Hello Friends,

Greetings from Barcelona ☀️where I am recovering from my trip to Toronto. I had some incredible views of Barcelona from the plane yesterday. More on that below👇

🙌Many thanks for reading The Quest. A special shout-out to Julia in Quebec City, Silvia in Rio, Peggy on Whidbey Island, Billy in San Diego, and Connie in Toronto.

If you are joining for the first time, welcome to our deep dive into all things creativity, facilitation, and learning.

You can catch up on the last edition 💪The Power of Online Whiteboardsand all past editions here.

💭Imagine this…

You are in a small country hotel in the lush green hills of Colombia.

You enter the workshop space to meet your group.

You greet a wealthy businesswoman on your right. You introduce yourself to a guerilla commander on your left. There is a small group of politicians and community leaders mingling in the back of the room.

It’s 2017. The Colombian government and the FARC guerilla group had signed a treaty to end a violent 52-year civil war.

You have been hired to facilitate a process of reconciliation after decades of conflict. Months earlier it would have been unthinkable to have these people in one room.

That is one of the case studies that renowned facilitator Adam Kahane shares in his new book Facilitating Breakthrough (I know, great title!).

Conflict comes in all shapes and sizes, and all levels of intensity.

You may not have to facilitate groups who have just emerged from war. But conflict is a natural part of any group process. As a facilitator, you need to know how to respond to conflict. How to facilitate conflict is one of my learning edges.

How do you facilitate when people and groups are stuck in complexity and conflict?

Answering that question would take more than one edition of the Quest.

What can we learn more about facilitating conflict from Kahane’s Facilitating Breakthrough book? That’s our Quest for this week🔎

👉Facilitating Breakthrough – 3 Key Insights

👉5 Techniques for Facilitating Breakthrough in Conflict

Let’s dive right in!

📕Facilitating Breakthrough -3 Key Insights

A new book by seasoned facilitator and author Adam Kahane. The focus of Kahane works with groups that are seriously stuck in “complexity and conflict”. He has worked on reconciliation processes in places like Colombia, South Africa, and Canada.

Kahane uses an approach to working with conflict called “transformative facilitation”:

“Transformative Facilitation is a structured and creative way to help diverse groups remove obstacles, bridge differences, and move forward together. It enables breakthrough.”

Here are my 3 key insights from his book:

• Facilitation is not about getting people to do things, it’s about removing obstacles. He uses the metaphor of a stream. “You can’t push a stream to flow, but if you remove the blockages, it will flow by itself.”
• Transformative facilitation transforms the group members so they can transform their conflict. He can often pinpoint the moment when a participant realises that for the problematic situation to change, they themselves need to change. He calls it “el click”.
• Transformative facilitation involves playing an outer and an inner game. Like Tim Gallwey describes in his book The Inner Game of Tennis, a transformative facilitator needs to be fully attentive and use all senses to attune to the group’s needs.

🧰5 Techniques for Facilitating Breakthrough in Conflict

Kahane’s book goes into detail on facilitation theory with some case studies. Being a facilitation nerd I wanted to know more about the techniques he used. He doesn’t describe this in detail, but I did pick up on a few exercises that Kahane and his team used:

1. Timed Introductions: Sitting in a circle, each person has one minute, timed with a bell, to introduce themselves. That meant that all voices were heard equally.

2. Shared Meals: The participants ate together at long tables. This created a space for informal conversation.

3. Walks in Pairs: They created opportunities for walks in nature. This helped develop personal connections across divides.

4. Empathic Listening: They introduced a framework for open, nonjudgemental listening that they practiced in pairs.

5. Storytelling: They facilitated time for participants to share personal stories about their lives. This helped develop empathy.

What are your techniques for facilitating conflict?

📷Photo of the Week

Landing in Barcelona yesterday. Why you should always ask for the window seat😅

💌Thanks for reading The Quest

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Creatively yours,