The Vertical Facilitator
Content at a Glance
The Vertical Facilitator course is founded on a two-fold premise.
First, the most important tool for facilitating transformative learning environments is your Self. Your ability to hold space, stay present, be alert to and manage your own reactive patterns, and bring spacious attention to your surroundings, all while projecting your authentic Self—all of these are key to the art of vertical facilitation.
Second, the premise is that human systems are not static—they have the potential to evolve toward ever-greater complexity, nuance, and capability. That both individuals and groups are designed to grow and develop. And, that there exist well-researched and solidly grounded distinctions, practices, and personal stances for attuning to, and leveraging the developmental capacity that is inherent in those systems.
The Vertical Facilitator teaches us how to leverage and tap into those distinctions, practices, and personal stances, for the sake of helping both individuals and the collectives of which they are a part, fulfill the developmental possibility that is, ultimately, their birthright.
High-level Structure of the Course
The course envisions vertical facilitation as activating two essential areas of competence and practice:
DESIGN: The design part understands vertical facilitation as the design of a deliberately developmental environment synchronously oriented around four essential meta-design elements
Heat Experiences. Posing reflective & situational challenges that reorient inner sensemaking categories.
Stretch Practices. Personal, collective, and conversational practices that psycho-activate developmental growth.
Social Container. A social environment that encourages developmentally significant actions and moves, through a combination of challenge, support and shared commitment.
Bigger Game. Creating and operating from a commitment—both individually and collectively held—to both extraordinary performance, and to the developmental path which makes such performance possible.
FACILITATION: The facilitation part pertains to the real-time, present-in-the-moment goings-on which define the activity and spacious managing of group energy, interactions, and sensemaking (both individual and collective).
We sometimes think of this aspect of vertical facilitation as a kind of dashboard consisting of five dynamics we are necessarily paying attention to at each and every moment:
Individuals. Paying attention to what’s happening with individuals, particularly in terms of the meaning-making structure that animates their speaking and action, and how I might dance with that in ways that bring developmental possibility to the foreground.
Interrelations. Paying attention to the manner of interactions between myself and others, and among and between others. What manner of individual and collective sensemaking is evidenced? What styles and patterns of interrelational and conversational stuckness and strength is there? What new skills and practices might best be introduced here & now?
Group. What are the group dynamics like? What is the “feeling” of this group? The energy? The field? How might I (a) reflect what I’m sensing back to the group and (b) help the group tune those dynamics and that energy toward greater wholeness and collaborative possibility?
‘Content’. Paying attention to, and managing the delivery of whatever it is that constitutes the ‘content’ for this occasion, event, or intervention. How is it communicating and is it? What is the manner of shift a given content might bring at any given moment?
Self. At the heart of it is Self. What is triggering me as facilitator? Am I falling into unhelpful patterns and psychological strategies? What beliefs, assumptions, and compensatory psychological strategies am I engaging in? Am I present, attentive? Can I own whatever it is that going on? Can I leverage what is going on for the sake of the development of this group, these individuals?
The Learning Journey of The Vertical Facilitator cuts a path through these distinct practice and competency areas in ways that leave you not merely knowledgeable, but able, competent and embodied in the distinctions, practices, and personal stances articulated along the way.
Vertical Facilitator Sign-Up Form
The next Learning Journey starts Tuesday March 12, 2024. The first part is free!