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The Global Flipchart is IAF's quarterly magazine about the power of facilitation – made by members, for members. Contact the editorial team by email: globalflipchart@iaf-world.org

Global Flipchart

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September 2016
| Issue #5

About this issue

The IAF Global Flipchart is International Association of Facilitators’ quarterly members publication with tips, tricks and resources for your individual facilitation practice and ideas to help you build your facilitation business and impact. 

In this issue, we explore Facilitative Leadership. 

The link between facilitation and leadership

Thousands of books have been written about leadership, yet every organisation these days is looking hard at what it means to be a leader in today’s world. There have been many models of leadership, the commander, the strategist, the servant, the visionary, but what about the leader as facilitator? The concept of facilitative leadership as an emerging model involves creating and maintaining the environment and the relationships for complex collaboration across many boundaries, cultural, regional, generational, organisational, physical and virtual, to allow the enterprise to thrive. We set out to understand what it means to be a facilitative leader, and the response of our members was overwhelming.

Contributions

We would like to say a big thank you to all our contributors for sharing their thoughts, opinions and experiences. Our colleagues from the Hall of Fame contribute their quotes on facilitative leadership. Rebecca Ejo Colwell takes us through the reasons why we need facilitative leadership, while Jan Lelie unpicks the difference between “facilitative” and “leadership”.  For Monique Walsh, facilitative leadership is actually a mindset: a way of being. Michelle McCormack goes even further, she considers it not only a mindset, but also a skill set and an approach for leaders in today’s organisations to ensure success now and to build a sustainable future. Bea Brigs says- being simply the boss is not enough while Mark McKergow argues why the leader is not the hero anymore, in this fast changing world he’s rather the Host.

In this issue we also feature two different platforms experimenting with the collaborative hosting idea, both physical and virtual. Anja Ebers brings the example of Liberating Structures Lab in Berlin stimulating critical conversations to liberate the full potential of groups, and Judy Rees reflects on her recent experience of hosting a 12 hours unconference online, where dozens of enthusiasts for the facilitation and coaching methodology Clean Language connected live and ran their sessions.

Join in! 

This Global Flipchart is only the start of a conversation. There are so many stories waiting to be shared. Let's continue the conversation in our social media forums

Upcoming issue

Our next topic is Facilitation Impact, honouring excellence in facilitation and its positive, measurable impact on organizations around the world.

We’d love to hear your stories, reflections and any suggestions on what you’d like to see in the next Global Flipchart. The deadline for contributions is 10 November 2016.

 

With best regards,

Julia Goga-Cooke, Editor, IAF Global Flipchart (globalflipchart@iaf-world.org) & 
Wiebke Herding, IAF Director of Communications (communications@iaf-world.org