dialogue_facilitation

The Advanced Dialogue Facilitation Program is designed to deepen your foundation and practical knowledge to convene, design and facilitate Dialogue conversations within a variety of settings.

A unique aspect of this program is that we have intentionally located it in northern New Mexico to take advantage of the power of Place to open and expand your capacity to facilitate Dialogue.

We believe that mastery is dependent upon inner development work which will allow you to facilitate in more powerful ways. Our goal is to further develop both your personal and professional mastery. Towards this end we invite you into a learning community of practitioners to share experiences, explore questions and experiment with frameworks and practices that your guides Glenna Gerard and Elizabeth Fadell have developed over the past 17+ years.

The program is highly interactive and designed to support and stretch your practice of Dialogue. It includes:

We believe that Dialogue is fundamental to the ability of individuals, organizations and communities to discern and make creative, strategic and effective choices for themselves, their work in the world, and our greater global communities.

We hope you will choose to join us for this unique opportunity. If you know of others (colleagues, friends, business partners) who might be interested in this program, we appreciate you passing this information on to them.

For your convenience links to more detailed information organized by topic area appear directly below.

Ability to articulate and embody the principles and practices of Dialogue
Development of your capacity for self-reflection as a practitioner;
- Working with your own internal point of view so that you can make conscious choices that are in service of the larger relational field and whole system
- Discerning what is yours and what belongs to the group
- Expanding your capability to resource the group and evoke the wisdom of the collective
Ability to facilitate the Dialogue conversation itself, including…

Introducing the history and concepts that are the foundation for Dialogue
Creation of a container that weaves elements of safety where participants take responsibility for both self-monitoring and group monitoring
Setting up guidelines in ways that promote the demonstration of and commitment to dialogic skills among participants
Offering various activities that both educate participants and further the Dialogue at the same time (including but not limited to balancing inquiry and advocacy, suspension of judgment, assumption identification, reflection on content and process, deep listening)
Designing to engage all 5 senses to create a whole person experience
Familiarity with both contingent and non-contingent Dialogue and their unique facilitation requirements
Promoting shared responsibility for facilitation within the group
When to intervene and how
Leading reflections during and at the close of the conversation that help participants to build their capacity for Dialogue, harvest their learnings, and provide for the transfer of these learnings to other task focused and action oriented conversations
Working with differing perspectives in a way that leads to a higher order of thinking

Ability to create invitations to, and designs for, Dialogue conversations within varied contexts (to include business, community, not-for-profit, educational settings, government…)
An understanding of how to weave Dialogue and its principles with other group processes such as Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, Open Space…
Demonstration of the above abilities as evidenced in:
- Application exercises during the initial 6 day session

Applied learning, with coaching and small group conference calls, during the following 4-5 months;
Practitioner application
Dialogue facilitation during the Advanced Practice & Completion session.

To ensure an intensive, in-depth learning environment, enrollment in the program is limited to 24 participants.

This is an in-depth program that introduces and dives deeply into the objectives listed above. To accomplish the objectives we believe that it is essential to set aside a continuous space in time versus a number of shorter segments. There is a rhythm and depth of experience that becomes possible which you will then be able to weave into your interim learning applications.

To enhance our time together, there will be pre-work including reading and self reflection practices, as well as the development of current case histories to work with during the program. Each day will be a mixture of interactive presentation and practice opportunities.

There will be morning, afternoon and evening sessions on all but a few days. You should come prepared to commit all of your attention to this learning experience, making whatever arrangements are needed in your personal and professional lives to do so.

Following the first in-depth learning session there will be a period of 4-5 months:

During this time each person will be responsible for convening and facilitating a Dialogue group of 8-12 people. You will also be responsible for writing a reflection on this experience. Some of the questions you will be asked to consider are:
- What deepened the conversation? Where did the conversation appear to get stuck (remaining on the surface only, collapsing into a particular person’s experience, etc.)? What questions surfaced for you during the experience? What insights emerged from this experience?.
In addition to the convening of the Dialogue group you will be asked to create and implement a series of practices to enhance your own awareness and skill levels.
Each person will have a one-hour coaching sessions with one of the instructors.
There will be two small group conference calls dedicated to the experience of "virtual dialogue".
There will also be a practitioner wiki available for group conversation and exploration.

At the end of the 4-5 month Practitioner Application, we will gather for an advanced practice session.

We will continue to evolve learnings (what is possible now in your practice and what will support its continued evolution?), work with questions and deepen practices together. At the close of this program you will be given a Certificate of Completion.

Attendance Requirements: For all to benefit fully from this program requires the disciplined commitment of all members of this community of practice. Certificates will be given to those who complete the full program. If you are absent for any portion or do not complete any of the assignments, you will not be considered to have completed the program.

The Initial Program and the Advanced Practice & Completion will be held at Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs Resort & Spa (www.ojocalientespa.com) and the surrounding area, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. This part of New Mexico is known for its beauty and for the power of the Land to tune and deepen people's capacity for listening and discernment. Being on the Land will be an integral part of the dialogue experience.

The initial program will begin at 7:00pm on Saturday, April 26th and end at noon on Friday, May 2nd.

The advanced practice and completion program will begin on Monday, September 15th at 9:00am and end after a celebratory dinner the evening of Wednesday, September 17th.

The Advanced Dialogue Facilitation Program tuition is $5,500 per participant (non-profits, government organizations, and individual consultants - $4,100).

Early registrants will receive a 10% discount if registration materials and tuition are sent postmarked by February 15, 2008. NCDD (National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation fully-paid members are eligible to receive a 15% discount off the regular tuition anytime they register. For information on discounts and other options see the Registration Form.

You are responsible for your own travel and lodging arrangements. You may stay at Ojo Caliente. The website www.ojocalientespa.com will give you information on types of accomodates available. We can also provide you with a list of other lodging options nearby. To make a reservation at Ojo Caliente call 1-800-222-9162.

You will fly into the Albuquerque, New Mexico airport which is approximately 110 miles from Ojo Caliente. We recommend that you make arrangements with other program attendees to share rental cars, as this will cost less then shuttle services and give you mobility during the program. We can provide you with contact information to help make arrangements

This is an advanced program. It presumes that you have some knowledge and experience with Dialogue and/or are a well experienced group facilitator. You may have taken another training program in Dialogue. You may have done significant reading and experimented with integrating Dialogue into your practice. You may have participated in and facilitated a Dialogue group within your community.

We are happy to speak with you further to answer any questions you might have and to discern whether this program is for you. Feel free to contact either Glenna Gerard (glenna49@earthlink.net) or Elizabeth Fadell (eliz_fadell@earthlink.net).

FYI - we will also be offering an Essentials of Dialogue Program February 9 - 13, 2008. For details please visit. If you know of others who might be interested in this Essentials of Dialogue Program please pass the information along to them.

If you are interested in participating in this program please contact either Glenna Gerard or Elizabeth Fadell. To register download and print the Registration Form. Send your registration materials and tuition to the address below. Please make checks payable to The Enterprise Group.

Once you are registered we will ask you to complete a set of Reflection Questions which will help us to customize the design of the program to maximize value for all. To download these please click Reflection Questions.

Glenna Gerard is co-founder of The Dialogue Group, a consulting and training company founded in 1990 and responsible for pioneering the development of Dialogue in the United States. She is co-author of the book Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation, John Wiley & Sons, 1998, one of the first comprehensive publications on the theory and practical skill-based application of Dialogue in organizations. It has been published in Portuguese, German and Chinese. In addition to her work within organizations Glenna has designed and led numerous experiential programs on the practice, facilitation and application of Dialogue. She lives in New Mexico where she continues to develop ways to make the principles and practices of Dialogue more accessible to people in their individual practices, in business, in personal relationships, in interfaith and intercultural communities. To learn more about Glenna, clients she has worked with, her current explorations and calendar of offerings in 2007-2008 visit her website at www.glennagerard.net E-mail glenna49@earthlink.net

Elizabeth Fadell is founder and Managing Member of The Enterprise Group, a management consulting firm specializing in organizational transformation. She integrates her Dialogue practice into her consulting work internationally with a variety of organizations in sectors including telecommunications, information technology, healthcare, government and the arts. Elizabeth has provided training and facilitated Dialogues as well as applied Dialogue to strategic planning, systems design and breakthrough improvement efforts. She has also integrated Dialogue into the designs of collaborative strategies for developing learning organizations, community building and leadership development. Elizabeth is committed to the process of integrating personal discovery with organizational development. Recent activities include co-founder of Creating Possibilities Through Dialogue: A Community Conversation in Madison, Wisconsin and incorporating Dialogue into the design and delivery of the Women’s Developmental Leadership Practice in California. E-mail eliz_fadell@earthlink.net