Ecological Facilitation: A Gritty and Creative Approach to Leadership

Ecological Facilitation: A Gritty and Creative Approach to Leadership

March 5-23, 2012

Teachers: Jenny Mackewn, Toni Spencer, Jean-Claude Audergon, Tim “Mac” Macartney and Stephan Harding

This course is open for bookings.

The world is increasingly volatile and unpredictable. There’s a hunger and a need for a new kind of leadership – which can venture into the unknown and start making a new future. This practical and evocative course empowers us to better facilitate and lead groups and organizations in the service of creating that more sustainable future. It will open up a wealth of ideas, practices and skills that allow you to facilitate and lead from a deeper understanding of the interdependence of the universe. It gives us the courage to embrace complexity and ambiguity and yet to lead with clarity in the midst of uncertainty.

The emerging field of ecological facilitation and leadership looks to healthy, dynamic ecosystems for guidance in approaching change. Such bio-mimicry provides a logical and instinctive starting point for new leadership towards a sustainable world. This approach takes facilitator-leaders beyond self interest and the individualistic and organisation-centred concerns which have dominated recent decades. It suggests that we broaden our concept of ‘self’ and ‘organization’ to encompass the larger interdependent systems such as the natural systems and cultural forces to which we are compellingly connected.

Course Overview:

This highly experiential and practical course takes an ‘action research’ approach to developing participants’ work alongside theories of group process, leadership and change, we draw on a range of fields to support the fuller engagement of all: participatory arts, ecopsychology, embodiment work, practical sustainability and dialogue. With this we enable ourselves to tap in to a wider field of knowing so often left behind at the office / classroom door.

On this course we engage with participatory approaches that allow all voices to be heard and for the wisdom of the group and the context to emerge.

• We develop the idea and felt sense of an ecological leader-facilitator, bringing new experience and insight to the process of change.
• We cover key principles of working with groups, organizations and communities from an ecological, participatory worldview.
• We learn (or develop) an ecology of interconnected leadership and facilitation skills and methodologies .
• We create a vibrant and trusting learning community where we all learn from each other and enjoy the process of doing so.
• We practice the skills of facilitation and leadership in live scenarios and we give and receive feedback on our practice.
• We work with our own personal and professional contexts as learning opportunities – using creative systemic approaches to reveal new insights and possibilities to our dilemmas and challenges.
• We identify key dilemmas and inquire into them, seeking new and creative solutions to such inquiries as:
  1) What forms of facilitation best reflect our intentions?
  2) What practices reflect, and therefore enable, a more ‘eco-logical’ way of being?
  3) What approaches to leadership support and model the change we seek to facilitate?

We are stimulated, resourced and nourished. We leave re-inspired and ready to make an ever bigger difference.

Who is the Course for?

Facilitators, leaders, educators, organisational consultants, coaches, artists, community leaders, change agents, activists: all those working with groups engaged (or needing to be) in questions of sustainability. We welcome those with little experience alongside highly experienced practitioners wishing to refresh and advance their work. From this dynamic mix we will create a strong learning community.

Style of the Course?

The style of the course blends teaching from luminaries in the field with the group in a participatory learning exchange. The programme will be practical, challenging and fun.

The course will include:

• Talks and case studies
• Powerful experiential exploration of the themes
• Large and small group work
• Live practice of the skills of leadership, catalysis and facilitation
• Exploration of work-related scenarios
• Peer or home groups
• An overall learning community

Course Programme

Drawing from the fields of complexity theory, deep ecology, and participative democracy, we start with the assumption that our current ecological and social crisis stems from deeply embedded cultural habits and that we need new kinds of leadership and facilitation that is courageous in catalysing change: individual and collective.

We will work with our many ways of knowing and engage our intellectual, somatic, emotional and indigenous intelligences.

Key themes to be explored are:
• Facilitation as leadership
• Finding inspiring purpose and providing clarity in the midst of unpredictability
• Relational and systemic practice
• Working with / within nature and with nature as a co-facilitator
• Developing our embodied presence as leaders and facilitators
• The maker instinct, the creative and co creative process
• Working with uncertainty and venturing into the unknown
• Catalyzing breakthrough
• Co-designing and co-creating as leader and facilitator – drawing on bio empathy
• Holding the space for experiences and emotions that arise in this context
• Resourcing ourselves in this work
• Creating common ground and engaging the disengaged

Week 1 – Grounding the Practice – Facilitation and Leadership in an Ecological Paradigm
Jenny Mackewn, Toni Spencer, Stephan Harding

In this first week, we introduce the core ideas, inquiries and impulses for this new approach to leadership and facilitation. To start from the ecological self is a fairly radical suggestion as a starting point for leadership, and yet when we meet the idea in experiential and practical ways, it offers us solid ground for our work.
Participants are invited to bring their own ideas in to the development of the group’s understanding alongside practical and experiential teaching from the team.

Key themes this week are:

• Understanding an ecological paradigm
• The ecological self: qualities of a relational leader
• Working with ‘nature’ as co-facilitator
• Mapping the field of socio-ecological sustainability (or Mapping the terrain of work towards a sustainable future)
• Models and theories of groups

Week 2 – Working with Creativity and Conflict
Jenny Mackewn, Toni Spencer, Jean-Claude Audergon, Tim ‘Mac’ Macartney

‘A healthy rain forest ecosystem does not say “I’ll take five of those beautiful panthers, and forget the tacky leaf mould”. No leaf mould no compost, no compost no life.’ David Whyte

In this week we look at some of the tougher contexts that may arise in working with groups around the theme of sustainability and what can arise.

From an ecological starting point, everything has intrinsic value. This understanding offers new responses to how we work and live in the world. What can happen when we take this approach to situations of difference and conflict within our human ecologies? Participants are invited to offer real scenarios for live consultation as a learning platform for the group.

Key themes this week are:

• Working in planned and emergent ways with the unfolding of the group process in the sensuous field
• Status, story and ‘the other’
• Creative practices from the arts to support new conversations
• Invitation to wholeness rather than separation
• Dilemma flipping

Week 3 – Venturing into Innovation and Uncertainty
Jenny Mackewn, Toni Spencer

“Constant, intuition-based innovation is required to respond to discontinuous change; without it, no business can succeed in the 21st century.” Nancy Adler, McGill University in Journal: Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2006,

This third week of the course is focused on the qualities and skills necessary to work with increasing uncertainty, and the qualities and skills that allow for innovation and fresh insight. Much of this week will be offered ‘lab’ style: working as a learning community we will develop, practice and create new ways of working pertinent to participants’ professional practice. This offers a rare opportunity to explore new work with peers and experts in a generative environment. Content will support and challenge our ability to work with uncertainty and innovation.

Key themes this week are:

• Improvisation skills for working with the unknown
• Approaches to innovation in this field
• Working with uncertainty
• Creative approaches to future visions and strategy
• Creating practices and forms specific to participants’ own work context
• Developing our immersive learning ability
• Embracing rapid prototyping and experimental and playful approaches

The Teachers

Jenny Mackewn regularly leads, facilitates and catalyses sustainable change in corporate, community and academic settings. She is a creative-catalyst in limitednowhere and is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice (CARPP) where she was director of a unique programme in facilitation as a form of action research. She has written a chapter in the Sage Handbook of Action Research on facilitation and leadership as forms of action inquiry , and is a national trainer for the Transition Towns and Cities movement. She is currently co-creating a programme about developing resilience in organisations.

Toni Spencer developed and taught on the innovative Schumacher Certificate in Education For Sustainability, designing, facilitating and teaching on the course using a wide variety of facilitation techniques and approaches. She has also co-designed and run a number of Schumacher Short Courses. Alongside this she is a freelance facilitator elsewhere including Embercombe and Transition Town Totnes. She is also engaged in a re-emerging art practice and a growing practice as a wild food forager and teacher. She holds a BA in Fine Art and a MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice. Previous professional work has been with organisations including Goldsmiths, as a Lecturer in Eco Design, Forum For the Future, the Social Venture Network, Attainable Utopias, Wallpaper* Magazine as one of the founding editorial team, and Wink Media. Toni’s facilitation and coaching practice is fed by both professional and personal experience in the fields of Art and Eco Design, embodiment practices, The Work That Reconnects, Deep Ecology, Permaculture and new social ventures.

Jean-Claude Audergon teaches Process Work internationally and is a co-founder of the Training Programs of Process Work in Zurich, Portland Oregon, Slovakia, and the UK. He works with the creativity locked within apparent blocks or apparently intractable issues within organizations, and teaches leaders in teams and organizations to do the same. He also has a long-term interest in violence prevention, has supervised and trained teams and organizations within social services, prisons and schools. He has also led a long-term program working with mental health issues in psychiatric hospitals and community mental health forums. He is a co-founder of CFOR, and facilitator of community forums. He has also trained as a filmmaker and coaches performers. He has written a chapter in New Horizons in Body Psychotherapies, (Ed. N. Totton 2005) Open University Press.

Tim “Mac” Macartney is the founder of Embercombe, a charity and social enterprise established to champion a way of living that celebrates the opportunities inherent in this challenging time and that inspires people to contribute energetically towards the emergence of a socially just, environmentally sustainable and spiritually fulfilling human presence on earth. In 1983 Mac was the gardener at a management training centre. By 1987 he was the Head of consultancy at the same place, and two years later had his own London-based people and organisation development consultancy. With the skilled and highly creative involvement of a very dedicated team, this consultancy was later expanded into Russia and Poland. In 1997 after guiding a successful culture change project over a four-year period, Mac’s client offered him the financial means to purchase land and make a dream come true. Embercombe was purchased in April 1999 although it wasn’t until 2006 that the website was hoisted and the gates fully opened.

Over a period of twenty years Mac was mentored and coached by Native American metis ‘Medicine’ people to learn the Earth wisdom that once informed all indigenous peoples, including those of Britain. During this training and ever since he has attempted to bring two worlds together – an ancient world view that emphasises relationship, interdependence, and reverence for life with the huge challenges and equally huge opportunities of the 21st Century. Mac’s work with organisation leaders was motivated by his belief that it was in the world of business that he could exercise his skills to greatest effect for the benefit of future generations. He later modified this position to include people, young and old, privileged and disadvantaged, under-employed and over-employed. Mac’s book ‘Finding Earth, Finding Soul – the invisible path to authentic leadership’ speaks to the necessity for each of us to gather our courage and step out of the shadows and become the leaders ‘we have been waiting for’.

Course Fees

Any One week £750
Any Two weeks £1,400 (Save £100 over weekly course price)
Three weeks £2100 (Save £150)

All course fees include accommodation, food, field trips and all teaching sessions.

For further information about Schumacher College please see About the College

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