In October and November 2016, key members from Integral City’s Community of Practice and Constellation signed on to learn facilitation basics with Ten Directions’  “In This Together” (ITT) online course.

ten-direction-in-this-together

Linda, Alia, Diana Claire, Anne-Marie, Pieter, Marilyn and Kara attended via Zoom from the comfort of their workplace and/or abodes in Surrey BC, Seattle Washington, Ottawa Ontario, Hilversum NL, Amsterdam NL and Durant Oklahoma.

Diane Musho Hamilton, the course teacher, covered 1 topic each week related to effective facilitation. Diane not only shared her experience as mediator, Zen Master and facilitator, she also gave us homework to practice each week’s topic. Over the 9 weeks, we practised:

  1. Giving attention to our intention for facilitating
  2. Listening intently and actively
  3. Expressing our message clearly and congruently
  4. Recognizing the multiple points of view at the table
  5. Questioning to understand
  6. Embracing feeling & emotion to transmute negatives into positives
  7. Leveraging conflict through shared intention
  8. Giving and receiving feedback
  9. Enjoying our facilitator role and relationships

Our Integral City learners added value to the teaching each week by convening on our own Zoom call to share our homework experiences through 3 action research questions:

  1. What did each of us experience in accomplishing the homework?
  2. So What does the topic/homework have to do with Integral City practice or training?
  3. Now What will we do as a result, of our homework experience and sharing?

One big insight gained by the Integral City team was that sharing the homework really brought home the relevance of the course to Integral City practice and even the Human Hive Mind. The next series of blogs will share our value-adding discoveries for each topic.