IAF North America & Caribbean Conference 2018: Ottawa, Canada

180 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (1:00 – 4:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

As humans, we can easily get stuck in our comfort zones. Doing the same thing, whether quite right for the situation we are in, or not. It's comfortable. And so it is with our facilitation style. We get comfortable. It's time to take a lesson from a chameleon... what if we could be more aware of ourselves and our surroundings? What if we could adapt seamlessly to what's needed for a given situation? This workshop is designed to help you raise your self-awareness and choose the right behavior for the situation.  Join us to explore 4 scales of personality preferences, identify your own preferences, and learn how to apply this awareness to improve your facilitation skills.

 

Exploring the Role of Facilitation in Reconciliation between Settlers and Indigenous People (CF:180_2)  

Workshop Leaders: Jo Nelson and Donna Lyons

180 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (1:00 – 4:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

Reconciliation between Settler and Indigenous people in Canada is a critical necessity and the door is open to make it happen.  What is the history that has brought us to this point? As facilitators, what can we do to make reconciliation work well and heal our nation?

 

Becoming Culture Change Catalysts and Curators of Experiences : Conversations to move beyond the Status Quo  (CF:180_3)  

Workshop Leaders: Nathalie Sabourin and Eve Zeville

180 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (1:00 – 4:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity - that is today’s reality. The traditional Diagnostic OD stance of fixing what ails organizations is no longer enough. As facilitators, how do we change the conversations, and create impactful experiences that make a difference? This workshop aims to provide organizational facilitators with a unique opportunity to experience ‘’live’’ two innovative facilitation approaches that enable transformative conversations and build enhanced change capability and agility through turbulent times.

a. Co-Development for Action, an innovative social learning approach developed by professor Adrien Payette and practitioner Claude Champagne to solve complex issues and drive individual and collective change. 

b. Friendly Consulting- a CoachingOurselves module based on a peer coaching process that ‘’focuses on the collaborative development of colleagues, increasing trust while encouraging the sharing of knowledge, experimentation and cooperation’’- Henry Minztberg, University of McGill., 10 Tips for Peer Coaching

  

Facilitating a New Frontier: Bridging the Generational Divide  (CF:180_4)  

Workshop Leaders: Rangineh Azimzadeh Tosang and Barbara MacKay

180 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (1:00 – 4:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

This 3 hour highly interactive workshop will help move the group from curiosity to authentic deep learning, sharing, and commitment to change.  We will share our own stories of success and challenge as a multi-generational co-facilitator team working with multi- generational groups. Then we will encourage participants to explore their own assumptions and biases around generational thinking. Our goal is to create safe enough space for all to make an internal image shift around their own unconscious incompetency to conscious incompetency.  We will use a variety of tools from constructivist listening, story-telling, kinesthetic and visual energizers, visual mapping, and commitment exercises.

 

Games for Groups: Process design beyond the sticky note (CF:180_5)   

Workshop Leaders: Tamara Eberle and Sune Gudiksen

180 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (1:00 – 4:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

"Play" has surpassed "a sense of purpose" as a motivator at work and "gamification" of everything is on trend. Research shows that well designed games can engage participants, level power dynamics, open up safe spaces for challenging conversations, and get very effective outcomes. What can we as facilitators learn from organizational game designers, and how do we put these techniques into meaningful practice in our work? In this workshop you will learn more about the value of play and games for groups, explore the key elements of game design, and design a game yourself! Interactive, applied learning guaranteed!

 

Reflective Inquiry through Visual Practice (CF:90_1)

Workshop Leader: Jennifer Shepherd

90 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (10:30 – 12:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

Experience several ways to reflect on what you sense, think, or do in your facilitation practice and broaden your understanding of what is possible using visual practices. Choose your own meaningful question to explore while experimenting with drawing, an image set, or movement. The creative processes and dialogues with peers will get you out of your comfortable frames of reference to notice fresh ideas. Whether you discover broader perspectives, identify new options for action, or generate questions for deeper inquiry, you are sure to challenge your own boundaries and expand your horizons. (Psst! Drawing experience is not required.)

 

And the Secret Is...?: Guide to Annotated Agendas  (CF:90_2)

Workshop Leader: Jessica Delaney

90 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (10:30 – 12:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

In this highly-interactive workshop, we focus on the analysis of one tool that is the secret to the success of any facilitation session. Originating in objective-driven curriculum development, and earning a special place in the International Participation for Public Participation's engagement event planning, objective-driven annotated agendas can also be a guiding light for facilitation sessions. Participants will work in groups to design their own annotated agendas for a facilitation session, which then they will need to... facilitate! Join us for 90 minutes of interactive fun, and learn how Delaney + Associates create annotated agendas.

 

Consensus Decision-Making: Benefits and Pitfalls (CF:90_3)

Workshop Leader: John Butcher, CPF

90 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (10:30 – 12:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

Most groups, when asked their preferred decision-making model, respond almost reflexively: "Consensus". But what is "consensus"? Unanimity? General agreement? Live with it? How necessary is "consensus" to durable group decision-making? How do facilitators work with groups that want to use "consensus" as their decision-making model? The workshop will explore various descriptions of "consensus" and their implications for group decision-making. Participants will share their experiences with the use of "consensus" decision-making models, how their groups settled on those models, and what facilitation approaches helped their groups to use those models most effectively and efficiently.

 

Dotmocracy is Broken: How 30 people can prioritize 40 ideas in 20 minutes (CF:90_4)

Workshop Leaders: Karyn Dumble and Jason Diceman

90 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (10:30 – 12:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

Asking meeting participants to prioritize among many ideas can be problematic.  Dotmocracy is not reliable because of the bandwagon effect, vote splitting, choice overload, and even cheating.  Digital tools are expensive and prone to problems.   This prioritization method we’ll share with you gives instant, reliable, and defensible visual results. It results in quantifiable data that shows overall support or lack thereof of an idea. It quickly gathers a group’s judgement of statements, goals, strategies and more. It’s been used at small focused meetings, mid-sized public consultations, and large symposiums. It’s useful for facilitators, public participation practitioners, change managers and more.

 

Wisdom2Action - a youth-led model of community engagement (CF:90_5)

Workshop Leader: Muna Mohamed

90 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (10:30 – 12:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

The goal of Wisdom2Action events is to facilitate cross-sectoral connection and knowledge sharing between a diverse groups of participants, including researchers, academics, community based organizations, policy makers, and youth themselves. The events provide a unique opportunity for participants to share practice-based evidence, evidence-based knowledge, and local knowledge, and promote promising practices with each other and with their wider networks so that they may better serve the needs of vulnerable children and youth in their region. Wisdom2Action has hosted 13 Wisdom2Action events across Canada that have engaged hundreds of participants. Event evaluations reported that 93% of participants found the events important for their work and 56% of evaluation respondents indicated they had made important partnerships through the Network that influenced how they provided services. Youth co-design the events, are trained to host them and lead the events, providing a unique experience for youth with lived experience of mental health issues and marginalization. This workshop will provide an experiential overview of the W2A process and increase participants’ knowledge of how to engage and support youth.

 

Increasing Engagement in an Increasingly Digital Workplace (CF:90_6)

Workshop Leader: Mindy Forsyth

90 Minutes, Fri, May 4 (10:30 – 12:00)
Registration Price: Included in Conference registration

In the global marketplace, how do you ensure that your meetings, typically delivered online or by telecon, engage everyone and are just as, if not more efficient, than face-to-face meetings? It’s not uncommon for virtual meetings to be one-way conversations, where the presenter is delivering information and meeting participants are on mute and unengaged. This workshop will introduce a variety of activities and tips to encourage virtual participation and increase collaboration when participants are located remotely.