Date:

5 Sessions Previously Recorded

Time:

7:30 - 9:30am
Pacific (California) Time

Fee:

Gift Economy

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Listen to Miki share her passion about this course (6 minutes):

If you have 12 minutes to spare, listen to this more in-depth interview

If you’ve ever dreaded attending a meeting – or watched in dismay as your group collapses into conflict – know that a methodology known as Convergent Facilitation offers you possible solutions.

It’s based on one simple experience: that people come together at the level of their underlying principles, needs, aspirations, and dreams, not at the level of their surface positions.

Convergent Facilitation is a highly efficient decision-making process developed by Miki Kashtan from the principles of Nonviolent Communication. It enables you to look beneath the surface and find the essence of what’s important to different stakeholders, and bring it together into one set of principles that lead to proposals and ultimately decisions. As a result, it readily produces solutions and decisions that everyone can embrace.

This method is uniquely effective, because it:

Who It’s For

If you work with groups that make decisions and need to collaborate effectively, this course is for you.

What You Can Take Away

For more details, read this case study for a start-to-finish view of the Convergent Facilitation process and its transformative results.

Why Now?

While Convergent Facilitation has continued to grow in prominence and recognition over the years, Miki has declined requests to teach it online, as she was unsure how well it would work in an online forum. However, only an extremely small number of trainers at present have gathered enough experience in Convergent Facilitation to be able to teach it… People from all over the world continue to express such hunger for learning the new capacities inherent in this method. Many of them are living in places and contexts where attending a live training would be out of the question.

After much consideration – and to our delight – Miki has decided it’s time to take Convergent Facilitation to the online community, and make it possible for people everywhere to learn and experiment with it in their daily lives.

This course is designed to give you ample opportunities for practicing specific skills that are essential for Convergent Facilitation.  You will maximize  your benefit if you are able to register with others from your geographic area with whom you can practice face to face.  Groups of 4 or 8 who register together will receive a discount. 

Putting Convergent Facilitation into practice, experimenting even when not yet fluent, is, ultimately, how anyone truly masters applying the principles in a fluid way that is responsive to changing realities.

Dates and Topics Covered

August 12 Introduction     Overview of Convergent Facilitation
August 19 Session 2        Criteria Gathering: Finding the Noncontroversial Essence
September 9 Session 3 Proposal Creation: Tracking as a Key Facilitation Skill
September 16 Session 4 Decision Making: Inviting and Engaging with Dissent
September 23 Session 5  Attending to Outliers and to Power Differences

About Miki Kashtan

Miki Kashtan is a co-founder of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication (BayNVC) and Lead Collaboration Consultant at the Center for Efficient Collaboration. Miki aims to support visionary leadership and shape a livable future using collaborative tools based on the principles of Nonviolent Communication. She shares these tools through meeting facilitation, mediation, consulting, coaching, and training for organizations and committed individuals. Her latest book, Reweaving Our Human Fabric: Working together to Create a Nonviolent Future (2015) explores the practices and systems needed for a collaborative society. She is also the author of Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness: Transcending the Legacy of Separation in Our Individual Lives, and The Little Book of Courageous Living. Miki blogs at The Fearless Heart and her articles have appeared in the New York Times ("Want Teamwork? Encourage Free Speech"), Tikkun, Waging Nonviolence, Shareable, Peace and Conflict, and elsewhere. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley. More...