When facilitating, we take responsibility for noticing, navigating, and, where appropriate, making visible the dynamics and behaviours playing out in the room.

These dynamics and behaviours often take place ‘below the waterline’, meaning that they are not being noticed, acknowledged, or addressed. We are not immune to this: as facilitators, we are also often playing out dynamics and behaviours in the room that we might not see or understand.

On top of this, we are living in chaotic and challenging times. This can affect group members' nervous systems and ability to self-regulate, and how open a group is to facilitation, collaboration, feedback, and change. As facilitators, these times are likely affecting our nervous systems and ability to self-regulate too, and how well we can hold the facilitation role.

Combined, this can put immense pressure on the processes and outcomes of a meeting or event, and all the participants.

Inspired by therapist intervision groups, Facilitation Pods are small-group spaces in which to bring our challenges, hopes, and experiences as facilitators and gain access to the wisdom of the social field.

Within Facilitation Pods, we:

• deepen self-awareness of ****our reactions, needs, desires, and dislikes when in the facilitation role
• deepen our ability to stay grounded and embodied when we, our teams, our groups, or our clients are showing up chaotic and stressed
• deepen our ability to notice whether we're responding from within the facilitator role or from another (often invisible) role we are unconciously adopting
• deepen our ability to notice, navigate, and - where appropriate - bring attention to what's alive in the room.

WHAT YOU WILL RECEIVE AS A POD MEMBER

During the three-month long season, pod members gain:

• access to a small group of practising facilitators that will learn your facilitation blindspots, strengths, challenges, and hopes, and support you in your learning and unlearning. (Each pod has a a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 members, then the facilitator.)
• an ‘Intro to Your Pod’ document, so you can get to know a little bit about your fellow members before you join the first session.
• a shared space where we centre care, appreciation, and joy for facilitation as an important role, along with a shared awareness of the responsibility we choose to carry when we step into the facilitation role.