Workshops
I love offering workshops on communication, supportive listening, and interpersonal and group facilitation. Interpersonal facilitation is the art of supporting one or more people in an emotional and/or communication process. Interpersonal facilitation skills are a building block of group facilitation skills, because within any group, interpersonal dynamics can surface and become important. I value sharing what I’ve learned and supporting others in building skills because I think we need these skills to live and work effectively together.
Here are examples of workshops that I’ve facilitated. I can also craft more specialized workshops for particular situations.
- Attuned Listening
- Away from Binaries: Making NonViolent Communication More Effective and Inclusive
- Constructively and Kindly Engaging in Conflict
- Exiting Power Struggle in Relationships
- Foundations of Facilitating Groups
- Foundations of Interpersonal Facilitation
- Supportive Listening and Intro to Peer Support
In all cases, we start with an intake conversation, in which I want to understand your goals and evaluate together whether or not I feel qualified and able to support those goals. If we both want to proceed, then we can set up a plan to move forward.
Here’s an example of how I like to introduce and set the container for each workshop.
Descriptions of a few example workshops:
When a partner, friend, colleague, or child is upset, how can we respond if we want to welcome and support them sharing with us?
The goal of this workshop is to explore what it means to listen both deeply and functionally in order to support another person vulnerably sharing their experience and feelings. We will explore/practice:
– Noticing what a person may need to feel connected with the listener
– Refraining from alienating responses or frozen silence
– Softening the space and making it easier to share
– Following and supporting the flow of the other person’s process
How can we more clearly explore and express what we want and why? How can we help someone else be more clear when we’re confused by what they’re saying?
The goal of this workshop is to widen our options for asking for what we want and seeking solutions that work for us and our conversation partner. It will give you a chance to practice:
– Moving along a continuum from abstract aims/desires to tangible approaches to pursuing those aims
– Finding the sweet spot in that continuum from which to start problem solving
– Asking what and how questions that increase clarity
– For people familiar with Non-Violent Communication, how to talk about needs in a non-alienating way
Supporting Family, Friends, and Co-Workers:
When we see that a conversation going poorly, what can we do to help?
– Our standing to support someone
– Multipartiality: how to be non-exclusively supportive to each party
– Self-connection, empowerment, expression, and reception
– Signs that suggest support would be helpful
– Facilitative movements
Foundations of Facilitating Meetings
If you’re asked to facilitate a meeting and things seem to be going off track, or you’re participating in a meeting and it’s going poorly, what can you do?
This workshop aims to increase our ability to notice how conversations with two or more participants can run afoul and what a facilitator or 3rd party can do to help the participants engage constructively. We will work with:
– Purpose-orientation as the core of facilitation
– Example purposes and types of facilitation
– Facilitator responsibilities
– Some common things to avoid, such as false container promises
– Standing and briefly facilitating as a participant
– Facilitator tools and movements