by F. Giovanna Martinez
From the 13th to the 17th of May 2024, a highly motivated group of 8 facilitators, of which I was lucky enough to be part, met in Portorož, on the beautiful Slovenian seaside, to participate in the "Facilitation Training: Fertilizer for Facilitators". The purpose of this course, designed by Drs. Jan Lelie and Yuen Yen Tsai, has been to help us learn new facilitation techniques, reflect on the role of a facilitator, ask powerful questions, make meaningful connections, and get the chance to put everything we learnt into practice.
We started by exploring the Four Realities Perception Model, based on the book Paths of Change by Will McWhinney. According to Jan Lelie, whose background is in physics, this model can help us understand the whole universe! My level of understanding doesn’t reach such depths yet, but I can indeed see how this model can and will be very helpful for understanding human societies and interactions. We also explored the principles of Design Thinking, including the power of playful techniques. And we faced our deepest fears during a session about Empathy Maps in which we were asked to think of the “worst possible client” (and we were reminded that even the hardest people are complex humans with deep feelings).
We also had many highly interesting theoretical discussions about the power of language and how we shape our reality by drawing connections and naming what we experience, and we asked ourselves what the role of the facilitator might be, and how we could try to have a positive impact on the world around us.
We got to start exploring this final question by interacting with our local host, the Italian Union, and helping them work through some of their issues, offering possible paths of change.
I can already see how the methods that Jan and Yuen Yen shared with us will be very precious in several aspects of my life. I will surely take with me the Four Realities Perception Model, and use it as a lens to interpret reality and the problems that might arise in my job. I also plan to work much more on drawing and sketching techniques, and on inserting elements of playfulness and fun in everything I do. Fun makes work easier, and it encourages creativity and the forming of new connections! Not only between concepts and ideas, but also between people, which is just as important.
It has been very stimulating, for me, to start from the perspective of language and to explore how we are constantly making new connections and finding new meanings. Our thoughts really shape our reality. We can’t stop thinking, but we can be aware of how much our perceptions are influenced by our thought patterns, and we can have deeper interactions with other people by trying to understand what their thought patterns are, and what they mean when they use the words they use. Language is a powerful tool to help us people cooperate and work together meaningfully, but we need to know how to use it! In general, it is so fascinating for me to look at how we are always striving to make sense of what is around us: whatever it is that happens, we will find some meanings, connections and interesting stories.
Courses like this one, beyond the precious learning intakes, are always reminders of the incredible importance of cooperation. As participants, we were encouraged from the beginning to form deep connections: we started as individuals, but already after the first session we had become a group, and after a day we were a team.
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