In any situation with two or more people, there are three things going on - you, them, and the relationship itself. Facilitation is the practice of paying attention to the relationships between people in a room as well as to the people themselves, so that a focus on outcomes doesn’t take away from a good process that works well for everyone. Part of this is ‘creating the space,’ so that there is a clear pathway for the group to follow. Another part is ‘holding the space,’ by making sure that everyone feels comfortable speaking up and that their contributions are heard and valued. I integrate both of these aspects into my work with teams - as well as a healthy focus on having a good time together! Facilitation is a part of my core research philosophy (check out my approach) and is also something I do as a consultant with clients. If you think your team could use a facilitator for a specific workshop or a longer term process, let’s have a conversation!

We are a group of women who have formed a guild to support each other’s growing facilitation practices. We have different specialties, from team science to STEM education to community engagement to experiential and play-based learning. We help each other build our own businesses and collaborate as co-facilitators on projects. We share facilitation tips and tricks with each other, and with our wider community through webinars, peer-reviewed publications, and other forms of outreach. The Facilitation Guild offers its members a safe space to grow and be vulnerable, and provides a platform for us to spread the word on how high-quality facilitation can help teams achieve their goals and more effectively work together to make the world better. You can get in touch with the guild at our website if you want to learn more.

Mind the Gap Research and Training was founded in 1995 by Scott Jones with the goal of building local and international capacity for managing environmental conflicts, and working with natural resources conflicts to explore peace-building more broadly. Since then the team has worked on a diversity of environmental and social issues with a wide range of clients, including international development organisations, United Nations agencies, government ministries and local authorities, for-profit companies and not-for-profit groups. I became a Co-Director at Mind the Gap in 2015, and work primarily on our facilitation and training projects. Currently Scott and I are leading the patient and public involvement for a UK-wide multi-organisation research project called AMPHoRA. AMPHoRA’s aim is to identify how agricultural air pollution affects human health, and how changing human diets and farming technologies can support healthier, more sustainable agriculture across Britain.