What does nonviolence have to do with group facilitation?
If nonviolence is, as Miki believes, "a way of being and living that orients, in thought, word, and deed, towards integrating love, truth, and courage in individual and collective action aimed at preserving what serves life and at challenging what doesn't to transform itself so the human family can realign with life," then facilitation is one clear path of bringing nonviolence to the world.
How can we act now, as facilitators, as if the world of our dreams, the Beloved Community, is already in place?
This course is designed to support you in moving towards more capacity in this area.
If you are an NVC trainer or practitioner, your NVC skills will be of great value for integrating what we do in this course, however, they are not required: you will still able to make use of what you learn.
Course Outline
The course is comprised of three 90-min sessions held on three consecutive days. The outline below is loose and may shift to adapt to needs, experiences, and situations as they arise in the course of our time together.
- Wednesday: Transparency and Intuition
- CLARITY OF PURPOSE: You're a human among humans, with a different purpose from anyone else, which is to support the group, not what you want
- HUMILITY: You don't "know" anything; and you're the only one who can decide moment by moment how to respond to what is happening
- INTUITION: The power of knowing without knowing; how to follow it; and how to train your intuition over time
- SPEAKING THE WHY: how transparency increases trust when used to shed a light on process decisions
- HOLDING THE WHOLE: how transparency can interfere when used to bring attention to your feelings beyond your capacity to hold
- Thursday: Tracking What Matters
- PURPOSE: the group won't track it and will hold you accountable for it when they veer off
- TIME: The closer to the end, the higher the threshold for changing anything
- PEOPLE: Keeping an eye for who spoke or not; who may be stretching too much; and more
- POWER: Knowing your own power and any other source of power in the room, along with power dynamics, can help you navigate care for all
- NEEDS: What's important to the individuals in the room? How does it get included in what the group does or decides?
- OPEN LOOPS: What requests are not attended to? How not to drop anything when stakes are high?
- Friday: Challenges in the Group
- POWER AND PRIVILEGE: who speaks, who doesn't; whose voice counts: whose pain is invisible; what you can do about it
- OUTLIERS: How to walk towards someone who presents a challenge to a group, and even to you, while caring for the whole group, still?
- CONFLICT: How to attend to what is happening in a given moment without compromising the purpose for which the group is there?
