Authentic Inclusion

Posted on August 27, 2026 by jofacilitator

Inclusion of all those who have a stake in the results of a decision in contributing to the consensus on that decision is an ethical value that undergirds authentic facilitation.  It is often very challenging.  There are many blocks, both unintentional or unrecognized as well as intentional or hidden in systems, that hamper inclusion. 

When the facilitator is open and curious, listens deeply to everyone, observes when people are blocked from participation, and provides ways to address a range of blocks, extraordinary results and commitment can result. 

The following are stories of experiences that taught me how to include all kinds of ways of participating, and the impact of that inclusion.

There’s the story I call the “Jacques Story”, which you will find in another post. (link below) Jacques had some form of communication disability that prevented people from understanding him.  He only communicated with metaphors. Listening through his metaphors to the thinking behind them brought breakthrough into the group planning process and the evolution of the organization.  https://jofacilitator.ca/2015/01/13/inclusion-the-jacques-story/

 In one facilitator training course, one participant was a person who needed to move his body to process information, waving his arms around as he tried to grasp the significance of clustering a group’s brainstormed ideas to create larger ideas, not just sorting them into categories.  His movements were distracting. At the end of the day, he was still confused.  The next morning we brought in a simple picture puzzle, where all the pieces had different patterns and colours.  When he fitted together those very different pieces, the lovely picture that emerged was larger than the sum of the parts but needed every unique piece for its creation. The physical manipulation of the puzzle pieces and the final result allowed him to understand the process of clustering individual ideas to create larger insights.  

One facilitation client was a department which had had a vindictive manager. It now had a new one that encouraged diverse opinions, but some in the group could not yet trust that they would actually be heard and respected. The trauma of being the target of nasty attacks from a person of authority in their workplace created fear, anger, and destructive resistance.  In a brainstorm of blocks to their vision, several small groups wrote cards that were nasty but veiled attacks on management.  No one would admit to having written the cards, so I read them out loud, took them at face value and asked where the group needed to cluster them to help identify a deeper root issue.  The simple act of taking their cards and incorporating them in the process instead of judging the content or just throwing them out started to change the behaviour.  Naming the deeper insight into root issues in each cluster, holding all the wisdom in the cluster beyond the words on the individual cards, increased the experience of being heard. In another session with the group a few months later, everyone participated positively.  The culture of the group had changed to one of trust and collegiality.

A community organized to support people with developmental challenges decided to do a participatory strategic plan.  A number of their supported people had challenges communicating, especially in groups and under time pressure.  One person was autistic and non-verbal. Before the group meeting, the supportive members of the community, who knew their people well and could read what they were thinking, worked with each person individually to discern, check, and record their ideas so that they could be included in the consensus workshop.  As they clustered the cards in the meeting, there was support in the group to make sure that more than one person agreed on where each idea went. A strong consensus developed, and results were powerful.

The Consensus Workshop method is a very visual process, moving cards on a wall around to cluster them together to create larger ideas to discern consensus.  On several different occasions there was a participant in a group that was visually impaired.  Each time I told the individual what we would be doing and asked what support they needed.  Each one had a different strategy to recommend – one needed the cards to be read aloud each time.  Another could hold the emerging clusters in their head and could suggest where a new one went.  Another could see the cards from sitting up very close to the wall. Sharing the basic process and asking each one before the meeting started what would help them participate fully allowed me to adjust the process to include their wisdom.  

Another group had a range of literacy from non-literate to academic reading.  I made sure that each breakout group had at least one respectful literate person who would write the cards for each person in the small group, and hold it up and read it back to make sure they had held each person’s wisdom.  I read each card before asking the whole group where to place the card.  Most people could tell their card from the shape of the writing on it, even though they could not exactly read the words.  

Once in a facilitator training course, there was a participant who had gone to a school with rigid rules and had spent his adult life in the military.  In one of the exercises we were teaching how the setup of a room and the style of the facilitator changes participation. We took out all the tables and chairs and created a chaotic environment for when participants walked in the room. A pushy and demanding facilitator completed the environment.  This event was followed by a reflective conversation. Usually this activity created a lot of fun and intensified the teaching of careful setup. However, for this participant, the chaotic environment and demanding leader was so powerful that he withdrew from all participation for the rest of the day, including the reflective conversation on the experience.  We lost his wisdom. Our learning from that was to be careful with activities that might trigger a trauma response and be ready to respond.    

 I think that being intensely curious about of all the hidden wisdom in the room and being thoughtful and honest in the way you adjust the process to bring it out is a foundation for authentic inclusion, a core value of powerful group process facilitation. 

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Transformation of a Worldview: A Personal Story

Posted on June 22, 2026 by jofacilitator

Dr. Jean Houston

Dr. Jean Houston was a deeply caring and thoughtful person who worked with groups of people to reflect on their own lives and life itself.  She died in May this year, and this post is in memory of the profound influence she had on my life.

I didn’t have a lot to do directly with Jean, like some of my colleagues.  I attended a couple of weekend conferences that she led and participated in one year of her “Mystery School”.  The Mystery School was a series of retreats held over 9 weekends in a year with a break in the summer, and each had a theme.  The theme of each year was the catalyst for presentations, reflection, and activities that allowed profound reflection on one’s own life and life itself. 

The year I attended, 1988, the theme of the Mystery School was Cultures.  This appealed to me because of my study of anthropology, and the fact that just before we came to Canada Wayne and I had lived in 6 cultures in 10 years, mostly in villages where we were working shoulder to shoulder with community people to help them carry out the development they wanted to see in their village or community. We had continually explored what it meant to be a human being in each of those cultures.  

At the first session in January each year, Jean would take time individually with each participant to ask what results they wanted from that year’s activities.  When she asked me, my first response was “to let go of ego self”.  She gently but firmly informed me that I could not just say what I wanted to get rid of, but that I had to say what I wanted to replace it with.  I thought for a while and said “I want to replace it with receptive self.”   Then the sessions began, and my comment receded from my awareness. 

Just before the summer break, Jean announced that the culture we would explore in September was Aboriginal Australian culture.  She noted that she did not know a lot about this culture, and would be working on that over the summer.  This caught my attention, because our family had lived for 2 ½ years in an Australian Aboriginal community, where most of my work was with elders to listen to them and support them in bringing back their traditional culture and teach it to the children in the schools.  Whenever Wayne and I had run into questions about the language and the culture, we had talked with elders about the questions and had done lots of reading and research about cultural patterns and understandings which we verified and refined in our conversations.

Wayne was working that summer with Jean to set up a conference for her to hold in Canada in the fall, and he told her about our (and my particular) experience.  Jean asked if I would do the first lecture on Aboriginal culture.  Wayne told her I would, then worked with me on pulling together what we had learned in order to share it.  In my knowledge, this was the first time that Jean had asked anyone to do the lecture of a session, and I experienced it as a huge honour and responsibility. 

I made a mind map that put land (and particular land forms) at the centre, and then with the mind map showed the Aboriginal understanding of land at the centre of everything and its impact and relationships of everything in Aboriginal life, from rituals and beliefs, to language, to laws governing behaviour, to whom you could speak, to foods you could and couldn’t eat, etc. When the time to do the lecture came, I used the mind map to guide my presentation. 

As I was doing the presentation, suddenly I realized that every single person in the room had something profound, some important wisdom, that they could share with the world, given the kind of invitation, support, and audience that I had been given.  All of a sudden, I became extraordinarily curious to know what each person knew or had experienced, and the wisdom they had that no one knew about. 

By asking me to do her lecture, Jean had pushed my ego so far that it turned my ego inside out, and I became receptive at a level I had never experienced before. 

Those who know me, know that I have been a talker all my life. (I still am.) When I was a child, someone even asked my father if I was born of a talking machine!  In the entire 40 years of my life at that point, no one had ever said that I was a listener.  But within the next two weeks after that event, several clients said to me without prompting that I was a good listener! I found myself continuing to be very curious about the wisdom of every one of the participants in the room.

Becoming intensely curious about what wisdom others had made it possible for me to become a deeper group process facilitator, not just someone who did cute or interesting things with groups or even got good results: someone who could listen to each individual and to the whole group, making sure that everyone was heard and everyone heard others as well.  In this way, the group could create wiser results.

I think that being intensely curious about of all the hidden wisdom in the room is a foundation for authentic inclusion, a core value of powerful group process facilitation. 

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Resolving Destructive Dispute Behaviour

Posted on May 1, 2026 by jofacilitator

It seems to me that this is a time in history when differences in opinion easily escalate into polarization and from that to destructive behaviour. This is not a new pattern, though it seems to be happening more often and with wider implications: at least it is more visible. Perhaps a story of how behaviour like this was resolved in the past is useful.

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A number of years ago, a large school district had recently been created by a merger of smaller boards.  The merged board was having serious problems working together. Board members who had been prominent in their different smaller boards no longer had the power they were used to. Two particular members continually attacked each other verbally, including on live broadcasts of their meetings. The public was fast losing confidence in the board. Other board members were upset about the behaviour but couldn’t get it to stop.

One board member asked me to come in and facilitate a board retreat, with the aim of dealing with the conflict and also tackling a thorny issue. The retreat was held in a remote area, out of the public eye.

The first session, on the first afternoon, went quite well.  They sat around a big table and created a common vision of what they wanted this new school board to be, using the consensus workshop method.   

But immediately afterward, the conflict showed signs of re-emerging, so I was asked to directly address the conflict. 

I dropped my original plans and moved the group to a more comfortable space, with couches and comfortable chairs where they could sit in something approximating a circle.  My intention was to lead a focused conversation on previous events, to reveal the underlying contradictions to the behaviours. (I was aware that the natural human response of coming up with a vision usually leads to surfacing obstacles.)

To surface the objective level, I asked people to recall events that had happened in recent board meetings, and describe them. We got about halfway around the circle before the two board members began arguing with each other and calling each other names, and other board members started to shout, too.  So I basically stomped my foot, made them stop, and said “This is happening again.  Let’s take some time to debrief this event.” 

I asked all the participants except the two to name what they had seen and heard just now in this very event. Then I asked each of the two to say one at a time what they had just heard and seen.  I asked then what upset people about what had happened (the others first, and then the two), and what they were ok with.  For the next question, I took out a marker and started taking notes on a flipchart as we went around the room to answer.  “What might be some of the root causes of this behaviour?” I stressed that this question was looking for something more like the roots of a dandelion than the visible leaves, and that there were no wrong answers.  There was a long list.  Finally they intuitively clustered the list of root causes and named the underlying contradictions behind them. The last question was “What are some things we might we do to deal with these contradictions?”  There were a few answers, but I left them to think about these overnight. 

The evening was the usual kind of evening of a corporate retreat – food and drinks, sitting near a fire in a fireplace….  Nothing overt going on. 

The next morning we did a workshop on ways to solve a particularly thorny issue about equity between the parts of the region that had been caused by the merger.  To my surprise, there was no visible conflict.  When we broke into pairs to brainstorm ideas, the two adversaries actually worked together and came up with some common ideas!  And the results of the workshop were valuable options to solve the issue. 

For many years after that event, there was no publicly visible animosity between board members.  I’m sure there was plenty of disagreement, but the board was able to work together in a healthy way.   

I think the keys to this were ToP methods: the Working Assumptions (which are described in another post), the Consensus Workshop Method that allowed all the voices to be heard and incorporated into the results, and the Focused Conversation Method which allowed people to analyze the behaviour in a thoughtful and respectful manner. 

For more information on ToP methods, look for the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) in your country, or http://ica-associates.ca or https://www.icacan.org/ in Canada.

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Listening as a Leadership Skill

Posted on April 17, 2026 by jofacilitator

A number of current events and posts by colleagues have catalyzed my thinking about leadership. 

As a facilitator, I have experienced a range of situations with clients where leaders thought that leadership was about presenting their own insights and requiring others to follow them. 

Telling, Not Listening

One was a CEO who brought a whole team together from across the country and then started the meeting by telling them they were all incompetent.  The group had been very successful in the past year, according to documented accomplishments, but they retreated from that assessment because he told them they were incompetent.  This affected their willingness to take risks, and the company suffered.

Another was a government department who set up a community consultation saying that they wanted input but immediately told the group what they had already decided.  Someone in the group wrote a card that said “Here we go again…”  and propped it up on the table so all the other participants could see it. Authentic sharing of insights was squelched, and no results came from the session.

From Telling to Listening

One quarter I had three very different clients in quick succession where there were new leaders who had asked for a participatory planning exercise because they were replacing autocratic leaders who had demeaned the insights of their employees.  One was a company, one was a non-profit, and the third was a small university department.  In each of these, a few participants were not only hesitant to participate but also contributed anonymous defiant ideas that were designed to undermine the work of the group – their trust that the leader would actually listen to them had been destroyed by the leader’s predecessor.   In each of these participatory events, facilitation was not easy – the facilitator had to prove that everyone’s ideas were valuable by very strongly demonstrating that the ideas that came forward were heard, and that people were respected.  In two of these, the anonymous defiant ideas in the obstacles workshop were written on cards and no one would own up to them or even answer questions of clarification.  I did not throw the cards out.  I took the words at face value and asked the group where the cards best fit with the clusters that were emerging. The cards were clustered using the hidden wisdom in them, not the surface level defiance. In this way, everyone’s wisdom was respected at a deep level.    

Follow-up sessions with these groups demonstrated that trust in the new leadership was gradually increasing as a result of the facilitated events.  In each of these situations, leadership was ineffective until the leaders began to listen to the wisdom of their followers. 

Listening as Leaders in the Political Realm

I was a child in Iowa in the 1950’s, when Iowa had precinct caucuses for political parties instead of primary elections. In these caucuses at that time, neighbours gathered together to discuss issues and values and decide on the “planks” of the party “platform”, as well as choosing someone to represent their decisions at the next higher level of the party, the county party convention. (When I was about 9 years old, the caucus in our precinct was held in our family living room – I remember it clearly because I was helping serve coffee and spilled some very hot coffee on myself, creating an indelible memory.)   

The representative group at the county level looked at the recommendations from the precincts, put together the party platform at the county level, and selected representatives to take their recommendations to the state conference. The same process happened at the state and national levels. Candidates were chosen at each level who would support the issues and values that arose from the people.  The grassroots wisdom percolated upward from local neighbours to the national level.  My father really loved this grassroots process.

Several years ago, there were a number of private groups in Canada who sponsored Syrian refugees during the civil war there.  At a local meeting about the issues of sponsoring refugees, the local member of Parliament was listed as a speaker.  Instead of speaking, he asked the group, mostly people who were part of sponsor groups, for their reflections on the process and how government could support them.  People came up with many suggestions. I was astounded – it is seldom that one hears a politician asking questions and listening intently to the answers. He was re-elected several times.  

Recently in Toronto there was a by-election for Parliament. A candidate had formerly been a member of the provincial legislature who had a reputation for really listening to her constituents’ needs and standing up for them. Although she had changed her party affiliation to run for this new office, she won a resounding majority as a member of Parliament.

And I am hearing very positive stories of a candidate for Congress in Iowa who has built a reputation for overcoming great obstacles to listen to ordinary people of all stripes about their concerns and has explained his positions on issues by relating what local people have said.     

Effects of Listening to Those You Lead

The first 40 years of my life, I was known as a talker – once someone asked my father if I had been born of a talking machine! I hid an inner insecurity with acting as if I knew all the answers. I found myself isolated as a result. It took a significant life event just before my 40th birthday for me to discover that I was deeply curious about other people’s stories, experiences, and wisdom. That was a catalyst for my career as a facilitative leader. 

As individuals, we see one facet of the whole reality.  When we are curious, ask open questions and listen to the answers from a wide variety of people who have a stake in the results, we gain a variety of grounded, realistic perspectives.  If we don’t agree with the answers, asking questions that help someone articulate why they have come up with their answers helps us (as well as that person) to understand the bigger picture and make wiser decisions. 

Really listening gains respect from those you are listening to.  That respect allows creativity and teamwork to flourish.  That in turn makes you and your team more productive.

The incorporation of more perspectives and life experience from a variety of people creates commitment and makes plans more effective.

And your increased productivity and effectiveness makes you more valuable, so that you are more likely to keep your job, get a promotion, or even get elected!

(And of course, given the topic of this post, I invite you to share your perspectives on this in the comments so that all of us can continue to learn from each other!)

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A First Step in My Facilitation Journey

Posted on April 3, 2026 by jofacilitator

Someone asked me this question:  If a career as a facilitator is lifelong, when did you decide you wanted to become a facilitator?

When I started facilitating, there was no profession called facilitation.  I started out as a teacher. I had wanted to be a teacher ever since I taught my sister how to read when she was four years old and I was 6. My university education was focused on Education and Anthropology.

My first experience facilitating, although I didn’t call it that at the time, was when I was teaching music to black kids in an inner-city school in 1972.  I was 22 years old, a white farm girl, and it was my third year of teaching.  The students were ages 12-15, bigger than I was, and they did not want to be in school. Many couldn’t read in Grade 7 or 8, although they could copy off the blackboard.  I wanted to teach reading, but the education system assigned me to teach music. 

So, copying a colleague in another school, I did a life planning exercise with the students on the first day of class that asked them questions. I told them that this was a personal exercise, and they wouldn’t have to share anything except the answer to the last question. I asked them each to take a sheet of paper, write their name at the top, and how old they were.  Then I asked them to write how old they would be in 10 years, which for them was the age of an adult.  Then I asked, “What do you want to be or be doing when you are that age?”  I emphasized that this was what they wanted to be, not what someone else wanted them to be.  The answers ranged from beauty operator to professional football player. 

Then I asked them, “What are 10 things you need to do to get where you want to be in 10 years?”  I gave some examples and helped those who wanted help. Clearly passing Grade 8, which required passing a 6th grade reading test, was one of the foundational things they needed to get to wherever they wanted to be.  

Then I asked “What are 10 things you need to do in the next year to get to where you want to be in 10 years?” Again, I gave examples if they wanted help.

The final question was “What do you need from my class, to get to where you want to be in 10 years?” This was the only question where they had to share their answers. I went around the class and each person had to say what they needed from my class. I wrote these on the blackboard, and had someone copy these down.

Then I took all these notes home (I had 7 classes of 30 kids every day) and looked for the patterns of what they wanted.  I merged that with what the curriculum said (which was luckily very vague), and what I knew they needed, which was to a) learn to read and b) to believe in themselves.

From this together we created a Black Music History class.  We started with African history and African music, then went through gospel, blues, jazz, and rock music. (At that point I did not know about Caribbean music, and hiphop and rap had not yet evolved, or I would have used those as well.) We listened to various songs, while looking at the lyrics. I played my guitar when appropriate, and we sang.

I taught them reading through the words of the songs, and to believe in themselves through learning their own history.  It was amazing, and all of us learned so much! I had very few discipline problems with the kids that year. They even brought written music for me to share with everyone.

My discovery from this experience was that asking people for their wisdom and really listening is a very powerful tool, and not only does it come up with powerful solutions, but the facilitator is learning from each encounter as well.  I also learned that connecting lessons with students’ life needs is very important for success, both in the classroom and for students personal goals. 

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Using the Focused Conversation Method with Dots to Prioritize Consensus Workshop Results

Posted on March 26, 2026 by jofacilitator

I’m not sure when I discovered this process based on the Focused Conversation Method, but it allows thinking through a number of perspectives on priorities at different levels to discover which item is the biggest priority overall. Instead of just gut level reactions to “What is our biggest priority?” participants have a chance to think through and record different perspectives on priorities, which makes the conversation on priorities as the whole group more accurate. The questions can be adapted, as can the number of dots (as long as you have enough different colours).

Give each person 4 dots:  one each of red, yellow, blue, green.

Looking at the results of a Consensus Workshop Method (the names of the clusters)

O.  Read the names of the clusters out loud

R.  Each person put a red dot on the one you are most passionate about.

I. Each person put a yellow dot on the one you think is easiest to do. (or this could be the one that has to be done so the others can happen)

 I. Each person put a green dot on the one that would cost the least.

 I. Each person put a blue dot on the one that would have the most positive impact.

 D.  Look at the whole picture of dots and do a quick reflection on the whole picture:

Whole Group Together:

 O.  Where do you see a big concentration of dots?

Which of these has the most different colours of dots? (clues to priority from different perspectives)

What questions of clarification do you have? (i.e. ask the person who did it what was their thinking behind where they put a dot)

R. What surprises you here?

I. What insights do you see here about what we see as priority?

Which of these are clearly low priority (few dots)?

Which of these are clearly highest priority? (Can rank them from highest to lowest if you like)  

D. Given their priority, which of these are we committed to working on?

(If you are interested in group facilitation tools that have a deep theoretical base and are grounded in years of real-life experience with groups all over the planet, search for ToP facilitation, or the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) in your area. In Canada, it is ICA Associates, Inc., http://ica-associates.ca , a company related to the not-for-profit ICA Canada (The Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs) http://icacan.org .)

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ORID Thinking to Address a Facilitation Emergency:  A Participant Who Tried to Take Over a Meeting

Posted on March 12, 2026 by jofacilitator

I was facilitating the first meeting of a steering committee for a proposed province-wide public consultation on a painful and difficult topic involving abuse. 

My colleague and I had worked hard to find a wide range of participants who all had a good deal of wisdom on how to deal with the topic and had a stake in the results of the conference.  Most of these participants were service providers, not necessarily those who were personally affected, but who cared deeply about those where were.  Survivors were reluctant to be identified publicly.

One woman who insisted on participating in the steering committee had a reputation for obstructing any meeting on the topic in nasty and very personal attacks, including staging very public walkouts that had scuttled any work on the topic.

I tried to make sure her views were heard, as well as everyone else’s ideas.  

We had been working for two days and were getting very close to the time we had to finish so that participants could catch planes and other public transportation to get home. We were in the midst of a brainstorm to articulate the way the conference should address the issue, but I had been told that I could not use the consensus workshop method with cards, so I was using the flipchart method which presents challenges in showing common patterns among the ideas.   

The process bogged down, and suddenly she stood up and declared, “I refuse to go on until you all admit I have the only right to an opinion.”

The group froze.  At the front of the room, I noted in my head the words she had said. I noted the background information I knew about her.

Then I noted my reaction – a crouched defensive posture; and the reaction of the group – everyone looked down and tried to become invisible. 

First I thought about why I had reacted in this way:  I admitted to myself that her behaviour was threatening my right to lead the group, which also challenged my self-story of service. Then I thought about why this might have happened and realized that the group, afraid of attacks from her, had abdicated taking responsibility for her behaviour in the group, and left it to me to handle her for the whole meeting to this point. 

So I thought about possible responses.  Should I stand up to her and emphasize that everyone had a valid opinion?  The consequences of that would likely be that she would then focus her attack on me personally, and I would not be able to facilitate the group. The whole group really needed to take responsibility for the situation.  How might I get them to do that?

Intuitively, I pulled my chair over to the side of the table leaving the front of the room empty. I silently projected the question that the group needed to ask into the middle of the room. After a few minutes someone asked the question of her: “Why do you have the only right to an opinion on this topic?”  She answered, “Because I am the only advocate in this room who speaks for the survivors”.  She had a valid point hidden behind her behaviour.  My co-facilitator and I had not been able to find survivors who would come out publicly to be on the steering committee to represent themselves.

Participants in the group began to speak up: “I know a couple of people that I can ask who will probably be willing to be a part of the steering committee…”  Others volunteered to ask others that they knew. 

Finally the group closed the meeting.

In the next meeting, survivors were present.  Because the group had been unable to find the patterns in their brainstorm, my colleague and I had taken all the individual ideas from the first meeting, clustered them using our best understanding of their meaning by the people who had said them, and named the clusters. We shared the results with the whole group.

The woman who had caused the situation turned to her friend and said, “We don’t need to be here.  They’ve heard us.”  For the rest of the steering committee meetings she participated positively. 

When the actual conference of a hundred people was held, her old behaviour re-occurred. She invented a reason and tried to stage a walkout.  Survivors stood up and said “You don’t speak for us.  We speak for ourselves, and we want to finish this consultation with results.”

The consultation was a success. Afterward I heard that people’s lives were changed positively because of their participation in the conference. 

Note that my silent thinking process to address the issue in the steering committee followed ORID.  It was not a focused conversation. 

If you want to know more about the roots and history of ORID, contact the ICA in your country or http://ica-associates.ca ORID is also explained in depth in The Art of Focused Conversation, Second Edition, and Getting to the Bottom of ToP.

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Focused Conversation On Current Events with One or a Few Others (Or with Self)

Posted on February 25, 2026 by jofacilitator

This conversation was catalyzed by a conversation with a couple of other ToP facilitators in this month’s ToP Community of Practice meeting about how in current times it is challenging to have conversations about anything because people cannot agree on whether something is objective data or not. Arguments break out before a conversation can even start. The question was how to have these important conversations to begin to address polarization. 

The conversation was also triggered by reflection on a set of “kitchen table” conversations I posted here on March 23, 2025.  I decided that there needed to be an update on these conversations given what has happened in the past year.  

I have written this for a small group, but it is equally helpful for a conversation with one’s self.

Preparation: Find an article or a short video clip for the tangible beginning point. For this conversation to work, it is very important that the starting point is something brief and on topic that everyone in the group can see or hear.

It is important to start with the Working Assumptions to create a space where people can listen to each other’s answers before reacting to them.  (See post from Feb. 5, 2026)

Rational Aim:  To discern the meaning of current events or posts. (Consensus is not necessary.

Experiential Aim: To decrease anxiety and to ground external reports in real life

Opening:  Tangible Beginning Point:

We will start with an article (or a short video clip) from the news. Take a few minutes to read or watch it.

Objective Level: What is a word or phrase you saw in this article (Or saw or heard in this clip)? 

Just quote the word or phrase you actually saw or heard.  

Somebody else — a different one that you actually saw or heard?

Reflective Level:  What is a personal experience you have had of this or a situation like this — not what others say or tell you, but your own experience.

Someone else – your own personal experience?

What is your gut level reaction to the situation?

Someone else?

Interpretive Level: Why do you think is behind your reaction? Or Why do you think you reacted this way?

Someone else?

What historical events might help us understand this event?

What might be the significance (or meaning, or impact) of this event from your perspective?  Short term?  Long term?

Someone else?

Decisional Level: What might we do to respond to this event? Personally?  As a group?

Someone else?

Closing: Thank you for this opportunity to discuss a tough topic.

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Facilitating Diversity

Posted on February 19, 2026 by jofacilitator

(Photo from the front cover of The Art of Focused Conversation, Second Edition)

This week in February 2026 marked significant religious events in several different traditions. Lunar New Year, the beginning of Ramadan, and Ash Wednesday all happened within 2 days. And within a month, there will be Purim and Nowruz, followed closely by Easter. This led me to a reflection on facilitating diversity.

I grew up in a community where the ethnic differences (and accompanying ancient prejudices) were between the Swedes, the Danes, and the Norwegians, all immigrants or first-generation Americans. It wasn’t until I was grown that I knew people of many backgrounds. Then our family was assigned for 10 years to work doing participatory development in 5 cultures on different continents. We listened to the wisdom of ordinary people from each of the cultures as we facilitated participatory planning and worked shoulder to shoulder with community members in planning and carrying out appropriate development led by them. Then since we moved to Canada, I have had the privilege of working with many different cultural groups and indigenous communities across the nation. In all of these settings, my primary role has been that of group process facilitator, one who asks questions and listens, and learning what it means to do this across differences.

One of the things I have learned is that we are all human beings. None of us, and no one culture, has all the answers, but we all have insights into what it means to be human. We all have insights into what we need to live fulfilled lives.

Someone asked me the other day what we can do these days to build the economic and political structures that we human beings need in this world. My answers to this, not complete answers but starting ones, were that we can first be kind, generous, respectful, and supportive to people in our local community, wherever and whoever they are. That is a foundation. The second is that facilitating groups to listen to each others’ wisdom and to come up with common solutions is a doorway to creating human solutions to profound underlying challenges.

Years ago, I was facilitating a workshop at a conference of multi-cultural organizations in Ontario, to demonstrate some practical tools of facilitation. I had made a point of sharing my “working assumptions” for facilitating groups, which include “Everyone has wisdom” and “We need everyone’s wisdom for the wisest result”. About 20 adults, representing a good cross-section of the world, were actively participating in envisioning what they wanted our multicultural society to look like, brainstorming and sharing their ideas on cards on the wall. My youngest son, then about 7 years old, had accompanied me as it was a Saturday and I hadn’t been able to find child care. He was quietly playing with his Legos in the back corner. Suddenly, one of the participants said, pointing at my son, “What does he think? After all, it’s the next generation who will benefit and continue this!”

I called out, “Tim, what do you want our multicultural society to look like in 5 years?” He thought for a moment, then said, “Can I have three colours of markers?” I said, “Sure”and handed them to him. He took a card and drew 3 stick figures of different colours dancing together.

The card went up on the wall and clustered with all the cards that said that we would be working and playing together in our multicultural society.

We were all astounded that a child’s spontaneous non-verbal contribution could add richness to the product of the adults, although in retrospect, we shouldn’t have been surprised.

We are the ones who can shape the future. And group process facilitation is a profession that has matured in time to help us do that with the wisdom of all.

What do you want to see in our world in 10 years? What can you and we do to help bring that about?

(If you are interested in group facilitation tools that have a deep theoretical base and are grounded in years of real-life experience with groups all over the planet, search for ToP facilitation, or the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) in your area. In Canada, it is ICA Associates, Inc., http://ica-associates.ca , a company related to the not-for-profit ICA Canada (The Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs) http://icacan.org .)

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My Working Assumptions as a Facilitator

Posted on February 5, 2026 by jofacilitator

I have recently read reflections by several facilitators on group norms, facilitator neutrality, and “facilitation as manipulation”. I think that this is an important topic, especially in these times.

Thirty-two years ago a group of people (I was a part of it) began the International Association of Facilitators to separate the role of a group meeting leader (a consultant or content provider) who has knowledge or wisdom to present to a group, and the role of a group meeting leader (a facilitator) who has questions and process to help a group discover and create its own knowledge and wisdom. The role of a meeting leader who led with questions and process was barely known in the western world, and certainly not separated clearly. So it was necessary to bring attention and professionalism to the role.

These two roles are on opposite ends of a continuum, and there are roles that contain elements of both, such as a facilitative trainer who shares content but guides the group to discover how it relates to them. However, it is still a challenge for a group leader to understand that being in front of the room doesn’t mean that you have to know and tell people something, and for the group to understand that it is safe to say what they know.

My experience is that when you ask people for their wisdom, and you really listen, they think YOU are wise. And of course when you ask people for their wisdom, and you really listen, you gain more wisdom and get more wise!

The following describes how I begin meetings that I facilitate, to rehearse for my self and make clear to the group that my role is that of a facilitator.

Edited from original post on this blog from February 23, 2015

In the 1990’s, I had a client gig that I knew was going to be a challenging one.  Their director had spent 3 years strategically building consensus that they should have a consensus-building workshop!  So I decided that I needed to think through some ground rules to start with.  Now I have always hated ground rules.  They generally come to me as “thou shalt not”s, all negative energy about what you shouldn’t do. Very de-energizing.

So I created something that at first I called “Ground Rules”.  And then I realized that they were not rules at all — they were presuppositions — assumptions that I was making and expected the group to make  in order to work together productively.  But who wants a 5-syllable word at the top of a flipchart to start the day?  So I named them “Working Assumptions”. I have used them ever since with most groups. I write a cryptic form of them on a flipchart (like the image above or the bold type below) and talk through a description of them with the group (in parentheses below).

Working Assumptions

  1. Everyone has wisdom. (This doesn’t mean everything that everyone says is wise. It means that behind what they say is wisdom, and we will listen for it.)
  2. We need everyone’s wisdom for the wisest result. (In the same way that a diamond is more valuable when it is cut with more facets, what we come up with will be more valuable when we have illuminated more facets of what we are working with — we all come from different perspectives — some are near each other, some opposing sides, others in a totally different plane from the others, like the facets of a diamond.)
  3. There are no wrong answers. (This doesn’t mean we agree with everything — I have never been in a room where everyone agreed — even if I’m the only one in the room!  Also, see number 1 — behind what may seem on the surface as a wrong answer — and I have heard some that were positively evil on the surface — there is wisdom, and that is what we will listen for. The corollary, of course, is that there are no right answers, only the best we can come up with given our limitations.)
  4. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (A cliche, yes, but it points to consensus as creating a larger answer that is not identical to any one view, but includes the wisdom of many. I think of compromise as smaller than the sum of its parts, consensus as larger. Like a puzzle picture, which is the sum of the puzzle pieces and their relationships. All puzzle pieces are included, or there is a hole. I learned recently that Aristotle came up with this phrase.)
  5. Everyone will hear others and be heard. (This doesn’t mean that everyone has to talk all the time — then nobody would be heard. It means listening to others as well as making sure your wisdom is on the table.)

I’ve recently concluded that Aretha Franklin would probably summarize the whole list with “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.”

I have never had a group reject these working assumptions altogether. Someone in the very first group, however, did differ with the 3rd one.  As soon as I said “There are no wrong answers”, a lady at the back of the room pounded on the table and shouted “There are too wrong answers!”  And I thought really, really fast and replied, “And that’s not a wrong answer either!”  Everybody laughed. “There are sometimes wrong answers on the surface, but it is the wisdom under them that we are listening for.”   The group had a great retreat and listened to each other for maybe the first time in their history.

For number 4, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” I have had various people try to make this more clear.  Tim, one of my Cree trainees once said, “You know, it’s like a band.  Each instrument — the guitar, the bass, the drums — makes a good sound on its own.  But when you put them together, the music they create is greater than any one of them could come up with on their own.”  I’ve used his analogy ever since and get lots of nods of understanding.

In order to carry these out, I “hang my opinions on the doorknob” to detach myself from them, so that I am open to hearing the group. If something comes up where I have an opinion or some knowledge that might be useful to the group, I move to another part of the room, tell the group I am taking my “facilitator hat” off for a bit, and make my suggestion. Then I put my “facilitator hat” back on, and move back to the facilitator’s place in the room and ask “Where do we go from here?”

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