Artful Facilitation Across Cultures

This training is designed for business and government leaders, campaigners, community organizers and senior nonprofit staff who are engaged in facilitation, negotiation, or conflict resolution in a cross-cultural context, and wish to master a more comprehensive set of skills.

Case studies and examples will be drawn from a diverse range of organizational settings and multicultural contexts. Participants should have working familiarity with the following: facilitative leadership, conflict resolution, conflict management, negotiation and facilitation.

At the conclusion of the course, participants will have:

• Developed and applied practical strategies for preventing, analyzing and managing intercultural conflicts in and between organizations and communities;
• Increased awareness of cultural and worldview differences alive in contemporary multicultural organizations and communities;
• Increased understanding of power and hierarchy and their abilities to work constructively in asymmetric situations;
• Developed cultural fluency including the ability to anticipate, adapt to and work across a range of communication starting-points and values;
•  Deepened their capacities to work through and beyond impasses in negotiation and facilitation;
• Learned about creative process and explored their inner geography of creativity, so they will be better able to make choices that stimulate and energize creativity for themselves, their organizations and their communities;
• Enhanced abilities to facilitate, lead and collaborate with others across a diversity of worldviews and values with awareness, sensitivity and increased confidence and choice.

This training is ideal for professionals working in business, government, community-based or non-profit settings, including those involved in teaching or training, community or resource planning, conflict resolution, cross-cultural outreach, advocacy, political organizing and multi-stakeholder decision-making.


Julian Griggs is one of the founding Principals of Dovetail Consulting Inc., and has been a regular trainer and facilitator for the Hollyhock Leadership Institute since its inception. In the last 10 years, Julian has designed and facilitated over several hundred workshops, strategic planning retreats and conferences for corporate, government, First Nations and non-government clients.
Michelle LeBaron is an internationally renowned scholar/practitioner, currently serving at UBC as professor of law and Director of Dispute Resolution. Her books include Bridging Cultural Conflicts: A New Approach for a Changing World and Conflict Across Cultures: A Unique Experience of Bridging Differences. www.accordcanada.com