Most facilitator trainings teach what to do.

They teach how to ask better questions or manage conflict. How to increase participation. How to guide a group toward clarity.

How to intervene. How to lead.

Much less attention is given to noticing what we are already doing.

This workshop is interested in something slightly different.

What else are you doing while you are trying to help?

Because long before we consciously decide what to do, we are already shaping interaction.

We explain, reassure, summarize, clarify, create certainty, and redirect attention.

We begin feeling responsible for where the interaction goes next.

These movements are often skillful and caring. Usually they feel so obviously helpful that we never think to question them.

And yet they shape participation.

They influence who speaks, who waits, what becomes discussable, what becomes settled, and what remains possible.

Sometimes the moments that organize a room most strongly are the very moments that feel most helpful while they're happening.

What we'll do

Through a series of live experiments, we'll slow interaction down enough to study it while it is happening.

Together we'll watch what happens when:

• someone tries to help

• a group moves toward a shared explanation

• certainty begins to form

• responsibility starts to concentrate

• attention gets organized around one person

Rather than talking about these dynamics, we'll experience them directly and observe what they do to participation.

We'll watch how responsibility concentrates, how authority emerges, how coherence gets created, and how different forms of participation become easier (or harder) depending on the conditions of the interaction.

The focus is not technique.

The focus is perception: the ability to notice how your own participation is shaping what becomes possible in a room.

You may leave with a clearer sense of:

• when you're helping and when you're organizing

• how authority emerges inside interaction

• what kinds of participation your interventions invite

• what happens when certainty arrives more slowly

• what you do when you feel responsible for where the interaction goes next

• what else becomes possible when you don't immediately move toward explanation, reassurance, or resolution

This workshop may be relevant if you:

• facilitate groups or workshops

• coach, mentor, or supervise others

• teach

• lead conversations

• hold therapeutic, educational, or community spaces

• often find yourself explaining, reassuring, clarifying, or organizing interaction

• are curious about how your participation shapes what happens in a room

Format

Live online intensive
3 hours
Maximum 12 participants
Experiential and participatory
No prior experience with my work required

Details

Sunday, July 19
5pm-8pm Central European Time (11am Eastern US)
Tuition: 1200 SEK / 125 USD / 108 EUR

Reflections from participants in previous workshops

"It was a real pleasure not to be told what I meant."

"The witness's use of participatory language helped my own story become unfamiliar to me."

"I am excited about how much possibility there is in interaction."

Facilitating Without Capture is not about abandoning guidance, care, or leadership.

It is about becoming more aware of how those things shape participation - and discovering what else becomes possible when understanding arrives a little more slowly.