Welcome to the Northern Ohio Facilitation Community of Practice

This afternoon, 35 Cleveland area facilitators engaged each other for the first time in two hours of conversations that participants described as "electric", "enlightening", and "outstanding." They represented government and grassroots organizations, independent corporate types, a Taoist healer, and CPA. There were people from every generation representing every continent. No one managed, led, directed, controlled or facilitated the conversations, including of course the Open Space conversation on raising perceptions of the value of facilitation in the communities represented. It was people trusting themselves to be themselves in new conversations. Ordinary magic.

The event covered in the blog world: by George Nemeth at Brewed Fresh Daily / by Roberta Waxman-Lenz at RealNeo

Notes from the Open Space conversations

What is the purpose of facilitation?

• Get away from the "enemy/other people's problem images"
• Harvest collective wisdom & make it explicit
• Identify common interest/collective agenda
• Allow leaders of group to be participants instead of leaders
• Bring more objectivity to the process
• Process of slowing down to get in touch with "What Is" that allows ground to be built
• Creates order to the process and allows order to emerge from multiple fugures
• Moves the process along in a timely way
• In a constructive, respectful manner, allows others' input to augment ideas of leadership
• There is a deeply spiritual dimension to good facilitation - it uncovers the deep connection that we share ... wow moments
• Good meetings don't just "happen" - it takes training and skill
• Good meetings create time and money savings and increased innovation resulting from idea sharing

• Before/after surveys of participants
• Follow up well after 3-6 months
• Is there a way to get independent feedback?
• From who's point of view?
• The positive effect of good facilitation is very subtle
• Clients are more willing to try facilitation if they've seen it work
• How can we showcase facilitation more in the business community?
• Maybe have more facilitated pieces at big suit/panel/powerpoint events and meetings
• The drivers: stuck crisis > quantifyable result
• Challenge: managing expectations up front
• After Action Reviews - learning organization; everyone takes of their "stripes" - group consensus about what worked

• Sometimes we need mediation before facilitation - we need mediation to create the "space" for facilitation
• Demand is difficult to recognize - people tend to have lost the skill to have "conversations"
• Conversations are messy
• Political leadership is driving away from conversations - not toward it
• People want to connect - people want conversation
• "Consumers" need to know how to "ignite the fire"
• Demand arises when people begin to see the value of conversation
• To see the value they must experience it
• People who need it the most demand it the least
• Facilitation sometimes leads people to "uncomfortable" places, when they shut down and withdraw from the conversation
• The demand for "community engagement" is sometimes disingenuous

• A $3M question in NE Ohio
• 1/3 prep + "x" + 1/3 report - it's more than the facilitation event ("x" = activity)
• Legal questions are one of the few places where it's clear a facilitator is needed
• Often confrontational situations don't want a facilitator because people would have to air their issues
• This however is a positive - facilitation as a way of supporting greater group honesty/authenticity and responsibility than it would have otherwise
• We need to have a concrete focused endeavor/product to have someone (e.g. jane Campbell) see the need for facilitators to work on it - that is, sell the product - doing specific proposal
• Present stories of successes to sell your skills
• When attendeed leave a facilitation session feeling good about themselves and what they've created, they will "buy" the product of facilitation

What emerged?

So much knowledge energy and wisdom that it would be good to create support groups for each other to share successes and problems that we ran into. Investigate technology options for that.

The need to build awareness around who we are as a community. Who else is doing this work? And building awareness in the community. How facilitation can build value in your organization/community etc.

Fantastic openness and deep level of support in this community which is excellent.

What would make a local facilitation community of practice valuable for us?

Get contact information so as to share info sessions etc

Develop a bio of each person, that captured each person’s assets in facilitation. Increasingly co-facilitation is needed.

People that need facilitators, people that what to enhance their skills, people who want to sell their skills.

If we met every 2 months and bring these discussions to deeper knowledge.

The ultimate is to get back together again. I would like to reinforce the relationships that we made today. We should change the methodology so that we learn something everytime we come.

A website as perhaps hosted by 3M

Interactive website enables the conversation to keep going.

Ed envisions facilitation group learning and complex learning is how we do things in NEO. Open networks of collaboration in Universities and libraries and neighborhoods and counties and across counties….this is how we will build the civic space. Could this group be the seeders of a large revitalization of the civic space. People will come together and reclaim the civic space, sharing information and sharing conversation.

People looking for ways to build their capacity and using technology. How do we use the people in the room to teach us how to grow our skills in online facilitation practice.

People who attended the 3.11.05 Launch Gathering

• Jack Ricchiuto jack_at_designinglife.com
• Emilie Unkrich emilieamanda_at_ameritech.net
• Debra Griest dlgriest_at_aol.com
• Don Posner don.posner_at_mcgcorp.com
• Karen Tingley Karen.Tingley_at_kp.org
• Leia Berlin leiaberlin_at_yahoo.com
• Craig James cjames_at_catalyst-strategies.com
• Joanne Montagner joannemontagner_at_mindspring.com
• John M Kundtz jkundtz_at_us.ibm.com
• Sarah Spengler sbs_at_neighborhoodprogress.org
• Ian Heisey ianh_at_bpdc.org
• Gennorris Heard genn107_at_hotmail.com
• Sudhir Raghupathy skraghupathy_at_yahoo.com
• Sandy Piderit piderit_at_mac.com
• Gary Murphy gvm1_at_weatherhead.cwru.edu
• Bill Proctor williamproctor_at_ameritech.net
• Ed Morrison efm7_at_weatherhead.cwru.edu
• Kathleen A Pichola kapich_at_juno.com
• Adele DiMarco Kious adeledk7_at_hotmail.com
• Betsey Merkel bmerkel_at_weatherhead.cwru.edu
• George Nemeth george_at_smartmeetingdesign.com
• Roberta Waxman-Lenz Waxlenz_at_aol.com
• Norm Roulet norm_at_icearth.com
• Steve Goldberg steveg_at_ieee.org
• Sally Follett salfollett_at_aol.com
• Christine Zust christine_at_zustco.com
• Mary M. Rose maremike_at_earthlink.net
• Jack Kleinhenz jekleinhenz_at_prodigy.net
• Portia Brown portia.brown_at_sbcglobal.net
• Rick Warger rwarger_at_spiritualcare.org
• John Kundtz helix_at_kundtz.com
• Susan Aldrich susan.aldrich_at_med.va.gov

• Larry Fergus Larry.Fergus_at_kp.org
• Allison Conte allisonconte_at_earthlink.net
• Maudie Holm MHOLM_at_plaind.com
• Cathy Monnin CMONNIN_at_cuyahoga.lib.oh.us
• Sally Parker sbparker_at_currere.net
• Dave Walker dave.walker_at_kammscorners.com
• Chloë Hopson chloe_at_passportproject.org
• Kenneth Weber kweber_at_us.ibm.com
• Lois Annich revlois_at_aol.com
• Piet van Lier vanlier_at_mail.catalyst-cleveland.org
• Stephanie Strong stephanie_at_e4sustainability.org
• Katharyne Marcus KMarcus?_at_SCSNDA.org
• Sherry Greenleaf sgreenleaf_at_impact-dev.com
• Linda Robson linda.robson_at_case.edu
• Pat McGreevy patmcgreevy_at_worldnet.att.net
• Celia Jennings cjennings_at_us.mirifex.com
• DTimms_at_Lakelandcc.edu
• Meg Seelbach MegS3650?_at_aol.com
• Mark Chupp chupp_at_urban.csuohio.edu
• Chester Bowling bowling.43_at_osu.edu

• Jack Ricchiuto jack_at_designinglife.com
• Emilie Unkrich emilieamanda_at_ameritech.net
• Debra Griest dlgriest_at_aol.com
• Don Posner don.posner_at_mcgcorp.com
• Karen Tingley Karen.Tingley_at_kp.org
• Leia Berlin leiaberlin_at_yahoo.com
• Craig James cjames_at_catalyst-strategies.com
• Joanne Montagner joannemontagner_at_mindspring.com
• John M Kundtz jkundtz_at_us.ibm.com
• Sarah Spengler sbs_at_neighborhoodprogress.org

• Jack Ricchiuto jack_at_designinglife.com
• Emilie Unkrich emilieamanda_at_ameritech.net
• Leia Berlin leiaberlin_at_yahoo.com
• Craig James cjames_at_catalyst-strategies.com
• Gennorris Heard genn107_at_hotmail.com
• Sudhir Raghupathy skraghupathy_at_yahoo.com
• Kathleen A Pichola kapich_at_juno.com
• Adele DiMarco Kious adeledk7_at_hotmail.com
• Betsey Merkel bmerkel_at_weatherhead.cwru.edu
• George Nemeth george_at_smartmeetingdesign.com
• Roberta Waxman-Lenz Waxlenz_at_aol.com
• Norm Roulet norm_at_icearth.com
• Christine Zust christine_at_zustco.com
• Portia Brown portia.brown_at_sbcglobal.net
• Susan Aldrich susan.aldrich_at_med.va.gov

Coming soon: Notes from the 3.11.05 conversation on creating a local community of practice