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• Access, follow and train your intuition: how to know without knowing;
• Navigate difficult situations with care for all through an active awareness of your own power, as well as other sources of power in the room;
• Remain aware of who speaks and who doesn’t, of those whose pain is invisible – and what you can do about it;
• Walk towards someone presenting a challenge to a group you are facilitating, while continuing to hold care for the entire group, and more.

What does nonviolence have to do with group facilitation?

Miki Kashtan believes that nonviolence is a way of being and living that orients us in all our thoughts, words and deeds toward the integration of truth, love and courage. All nonviolent individual and collective actions are aimed at preserving what serves life and challenging what does not. Facilitation is one clear path for bringing nonviolence to the world!

How can we act now, as facilitators, as if the world of our dreams, the Beloved Community, is already in place?

Trainer Tip: Meetings can be unproductive when the participants aren’t clear about their needs or what they want from the group. When participants express opinions without expressing a need or informing the group of what they want, the meeting lacks clarity. Instead, if we can focus on naming our needs and make related requests, we can get closer to resolution much faster and enjoy the process more. Read on for an example.

Exploring how to connect with your reasons for offering empathy when someone shares pain.

The awareness and practice of interdependence is integral to holding an NVC consciousness. Practicing interdependence also means bringing in a quality of care in the moments we want to change agreements with others. This article talks about where our various choices, in regards to changing agreements, fits into different levels of engaging our interdependence.

One clue we have trauma is when we respond in a way we don't want (eg. being reactive, self sabotaging, etc). Even when we have high level NVC skills our trauma-related mechanisms can activate, and we can lose access to well honed NVC skills. Read on for approaches that involve healing trauma, and approaches that involve managing the effects of trauma and preventing additional trauma.

• Learn tips and strategies to ensure ALL voices are heard
• Grow your capacity to name and address power dynamics
• See how prior assumptions and perspectives impact how groups work together
• Explore facilitation components using a caring for all, power-with lens

• Learn tips and strategies to ensure ALL voices are heard
• Grow your capacity to name and address power dynamics
• See how prior assumptions and perspectives impact how groups work together
• Explore facilitation components using a caring for all, power-with lens

Roxy Manning's 2023, 4 session course, will help you

• Explore several essential components of facilitation using a caring for all, power-with lens
• Know how to identify and gather together the people who need to be in the room
• Learn tips and strategies for ensuring all voices are heard
• Grow your capacity to name and address power dynamics and unconscious bias that impacts group members’ experience

Listen to the Universe is a fun group exercise to explore how we focus our attention and interpret what we experience.

When a person of color (A.K.A. a person from the Global Majority, or GM) tells a marginalization story that triggers a defensive response from a white participant in a group, to foster awareness and healing, leaders can address the white person's distress with empathy, highlighting the common dynamic of prioritizing white pain. From there, leaders can offer GM participants opportunity to share their experience and make requests of the group.

Shared story has been a way for groups to unite in opposition to a common enemy. But more divergent and virulent beliefs/stories swirl through the internet and social media, facilitating people to polarize against one another. So notice when you're caught in a polarizing story; try shifting focus to observing your mind; somatic presence; underlying commonality; consciousness as universal need, energy, and spaciousness; and the natural compassion and generosity that flow from this.

• Learn how every decision we make perpetuates the status quo or brings us closer to the vision of a world that works for all
• Find out about our big brain capacity to integrate needs, impacts, and resources to make decisions that work for everyone
• Understand why power differences interfere with collaborative decisions and what can be done about it
• Discover tools that support collaboration in larger groups and organizations— even across power differences!

You've probably witnessed and participated in role plays that were powerful tools for inspiration, integration, or healing. You've likely also been in contexts where role plays fell flat, leaving people frustrated, confused, or disengaged. If you're sharing NVC with others – or are envisioning yourself going there in the future – you'll want to take this class, where the focus is on how to increase the chances of having role plays that serve a clear purpose, engage an entire group, and support the deepest learning possible for all.

Join CNVC Certified Trainer Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, Greg Rouillard and Certified Dynamic Governance (Sociocracy) Consultant John Buck for this six-session course recording to learn how to transform your method of meeting facilitation. Many NVC organizations have begun using sociocratic tools, including circle meetings and decision making by consent, with satisfying results.

• Discover what is yours to do in response to our growing global crises
• Weave nonviolence more deeply into how you live and lead
• Receive ongoing support within and beyond the course in how to be effective and alive while doing what’s yours to do
• Increase your capacity to face and mourn current reality as a source of greater choice and energy
• Be a part of transforming the legacy of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness into a livable future

Understanding how our brains operate in relation to power, privilege and status is important if we wish to build a world that works for all. This article gives an overview of the brain tendencies we have in relationship to groups, and provides remedies to counteract the automatic labor-saving devices of our human brains (which often prevent us from seeing the fullness of others, and our own, humanity).

In groups, relationships and society we may not want to dominate or take away from others’ access to power, to choice, to participation in decisions, nor to shaping the vision and direction of the dynamic. And yet how do we do it anyway without knowing it? Discover how privilege operates on a societal level and becomes so invisible in groups. Learn why the conversation is usually excruciating for members of both privileged and under privileged.

If you’ve ever dreaded attending a meeting – or watched in dismay as your group collapses into conflict – know that a methodology known as Convergent Facilitation offers you possible solutions. It’s based on one simple experience: that people come together at the level of their underlying principles, needs, aspirations, and dreams, not at the level of their surface positions.

Convergent Facilitation is a highly efficient decision-making process developed by Miki Kashtan from the principles of Nonviolent Communication. It enables you to look beneath the surface and find the essence of what’s important to different stakeholders, and bring it together into one set of principles that lead to proposals and ultimately decisions. As a result, it readily produces solutions and decisions that everyone can embrace.

What can we do when someone tells us we're contributing to a pattern we're genuinely not seeing (nor experiencing)? What makes these patterns visible to some people but not others? This article addresses these things by talking about what to factor in when receiving feedback; handling feedback; responding relationally; paying attention to social location; considering impact; plus, broadening our perspective to bring in greater care and awareness.