🎙️FS85 - Authenticity and Accountable Grounding with AI

Facilitation Stories

In this episode of Facilitation Stories, host Sam Moon interviews Hannah Boneham about her journey into professional facilitation, the founding of Facilitate

Key takeaways

• Hannah Boneham co-founded Facilitate Sheffield with Jane Clift, growing the local IAF meetup to approximately 60 members who meet bi-monthly for peer-led sessions.
• Boneham now co-leads the Sheffield group alongside Angel Tukore and Helen Todd, fostering a space where facilitators share skills and expand their networks.

Main topics

• Authenticity and professional identity in facilitation
• Building and sustaining local facilitator communities

Notable quotes

"That does not make me the cheapest facilitator on the market. And it doesn't mean that I have the largest profit margins, but it does mean that my quality and accountability were always high."

Conclusion

Listeners gain actionable strategies for balancing technological efficiency with

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast of the England and Wales Chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as the IAF. My name is Sam Moon and my guest today is Hannah Boneham. Hannah is a facilitator specialising in change management and organisational development and is a CEO of Leadwell. a social enterprise and consultancy based in Sheffield. So Hannah, to kick off with, tell me what in your world of facilitation is making you smile at the moment? Speaker 2 (0:41) Thank you, Sam. And can I say, first of all, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for having me. Speaker 1 (0:46) Thank you, Hannah. It's lovely. Speaker 2 (0:49) Well, it's making me smile. So the obvious and first answer that rushed to my mind when you asked the question was the community of facilitators that I've gotten to know over the last few years. There are some absolutely tremendous people, wonderful talent, and so very generous with their skills and experience. And this network, this space that we've all... chosen to occupy together. It brings so much joy and it makes facilitation not just a profession, but a community. I really love that. Speaker 1 (1:19) Tell me a bit about what you love about that. What does that mean to you, Hannah? Speaker 2 (1:23) Well, I'm an extreme extrovert and I don't say that lightly. I really do. At the end of a day's facilitation, I come home absolutely pumped because I've just spent the day interacting with people the whole time and I really enjoy it. It's something I have to watch and manage in terms of how my energy can come across. I can be a lot, so my husband tells me from time to time. And the fact that there are a huge range of different kinds of people from different walks of life, with different backgrounds and skills and perspectives, and who present different challenges and ideas, it's such a rich tapestry. facilitation with so many amazing different people and it really feeds me i get a huge amount of it and i hope i give a lot back to it as well because i get a lot of enjoyment from spending time with those people and Speaker 1 (2:07) danger of putting you on the spot here is there anything that comes to mind in terms of like there have been highlights of this shared community and the gifts that you discover when You're in a community of facilitators and things that surprise you that you weren't expecting. Speaker 2 (2:28) Yeah. So I was one of the co-founders of Facilitate Sheffield, which is the Sheffield branch of the IAF, the meetup. I co-founded that with Jane Clift, who has been a guest on this podcast herself. Speaker 1 (2:39) Yes, yes. Speaker 2 (2:40) And Jane and I, starting that off, we literally met for a coffee and we were like, we can't be the only facilitators in Sheffield. Who else is here? How should we find them? And growing that from that conversation, just the two of us, to the next, I think it was the next month when we had nine or ten different people come along, two of whom agreed to then be co-leads. So I now co-lead along with Angel Tukore and Helen Todd. And we now have, last count, I cannot remember, something like 50 or 60 members that come to sessions every two months. And each time we have a different... person volunteered to facilitate a session which means that we get to learn a completely new topic and we get to experience someone else's kind of key skill set so you get two for one right because you're not just like experiencing the facilitation of that person but you're also learning how they do it you might pick up a new tip or a new trick or a new set of pens that work for you that you can try and or whatever it might be and I think that's the thing that really stands out for me that in the last few years is that not only is this community about but it's generous and it's willing to be expanded and wants to be probed and shared and enjoyed by everyone and I just yeah I was really surprised to find that and I'm very happy to be part of it. Speaker 1 (3:54) Sounds like a really powerful strong experience in terms of bringing people together you can share stuff and share stories and kind of what they're up to and learning from each other. How are the sessions that you meet up? went after an event like that, after coming together, what do you leave with? What in terms of not as in product or transactional, but how does it leave you feeling? Speaker 2 (4:15) For me, very energized because I've spent the time with people. Other people have said they felt very safe, which has been really nice feedback and very involved and included. People have told us that they leave feeling as though they've found their people. Right. They've recognized now that they're not alone in what they're trying to achieve. We have a lot of... It's probably an even balance actually of in-house facilitators. So people who have roles like project management, where they do a lot of facilitation and then other people who are freelance facilitators or have their own business like myself. And I think that people have made connections with others who have similar peripheral skill sets or needs or requirements as well as the facilitation as well. So I think people have said that. coming away from it they've made new friends and new connections that have helped support them in other aspects of their careers and their lives which have been great sure Speaker 1 (5:07) so that sounds like a really mutual experience as well i Speaker 2 (5:10) hope so because you know when you get a lot out of something sometimes there's a concern like you stop and go hang on this this is feeding me i hope it's feeding other people too no Speaker 1 (5:21) it feels like there's a lot of aliveness in there I'm going to come on to the next question in a moment, but whilst we're here, and this is the Sheffield meetup. It Speaker 2 (5:29) is, yeah. Facilitate Sheffield. For Speaker 1 (5:31) any listeners who were in, any facilitators and listeners in Sheffield, how would they find out about those meetups? Speaker 2 (5:38) So it's any facilitators working or living in or around Sheffield or the Sheffield area. Call it South Yorkshire. If you're willing to travel, we'd be very happy to have you. You can find out about us by searching the hashtag Facilitate Sheffield on LinkedIn, or I'll give my details at the end of this podcast. Very happy for you to drop me a line or find me on LinkedIn and I'll connect you up with the group. Speaker 1 (5:58) Beautiful. And we made sure we put that information in the links of the podcast as well. So that's a beautiful thing. So Hannah, what helped you get into this work? How did you find yourself in facilitation? What is your facilitation story? Speaker 2 (6:12) Thank you. So I think I'm one of probably many people who was a facilitator before they realized that it was a defined profession, you know, professional skill set. So I worked in change management, project management, organization development, program management, those sorts of peripheral fields. And I spent a lot of time. helping manage complex groups of stakeholders who often didn't agree with each other or who agreed about what the outcome might be, but not the journey that we had to go on to get there, et cetera, et cetera.