This post is also written in the following language:
日本語 (Japanese)
We are pleased to report that we facilitated an original workshop at the IAF Facilitation Summit 2024, an international conference for facilitators held online in October 2024.
We are pleased to report that we facilitated an original workshop at the IAF Facilitation Summit 2024, an international conference for facilitators held online in October 2024.
IAF(The International Association of Facilitators) is an international association of facilitators with several thousand facilitators as members worldwide.
The conference was held via online and many facilitators from all over the world participated.The title of the workshop facilitated by our CEO, Hideyuki Yoshioka, with co-facilitator Imizu Wkako, was,
How to achieve Leap Frog Growth as a facilitator.
～The ways to evolve our competencies to shape the brighter future of facilitation.
Leap Frog Growth is non-linear growth of our capabilities
“Leap Frog Growth” means an eminent growth in a single moment, just like frog leaps.
The learning curve when we strive to acquire some ability is not a straight line, but rather a staircase as shown below, with a period of stagnation followed by sudden large improvements in performance, often resulting in nonlinear growth.
It is not well understood why this kind of stagnation, often referred to as a plateau phenomenon, occurs and when nonlinear growth emerges, but if we can intentionally set up this kind of nonlinear growth, we can efficiently enhance our professional capabilities. This idea encouraged us to design this workshop.
The objective of the workshop is to explore ways to achieve faster growth as a facilitator by adapting Leap Frog Growth.
We came up with the formula for Lea Frog Growth as below,
Desire to Leap × Seed to Leap × Trigger to Leap
Desire to Leap is a strong desire to grow in certain capability area.
Seed to Leap is the potential capabilities to grow.
Trigger to Leap is the what makes potential spark to turn into performance.
In order to achieve Leap Frog Growth, we think we must have a strong desire to develop certain capability first, and if we have a strong desire, we will be able to find something potential, Seed to Leap.
Our hypothesis is that Seed to Leap includes not only the capabilities that are being developed consciously, but also the capabilities are being developed unconsciously, and those that are actually recognized as existing capabilities, but that have been assumed to have no relation to facilitation.
I share my story as an example. When was younger, I worked as a sales representative at a certain company. My boss organizes the meeting every Monday where the boss reprimands subordinates, and I was a main target.
During the meeting, I have been forced to be patient to hear the boss yelling to me. I didn’t speak up entirely, I just stayed silent. Instead, I was able to focus on observing what was discussed, how the others behave.
And my observation skill has been unconsciously developed very well, I didn’t know it at that time though.
Many years later, when I started a facilitator’s career, I suddenly made my potential observation skill spark. And I found I’m well equipped with very high observation skills.
I have also had many experiences where something that I recognized as an ability, but which I thought was unrelated to facilitation, led me connect to facilitation performance, and made me find appropriate ways to adapt it to facilitation.
Adapt Leap Frog Growth to Facilitator’s competencies
Facilitation requires a very broad range of competencies. IAF defines a wide variety of roles and performances in six-competency areas as Facilitator’s Core Competencies. Therefore, we believe that the potential cultivated through all types of business experience can be applied in facilitation.
If you find a Seed to Leap, the next step is to find Trigger to Leap.
There are many triggers for potential to spark. What is like to be a trigger is different depends on the individual and the situation, but we believe that there is a tendency for triggers to work for each individual.
Therefore, in the workshop, we reflected on our own Leap Frog Experiences in the past and probe what was a trigger? What could be the triggers for each individual?
As one clue to analyze the type of triggers, we asked the participants to specify the zone in a matrix with two axes, strong pressured and comfortable, dramatic and minor, in which triggers are likely to work.
Some participants fit all four quadrants, while others were more pronounced in one of the quadrants, the trigger types are varied. Although one’s trigger type cannot be completely represented by these two axes alone, many participants felt that they were able to get a sense of their own trigger types.
How to Mange Leap Frog Growth
We believe that if you know the situations in which your triggers tend to work, it is possible to activate the triggers intentionally.
In the latter half of the workshop, the participants were asked to target the areas of facilitation competency that they strongly wanted to develop, look for Seed to Leap in those areas, and think about what could be triggers and how to activate them.
We had a short work session during the workshop to test this process. We believe that by taking the time to do this work, we can manage Leap Frog Growth.
Since facilitators from all over the world were present at this workshop, we were able to share a wealth of Leap Frog Growth experience and gained a variety of wisdom in managing Leap Frog Growth.
The workshop made us realize that there are hints for future growth hidden in past experiences.
Facilitators
- Hideyuki Yoshioka CEO of Knowledge Signs Inc.
As a professional facilitator, Hideyuki has crafted unique methods of facilitation and consulting. Hideyuki has been involved in professional facilitation for over 20 years and facilitated almost a thousand times of meeting.
Hideyuki always commits very critical meetings that require critical outcomes as enterprise mid-term strategies, organizational development plan, digital transformation plan.
And also has plenty of experiences to facilitate cross cultural group.
Hideyuki is always influential to facilitator’s community in Japan as a spearhead to lead new challenges.
Hideyuki has conducted original workshops in IAF Asia conference for three years in a row since 2014.
■Certification
IAF CPF(Certified™ Professional Facilitator)
Language: Japanese, English
Available: Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, India,other areas in Asia, North America, Eu
Wakako Imizu
Certified Level 1 Career Consulting Technician, Certified Supervisor of the Career Counseling Association of Japan, Certified Workshop Designer.
After working in corporate sales and management positions at a human resource service company, she has a proven track record as a training instructor and career counseling supervisor.
Based on her experience in career counseling, her strength lies in creating a warm and free atmosphere where participants can be relaxed and talk candidly with each other.
Language: Japanese, English
