January 2020 Dynamic Facilitation skills seminar, South County / Watsonville
Thanks to the partnership of local nonprofit, It’s Our Home, with WA-based Center for Wise Democracy 501(c)3, we were able to offer this third Santa Cruz County Dynamic Facilitation & Wisdom Council training seminar, with founder Jim Rough.
“Learn a new way to solve contentious problems without requiring general agreement as a pre-condition. The broader the viewpoints, the better the outcome.”
-L.M., DF seminar participant
Dynamic Facilitation training is a 3-day seminar, designed to demonstrate the ‘Dynamic Facilitation’ [DF] model and give trainees the opportunity to immediately dive into practice with real issues. In this regard, contentious or gnarly issues from any sphere are perfect to raise within the context of the training, indeed are considered fine grist for the mill!
Dynamic Facilitation is a facilitator training like no other, a core component of the civic ‘Wisdom Council Process’ [WCP].
From Center for Wise Democracy website:
“In this seminar you learn key leadership skills — how to help diverse groups address and solve impossible-seeming issues, conflicts, and other difficult tasks, where they creatively achieve unity in a fairly short time. Furthermore, the seminar gives people practice in the core thinking process of democracy, that it isn’t about debating, negotiating, deliberating, or decision-making … although of course these all play a vital role. More fundamentally thought, true democracy is about “choice-creating” … where diverse people face the key issues with respect, and mutually create win/win answers. As expressed by Mary Parker Follet in her 1918 book “The New State” … The very essence and substance of democracy is the creating of the collective will. Without this activity the forms of democracy are useless, and the aims of democracy are always unfulfilled.
| ABOUT CHOICE-CREATING “Choice-creating is the kind of thinking we need. … It’s heartfelt and creative, where people address the most important impossible-seeming issues and achieve breakthrough progress. It often arises naturally in a crisis when normal thinking can’t work. Then in those special circumstances people may put aside their egos and roles to say what they really think with feeling. Judgment is held at bay so the group has more room to roam. And people seek answers that work for everyone … and for the situation … and for future generations. Paradoxically as people become more unique by expressing themselves authentically,, group unity can arise more fully. This unity occurs through shifts and breakthroughs, not through negotiation or compromise…. There should be an ongoing “We the People” for each level of society—nation, community, city, world, etc.— where “We the People” provide responsible leadership to “decision-makers”. (See the chart contrasting decision-making and choice-creating) —Jim Rough |
Dynamic Facilitation can reliably evoke choice-creating in small groups. The Wisdom Council Process and the Creative Insight Council can evoke the spirit of choice-creating in large systems of people.
This seminar has been around for over twenty years and has been taught in many locations around the world including cities like Seattle, Frankfurt, Vienna, Denver, Zurich, Bangkok, Jackson, Perth, Amsterdam, Portland, Toronto, Singapore, Oakland, Washington DC, Chicago, Vancouver, Amsterdam, and London.” Center for Wise Democracy, WA
Jim Rough is the author of Society’s Breakthrough! Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People [2002]:
“To the Founders of the United States of America, who sparked a society-wide Breakthrough that deeply affects all of us today… and who also, unknowingly, gave us the key to society’s next Breakthrough.” [dedication]. The intervening years have afforded a rich feedback loop in the realm of governance, with experiments and established practice at a local, state, and national level, heartening examples toward shaping and reshaping our collective future on Planet Earth. [see Jim Rough, 2002-2016]
“The earth belongs always to the living generation....”
—Thomas Jefferson
