For IAF Singapore Chapter, the final event to celebrate Facilitation Week 2024 rounded up this morning with a solid, 3-hour session by Douglas O’Louglin of The Dao of Learning on Working, Facilitating and Dancing with Change.
Earlier in the week there were 3 other events held on weekday evenings:
- Anne Yeo, MadMum shared Experiential Facilitation @Play;
- Jerlyn Tan, Change@Werk shared Unlock Your Potential: The Journey to be A Professional Facilitator
- Benjamin Aw (The Octalysis Group), Gerald Wong (Oopa! Consulting), Loh Teck Kwang (Pareto Solutions,), and Shoba Chandran (The Innovation Matrix) led the Hybrid Experiment: Creating Collaborative Relationships with Clients
All four sessions were facilitative to enable participants to experience facilitation first hand. They were not training workshops. “By-products” of well facilitated sessions for participants are a deep sense of inclusivity, making friends easily, learning together, just to name a few and I believe these were all achieved.
A poignant moment came up for me as I sat outside the seminar room this morning, penning my closing note to thank Douglas. I met Douglas more than 20 years ago as a budding HR Development professional doing training delivery. Now years later and still delivering training, my scope has expanded to include working more in change and organisation development projects. This was mainly because of IAF which “named” the skill set that I admired very much in Douglas – process facilitation.
From this morning’s workshop, I could see how skilfully he applied some of the IAF Core Facilitator Competencies of C: Create & Sustain a Participatory Environment and D: Guide Group to Appropriate and Useful Outcomes. Less obvious but present throughout his delivery was how he modelled a positive professional process facilitator attitude (Competency F). He was non-judgmental, inclusive, accepting of diverse views, curious, neutral in spirit and words, and so much more. As I re-read my note, I felt blessed that my first encounter with Douglas almost 30 years ago has cultivated infinite ways that developed me into a more confident HR Development professional who strives to enable powerful change which is at the heart of IAF and facilitation