Take Me to Your Leader: Facilitating Multi-organization Collaborative Processes by Penny Walker, CPF

When organisations are collaborating with each other, they need to agree what they want to achieve together, and they need to agree how to work together. These process decisions are ideally made jointly. But you have to start somewhere!

What does it take to facilitate a collaborative process? Tricky questions arise:
· Who is my client?
· Who decides?
· What does success look like?
· What is my role in helping the group succeed?

This session will include some useful conceptual frameworks which help facilitators (and their clients) navigate through the early stages. Focusing on those characteristics of collaboration that are different from other situations where facilitators work, there will be guidance and a chance to reflect on your own experience and think about how you would respond.

Penny Walker is an independent facilitator (CPF) specializing in change, stakeholder dialogue, and sustainability. This work has included projects with Unilever, Greenpeace, and government agencies in the UK. She is a director of InterAct Networks, building public sector capacity for stakeholder engagement and collaboration. Her widely-praised and accessible book, Change Management for Sustainable Development - a workbook, was published in 2006. Her most recent ebook is entitled, Working Collaboratively: A Practical Guide to Achieving More. She blogs at penny-walker.co.uk/blog.  Penny also chairs the award-winning social enterprise, Growing Communities (www.growingcommunities.org), a literally ground-breaking social enterprise growing and trading food. She lives in North London with her husband, two children and a vegetable garden.