me that she had received some pressure to “cover more material” in order to “make the most” of the professional development investment. “Yikes!” I said, “That is so contrary to all we know about how humans learn.” “Don’t give into...