Archives for February 2021

Is Collective Power of the Group the Best Avenue to Team Facilitation?

Team Facilitation: Who Are We Facilitating?

While listening and watching one of the five Virtual Book Tour stops for ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation‘, one of the participants had one of those moments of clarity that we might describe as ‘an aha-moment’.

Art Moore of Clear Systems, LLC was listening in on my conversation with Ahmed Sidky, Deborah Grayson Riegel, Lyssa Adkins and Tricia Broderick. The topic of that Virtual Book tour stop was: Leadership is a conversation: The importance of facilitating collaborative conversations.

Here is what happened in Art’s own words.

Who Are We Facilitating?

By: Art Moore

We talk a lot about the collective power of the group. The whole is greater than the parts. Believe in the ability of the team. These are great principles. And yet I have always sensed they were somehow incomplete, not the exact story.

I can only say this in retrospect, after a recent moment of clarity. It happened while I was sitting in on one of Marsha Acker’s virtual book tour events for her new book, The Art and Science of Facilitation. She and the astonishing panel she’d assembled[1] had begun talking about achieving a level of co-creation; and the missing piece fell in place.

For me, that missing piece, the underlying truth, is that a great facilitator, leader, human, starts first with belief in the individual; that one person and the fountain of creative potential they possess.

Belief in people really means belief in many individuals and, as individuals, their ability to co-create. It is each individual rising above himself to create with others who are also creating. As the panel said, this is not “mere” collaboration. It is not just more, but different. It is each reaching fully and their ideas co-mingling with others who are doing the same.

The orchestra analogy is apt. This viewpoint and approach, pushed out to its boundary, promoted out as a model of leadership and working, establishes a new North Star not just for individual leaders but for human society. “Here is what I am tremendously interested in. Are you interested in it too? Let’s go together.” There is an idea, but it can be fully co-owned.

So we’re not really honoring “the group.” We’re believing in something much more powerful. The ability of individuals to co-create. It is no small skill. It is, I believe, the skill, the one that will elevate us to the society we are capable of becoming together.

[1] Marsha Acker, Ahmed Sidky, Deborah Grayson Riegel, Lyssa Adkins and Tricia Broderick

Are you curious about the rest of this conversation?
We recorded all of it and it’s available right here!

Our gratitude goes out to Art Moore for sharing his experience with us.

Art Moore, Author

Mr. Moore’s career spans software development, practice management, methodology development, training and strategic consulting, in both federal and private sectors. He has provided industry thought leadership in multiple disciplines, from data warehousing, to business rules, requirements engineering and Agile, and brings decades of experience in building high performing teams. That is the focus of Clear Systems LLC, which he founded in 2005, providing Lean/Agile training, coaching, and transformation at the team and organization level. (CSP, CSPO, CSM, CAL1, Scrum@Scale, LeSS, SPC, KMP II, ICP-ATF, ICP-ACC, ICP-BAF, Certified ICAgile Instructor

Republished with permission

Did you know: TeamCatapult has been training facilitators for years!

Here are several upcoming opportunities for you:

Virtual Facilitation Masterclass March 18-19, 2021
Agile Team Facilitation Workshop March 22-26, 2021
Advanced Facilitation Workshop April 28-May 5, 2021

Join us for one, or all, Virtual Workshops!

These workshops are a great stepping stone to our cohort.

Learn more about our Coaching Agility from Within ‘A Cohort Journey to Masterful Agile Team Coaching’ and apply to join in May 2021.

Creating a Pathway to Business Agility Through Facilitation

In January of 2021, my book ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation’ was published. Due to ongoing lockdowns and worldwide travel restrictions, a traditional book tour was out of the question.

So we came up with an alternate way to celebrate the release of the book. Out of necessity, a Virtual Book Tour was born.

As I write this, I’ve completed five Virtual Book Tour stops, each with its own topic, unique guests and purpose. Read on to learn more about the second stop in this series of the Virtual Book Tour to celebrate ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation’ and meet guests Evan Leybourn and Zuzi Šochová.

How Do You Use Agile Facilitation to Achieve Business Goals?

It’s essential to create an agile company culture that supports business agility, growth and development.

In this conversation, I was joined by Evan Leybourn of the Business Agility Institute and Zuzi Šochová.

The discussion centered around the ways companies get in their own way and how they can create a culture that helps them thrive.

Show Notes: Business Agility Through Facilitation

Here are some of the questions Evan and Zuzi responded to during this conversation.

What does it mean to be ‘agile in business’? Where do you see that going?
How facilitation can support business agility goals.
What does ‘being an agile organization’ mean to each of you?
What is the most common reason companies get in their own way? How can a leader create a culture that helps them and their company thrive, using agile facilitation?
What was the approach and vision you created for the business agility conference deep dives during the 2020 Business Agility conference?
What’s important about dialogue for business agility?
What’s challenging about dialogue?
What advice would you give to other leaders about the use of dialogue in becoming agile?

Have these questions sparked your curiosity about Business Agility and the role of facilitation?

Business Agility Through Facilitation

If you are curious about the answers sparked by these questions during this conversation, great! The full Virtual Book Tour episode 2 replay is right here! Watch and listen.

The Art & Science of Facilitation

During the first Virtual Book Tour stop, the live audience in attendance asked many questions of TeamCatapult faculty, who were part of the panel to celebrate the book launch.

Several questions couldn’t be answered live due to time constraints: we added the questions, and the answers in a blog article.

Read: How to Lead Effective Collaboration with Agile Teams to get amazing insights from the brilliant minds of our TeamCatapult faculty.

Next, stay tuned here for recaps of Virtual Book Tour stops 3, 4 and 5!

An Agile Conversation: The Game of Teams Podcast

As part of my recent virtual book tour for ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation’, I made a virtual stop at The Games of Teams podcast studio, which is located in Dublin, Ireland.

The Game of Teams podcast is a series of “Conversations designed to illuminate the Game of Teams from renowned Practitioners and Leaders worldwide”

Meet Tara Nolan, Podcast Host

Tara Nolan is the host of The Game of Teams Podcast, a podcast that was born out of her fascination with teams, her work with teams as a Team Coach and her interest in exploring the thoughts and thinking of others who have a role in making teams great.

As part of this podcast series, Tara interviews practitioners and leaders to hear their stories, including failures in a bid to give voice to what is happening on teams.

Many have written books on the subject. Her role is to help listeners to get massive traction to the things that matter most on teams.

The Art & Science of Facilitation

During episode 52 on The Games of Teams podcast, my conversation with Tara Nolan was centered around my new book.

We discussed many points during our conversation, here are just a few of the show notes:

Systems Thinking. Dialogue, Structural Dynamics and Agile is the thinking I use to inform my approach to client engagements.
Dialogue and Structural Dynamics enable movement towards agility.
Many teams that I work with notice the groundhog or mini groundhog day conversations with which they are engaged. Dialogue principles and structural dynamics often provide the gateway to true collaboration.
So much of facilitation is an inside game. A good facilitator gets very familiar and comfortable with the 5 beliefs inherent in facilitation.
I make the claim that 21st century leaders need to become artful facilitators and coaches of teams.

Listen to The Game of Teams Podcast

I invite you to read the full list of show notes from this podcast episode.

You can listen to the full podcast right here.

If you prefer, The Games of Teams podcast is also available through

Apple Podcast and Google Podcast