Hosting and Facilitating:
Similarities, Differences and Applications 

with Frances Baldwin

Mastering the art of the dance; knowing when hosting or facilitation is the “right” approach depends upon context, purpose and expected outcomes in each situation. There are clear distinctions as well as important, complementary and overlapping values within and between these practices. With emphasis on hosting The World Cafe this module offers an insightful and interactive exploration for new and experienced Cafe Hosts and Professional Facilitators.  

The unique knowledge and experience that each of us brings from our practices supporting social change and human development influence the lens through which we fully embrace, learn, design, and incorporate the potential of The World Café  into the scope of our work.  

Professional facilitators, consultants, managers and team leaders are often skilled in designing, actively guiding and balancing content, process and roles toward the expected outcomes of meetings. Most of us appreciate how structure and effective facilitation can enhance the quality and efficiency of many types of meetings. 

Experience and knowledge of group process, a core competence of facilitation,can complement the designing and hosting of dialogic processes such as World Café. It can also be an unconscious barrier to releasing our full potential as these dialogic processes require  different applications of very similar values and competencies as well as different ways of using our “selves” and our presence.   

Much of what a facilitator may attend to becomes background data not acted upon in the role of Café hosts. Core competencies of hosting embrace more egalitarian values; principles of openness, inclusion and collaboration, presume that given the right conditions the most useful and sustainable solutions and actions are the consequence of a shared intelligence of the people in the room. This affects the presence and “being” of the Cafe host as much or more than what one “does”.

DETAILS

WHERE
Online

WHEN
Thursday, February 13th, 2020
10am - 12pm Pacific Time
(see a Time Zone Converter for local time in your area) 

COSTS
$69.00 US
30% Discount for Community Table Subscribers, Beehive Productions
& Groups of 3 or more.

WHO IS THIS FOR? 
This course is suitable for all levels of World Cafe and other participatory practice hosts.

YOUR HOSTS   
M. Frances Baldwin & Amy Lenzo

Your Hosts

M Frances Baldwin is a native Floridian with more than 40 years of international experience as an educator, leadership consultant, and executive coach in a wide range of public sector, private industry and faith organizations. She was a teacher/counselor in the Dade County School System for 11 years including two years as counselor at Miami Dade Community College. As an internal organization development consultant Frances spent 6 years with the City Manager’s Office in Palo Alto, California. She spent 13 years with Exxon’s (Exxon-Mobil) domestic and European petroleum, research and chemical companies, where she designed and facilitated executive education strategies and consulted on several major capital improvement projects.

In 1994 she created Designed Wisdom, Inc., a small consulting/coaching practic

Note: This two-hour module is not designed to prepare participants for hosting World Café. See World Cafe Signature Learning Programs for more information on the eight-week World Cafe Hosting Fundamentals program we offer each fall semester in partnership with Fielding Graduate University.