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When least expected, all eyes are on you…

IAP2A’s Engagement Facilitation attracts engagement practitioners who want to be sure that, if they had to ‘step up’ to speak in a live event, or even to harness the energies in the room, they could do so with confidence, and do so competently.

Live community events always have an element of randomness that can cause the most experienced of engagement facilitators to be alert. While an agenda is published and circulated, there is often confusion about what everyone has gathered for. Some people come to an event because they want change, some have been annoyed about mooted changes for a long time and some expect that a ‘review’ process means that the concept – now being implemented – might be canned and the view of this meeting substituted. Not surprisingly, they are shocked!

Here are some of the facilitation contexts participants in the recent Sydney course are facing, and the lessons from engagement life they shared with us.

Lesson 1 – Facilitation can be slow and quiet
Engagement staff who have worked in rural areas for years shared examples of how they have sometimes to ‘fill in the gaps’ because, in some cases, rural people may respond differently. Some are brief or softly spoken; some prefer to just listen, or nod or look. Our course participants based in rural areas talked about ways of holding our body position to convey interest when sentences take quite a while to finish… or when some didn’t. Listening in a quiet environment is another skill; we city folk are used to ‘cutting through’ chatter and myriad noises. We just talk louder. Rural folk stop and wait for quiet to resume. That can take some getting used to.

Lesson 2 – Facilitation can be tense and create surprises
Two participants from an inner city council are starting an engagement process which involves council land being redeveloped into a multi-use community sport and health centre that is being funded by a sporting club that owns the land next door. Worse, despite the sporting club being a landmark entertainment-type club and active community member for decades, groups within the community have suddenly realised that it isn’t the ‘correct’ football code of the area. Sometimes things go unnoticed for a long time then are proposed as an important consideration. Simmering passions can erupt unexpectedly.

Lesson 3 – Facilitation balances content and process
In each Engagement Facilitation course, the skill to continually balance content and process is raised – it is one of the ever-present challenges for facilitators. The importance of planning so that you get what you need in the first session is stressed.

While the adage on ‘being neutral on content’ is important, Grace Leotta, IAP2A’s trainer who has the international facilitation CPM accreditation, reminded us that the facilitator may need to be the advocate for the missing perspective. That is an important reason why you need to make sure you, as facilitator, are clear on the content and go to the community with clarity and have prepared well.

Grace Leotta
IAP2A Engagement Trainer

Lesson 4 – Facilitation for old and new
One of our course participants was in charge of library services, which led to an interesting discussion on how libraries are identifying a need to take community facilitation to a new level.

Community libraries have been going through a transformation for over a decade. While the demise of books and libraries had been predicted and these community assets had just been left to age, the revitalisation of community libraries has occurred. They are now vibrant community service centres with record visitation rates and offering a range of services.

Our course participant was the library services manager in an older suburban area where the mobile bus had been one of the key services for the large population of seniors. Many come to the library by the community bus and need to be able to feel comfortable and welcome; many just want to go to the library – at their front gate. There is a growing population of families with children (read noise and toy bits you stand on) who also want to include a day at the local library and then there is the after school-hour population of young people who want to ‘study’ when they are not actively talking to their friends from other schools. There is pressure to become a successful ‘new age’ library mirroring those that win all those awards while not forgetting the important social service for the traditional use.

We hear such interesting stories in our courses – and we hope our participants leave with good ideas, new skills and contacts to ‘phone a friend’ for advice.

Engagement Facilitation is coming to a location near you, head over to our training calendar to book your place now