Author: agile-to-agility

Pedram Parasmand – The Art and Science of Facilitation

Posted on by agile-to-agility

Pedram Parasmand

The Art and Science of Facilitation
MARCH 1, 2023
TRACK A

2:30 PM to 3:15 PM EST

The Art and Science of Facilitation
Stand out as a masterful facilitator using a unique approach to designing and facilitating transformational workshops.


Facilitation requires a combination of creativity, intuition, and structure.

Yet, most of us who facilitate get away with a ‘winging-it’ approach to designing and delivering workshops. We have a toolkit of methods and exercises, picked up tricks of the trade through trial-and-error, and more than likely relied on our intuition, enthusiasm, or just being good with people.

However, this approach can lead to inconsistent results, feelings of overwhelm and frustration.

You agonise over what goes in and doesn’t go into a workshop. Work hard in sessions because people get lost as to what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. More than likely, you’ve felt rushed or flustered as you run out of time.

To avoid these pitfalls, you need a practical and repeatable process for crafting and facilitating purposeful workshops.

In this talk, Ped draws on his 20+ years of facilitation experience to share a process rooted in the art of storytelling and the science of learning design. He shows you to transform your ‘trial-and-error’ approach into a bulletproof, evidence-based facilitation structure that fully engages your attendees and guides them naturally to their a-ha moments.

Leave the talk with the know-how on facilitating high-value workshops.

     

    About Pedram Parasmand

    Ped brings 20+ years of learning design and facilitation experience in the public, private and charity sectors. He’s delivered bespoke programming to clients such as Google, Netflix, Red Bull, and The British Council. As an ex-Theoretical Physicist who loves systems and frameworks, he developed tools and templates to create a repeatable process to design, develop and facilitate transformational experiences. His methodology blends academic approaches from Instructional Design and Adult Education with practical methods from Design-Thinking, Leadership Development, Systems Coaching and Storytelling. He now supports coaches and consultants in creating high-value workshops that get clients results and has them stand out from the crowd.

    You can connect with Pedram here:

    LinkedIn 

    Martijn van Kesteren – Unleashing Your Facilitation Superpowers

    Posted on by agile-to-agility

    Martijn
    van Kesteren

    Unleashing your facilitation superpowers
    MARCH 1, 2023
    TRACK B

    1:15 PM to 2:15 PM EST

    Unleashing your facilitation superpowers
    How to get the most out of any workshop you facilitate.


    Facilitating workshops can be a challenging task, but with the right tools and techniques, it can also be incredibly rewarding. Join Martijn van Kesteren, a seasoned workshop facilitator with over 20 years of experience, as he shares his insider tips and tricks on how to design the perfect workshop flow, whether it’s virtual or in-person.

    Martijn will guide you through the key considerations in planning a successful workshop, including how to select the right tools, keep your team on track, and make the most of your valuable time together. He will also delve into the art and science of facilitation and explain why intuition and experience play a vital role. Get ready to be inspired and learn from a world-class facilitator as Martijn shares his knowledge and passion for the craft in this engaging and interactive talk. Whether you’re an experienced facilitator or just starting out, you’re sure to take away practical tips that will help you run more effective and impactful workshops.

       

      About Martijn van Kesteren

      Martijn van Kesteren is a seasoned facilitator with over 20 years of experience in leading strategy workshops and creative brainstorming sessions. He started his marketing career at Unilever, where he worked on iconic brands such as Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum, and Lipton. Currently, he is a creative consultant at nlmtd, a boutique consultancy agency based in Amsterdam that helps organizations become future-proof through innovation, strategy, and transformation. As creative consultant, Martijn supports clients in ideation, concept development, and strategy consulting. He is 46 years old and lives with his husband and dachshund in the forest near Utrecht, The Netherlands. Martijn is passionate about sustainability and promoting diversity and inclusion, as he believes that a wide range of perspectives leads to more impactful and innovative outcomes.

      You can connect with Martijn here:

      LinkedIn 

      David Finnegan – The Heart of Facilitation

      Posted on by agile-to-agility

      David Finnegan

      The Heart of Facilitation
      MARCH 1, 2023
      TRACK A

      1:15 PM to 2:15 PM EST

      The Heart of Facilitation
      To highlight the journey, and outcomes of implementing facilitation into your business..


      Imagine for a moment what your business could look like if you and your team could get more done in less time, while feeling energized and inspired rather than stressed and exhausted. It’s not a fantasy; in fact, more companies than ever before are embracing the power of facilitation and the profound effect it can have not just on your bottom line, but also your team’s sense of happiness and fulfilment at work.

      To help you get started, David will share his personal journey to become a master facilitator and workshop designer. While providing you with many of the most important insights he has gained along the way, before revealing the reasons he believes this way of working is so much more effective that what most companies do today.

      You’ll leave with a greater understanding of the impact of running and facilitating workshops, and you’ll be equipped with techniques that you can use to kick off your own facilitation adventures.

         

        About David Finnegan

        David is a Master Facilitator and Workshop Designer, with a background working with Product & Tech companies of all shapes and sizes that spans nearly 15 years. He’s an expert in helping teams effectively collaborate on solving complex challenges, and supports teams in implementing this way of working themselves through training & coaching.

        He’s an expert in innovation, collaboration, and product strategy. Having spent many years working with startups to help them find product market fit, he now focuses on working with larger organizations who want to work more like startups, and have the ambition to dismantle control based processes and embrace trust based ways of working instead.

        You can connect with David here:

        LinkedIn 

        Pepe Nummi – Beyond Brainstorming – Idealogue Method

        Posted on by agile-to-agility

        Pepe Nummi

        Beyond Brainstorming –
        Idealogue Method
        MARCH 1, 2023
        TRACK B

        12:15 PM to 1:00 PM EST

        Beyond Brainstorming – Idealogue Method
        In this session you learn a North European facilitation method called Idealogue.

        The idealogue method is an improved alternative to traditional brainstorming methods and doesn’t just allow for ideas to be created and shared, but also helps facilitate the understanding of shared ideas, creating group consensus.
         

        Traditional brainstorming methods have proven effective in generating and sharing ideas, but often times a person is most concerned with making sure that their ideas are being heard, and understood. Instead of focusing on others, they are focused on making others hear their own ideas, with the result being that they find it challenging to connect their ideas with others and to form a common understanding. Idealogue is a group tool that not only helps people to understand ideas, but to also connect them to other ideas and to reach group consensus on what the best ideas are.

           

          About Pepe Nummi 

          Pepe Nummi from Finland began his leadership career in 1990 and has worked as a facilitator since 1998. Pepe is a facilitation trailblazer. He has served as the inaugural chairman of the Finnish Association of Facilitators, and is a co-founder of Grape People, a facilitation training company. On top of all this, Pepe is the developer of the Idealogue Method, and is the author of The Handbook of Facilitation (2007), The Handbook of Virtual Facilitation (2012), Beyond Brainstorming – Idealogue (2016), The Handbook of Facilitative Leadership (2018) and The Handbook of Professional Facilitation (2021). Over the course of his long career, Pepe has provided facilitation services in over 20 countries and has trained over 15,000 facilitators.

          You can connect with Pepe here:

          LinkedIn 

          Grape People 

          Marsha Acker – How to Read the Room and Change the Outcome

          Posted on by agile-to-agility

          Marsha Acker

          How to Read the Room and
          Change the Outcome
          MARCH 1, 2023
          TRACK A

          12:15 PM to 1:00 PM EST

          How to Read the Room and Change the Outcome
          Invisible group dynamics undermine relationships and performance, being able to see and name the dynamics empowers teams to change the outcome.
          Research consistently demonstrates that team effectiveness is highly dependent upon the quality of the communication between team members. Yet it’s easy to get into the flow of daily work and be really focused on the ‘what’ in our conversations without much attention to the quality of ‘how’ we’re communicating.

          How teams are having (or not having) conversations is a primary contributor to many of the challenges teams face. The structure of the conversation is often the source of conflict and breakdown in the team dynamics.

          How can facilitators unlock the collective intelligence that exists within teams and help them see the structural pattern of their conversations, so they can change it, in order to have the conversations they need to have?

          We’ll explore the use of Structural Dynamics for learning to ‘read the room’ using four elements for all face-to-face communication.

          Outcomes:

          • Learn a language for how to ‘read the room’ and describe the structure of what’s happening in conversations
          • Explore the four elements of all face-to-face communications
          • Learn the benefits of each element and the traps of ‘stuck patterns’
          • Learn techniques that can be used to create more effective conversations

           

          About Marsha Acker

          MARSHA ACKER, CPCC, PCC, CPF, is the host of the Defining Moments of Leadership podcast, the founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, and the author of the groundbreaking book The Art and Science of Facilitation and the just released book – Build Your Model for Leading Change.

          Marsha is known internationally as a facilitator of meaningful conversations, a host of dialogue, and a passionate agilest. She coaches leadership teams in growing their collective leadership and building the capability of achieving true, sustainable behavior change through dialogue.

          You can connect with her here:

          LinkedIn

          Defining Moments of Leadership Podcast

          The Art and Science of Facilitation 

          Build Your Model for Leading Change 

           

          Christopher Bramley – The Tautai of Leading

          Posted on by agile-to-agility

          Christopher Bramley

          The Tautai of Leading – Navigating complex environments together
          January 11, 2023
          TRACK C

          1:15 PM to 2:15 PM EST

          The Tautai of Leading – Navigating complex environments together
          It’s hard to navigate when you’re too close to the sun, but all too easy to forget that we cannot effectively explore and influence a journey unless we are part of it – so how can we pull all these concepts together to help find our way in a meta-complex world?
           

          Without the agents within, a CAS ceases to meaningfully exist. In human terms, we are so much more than mere components set to a task of specialisation in a rigid system, and we know this isn’t how the real world works. The most successful navigators we have known have used the human elements of song and story to evolve and bring entire cultures from one shore to another in a vast, unknown and sometimes dangerous ocean; navigating the shifting waters of complexity can be harder than ever in the modern world. It can be even harder when concepts and ideas seem in turn complex or inaccessible, so how can we all become part of the journey?

          When we have taught ourselves to learn poorly, and wilfully ignore the boundaries and signifiers offered to us by our environment, it’s easy to lose our way. Here, we explore a more abstracted, connected view of many concepts – culture, language, agility, complexity, collaboration, tools, and lenses and scaffolds amongst them – not to provide an answer today, but to see if we can seed change in the way we think about how these things – and each other – are interconnected… and perhaps when and how to use (or not use) them.

          It’s very hard to keep multiple resolutions in our view as we try to find our way, and very easy to focus on only one, but navigating this complex world together – in waters both corporeal and metaphysical – can offer better and more numerous opportunities for success.

           

          About Christopher Bramley

          Chris moonlights as a TEDx and conference speaker, coach, and advisor for c-suite executives and organisations down through to individuals and teams, in complexity, agility, distributed workflow and interactions, and human learning. He writes articles and books in non-fiction and business as well as critically-acclaimed multiple fantasy and sci-fi novels. The value of people and balance is a key focus for strategy and flow explorations, and he has worked across private and public sectors at all strata to inspire people in learning to truly lead through clearer intent and language. He is a storyteller, seeing and exploring patterns and linkages others don’t often see; Chris is atypically autistic (ASD 1/2 and ADHD), and has differences in sensory and emotional input, as well as increased sensitivity in all of them, and works to advocate equitable inclusion, diversity, and health physically and mentally.

          Connect with Christopher Bramley on LinkedIn