FS40 The Endorsed Facilitator programme and the Challenges of Inclusivity

In this episode, Pilar talks to Anish Hindocha, who has recently taken the IAF Endorsed Facilitator assessment process. They talk about Anish’s experience through the process and then move on to talk about the challenges of being truly inclusive.  (You can check out an earlier conversation they had, in episode 08 of Facilitation Stories. https://facilitationstories.com/fs08-what-happens-at-our-meetups-and-first-steps-in-facilitation ) Anish is a change consultant with a passion for culture transformation. He started using facilitation through his work as  a business analyst, bringing teams together. He progressed to bringing different people together, with different opinions and helping them to solve problems together. At the same time, he created a Meetup for Spanish speakers wanting to practice English and viceversa, which also brought in another level of facilitation. Anish started looking at the IAF's endorsed route when he became freelance. He realised that a lot of the proposals he was putting out to clients had more to do with facilitation than anything else. Around that time he came across the IAF, which he considers the “gold standard” of facilitation. The Endorsed facilitation process (https://www.iaf-world.org/site/pages/become-iaf-endorsed%E2%84%A2-facilitator ) consists of a written submission and a multiple choice exam. The questions are mainly based around the core 6 competencies of the IAF. The written submission is less rigorous than the CPF (check out more about this in our last episode where Helene describes her experience https://facilitationstories.com/fs39-growing-as-a-facilitator-through-the-cpf-certification-process), and you have to describe a recent experience, guided by their questions. Anish shares one of the sessions he talked about, with its objectives, how he designed the session, the tools he used (SessionLabs), an icebreaker, the ground rules he had, consideration of different types of participants, listed his open questions (like, how would you like to be me during the session? How will we keep our attention going during the session) etc. The work then goes to an assessor who creates a feedback report - something Anish wasn’t expecting and he really appreciated, turning the assessment process into a learning experience. Finally, Anish feels that the accreditation also brings credibility to the freelance facilitator. In the second part of the conversation, Pilar reflects on a session led during Facilitation Week by Helene and Hilary. Usually, you know the kind of behaviour to to expect in the IAFEW meet-ups https://www.meetup.com/IAF-facilitators-and-friends/ , and in this occasion, a person turned up who had a very different presence to that expected. Pilar noticed that she felt threatened by this unexpected presence, although it helped that it was online, rather than in person. This led to some curiosity to understand what was going on, until she noticed that the person was as engaged as everyone else, in a slightly different way to what she would expect, but in line. How would this have played out in a face to face environment, and how aware is the person of the impact they might have on others? Both Pilar and Anish would love to hear from listeners who’ve had similar experiences where their values have been challenged.  You can connect with Anish Hindocha through his website https://www.jigsawconsulting.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn. Twitter: Anish: @hindocha_anish Pilar: @PilarOrti Facilitation Stories: @Fac_Stories Thank you for listening. You can find out all about us and how to contact us over at https://facilitationstories.com/  

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