To work effectively with people and the systems they live and work in, organisational development practitioners, consultants, mediators, leaders, activists and community facilitators rely on finely honed facilitation skills.

Participants of our advanced practitioner development program will learn about and experience a large and small group facilitation method known as Worldwork.

Worldwork is a powerful tool for working with complex social and organisational dynamics, supporting diverse voices to be heard, addressing conflict and creating awareness about the effect of our subtle biases and unconscious use of rank and power.

Why Worldwork?

To facilitate teams and systems well, we must consider many factors including the group’s history, patterns and style of interacting, the context, rank differences, leadership, values, perceptions and more. Worldwork strengthens facilitators skills in working with the many and ever-present layers of group dynamics and diversity.

Worldwork is a powerful way to hear marginalised voices and perspectives that frequently offer new insights and breakthroughs for the society, organisations and culture. Offering a profound experiential learning, it supports participants to recognise the impact of their own behaviours and the conscious and unconscious rank dynamics at play in society.

Familiarity with the Worldwork methodology will deepen your own confidence in working in conflicted and potentially volatile situations. It equips you to think on your feet and work with what’s in the room.

What Will I Learn From The Course?

This course will enable participants to:

• Recognise the spoken and hidden influences of diversity in groups, communities and organisations
• Hear and identify roles and voices within a dialogue or complex issue
• Demonstrate greater awareness and sensitivity to the multitude of experience in the system
• Switch perspectives with greater ease and confidence
• Engage more effectively with issues involving strong feelings and conflict
• Recognise early signals of escalation and de-escalation in conflict
• Gain greater confidence working in situations which appear complex and chaotic
• Support consensus, alignment and committed decsision making

There will be a strong focus on skill development but also on your personal development as a facilitator.

Course Structure

The course will comprise of six days of training including an initial introductory two-day workshop for those new to Worldwork.

Workshop 1: An Introduction To Worldwork

Our first workshop will focus on key concepts and applications as well as the core skills underpinning the subtle art of Worldwork facilitation.

Topics covered in the first workshop include:

• What is Worldwork?
• The facilitator’s role in Worldwork
• Gaining consensus for an agenda
• Recognising roles & diversity
• Deepening and unfolding roles
• Supporting marginalised voices to emerge
• Polarisation in groups
• Working with hot & cold spots
• Framing the group experience

This workshop will be a strong grounding for facilitators new to or developing their confidence in Worldwork facilitation.

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Workshop 2: Developing Fluidity As A Facilitator

This workshop will include an Open Group process in which members of the group facilitate dynamic group interactions and receive private supervision feedback.

This workshop will cover:

• Framing roles
• Working with one-sidedness in faciltiation
• Deepening dialogue
• Working with the Quantum field

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Workshop 3: Facilitator Awareness

Effective facilitation lies first and foremost with a facilitator’s own personal awareness. An advanced facilitator recognises they are in a relational dialogue and is required to track and anticipate a group’s needs and process along with their own personal process.

Participants will learn how to recognise roles, biases and beliefs within themselves and others. You will learn to use this information, rather than be caught by it, to deepen dialogue between parties with differing interests as a basis for shared understanding, decision making and consensus.

This workshop will develop participant’s capacity to:

• Work with owned and marginalised feelings, impulses and communication
• Work with inner states
• Work on your personal history
• Recognise roles within yourself
• Recognise biases and beliefs
• Follow impuses

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Workshop 4: Working With Heat

This workshop will equip participants to work with conflict providing an understanding of the causes of escalation and de-escalation.

An open group process will be held, enabling participants to apply some of these skills in the heat of polarized debate.

Participants will develop techniques for:

• Triggers for conflict in groups
• Working with hotspots & cool-spots
• Assessing a group’s capacity for heat
• Tracking escalation & de-escalation

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Workshop 5: Working With Power and Rank

The impact of rank and power on organisational, community and team dynamics is rarely discussed, and hence poorly understood. Yet the capacity to use power effectively is dependent on our understanding of the factors shaping our experience of power and that of our staff and colleagues.

This workshop explores ways to:

• Understand diverse sources of rank (stuctural, social, psychological & moral)
• Track your own high and low rank as a facilitator
• Learn to use your rank well
• Work with participants experience of high and low rank

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Workshops will run 9.00am-4.30pm each day.

Participants will be asked to undertake some reading to support their skill development.

Information & Registration

For more information on the program please email or call 03 9077 2163.

If you are interested in this topic please read our blog “History Is Not In The Past“. While you are there, why not make a comment, and add to the discussion?

This program introduces a powerful framework for recognising the emergent potential inherent in organisational visions, challenges, disruption and conflict.  Participants will learn how to identifying and work with the edge – factors that maintain the status quo and serve to limit an organisation, team or individual’s capacity for change.  The program also examines the impact of power and rank dynamics on communication and decision making.

Finally participants are supported to learn about themselves as an instrument of change, appreciating a rich understanding of their own role in team, group and community dynamics.

Overview

The solution to the challenges faced by any group can be found in the signals that emerge in their dialogue or struggle. The skilled leader or facilitator’s role is to know how to follow these signals and assist organisations and communities to understand what is emerging and move forward based on new insight and understandings.

This series of five workshops is designed for leaders, facilitators, coaches, organisational development practitioners and consultants. It introduces the theory and practice of process-oriented facilitation including Worldwork and Deep Democracy, originally developed by Dr Arnold Mindell.

This program combines an introduction to Process Oriented leadership and facilitation with an opportunity for participants to investigate and receive input on case studies from their own organisations and consultancy practice.

Workshop 1 & 2:  THE DYNAMICS OF CHANGE

Leaders, consultants and coaches develop the change capability of individuals, teams and divisions. At times their role is to disturb the status quo in order to effect change. At other times they may support staff to deal with the impacts of unexpected change. In an effort to maintain stability, individuals and organisations tend to resist change, marginalising information critical for their growth and survival.

In this workshop we will explore the concept of collective edges and cultural barriers to change. We will consider the ways organisations, teams, professions and individuals suppress certain characteristics in favour of a static and cohesive identity.  Vitality, momentum and essential capabilities are lost as a consequence. A Process Oriented approach to leadership and facilitation reintegrates this lost potential.

Participants will develop methods for working with the dynamics of change in order to support organisations, teams and communities to find new ways of engaging with old problems.

Workshop 3:  UNDERSTANDING GROUP AND TEAM DYNAMICS

A clear framework for understanding the complex and often confusing interaction between diverse interests in organisations, teams and communities is critical for leaders and consultants alike.

This workshop explores group dynamics and introduces strategies for engaging and working with the diverse roles that exist in organisational, team or stakeholder groups.

Participants will master the art of deepening dialogue between parties with differing interests as a basis for shared understanding, decision making and consensus. Finally you will learn to follow a group’s communication signals in order to recognise the missing elements essential for change.

Workshop 4:  DIVERSITY, RANK AND POWER

Effective leadership is dependent on our capacity to occupy the authority inherent in the leader or facilitator’s role. Failure to adopt the legitimate authority of our roles can create a leadership vacuum. Conversely poor use of power impedes communication, stifles innovation, leads to costly workplace conflict and high staff turnover.

The impact of rank and power on organisational and team dynamics is rarely discussed in leadership circles, and hence poorly understood. Yet the capacity to use power effectively is dependent on our understanding of the factors shaping our experience of power and that of our staff and colleagues. This workshop investigates the often hidden diversity individuals bring to organisational and community life.

Workshop 5:  DESIGNING ORGANISATIONAL INTERVENTIONS

The Dance Between Vision, Issues, Workplace Relationships and Emotions
How can leaders, coaches and facilitators work with multiple dimensions of organisational and community life, including guiding visions, operational challenges, emotional and relationship dimensions? Failure to address any of these dimensions causes change initiatives, dialogue and consultation to stagnate – leading to organisational inertia, frustration and hopelessness.

In this final workshop participants will integrate their learning and refine their application of a process oriented approach to leadership and facilitation.

A range of scenarios from organisational and community contexts will be considered. Participants will design and road-test interventions and strategies for addressing common challenges.

Please contact admin@cleconsulting.com.au to register your interest.

Supervision supports facilitators and coaches to work effectively with their clients by offering a touchstone and new detached vantage point from which to reconsider the systemic and personal facts influencing their perception and choices.  It also plays a key role in helping practitioners to work on their own development, including an appreciation of their own edges and growing frontiers, so that they can show up with clients in a manner which is agile and aware.