The Vertical Facilitator
Catalyzing Transformative Learning in Teams and Groups
Michael Hamman and Lyssa Adkins, Course Leaders
The challenges and the complexities organizations face in the world belong as much to tomorrow as to today.
Single minds can no longer cope.
What is needed are not only single minds, but collective minds as well.
Cultivating the emergence of collective minds capable of meeting today’s (and, more importantly, tomorrow’s) challenges and complexities: this is the most important work for organizations that seek to thrive in tomorrow’s world.
Such a manner of cultivation necessarily moves beyond current learning paradigms. One in which learning is one that not only introduces new skills, but upgrades the very minds that engage those skills.
One in which emphasis not so much what people know, but how they know. One that transforms the very ways in which people think, and interact and communicate with one another.
Vertical Facilitation is a manner of leaderfully engaging with others in ways that deliberately cultivates just such a learning.
It is a discipline of practice that brings together key elements of coaching, design, and facilitation. At the same time, it integrates insights and practices from the fields of adult development, transformative learning, and relationship systems coaching.
The Vertical Facilitator: Catalyzing Transformative Learning in Teams and Groups is a program of study, culminating in an 8-week deep dive, that will leave you with a new-found mastery in the art and practice of designing and leading moments of deep transformative change for any variety of group learning modalities and situations.
The program has three phases.
The first phase consists of a 2-part series of live webinars, combined with brief recorded teachings and short articles that provide a substantive introduction to the art and practice of vertical facilitation. We call this first phase the “Warm Up”, and it is free to all.
The second phase is an 8-week Deep Dive, which builds upon the learning of that first phase. During the Deep Dive, participants develop a profound, experiential connection to the practices, skills and disciplines embodied when we are facilitating transformative, or vertical, learning with, and for, others. Cost for the Deep Dive is $1,975USD.
The third phase is an advanced practice in which practitioners expand what they learned in the Deep Dive, while bringing all they are learning into the cauldron of day-to-day organizational settings.
The course builds upon a combined 25 years experience in leading transformational programs, and leverages a unique blend of human technologies from the fields of adult development, transformative learning, systems relationship coaching, and executive coaching, to foster a powerful, and powerfully transforming, learning environment
Who Is This For?
The course is for experienced agile coaches, facilitators, consultants and organizational leaders who seek to bring a deep and transformative dimension to their training programs and facilitated events.
It is particularly suitable for those who themselves have been on a journey of inner transformation and seek to bring about situational and environmental qualities that reliably catalyze similar transformative pathways for others.
This course is for you if you
Conduct leadership training offers.
Coach or facilitate learning environments with leadership or management teams.
Coach agile product development teams who are ready to go to the next level in their performance.
Work with groups and teams of any sort who seek to be able to work together more productively and collaboratively.
The What, the Why and the How of Vertical Facilitation
A more detailed look at the human technology of vertical facilitation.
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Vertical Facilitation is a facilitation methodology by which we help people upgrade their capacity for complex sensemaking, both as individuals and as a collective.
Such an upgrade leads to a greater capacity for high performance in a complex world.
Vertical Facilitation is a powerful tool in helping individuals, teams, and organizations grow their capacity for inner agility—a key capability for sustained organizational agility.
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‘Agility’, as a set of frameworks and methods and as a management philosophy, has taken the world by a storm. And yet, how often is it the case that organizations are able to truly realize the potential benefits which agility promises?
The key to this quandary can be found in the phrase “you need to be agile, not just do agile.” This begs the question: How might we evoke such a manner of ‘Being’?
For the most part (and of course there are exceptions), this question has eluded us. But only because we haven’t been quite sure where to look. What know-how, institutions, and methods might we look to for instruction and inspiration?
What is needed are methodologies that provide yield the kinds of learning and competency which result in people being agile, in much the same way we currently have methodologies that provide learning and competency which result in people doing agile.
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Vertical facilitation leverages a unique blend of human technologies from the fields of adult development, transformative learning, dialogical O.D. (organization development), and systemic thinking.
These fields of research have a long and robust legacy and, consequently, offer a rich body of insights, practices, and methodologies that address, directly and powerfully, the very question of what it means to be agile.
Building from this rich body, Vertical Facilitation brings about acute awareness of the beliefs, assumptions and psychological strategies by which individuals and groups operate.
The insights which such an awareness brings about has the effect of shifting the complexity, nuance, and systemic inclusiveness with which people are able to make sense of the situations and circumstances they face.
Such a shift significantly raises people’s intelligence and effective impact. People become far more able in the face of the VUCA world we increasingly find ourselves in. The end result is far more effective outcomes and results, individually, collectively, and organizationally.
The Vertical Facilitator provides a rich and practical learning environment for coaches, consultants, and managers who see the importance of inner agility—and who understand that in order to do agile, people will need to learn to be agile.
Learning Journey - How it works
The Vertical Facilitator Learning Journey has three phases.
PHASE I: Warm-Up
The first phase is comprised of a series of free webinars and emails, along with other materials to help you get learn the basics of Vertical Facilitation. This phase starts when you Join Us. Here’s the layout:
Upon sign-up: You will receive a copy of our white paper that introduces you to the world of vertical learning.
Week 1: Live Session #1: Introduction to Vertical Facilitation, Part I
Week 2: You will receive the first of two videos which further explain and explore key principles of vertical facilitation and vertical learning
Week 3: You will receive the second of two videos.
Week 4: Live Session #2: Introduction to Vertical Facilitation, Part II
The Warm-up is free of charge. You can join any time: you will receive recordings and other materials you may have missed.
PHASE II: Deep Dive
For those who wish to bring the principles and practices of vertical facilitation into the reality of their workplaces, the Deep Dive is for you.
Those who participate in the Deep Dive will come away with the tools, techniques, and inner stance needed to successfully design and facilitate a vertical learning experience for any manner of group or team situation, whether a workshop or a team coaching engagement.
The Deep Dive has the following parts:
Session #1: Establishing the foundation for the deep learning experience we are about to embark on, and introducing the key concepts and design principles of vertical facilitation.
Your Leadership Development Profile. During this phase you will participate in a profound personal leadership development process which includes a 1-on-1 coaching session with Michael. Most people experience this as a powerful boost to their own leadership development stance—a key part of the Vertical Facilitator’s competence.
Session #2: In this session we explore the nature of inner development and transformative learning, setting the stage for what happens next.
Intensive: During the Intensive we engage in a combination of informational and highly experiential sessions in which you engage with, and practice, all aspects of vertical facilitation, including your most important tool: Your Self. The Intensive takes place over 3 consecutive days.
Vertical Facilitation Design Project: Between the Intensive and completion of the course, you will create your own vertical facilitation project in which you apply all that you are learning throughout the course.
Practice and Feedback Clinic #1 and #2: Between the Intensive and the course Completion you will have an opportunity to practice and get feedback on your project from course leaders. An opportunity for deep, applied learning.
Completion. During this session we will share our deepest learnings, and celebrate both the triumphs and belly flops of our projects.
After the Deep Dive….
PHASE III: Advanced Practice
…. You will have the opportunity to be a part of a structured learning community, supported by frequent “Pulse” sessions, vertical facilitation “challenges”, an advanced vertical facilitation course, and the opportunity to meet with the course leader and with one another… all supported by an online community platform.
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Expected Outcomes of the Course
An ability to confidently embody graceful presence in the face of whatever it is that is happening in the room.
A newly found capacity to “read the room” developmentally, and to respond to what’s there in ways that activate new developmental possibilities.
A readiness to stand in the anxiety of not knowing in a given moment, and to draw from that unknown to catalyze transformative learning for others.
A refined design sensibility that informs a new approach to the staging of the events and courses you lead.
A greater awareness of the inner beliefs, assumptions and triggers that trip you up, as well as the inner strengths that empower your leadership.
Your Course Leaders
Michael Hamman is dedicated to the possibility that the workplace be a site for personal, professional and social transformation. Trained in the 1980s in coaching and large group facilitation, Michael went on to train in systems thinking and methods, group dynamics and facilitation, professional and executive coaching, and in human and organization development. He is a decades-long student of the nature of human transformation, both in himself and in others.
His book, Evolvagility: Growing an Agile Leadership Culture from the Inside Out integrates this rich and varied background and experience, and provides a blueprint for what it means to be an agile leader in today’s complex world.
Lyssa Adkins is an internationally-recognized thought leader in the Agile community. She is deeply trained and experienced in human systems coaching and facilitation and she is a frequent keynote speaker. Her content expertise is agile coaching, adult human development, and working with change and complexity.
She is the author of Coaching Agile Teams which is still a Top 10 book a dozen years after publication. Her current focus is improving the performance of top leadership teams through insightful facilitation and organization systems coaching to help leaders take up the individual and collective transformation that is theirs to do