Facilitating Reflective Conversation

Home: Workshops: Facilitating Reflective Conversation

Facilitating Reflective Conversation
Two-day workshop

The program scheduled for October 3-4, 2002, in San Diego, CA, has been cancelled.

Facilitating Reflective Conversation is a two-day workshop offered by Robert Putnam and Roger Schwarz. It combines Action Design's approach to reflective conversation with Roger's approach to skilled facilitation.

This workshop is offered as a pre-conference course in conjunction with the Systems Thinking in Action Conference produced by Pegasus Communications. Bob and Roger offered the workshop at the 1997 Conference in Orlando, the 1998 Conference in San Francisco, the 2000 Conference in San Diego, and the 2001 conference in Atlanta.

Overview
Workshop Topics
Faculty

Overview

An organization gains enormous leverage for improvement when key groups of people can sustain inquiry into contentious issues well beyond where they usually bog down. Reflective conversation amid the pressures and constraints of organizational life requires a high degree of skill, exercised either by group members or by a designated facilitator. This workshop offers an unusual opportunity, integrating work in reflective conversation and in skilled facilitation. Participants will discuss case situations, reflect on demonstrations, and practice intervening using the concepts and skills offered.

Workshop Topics

Setting the context. Features of reflective conversation; the process-content distinction; features of group facilitation; using facilitative skills across roles.
Exploring the left-hand column. Noticing one's own unspoken thoughts and feelings ("left-hand column") and their impact on your effectiveness as a facilitator; helping others in a group to use their left-hand columns productively.
Understanding different models. Learning Pathways as an orienting concept; alternative models for action.
Using ground rules for diagnosis and intervention. Introduces the diagnosis-intervention cycle. Practice using the cycle to intervene using ground rules for effective groups.
Intervention practice.
Intervening on logic. Extends the diagnosis-intervention cycle to facilitation that focuses on the content of the arguments people offer. Reconstructing logic, reflecting on dueling logics, facilitating productive reasoning.
Role play practice rounds.
Contracting with clients.

Faculty

Robert Putnam is a partner and co-founder of Action Design. He consults to senior leadership groups to facilitate productive discussion of contentious issues and to help develop the understanding, skill, and quality of relationship to perform at a high level. He also conducts professional development workshops for change agents and for those who work in fast-paced, project focused environments. Bob is co-author of the book Action Science with Chris Argyris and Diana McLain Smith and has written several articles on reflective conversation, action science, and organizational learning. (publications)

Roger Schwarz is an organizational psychologist and president of Roger Schwarz & Associates. He teaches, consults, and writes about facilitation, managing change and conflict, and developing effective work groups. He is the author of The Skilled Facilitator (Jossey-Bass, 1994).

For further information

This workshop is offered as a pre-conference course in conjunction with the Systems Thinking in Action Conference. To register or for information about the conference site, hotel arrangements, and so on, please contact Pegasus Communications.

For information on the content of the workshop or questions about whether it is right for you, contact bob@actiondesign.com.

In this section

info@actiondesign.com