Catalyzing transformative learning
in groups and teams
Tools and leadership mindsets to help people become collectively smarter, more confident and more adaptive in a complex and ever-changing world
Much of the work done in today’s organizations depends on people’s ability to solve problems, make decisions, and take action in the face of unpredictability, ambiguity, and rapid change.
To be able to act with intelligence, intention, and alacrity… even when faced with the uncertainty of not knowing what’s going on.
The problem is, most of us are are not so well-equipped to do this. The habits, the conversations, the interaction patterns and the assumptions on which our performance relies are fashioned for a previous time. One that was more predictable, more stable, less ambiguous. A time in which things just seemed to make more sense.
To be able to act in today’s time, we need to develop new skills and mindsets. We need to learn to adapt, while also standing on clear commitment and intention.
Vertical Facilitation is a manner of leaderfully engaging with people to help them evolve their capacity for effective action in the face of complexity and uncertainty.
It is about helping people who work together toward common purpose, get better at getting better.
To become more skillful in how they communicate, relate, and collaborate with each other. To become more mindful of the the otherwise hidden assumptions and mindsets that limit their capacity to see the bigger picture, and to overcome the obstacles that arise whenever we encounter situations that simply don’t make sense to us.
Vertical Facilitation is a guiding discipline and mindset that brings together key elements of coaching, design, and facilitation, while integrating insights from the fields of adult development, transformative learning, and relationship systems coaching.
As a discipline, it encompasses both a way of being and a manner of skillful practice. A manner of empathic and authoritative presence with individuals and groups; and a command of specific skills and practices that enable and empower them to think bigger, and act coherently.
We have crafted a powerful and deliberate learning journey for leaders, coaches, and facilitators who seek to help teams and groups evolve beyond their current level of sensemaking.
For those who seek to bring a profound transformative dimension to the work they do with groups and teams of all kinds.
The Vertical Facilitator
Learning Journey
The Leaning Journey 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 the Learning Journey 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 situat-ional 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.
Workwitroups and teams of any sort who seek to be able to work together more productively and collaboratively.
Learning Journey - How it works
The Vertical Facilitator Learning Journey unfolds across three levels.
Level 1: Warm-Up
Level I is comprised of a series of free webinars and emails, along with other materials to help you get learn the basics of Vertical Facilitation.
The Warm-up is free of charge. You can join any time: you will receive recordings and other materials you may have missed.
The next Warm Up will start in the Summer of 2024 (TBA) - Register to stay in the loop!
Level 2: 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 next Deep Dive will start in the Summer of 2024 (TBA) - Register to stay in the loop!
Level 3: Pathway to Mastery
After the Deep Dive, 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.
Prerequisite: Completion of The Vertical Facilitator Deep Dive.
Expected Outcomes from Participating in the Learning Journey
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
What is Vertical Learning?
In this introductory video—excerpted from the Warm-up video course—Michael answers the question “What is Vertical Learning?”. Vertical Learning is that kind of learning in which individuals and teams become more aware of the processes by which they come to understand, and align toward common action. These ‘processes’ include the interrelational and conversational activity of sensemaking, as well as the underlying meaning-making structures that determine that activity.
To the degree that people—both individually and collectively—can become aware of the processes by which they make sense of their world, they render themselves more choiceful in their actions, and understanding and motivations that govern those actions.