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  • 🎙️FS84 - Dealing with disruptive behaviours, with Alan Heckman

    🎙️FS84 - Dealing with disruptive behaviours, with Alan Heckman
    2026/08/07
    In today's episode, Umah welcomes facilitator Alan Heckman to share practical ways to handle disruptive behaviours in groups, drawing on his IAF England and Wales conference workshop and his background with ICA training. They talk about: Common challenges, from subtle withdrawal to over-participation to barbed comments Mango's in facilitation!Setting informal norms and tools for helping people feel heard while keeping the process moving. The facilitator personaAddressing hierarchy by depersonalising ideasUsing the group to redirect off-topic derailments. Quote highlights "The very first thing that I say is, 'Hi, my name is Alan. I'm a group facilitator. This is what I think a group facilitator is.'""What you need is not for the person to stop talking, usually. What you need is to make them a little bit more of a process-aware participant.""Usually, they're concerned about something important, something that they aren't feeling heard about or that they love or think is really critical... They keep talking because they fear it won't come out in the final result." "If somebody steps up and is being angry or disruptive...you might try asking them...'Can I ask you a question?' followed by 'What is it that would have to take place for you to find this process worth engaging with?'" Links Today's guest - Alan Heckman: Facilitator and Facilitation Trainer Alan's website: www.alanheckman.co.uk Alan's Email: alan@alanheckman.co.uk Alan's Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/alanheckman For more information on the courses Alan runs, and to learn more about ICA:UK: www.ica-uk.org.uk/courses Today's host: Umah: Change and Transformation Advisor and Facilitator https://www.linkedin.com/in/umah To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-ew.co.uk 🌐https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-ew.co.uk 🌐https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales Transcript Umah: Hello, and welcome to Facilitation Stories. This podcast is brought to you by the England & Wales Chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Umah, and today, we're going to hear about dealing with disruptive behaviours. This year at the IAF England & Wales Conference, I had the privilege of attending Alan Heckman's workshop on dealing with disruptive behaviours. His insights into managing group dynamics were both enlightening and practical. Alan is a seasoned facilitator with over 20 years of experience in designing participatory processes and events, particularly in the public and charitable sectors. He's known for fostering genuine engagement where every voice contributes effectively towards decisions that everyone commits to. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Alan Heckman to our podcast. Welcome, Alan. Alan: Hello, Umah. Thank you so much for having me. Umah: Alan, your session at the IAF conference was really insightful. Could you share with our listeners a little bit about the work that you do and what brought you to facilitation as a career? Alan: So I'm unusual in the field of facilitation in that I was doing it from a relatively young age. I took a year out of university when I was 20 to do a year-long volunteer internship with the ICA in Phoenix, Arizona. Many of your listeners might already know that ICA is a community organization deeply involved in participatory practice, and was helpful, among other things, in founding the IAF, but also in setting facilitation as a field and in taking participatory approaches and running trainings in facilitation as well. So from that internship in, a long time ago, I had various roles that were related to participation and facilitation. I haven't been a full-time facilitator ever since. But I did move into independent practice as a freelance facilitator in 2015, which is now 11 years ago. So I've been doing this for quite a long time. Umah: Thank you. That's really interesting to know about the background and the connection with ICA and IAF as well. Alan: It is interesting. ICA probably doesn't have as good of a profile or as big of a profile as perhaps it should, but it is really interesting. Umah: At the conference, in your presentation, you spoke about different behaviours and I just wondered if you could share maybe a few of the common ones that you've encountered and how you handled them. Alan: Absolutely. So I run these two-day group facilitation methods courses through the ICA here in the UK, and I love running those training courses. And by far, the most common question I get on those training courses is some version of, "what do you do when it all goes wrong?" What do you do when things go pear-shaped? So that thing that you saw at the IAF was really a development from my set of answers to that question. ...
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    30 分
  • FS83 - Facilitation as a super skill with Robert Cserti

    FS83 - Facilitation as a super skill with Robert Cserti
    2026/07/17
    In todays episode Sam is joined by Robert Cserti, who traces his path from a single transformative team building workshop nearly 20 years ago to co-founding SessionLab in 2013 as a side project (built during evenings and weekends while he consulted and his co-founder did a PhD) that grew into a company helping facilitators design and deliver better workshops. The conversation centers on facilitation's rising status from a "soft skill" to a strategic, organisation-wide capability tied to empowerment and employee engagement and on Robert's own philosophy of intentional process design, handling reluctant groups, and the blurry line between being a facilitator and being a participant/stakeholder in the room. They talk about: Facilitation is becoming a "super skill." Organizations increasingly treat it as a core leadership and organisational competency, not just a nice-to-have for running meetings.Empowerment is the underlying goal. Good facilitation creates participative environments where people feel heard and have real input into decisions this is a cultural shift, not a one-off event.Scaling facilitation takes infrastructure. Beyond training individuals, organisations need central "facilitation hubs," shared tools/templates, and a critical mass of skilled people. Passion and "the fun-dar" sustain long, hard build processes. Both Robert and Sam agree that enjoying the work is what carries you through the grind of building something over yearsHandling unwilling participants requires listening first. When a group doesn't want to be there, the fix is giving them space to voice frustrations, then collectively finding the overlap between the sponsor's goals and the group's actual concerns. Quote highlights "I'm seeing that it's becoming one of the future super skills at workplaces that if you can facilitate as a manager, as a leader as a team member, it just opens so many doors for you because you can actually help teams to work effectively and achieve their goals." "We were organising a large event and a person came who was called a trainer and then a lot later I understand that what actually we had was not training. it was pure process facilitation to help our team align and really understand each other better, build bonds, flesh out potential friction points and build trust while we did hands-on work together." Links Todays guest: Robert Cserti - Co-Founder SessionLab https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertcserti/ https://www.sessionlab.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/trainedon/posts/?feedView=all https://www.instagram.com/sessionlab/ https://www.youtube.com/@TrainedOn Todays host: Sam Moon: Community Facilitator. Director of Sam Moon Facilitation Ltd www.linkedin.com/in/theboymoon123 To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-ew.co.uk 🌐https://iaf-members.org/site/chapters/england-wales Sam: Hello, and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as the IAF. My name is Sam Moon, and my guest today is Robert Cserti. Co-founder of SessionLab, Robert's first encounter with facilitation happened nearly two decades ago, where he was deeply inspired by how powerful a well-designed and facilitated workshop can be to shift the way people think and work together. Over the next few years, that hands-on experience as a facilitator planted the seed for SessionLab. Robert found himself running into the same frustrations. The tools available just don't support the real creative and logistical work behind designing great sessions. So in 2013, he and his co-founder, Philip Kish started building something better. For several years, it's a side project which eventually turned into a full business to help individual facilitators design better workshops and organizations scale facilitation and so much more that I'm sure we're likely to noodle on today. So welcome, Robert, and to get us started and add your own flavour to my introduction, what in your world of facilitation is making you smile? Robert: First of all, thanks so much for that intro Sam, its a pleasure to be here Sam: welcome. Great for you to be here. Robert: And so what is making me smile in the world of facilitation? I think what is really nice to see is that facilitation as a skill is getting more recognized in all sorts and sizes of organisations. And my background is that I started as a facilitator and then as you mentioned we saw a need how we could help facilitators. And then if I look back especially as we've worked with a bunch of facilitators at Session Lab, is that more and more large companies as well recognise that facilitation is an important skill to invest in as, and not just as a personal skill, but as an organizational skill. So, with all the rapid transformation that happens at workplaces with AI changing how various jobs are...
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    25 分
  • 🎙️FS82 - Facilitating in communities with Jeffrey Marr

    🎙️FS82 - Facilitating in communities with Jeffrey Marr
    2026/06/07
    In today's episode, Umah is joined by Jeff Marr, founder of The Practical Philosophy Club, to unpack the unique art of community facilitation and what it takes to design unstructured, safe spaces for deep, depolarising conversation. Moving away from top-down corporate agendas, Jeff explores how his grassroots, peer-led facilitation model grew from a casual living room meetup in Mexico into a global network hosting over 800 people a week across 28 countries. They talk about: The power of the introduction and why the first few minutes are the facilitator's most critical tool for setting guidelines on airtime, monologue-busting, and vulnerability The "jam session" approach to facilitation, shifting the practitioner's role from a rigid authority figure to a light touch that trusts adults to self-moderate and navigate their own dialogue Holding space for ideological friction and practical techniques to de-escalate heated moments, calm group triggers, and help people sit with constructive discomfortThe spectrum of group dynamics, from managing large groups by scaling into small, co-facilitated tables, to knowing when to let a little healthy chaos ride. Quote highlights "I think that's one of our main issues in society is that we have these echo chambers that no one's breaking out of, and our algorithms are pushing us to go further into it." "...you want to have a strong frame of reality and a sense of confidence in yourself, so that you can hear." "We've had several people who, we could call them say problematic, right? Like a little bit quick to anger easily triggered these type of things. And I have seen them blossom... they're able to hear all these opinions without getting triggered anymore so it's been beautiful to see that." Links Today's guest: Jeffery Marr — Practical Philosophy Club Founder https://www.practicalphilosophy.club & https://www.linkedin.com/in/practicalphilosophyy/ To join a Practical Philosophy Meetup in a country near you, head to: https://www.practicalphilosophy.club/practical-philosophy-locations/ Today's host: Umah — Change and Transformation Advisor and Facilitator https://www.linkedin.com/in/umah To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-ew.co.uk 🌐https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales Transcript: Umah: Hello, and welcome to Facilitation Stories. This podcast is brought to you by the England and Wales Chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Umah, and today we're going to hear about "Facilitating in Communities". In August last year, I went to Toronto and joined a meetup where I had the most wonderful time. Today's guest is the architect of that experience, Jeff Marr. He is the founder of the Practical Philosophy Club, a charity that has sparked deep discussions in communities in over 28 countries. Jeff, welcome. Welcome to the show. Jeff: Thank you, Umah Umah: So first off, I wanted you to tell our listeners a little bit about Practical Philosophy Club, what it means to you, and why you started it. Jeff: Practical Philosophy is mostly the opportunity for us to have deep discussion. We started post-COVID-ish, so 2021, at the very end of it, going into 2022, and people were hungry for conversation. And so that was more or less how it got started. And then over the last little while, it just grew exponentially more or less, and it took us about two years to set the foundations, figure out what it was that we even believed in. What were we trying to even do here? I'm a big fan of philosophy, and I wanted to have a space where people could talk. I think that what we need is more transparency and honesty and less polarisation in the world, and so that's through a roundabout fun way, enjoyable way. We're putting people into a room who have all these different opinions, all these different thoughts, and they're able to communicate with one another. And on social media and in traditional media, they would more or less consider themselves enemies. But then you get people who have very different political beliefs, and they realise they have a lot more in common. We aren't enemies to one another. I really like to see people think things through, and it's an opportunity to go deep into a conversation, both very logically, but also in the esoteric sense. I'm also a big fan of self-development, too. A lot of people, they're not necessarily open to self-development because it has a bad rap. But they come to Practical Philosophy 'cause, like, yeah, I do the practical aspect of it, and it does help people with whatever they're going through, even though they're learning different ways of thinking about situations in their life without directly confronting. And through that exploration of that topic, maybe it'll unlock different insights. Umah: You've got Practical Philosophy Club in all those different ...
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    23 分
  • 🎙️ FS81 - Abimbola Olajide - Tactile, hands on practice

    🎙️ FS81 - Abimbola Olajide - Tactile, hands on practice
    2026/05/15
    In today's episode, Olivia is joined by Abimbola Olajide, serial social entrepreneur and Chief of Play, to explore tactile, hands-on facilitation and what it means to work with the whole person in the room. With a background spanning community convening, grief support, and corporate consultancy, Abimbola shares how she found her way into facilitation and why embodied, kinesthetic approaches are at the heart of everything she does. They talk about: ● paying close attention to embodied feeling when listening to stories ● how personal experience led to founding a CIC supporting people through life transitions ● her consultancy grounded in human-centred work, congruence, and her àjọṣe ("let's do it together") practice, using tools like LEGO Serious Play & modelling wax ● how metaphor, play and physical materials open up focus, emotion and better decision-making, even in corporate spaces. Quote highlights "The power of metaphor, but also using tactile with that, just allows people to go from 'fine'to actually 'this is what this model is saying today'... it gets from zero to deep really quick" "A decision doesnn;t have to be 'I need all the data, and then I need to be stressed... I can play about this'. The term would be blue sky thinking, but I call it purple cloud thinking" Links Today's guest: Abimbola Olajide — In Every Season CIC ; Atúnkò https://atunko.co.uk/ & https://www.linkedin.com/in/abimbola-olajide-67a54b63/ Today's host: Olivia Bellas — Coach, Facilitator, Learning Experience Designer https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviabellas/ To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-ew.co.uk 🌐https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales Transcript Olivia: . so welcome to facilitation stories. how do facilitators end up in the profession? What methods and techniques can we learn together and we discover it all in this community podcast, brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Olivia Bellas and today I'm talking with Abimbola Olajide. Abimbola is also known as the Chief of Play. She's a serial social entrepreneur, passionate about the power of tactile play, fostering human-centered connection and growth, and she uses hands-on engagement to rewire mindsets in professional and community spaces. Welcome. Abimbola: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for welcoming me, and I'm so glad to be here. Olivia: Yeah. I am so looking forward to chatting today, and I know we have that focus area of the kind of tactile, the hands on practices, really looking forward to diving into all of that world. but firstly, I wanna actually just touch in on something. We'll be finding out more about you, but I wanna know today, what's making you smile in your world of facilitation. Just curious about your kind of current landscape, and then we'll get into a bit more about you. Abimbola: Okay, so, today what's making me smile in the world of facilitation I guess the connection to self, and I know that sounds very stereotypical, but I'll, I'll explain as a facilitator. I was at a workshop last week in the London Stock Exchange and there was, This guy, Peter Ra, he was telling us about storytelling and how we capture stories and you know, methods to just tell stories at an executive level. And one thing that really struck me from what he said was, you know, when you listen to a story or when you watch something or just noticing how you feel, and just that feeling and that part, I'm holding my belly area is just above, um, as I speak, but just how you feel, how something makes you feel. And that kind of made me stop and actually feel like, actually, you know, sometimes we. Ignore feelings or put them to the side, or we'll we'll have, whether it's chest tightening or you know, a gut feeling. Those are all indicators of our body telling us something. And him just saying, that actually made me really curious. Like when I listen to things or when I hear things or when I experience things, what's that feeling that I feel? What is it? So I've been really kind of curious. And listening out for that feeling. So that's kind of making me smile. 'cause sometimes it's like, ooh. What's that? Olivia: yeah. What's that? Kind of, either it might be there or it might not be there. Abimbola: Like, oh, what's that? I'm feeling something. Or how come I'm not feeling anything? So that itself, both of those are learning, by the way. 'cause it's discovery. Of myself. And I think when I apply that back into the work that I do, for the most part, if I'm doing work that I'm not feeling anything about, I think that also translates to the work that you do. There will be something not as warm or not quite captivating as it could be. So yeah, just that reminder to be like, oh. What am I feeling here? So that's, what's kind of ...
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    33 分
  • 🎙️ FS 80 From Facilitation to Hosting: Creating Transformative Spaces with Peter Pula

    🎙️ FS 80 From Facilitation to Hosting: Creating Transformative Spaces with Peter Pula
    2026/01/19
    Todays episode explores the evolving relationship between facilitation and hosting, highlighting how both practices can create transformative spaces for individuals and communities. Peter Pula shares insights from years of cultivating community through participatory dialogue and generative journalism. The conversation delves into the distinctions between facilitation often structured and outcome driven and hosting, which embraces emergence, deep listening, and co-creation. They talk about: The difference between facilitation and hostingThe use of time triads and deep listenting in group practiceLearning from mistakes and adapting when things dont go as plannedMoving from command-and-control to particpatory approaches Quote highlights "I feel like I am participating in the unfolding of human evolution and the evolution of community, and I don't know how that can do anything but make you smile." "And by naming the failure it becomes something else and it becomes… Something powerful… " "Before it was a passion. Now it feels like an essential work." Links Todays Guest The Subsidiarist https://peterjpula.substack.com/ Citizen Studios https://citizenstudios.mn.co/about Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterpula/ Website: www.peterpula.com Cultivating Community Gatherings (free): https://www.tickettailor.com/events/peterpula/1786857 Todays host: Sam Moon: Faciliator www.linkedin.com/in/theboymoon123 Edited by: Cassie Austin Leaderful Action To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-englandwales.org 🌐 https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Transcript: Sam Moon & Peter Pula Sam: Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the Community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Sam Moon, and my guest today is Peter Pula. Peter is the founder of Axiom News, generative journalism, the Peter Borough Dialogues, and a proud member of the Generative Journalism Alliance. These days, he's mostly concerned with, in his own words, my beloved cultivating community going on six years now, and where I first met Peter during the first few weeks of COVID when I joined an online global gathering of folk exploring how we could be together apart during what was to become very uncertain times with long periods of lockdown. Peter crafted a space from which people shared experiences and stories where deep relationships began to form and has continued to do so amongst the community that first got together and others who have joined since. So honoring that my own facilitation journey has been shaped very much through Peter's commitment to life given approaches of facilitation, it is an absolute pleasure to welcome you here today, Peter, and on that note, and before we get into some juicy questions, please introduce yourself, who you are and what you get up to in your world of facilitation. Peter: Who am I? I think I will say today that I am a person who deeply cares about the wellbeing of humanity. I'm a person who's. Gravely concerned with the prevailing trends at the moment, and I believe that hosting and facilitating people in dialogue that brings to the surface. Their deepest gifts, talents, intentions, and passions in a way that encourages us to be differently together, might at one time have been a nice to have and now it's a need to have. So I'm fully committed to the practices of facilitation and hosting. With the view to, well, for me it's a calling and a critically important one. And that's why I'm glad to be here talking with you, Sam. 'cause we've travelled for a number of years. We've got a lot of, water under the bridge, a lot of experience under our belt. And, we've traveled through some of those crises together in community held in a certain way. And so I think we could say that's also what I'm up to. Sam: Thank you, Peter. You put that, in a really lovely way. And we've got some questions that we're gonna explore together, but if I can just invite you to expand a little bit more on, your experience of facilitation and hosting and how you have made a distinction between the two and how you hold those. Peter: When you look to the definition of facilitation and facilitator, there's not much there that I wouldn't say also applies to hosting. I think in a lot of practices though, there are some differences, and it might be sort of a spectrum where my idea of the practice of facilitation is that when facilitating, we are inviting people into a fairly, predetermined process and trying to bring them along to more of a predetermined outcome than you might be if you're hosting, it might be a learning outcome, for example, we want, by the end of this process for everyone to be able to say, speak ...
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    27 分
  • 🎙️ FS79_Julia Slay & Ending Sessions Well

    🎙️ FS79_Julia Slay & Ending Sessions Well
    2025/12/05
    In today's episode, Olivia is joined by Julia Slay, founder of Facilitation 101, to explore an often-overlooked part of facilitation: how we end sessions well. With 15+ years' experience across social policy, consultancy and learning design, Julia shares her journey into facilitation and what sparked her growing fascination with powerful endings. They talk about: Why endings matter,and common mistakes at the close of sessions — rushed checkouts, lack of closure, and clunky feedback moments. How to design meaningful endings, using buffer time, reflection, grounding and action planning. The power of circularity too. Extending the ending beyond the room, with follow-ups and reconnection sessions.Plus creative closing practices, from body-based grounding to sound and movement. Quote highlights "A strong ending creates a feeling of completeness." "Reflection without action feels unfinished." Links Today's guest: Julia Slay, Founder, Facilitation 101 https://www.facilitation101.co.uk/courses?tag=Intensive https://myfreelancelife.substack.com/?r=b48m9&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-slay-aa02b240/ Today's host: Olivia Bellas - Coach, Faciitator, Learning Experience Designer https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviabellas/ To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 podcast@iaf-englandwales.org 🌐 https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales Transcript Olivia Bellas Welcome to facilitation stories. How do facilitators end up in the profession? What methods and techniques can we learn together? And we discover it all in this community Podcast, brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Olivia, and today I'm talking with Julia. S. Julia is the founder and director of Facilitation 1 0 1, which began in 2023 after a simple request for a two hour session, which turned into a three day intensive. This is the course that now distills everything she wishes she'd known when she first started facilitating previous to all of this. She held a range of different roles, across social policy and charities, meaning now 15 years of experience designing and leading workshops, strategy sessions, and learning programs. So everything from away days and team development to full strategy. Retreats and international events. And in my opinion, also I must follow on LinkedIn for her generous and human sharings on navigating the world of facilitation. Julia, it's great to have you. Welcome. Julia Slay Oh, lovely to be here. And that was a very kind, generous introduction as well. Wow. Yeah. Thank you. Olivia Bellas Well, welcome. Welcome. So really looking forward to chatting today, and I know that we have a focus area. Mm-hmm. Which we will get into. So that focus area is looking at endings in workshops and why they're valuable, how we can do them. But for that, I wanted to kick off with, something that makes you smile. So thinking about your world of facilitation at the moment, what's making you smile? Julia Slay Mm, well, lots of things. I often feel like I have somehow landed doing a job that doesn't really feel like work. And surely that's like the dream. Well, it is for me anyway, that it's, , each day mostly. There are some small exceptions that mostly I feel really. Energized, focused, joyful with the work. But something that does always make me smile is when I'm running the training side of the work, I do the facilitation training through facilitation 1 0 1, and I'm in a room with really brilliant facilitators who often come from quite a wide range of disciplines, and they bring in their experience and I get to see and learn from them. Which is, which is kind of the. For me, one of the secret joys of running training is that you are learning all the time as well. And there was a course I ran a couple of weeks ago and someone who comes from a kind of theater background and has done a lot of work with, um, theater of the Oppressed was running an activity with the group and I just. Had a smile all over my face. She did an incredible job. And I kind of walked away thinking, yeah, I mean, I got to learn something new today that I've never seen before, and I absolutely loved it. So that, that brings me a lot of joy in my work at the moment. Olivia Bellas Hmm. Yeah, so you get the opportunity to, to have multiple smiles because of all of those, different perspectives of facilitators you are encountering. And actually, I'm quite. Intrigued by that. So you had someone from a theater background. , What other kinds of facilitators are you encountering? Julia Slay Yeah, well it's, it's getting much more diverse. Mm-hmm. I would say a year ago I was primarily working with and training people who were freelance. So, uh, self-employed, , people who often had a combination of kind of coaching, ...
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    34 分
  • 🎙️ FS 78 – Relaunch Episode: Meet the New Hosts; Umah, Sam, Olivia

    🎙️ FS 78 – Relaunch Episode: Meet the New Hosts; Umah, Sam, Olivia
    2025/11/21
    In today's episode, the Facilitation Stories podcast returns with a brand-new hosting team — Olivia, Sam, and Umah — who share their stories, inspirations, and hopes for the next chapter of the podcast. They talk about: Why they joined the Facilitation Stories team and what excites them about podcasting as a way to connect facilitators and share learning. How their diverse backgrounds — from healthcare and construction to creative arts, community engagement and youth work — have shaped their facilitation practice. The power of collaboration and curiosity in creating spaces for reflection, learning, and human connection and what underpins their hopes for this podcast series And, of course, an important conversation about pets, TV guilty pleasures, and favourite biscuits! 🍪 "It's about creating space where people can make sense of their own stories — and find belonging in shared spaces." "Sometimes, facilitation is about slowing down, thinking, and making time for the conversations we don't usually have." Links Today's guests are the hosts themselves: Olivia Bellas https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviabellas/ Sam Moon https://www.linkedin.com/in/theboymoon123/ Umah Ganeshalingam https://www.linkedin.com/in/umah/ To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter: 🎧 Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ 📧 Email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org 🌐 IAF England & Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales Transcript Helene Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helene Jewell and for the last time I am introducing the podcast because I'm going to be passing the baton onto this wonderful new team. We have Sam Moon, Olivia Bellas, and Umah Ganeshalingam. In this episode, you're going to hear Sam, Umah and Olivia talk about their hopes for the Facilitation Stories podcast, some of the work they all do, the kinds of things they're interested in hearing about, and the conversations they're hoping to have. And it just leaves me to say thanks to everybody that I've worked with on this podcast. Pilar Orti, who started the whole thing, Nikki Wilson, we worked together for ages and it has been absolutely fantastic working with both of them and to Rena Kosh as well, who does all the graphics and stuff that go out alongside the podcast and pretty much everybody else that's been listening, all the guests we've had over the last few years, it's been fantastic. Umah Thank you, Helen, and thank you to you and the team for everything that you've done today and handing it over so nicely to us. Helene Good luck to you all. Sam We'll be standing on the shoulders of giants. Thank you Helen. So I'll kick off with the question. What brings you here, Olivia, to the new crew, why was it important for you to be here? Olivia Podcasting as a format really works for me, so it's definitely a medium that I enjoy for work, for fun. The idea of being part of a crew, a team, building a podcast is really, really exciting to be a bit more behind the scenes. I remember I was at the IAF conference in April in Birmingham earlier this year and seeing this call out to see who's interested. And that was one reason. And then the other reason was actually I tend to collaborate a lot. This year, I haven't been really up until that point and was like, oh, what's missing? And it was that feeling that I was actually, as a facilitator, doing lots of solo work, which I think has value sometimes, but I was really missing more closer collaboration with others. Yeah. What about you, Sam? Sam I think it's curiosity, which is often very much my kind of North Star towards things and serendipity and an interest in being with others, exploring and discussing what I enjoy and the room and the space to do that with others, and also an excitement and interest in talking about, talking with and sharing conversation with other people who are in the facilitation world. And I think just the opportunity to play with those ideas and experience other people's experiences. Learn a little bit about this realm of podcasting, which I'm not massively familiar with myself. I'm here with openness to the curiosity of what is possible. Really. So Umah, come to you. What brings you here, and why was it important for you to be involved in the IAF podcast as a as a new crew member? Umah Mine all started with a conversation with Paul, where I had joined as a IAF member and as part of the intro, he spoke to me about the IAF, the podcast and said, oh, if I'm keen, I could be involved in it. And almost the day I joined as a member, I say, yeah, I'll happily get involved with the podcast too. And then it was about finding other people to do it with us, and he mentioned it at the conference, which unfortunately I couldn't attend,...
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    28 分
  • FS 77 Facilitation in the Agile Space with Farah Egby and Çiğdem Saka Jackson

    FS 77 Facilitation in the Agile Space with Farah Egby and Çiğdem Saka Jackson
    2025/05/20

    In today's episode Helene speaks to Farah Egby and Cigdem Saka-Jackson about Agile. They talk about:

    • Agile as a set of working practices that prioritises people over processes and tools;

    • Farah and Cigdem's previous work and journeys into Agile facilitation;

    • The roles and functions that the "Scrum Master" and "Kanban" play in Agile;

    • Roles and techniques in Agile facilitation and tips on how to do it;

    "I think you need to care. You have to be a caring person. I definitely don't believe it is, it is a rule book and just a set of applicable guidelines. You have to care about the people you work with and the team you're working with".

    • How Agile can be applied in different contexts including personally.

    "There are things that you can also apply to your own life individually, you can stop and have a moment to reflect, even if you don't do it with a formal process".

    Links

    Today's guests:

    Farah Egby:

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/farah-egby/

    farah@tuntara.co.uk

    Cigdem Saka-Jackson:

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/%C3%A7i%C4%9Fdem-saka-jackson-7885a111/

    cigdemsaka@gmail.com

    To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter:

    Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/

    And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org

    IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales

    The Facilitation Stories Team

    Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/

    Nikki Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/
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    42 分