facilitate. 1610s, “make easy, render less difficult,” from French faciliter “to render easy,” from stem of Latin facilis “easy to do,” from facere “to do”.

When a group is in a process of mending, planning, building, reckoning, visioning, or decision-making, sometimes it can help to bring in an outsider to shape the space so that everybody in your group can give their whole self to the conversation.

Maybe things feel like a mess right now, and you want them to feel better without losing your values of complexity and co-creation. I’ll help bring organization, structure, and clarity to the process, to help you get to the heart of the matter.

Maybe you’re working on something big where one or a few people have been doing all the heavy lifting so far, and you want to shift the dynamic so that everybody gets to be a “participant” and nobody is unequally influencing how things go. I’ll help you bring more balance to the process, so that all voices are heard and so that each of you can take responsibility for what’s solely yours.

Examples of processes I can support you with:

  • Strategic planning, visioning, and making key decisions.
  • Building internal processes in new or renewed organizations (e.g. governance and decision-making, conflict prevention and resolution).
  • Internal review and planning for change in process, governance, etc.
  • Having big, complex conversations — sharing feelings (e.g. circles), making decisions, group reflecting (e.g. debriefs and post-mortems).

I can help you figure out:

  • Who are we?
  • What are we doing, and how are we doing it?
  • What next?
  • What do we need in order to do our work with more integrity, intention, or impact?
  • What just happened, what can we learn from it, how do we fix it?

My approach:

  • I’ll ask a lot of questions, bringing warmth, patience, compassion, and curiosity to the process.
  • I’ll teach myself as much as I can about the work you’re doing and the complex internal dynamics at play.
  • I’ll propose a process based on a) what I’ve heard from you, b) my years of experience, and c) my intuitive hunch about what might help make the path clearer for you. 
  • I’ll facilitate the process, keeping all the loose threads organized and attuning to what may be happening below the surface.
  • If you want, I can wrap things up by writing a report summarizing what happened.

I strive for my presence in your domain to feel like a bear hug — solid. warm. grounding. a little fierce. held.