Group Facilitation

Engage people. Foster healing, community, shared future.

"It is not easy to so masterfully facilitate a group full of facilitators! Our team trusted Kathy to steward us into greater clarity for our immediate future. I have never returned from a retreat with more practical, actionable tasks and plans – or as thorough notes as we have! Kathy is truly gifted, and we deeply benefited from her work with us! " Hilary Allen – Innovation & Growth Lead, New England Region, Unitarian Universalist Association

Facilitator's Role
My role is to support people to build awareness, personal insight, relationships, and mutual understanding. People are guided to resolve resistances, understand themselves and each other more deeply, accessing their inherent insight. I aim to help people live and work better together. In our work relationship is the primary goal, the foundation for everything. Relationship is the steady support for shared vision and values, and the capacity to create with sustainable outcomes.

Together with a Planning Team, we design sessions to match participants and their shared purpose, most often utilizing frameworks that integrate a bespoke version of healing/ coaching / dialogue from Life Centered Therapy and/or Reflective Structure Dialogue (RSD) created by Essential Partners of Cambridge, MA.

What is Dialogue?
Dialogue is a conversation animated by a search for MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING.
While distinct from problem solving, it often supports problem solving. In contrast to debate, participants are typically asked to set aside the urge to persuade. Dialogue supports:
SPEAKING in ways that are

RESPECTFUL
CONNECTED to personal experience and heartfelt concerns
RESPONSIVE to fresh questions and prefaced by time to reflect
LISTENING for what one wants to understand better, rather than what one wants to rebut
ASKING genuine (not rhetorical) questions
REFLECTING on others’ perspectives as well as on one's own.

Contact us when

You as the leader want to participate in the conversation.
The situation is beyond your skill set.
(Great leaders are not necessarily great facilitators.)
Your group is stuck. We can raise issues that are being avoided and help you address unproductive behaviors.
You must deal with complex issues and a variety of viewpoints. We can help stakeholders see the big picture, generate options, build buy-in, make decisions.

We Can Help You

Explore new possibilities
Engage cross-sector talents
Resolve conflicts
Build relationships
Foster new cultures

Great Facilitators
Motivate: Establish and maintain momentum.
Inspire: See and go beyond the known.
Listen: Hear and utilize content, intent, meaning and motivation.
Build Bridges: Find similarities, places of joining even amidst much difference.
Weave Multiple Threads: Integrate all that's presenting into a clear picture. Introduce the forgotten or unaddressed.
Demonstrate Clairvoyance: Notice and respond early to participants' energy, enthusiasm, emotions, needs.
Foster Peace: Address conflict early towards a constructive conclusion.
Get It Done: Never lose focus on time, process and outcome. Keep participants focused. Adjust as needed. Always help people deliver the outcome.
Praise: Celebrate often and specifically; celebrate progress and the multiple ways people contribute, learn and grow together.

Guided by Values
Our values & perspectives influence our facilitation style. We value presence, awareness, honesty, authenticity, generosity, flexibility,
the contribution of each person and the creative possibilities of the whole.

Costs
Costs are based on your intended outcome and the complexity of the process necessary to achieve your goals. All sessions are custom-designed. Think deeply and be clear about your expectations so we can create an engaging, productive process for you, and with you.

"Become a blackbelt observer and listener . . . The impact of the deeper levels of listening is profound: they function like a welding flame on the process of social reality creation. If cultivated, they can melt the walls of habitual interaction that keep us separate ~ separate from the world,
from each other, and from ourselves." Dr. Otto Scharmer, Senior Lecturer at MIT, Author of Theory U and Leading from the Future as It Emerges

Kathy brings a deep background in leadership, energy, psychology and group facilitation to her work with private individuals and organizational leaders.