workshops work
Welcome to “workshops work,” the podcast that transforms how professionals engage, inspire, and lead groups. Ranked among the top 5% most popular podcasts globally, it is hosted by Dr Myriam Hadnes, a behavioural economist and facilitation expert. Each episode delves into the techniques and mindsets that make workshops truly impactful.
Join us every week as we sit down with world-renowned facilitators and uncover their secrets to creating psychological safety, fostering collaboration, and sparking innovation. Whether you’re a Facilitator, L&D professional, HR leader, manager, coach or trainer, you’ll find practical tips, inspiring stories, and actionable insights to elevate your group dynamics.
From navigating conflict to unlocking creativity, “workshops work” blends theory with practice, ensuring you walk away with tools you can immediately apply. Dr Myriam Hadnes doesn’t just interview; she facilitates enriching conversations that shift perspectives and deepen understanding.
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workshops work
301 - Facilitating High-Stakes Multi-Stakeholder Climate Conversations with Barbara Oliveira
When an island is sinking, whose responsibility is it to save? What approach do we take, and who foots the bill?
Big, high-stakes climate conversations always share the same goal: to save the planet. But when a diverse group of stakeholders bring their own interests to the table, tensions naturally arise between the polarity of priorities - and that’s when things start to get a little complicated.
Thankfully, Barbara Oliveira is a master at helping everyone to win. As a lawyer in a past life, she now seeks solutions to Wicked Problems in the climate space, harmonising the rigidity of formal negotiations with the softness of human connection and open exchange.
A thoughtful and motivating conversation, with lots to double-click on, muse upon and learn from Barbara.
Find out about:
- Facilitation through the lens of high-stakes, multi-stakeholder climate conversations
- Powerplay, policies and principles: how to navigate multilateral conversations and negotiations with care
- What lies between the space of Facilitation and Chairing in the climate space
- Why building resilience can keep us present and help us to self-regulate
Links:
Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.
Connect to Barbara Oliveira:
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https://workshops.work/podcast
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Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!
What does it take to make workshops work and how can we facilitate collaboration that sticks and leads to results? My name is Miriam Hattness and, with the Workshops Work podcast, I'm on the mission to find the magic ingredients that make workshops work. Today, with me on the show is Barbara Olivier, and we speak about facilitating in high-level multi-stakeholder spaces with a focus on climate futures and climate action, and we really dive into the processes how to facilitate the change that is needed to save this planet. So listen carefully, because this is an episode not to miss, and don't forget to scroll to the show notes to find more links to connect to Barbara and to subscribe to the show if you feel like it. Thank you for listening. Hello, barbara, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Hello, hello. I am super curious to speak with you and to hear about multi-stakeholder meetings, high stakes, climate action, all these big topics that are more relevant now than ever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we're having this talk just in the aftermath of the COP 29, which ended this weekend, which is quite interesting, quite timely as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, so we are recording this end of November 2024. Yeah, and before we go there, I will start at the beginning. When did you start calling yourself a facilitator and actually do you? Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I do call myself a facilitator and I've started. I think I started calling myself a facilitator back in 2009. I don't know exactly when or which meeting, but I remember introducing myself as a facilitator or somebody who just, yeah, create opportunities for people who are very different to meet somewhere that feels productive and comfortable enough to go further.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a guide.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I had this retreat with my consensus building community a few months ago and one of our colleagues, a friend's beautiful person, asked the question which two are you as a facilitator and mediator? And we, all you know, took that question overnight and I thought I came back the next day. I think I think I'm a torch overnight and I thought I came back the next day. I think I think I'm a torch. I see myself like shedding light when it's dark, and sometimes a lighthouse. You know, when participants are in their boats trying to get somewhere, I'm in the shore, yeah, showing the rocks and saying, hey, keep on going, keep on going, yeah. But definitely the idea of like a guide or a torch resonates with me a lot.
Speaker 1:And I love that. I love that image you're painting because it's they know. For me, it sounds like they know the way and what it takes so they can navigate the boat. But if they don't see, they will navigate in the wrong direction. So you're not telling them where to go or what to do, but you're helping them to see so that they can do the work yeah, exactly, I think as a facility they are doing this work.
Speaker 3:For what? Almost 15 years now, the one thing that has grown inside of myself is really this trust for groups. I come from the art of hosting school, of computation, besides working formal multi-stakeholder negotiation processes, and there is that innate trust in the wisdom of groups and what happens is what you know, the only thing that can have happened. Yeah, and I remember learning that trust a group, trust a group, trust a group, and I'm a lawyer by training. I was like what are you talking about? Trust a group, trust a group, trust a group, and I'm a lawyer by training. I was like what are you talking about? Three versions of the agenda and think of every possible pitfall and you know, plan for troubleshooting all kinds of different things that could go wrong.
Speaker 3:And so seeing myself as a lighthouse or a torch, trusting that these are the navigators, they are in the boat together. I'm not a captain, I'm not even part of the boat that these are the navigators, they are in the boat together. I'm not a captain, I'm not even part of the boat. I can be invited for coffee or tea, but they know where they're heading and sometimes the lighthouse also helps them see that maybe the direction they're going is not the most useful, or they thought they wanted to go that way, but maybe they want to stop sooner, or maybe they want to divert course, and that's also part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful, course, and that's also part of it. Yeah, beautiful, and um, I heard three kind of keywords that I would love to double click on. One is and I first list them all three and then maybe you see where you want to start sounds good. I heard you've been a lawyer before and you started, or you're coming from the school of thought, of the art of hosting, and you're part of the consensus building community? Yeah, and I wonder how these three aspects inform the work that you're doing today with these complex multi-stakeholder meetings, especially maybe as a lawyer that is paid to have answers. Yeah, and the art of hosting, of creating space, and hosting doesn't sound as sounds more comfortable and cozy than multi-stakeholder meeting. For climate action. Yeah, and consensus building is it always about consensus? What are the pitfalls? So these are my three big ones and I just drop them there and leave it to you where to go with it yeah, how to make sense of them.
Speaker 3:So I love how you elaborated on this, because for me now I think I'm at a place again. I'm almost 48 years old. I've been doing this for one and a half decade, working in different countries with different communities, tackling different wicked problems between climate change, biodiversity conservation, energy transitions yeah, so, um, I think I came to a place in which I feel really integrated and whole. But for a while, in the beginning, in the first let's say five, yeah, until 2012, maybe I felt very born, I guess, because I felt like I was a double agent. Sometimes I was hanging out with the art of hosting the Impact Hub, the Innovation Crowd and World Cafes and it's all like wonderful and so connecting and so creative. But then how do we follow through from this? What are the action points and what are we implementing? And, of course, even in the Art of Hosting, there is a lot of consistency in implementation and production cafes and we've gone a long way.
Speaker 3:And then I would you know, the next day or the next weekend, I'm sitting with the consensus building folks and we are designing a whole year process to develop policy scenarios for energy investment at a country level, and then it's all very formal and the agendas are like really tight and there is barely any space for the individual.
Speaker 3:It's all like what is the structure, what is the mandate, what is the negotiation mandate and what are the different positions and what are the interests and where are we landing and what is the policy goal and how is the policy going to be implemented?
Speaker 3:And I was fine being this double agent and just you know, wearing one hat one day and another hat the other day, and having the lawyer, the legal background, which has always been super helpful because it's so analytical, and I'm always asking questions and not settling for the first answer and wanting to know why and tell me more and what if we do it this way. And then I think, when I became a coach, an integral coach in 2015, things started to come together. And then I started cross-fertilizing in the communities and then I became the connecting or the connection expert in the consensus building community and I became like the designer and the big vision scenario development person in the Art of Ocing community and that was really a beautiful cross-fertilization in terms of the tools and mindsets that the different schools of thought and facilitation contribute to actually tackling the hardest problems or challenges in our time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful. Thank you for helping us to understand this web and how it all came together, and I think it just beautifully also shows how facilitators all bring in their different path to then help groups in very different ways. Yeah, help groups in very different ways. Yeah, and maybe you can tell us more about your work with multi-stakeholders to tackle these big problems of our times, like climate change, because and you you mentioned another keyword that may inspire your answer the position, roles and the little space for individuals.
Speaker 1:So we have multi-stakeholders and they're all representing organizations, countries, institutions. And I wonder, as facilitators, we all say connection over content and we first have to connect on the heart level before we can go into the heart conversations and before we can even dream of consensus. How do you balance that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so interesting when you're talking about consensus and connection. I don't think I've ever shared that with you in our conversations, but I started at the UN. I worked at the UN level and the reason why I think I found my way into facilitation is because I was working in Geneva, the states represented and discussing agenda items and all of that, and I'm one of those kids that when I was in school or at university, my goal was to save the world and work at the UN. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Yes, I can relate to that.
Speaker 3:And so I'm there like really happy I've made it, I'm in Geneva. This is incredible, amazing. And I'm sitting through these meetings and I'm thinking, if these are the people who are going to save the world we are doomed Like there is no way in these ways of having a conversation, there is no way that we're going to generate the types of like results and outcomes that really address where we are now. Maybe they did address in the 1950s. There is such an important role for the UN in building peace and bringing hope in the world that's devastated by war, two wars, one after the other, all the regional wars. So there is something revolutionary in the multilateral body in that.
Speaker 3:But this is back then, 2006, 2007. And this is like the internet coming online back then, 2006, 2007. And this is like the internet coming online and all the we're talking like there were 30 years of participatory policy development happening in the US. You know, since the 1970s, 1980s, there were democratized countries also having participatory fora for policy development. So I was like this is not. I mean, there must be another way of doing this right.
Speaker 3:So fast forward two years. I mean this training in the Netherlands, where I live now, and it was called the International Program for the Management of Sustainability and it was a one week intensive learning how to do interest-based negotiations or the Harvard method on negotiations, and it was all about you know, instead of reading your statement or your position from your country, let's just understand what is at stake, what are the goals and how can we get there and how do we look at each other as resources versus a burden to overcome. So I think that really informed my even then my lawyering, or I saw how I saw things. Instead of seeing others as adversaries, it's like they are part of the problem. They are part of the solution, for sure. Let's see what each one brings to the table and let's figure this out.
Speaker 1:We may even disagree what the problem is and still find a way to agree on the solution and what I hear is a massive mindset shift from a lawyer who's usually playing, I would say, a zero-sum game. Whereas one loses, one wins yeah at least that's, I think, the ambition of a lawyer going into court yeah, a litigator to suddenly find looking for solutions where everyone can win yeah.
Speaker 3:I agree with you and I think it also comes from a value system. So because I grew up in that mindset, you know that the kid wants to save the world and work at the UN. From day one in law school, I found the whole idea of me having to win For me to win, you have to lose very strange. So I was like, well, why would I do that? And I didn't have words for those things or I couldn't name it. But it's like I want to preserve the relationship as well, and I remember all my civil procedure or criminal procedure teachers, this just saying you don't need to negotiate on this, you're going to win, like the law is on your side, the decisions on the court, jurisprudence on your side. But I don't want to win, I want to solve the problem. It's a different thing and I want to have it solved for a long time. Like to keep nurturing this, so moving even.
Speaker 3:As you know, as facilitators we have such an important role helping participants also move from a zero-sum game thinking into a win-win or value creation. People say, oh, win-win is too naive. Okay, great, a value creation mindset. Is there value to be created? What are you bringing? What am I bringing. Let's just expand this and I'll meet my goals. By having allowing you to meet your goals, yeah, does that make sense to you? What do you?
Speaker 1:think, yeah, I can totally see the mindset shift and the the desire to do that. And and now I wonder how can this become possible? Because on the small scale, yes, I can see it happening in workshops, with the individuals at the organizational levels. And now you make me even more curious how this works on a global scale, with multilateral negotiations or conversations where and I think especially for climate everyone comes in with yes, of course we have the same goal and to save the climate and for everyone. Something else is, something different is at stake and the costs are not equally distributed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would put a question mark after the question Do we have the same goal? Like I don't like. Oh my, this is such a huge, so many things to you know, untie there. I find there are various levels of divergence in the climate conversation. So we are dealing with the tension between short-term and long-term action. One of the most entrenched discussions in international law, which is the common but differentiated responsibilities, or the historical responsibility for the emissions, and who pays the bill, is another big question, right, what is the equity versus equality issue?
Speaker 3:If I were to look at the negotiations, not from a legal perspective and all the issues I've just described, but from a process perspective and how conversations are organized, I noticed that there is a lot of space for discussing losses and people giving up things and how much is that going to cost, and more and more like how much does it cost to adapt, not only to give up fossil fuels or to give up our ways of living, but also how much does it cost to adapt and to transition into a new way of living, and the compensation for those who have suffered the losses or who are in danger because of the climate change. And I wonder where is the space for the visioning, like I don't remember the last climate conversation that I was in in a more formal setting, that there was a one and a half hour introduction. So let's all envision a world in which we've made it. We've made it like we've, we were together. Look at the person sitting by your side. This person made it with you and you were together and you made it happen. How does this world look like?
Speaker 3:And of course, there are many people working on this, but I'm talking about where decisions are being made and from that vision, that unifying vision with some differences, maybe we walk backwards and say, okay, so what had to happen? When, by when and how? And then a discussion on trade-offs. And for that discussion, it's a facilitated discussion with modelists, and you're an economist, so run the models and let's look at the trade-offs, and not only economic costs, but social costs, environmental costs, cultural costs. And then let's discuss what are the criteria for making decisions.
Speaker 3:Is it equity, is it ancestral knowledge? Is it protecting cultural heritage? Is it the options that protect future generations the most? And then we're not discussing the criteria, only negotiating a tit for tat bunch of solutions. So, at the multilateral level, it would be incredible for that to happen, but that can already happen in the country level, in regional levels, among states that have commonalities, like the EU, for example, and that is the work that I have been doing for many years, also developing those scenarios or not developing, helping those scenarios be developed for people to have those conversations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what I hear and what you describe. Thank you so much for guiding us through that. I had a lot of light bulb moments and one specifically is that, by boiling it down to a process level, you're taking the emotional load out of the conversation, where it's not about who pays what and who has suffered and who is defending their own stakes, but it's okay. What are the common denominators and what are the criteria we want to agree upon and to have set that first and then go into the models and look at the data and see okay, if we agree on the vision and the main criteria, what does it then mean and how can we negotiate then the implementation of the details?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think you're spot on to make it more workable. You're trying to make something huge and very complex and, according to some intractable, workable, and I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that the emotions do not belong, I would just say that then they would have, like a place for that to be welcomed. You know, like they're not something that gets mixed up with the conversation, that there is no money available, you know, but oh, I'm drowning, my island is going to disappear, and then the person says, well, great, but it it would cost five billion and I only have 200 million available. I mean, what kind of conversation is that? You know, yeah, like okay. So if that is gonna likely happen, what are we going to do about that? What is our vision of how? Then? We're going to talk about migration, all kinds of different things, but we are on this together. Like, my job is not to fend you off, my job is to think through with you and commit to this vision together.
Speaker 3:But emotions are very, very important and they I think they if well explored and well, how is the word facilitated? Let's just see where it contained. Yeah, contained in a positive way, not like suppressed or repressed, but they are, yeah, they have a container well held. They lead us to needs. You know as to what are the needs behind these emotions. They lead us to grievances. You know where? Where have we not abide by our values, where have we not abide by these principles we've just discussed, and so that is.
Speaker 1:You know, that is a real conversation as well yeah, fascinating, and I would love to come back to the emotions and to the individuals who actually sit there.
Speaker 1:And before that, just one more moment on the process, because, as you explained, all the implications of, okay, the, the island might disappear, okay, we don't have enough budget, and then we have the issues of migration, we have the issues of cultural heritage, of shared responsibility, it seems as so what I can connect it to is an organization that sees one issue that they're losing market share, whatever and then a consultant comes in or a facilitator and peels the onion and actually shows everything that is related to that, and while everyone is focused to just solve this one problem, how can we save the island? Suddenly you have the conversation about values, priorities, systems, evaluation methods, who decides, or how does it then come? Because it almost looks like a flowchart. Yeah, that you want to go back to the highest level as possible, to really start there and then go down and to discuss the next level whenever it's appropriate, and that you can only discuss when you have agreed upon the higher levels, and I can imagine, from what I observe in human dynamics, is that's far too complex.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the budget again. Yes, because it's so much easier, but then you have to constantly get them on the road and put them up on the meta level again. How does it work?
Speaker 3:yeah, well, you've just oh, my god, you've just nailed first, you've just now. I have a light bulb here and I was like, yeah, that's a very good question. Who is framing these things? And I think I'm gonna go into that in one second. So I'm thinking, oh, that's such a beautiful question.
Speaker 3:The other thing is like you've been working in complexity for decades now, right, as an economist, as a facilitator, and we know all the heuristics of like, how the human mind shies away from complexity, how we try to break down the parts and simplify things, and that is why I strongly advocate for facilitation, professional facilitation. In such processes, the facilitator is a key instrument for holding complexity, or creating ways for complexity to be a little more digestible for the groups, or less scary, or yeah. So there is something about holding that complexity and I know you want to go there. So where is the individual on this? Where is the human development on this? And let's talk about that as well, because it's the one thing that started keeping me awake at night over the last five years.
Speaker 3:Like, where does trauma come into these conversations? Am I hosting conversations with a bunch of people who are completely numb? They're not listening. The people are saying, you know, I don't have a home anymore because of, uh, of the torrential rain and landslides, and they're like, oh, okay, great. Next, people are completely numb. So either we go like this is about power, they don't care about us, or we're just like, oh, my god, they are numb. We should have an intervention for all a bunch of somatic um experienced therapists to help people come out of their hypo arousal um window. You know of tolerance, the lack of tolerance, but anyway, so we were talking about yeah, so you were you mentioned about um who's doing the process, who frames it?
Speaker 3:And then you asked me something else. You said there was a piece about framing and the other piece was about Because I said I'm going to start with that.
Speaker 1:It slipped, because now you caught me on the corner.
Speaker 3:Yeah we weren't there, so never mind. So we'll just start with the beginning, okay. That's why I find negotiations skills and negotiations theory so vital for this type of facilitation. Whoever frames the conversation holds a lot of power, and whoever holds a lot of power ends up framing the conversation. So I advocate for participatory processes at the country level, at the UN level, at the multi-state, like when you think of intergovernmental levels, so that the framing of these conversations can be revisited, because by now we're having conversations, let's say, around climate change, in the international fora. That follows a structure that was negotiated in 1992, when the world was very different, and then in 2004 and then 2008 and then 2015. But there is a whole framing that was done by experts in climate policy, plus the UN Secretariat, plus the states that have negotiated the framework agreement in which we keep developing things and, with the amount of climate data, we have the types of interests that different groups that do not participate at the governmental level have.
Speaker 3:we're talking about youth, unborn generations, elderly, those in marginalized communities, those in the most vulnerable countries and areas in which I would say, well, good question, let's just reframe this conversation and see where we end. Right and that there is a lot of that's when loss and damage came in and the conversation around equity. And there is another thing which is the anchoring effect in negotiations effect in negotiations. So whoever, puts the first proposal or make.
Speaker 3:The first step is anchoring on numbers, on ambition, on how much you invest. So I'd say that maybe. Well, there has been what 30 years that we've been having these conversations at the multilateral level and I wonder if it's time for a reset. Yeah, I hadn't thought about this. I told you let's let's discuss where we can facilitate these conversations because, um, the multilateral negotiations level is not one that has been. Really. It has a lot of sharing, but not facilitation, as we call it with the capital f, you know, where people connect and we think of vision and we share our fears and we mourn together and we grieve and we dream. It's been very formal around positions and a lot more collaboration and participatory policy development happens in the countries, in countries and local government level.
Speaker 1:And that's a very interesting aspect. Do you think it is because of a lack of understanding the facilitator could bring to the process, so that they don't believe, maybe, in the competence or expertise or in the potential value a facilitator could bring expertise or in the potential value a facilitator could bring? Or is it because the system is so much in the mindset of negotiating and zero sum that there's a lack of trust that who appoints this facilitator, who will then again have a lot of power? Because if you drive the process, if you hold the framework, there's a lot of trust. There's a lot of power, because if you drive the process, if you hold the framework, there's a lot of trust.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of power as well, even if you don't define what happens within that. Yeah, I wouldn't know. It's a good point. I think that the intergovernmental regimes, they're really founded in state sovereignty, so in that sense the chair is one of the state, one representative of a state, so they're among peers and it's a system that's been done in diplomacy since a long time.
Speaker 3:So if you think of mediation. Popes used to mediate conflicts like a thousand years ago. So it's a peer system and I know of different processes in which chairs have hired facilitators as support and the facilitator is more on the background and they're like helping ask good questions, as powerful questions create some moments of interaction. That is more informal but it's I remember doing things for international organizations at the national level. They have like everything is on record. There is no brainstorming. You know all statements are read and recorded. So when you frame this conversation as like multi-stakeholder processes, high stake conversations, is because everything is on record. So where is the space for just creative thinking and, as we're saying, interest-based negotiations, like creating, without committing, and analyzing the various possibilities? What is the value that different parties are bringing to the table before you you actually go to into agreement negotiations?
Speaker 1:yeah, and then what is the role of the individual as opposed to the role? Because I can imagine from what you explain now, everything has been preset. So every individual is representing their organization, their institution, their country. So they're coming in carrying the responsibility to represent as best as they can. So there's, from what I understand or how I imagine it, very little wiggle room. If they're invited to brainstorm, this means letting go of this army of people who have been involved in preparing the representative and then starting and basically putting the trust in this representative that they can be in the moment and develop to the best of their knowledge, representing everyone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and usually those positions are the outcome of, like, very tight negotiations at home as well. If you think of the person who represents the European Union. Like you know, 26 states have sat down and spent months trying to come to that one position, so they have very little leeway. And that's where the innovation happens, not in that forum. It happens before it happens in Brussels. It happens in a multi-stakeholder forum on energy or energy transitions for the European landscape, or places where you can really gather industry and academia and youth groups and government representatives and CSOs to look the way I was describing before.
Speaker 3:What is the vision, where do we want to be together and what are the pieces, the parts of the puzzles that each one of us are bringing to make that a reality? And how are we going to deal with trade-offs? Because there is no free lunch, so there is no way that change will not affect different groups. That will change the way businesses are done, and that is a whole different, like an expanded conversation into how we're framing the future as well, and decolonization and all of that. How long is the facilitation uh, hooking that? Because I think one of the roles we have as facilitators is also to explicit those values, the values that inform the different world views.
Speaker 3:there is so much conversation and discourse that's based on automatism and things that we're repeating and we don't know, because it's the buzzword that's on LinkedIn or on the latest report of this organization or that organization, and I think, having worked with different minorities and different groups, like indigenous groups, women rights groups, there is always that question what is this in service of? What is this narrative? What is behind this narrative? You know, and there is sometimes, even when we talk about building futures there is such an imprint of business as usual we're going to change the way we produce, but we're not going to change consumption levels, we're not going to change how we deal with the end of life product, and that's still why I think multi-stakeholder collaboration is so important, because that's when those questions will be asked yeah, they will be asked.
Speaker 1:And then the question is how much space for innovation is there then in the conversation? If, if there is no time to pause, to bring everything on the maybe on a one level, up on the meta level, to assess, okay, what are the values of the principles that we derive this conversation from, and I wonder what you would think what, what kind of principles would have to change so that it might become possible to actually shift gears and to maybe it's a wrong word but empower the representatives so that they can engage in more innovative conversations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm so loving it that we arrived at the conversation on principles and values, and I know you've had other guests in this podcast that talked about principle-based facilitation and I find making those values explicit and working through polarity management, for example, in which we're looking, if we make a decision in this situation under these values, what does it look like? Under those values? What does it look like? So is there, you know, a third, and that is not a conversation about values in abstract, it's like these are the colors in which we interpret this way of being, and I would say this is me going back kind of with my legal DNA or the legal. It's like the river right, the under, like the underwater.
Speaker 3:Undercurrent river right the under, like the underwater and the current, yeah, the undercurrent. I can come out of the legal profession, but it's it doesn't leave me necessarily. So I think the one principle that I have been holding very dear to my heart is the intergenerational peace, and what does it mean to make decisions now that will protect life on the planet seven generations from now? So this is the, the work that folks, colleagues at cl, done with a bunch of other beautiful organizations called the maastricht principles, the rights of future generations, and, I think I think, anything that I sit down and facilitate and if I'm able to offer that you know I'm not the one I'm offering the principles or maybe in the contract phase, like, what are you discussing here? What are you making decisions based on? I would find that if we're talking about equity, this is, yeah, those principles are the ones to to be holding dear when we're having these discussions, at whatever level we're talking.
Speaker 1:And I was reflecting on guiding principles and values a lot recently as we closed we had the last NDB festival and realizing that we had three guiding principles risk, respect and generosity and everything that has evolved came out of these guiding principles. Everything that has evolved came out of these guiding principles and realizing the wasted opportunity of many organizations by just putting the principles or their values on the wall but not nurturing them in a way that they are driving decision-making and facilitating decision-making. To what extent are the principles then, on this higher level, present, or also just words on the wall?
Speaker 3:yeah, in the climate regime, in the climate negotiations, most of the principles, they are in the preamble to the agreement, to the unfccc agreement, and as a policymaker and a lawyer, you study those things. So every preamble to an agreement, this is, yeah, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This is me back at my you know, public international law. When I was a teacher so I'm laughing here I was like these things don't leave my body Anyway. So you always interpret an agreement, an international agreement, in light to the preamble and the principles therein. And international law itself has many principles as well that are aimed at protecting life and keeping peace and all of those things.
Speaker 3:So we're not in lack of principles.
Speaker 3:They are there, they have been well-designed, they can be reinterpreted in light of the world we live in now, which is a decolonial world in which we're talking about equity. In a decolonial world in which we're talking about equity in a very different way, in which we're talking about repairing historical harm. And that leads us to the individual is like, how can we prepare the people who participate in these processes to be resilient for these conversations? And that's where I see so I've talked about the facilitator as a negotiator, right, see. So I've talked about the facilitator as a negotiator, right, and now I want to talk about the facilitator as a coach. And how can you have, how can facilitators work with colleagues that are able to create spaces that are safe enough for inner transformation, brave enough for exploring what's on the undercurrent, but safe enough for any transformation? And also our ability to hold both what's at the surface and what are the outcomes and the decisions that are being made, and what is in this individual collective, because it's collective trauma, but individual, collective layer.
Speaker 1:And it's the second time that you use the word trauma, so I would love to double click on that and also on. I realized that I'm very peculiar on words today. Yeah, on resilience. What do you mean by resilience? To prepare them, to build the resilience? Is it because of the frustration that comes through these conversations and that they have to stick to their vision and the purpose why they showed up in the first place?
Speaker 3:what is the resilience about so, miriam, in the facilitations you lead, when people are not interested in the conversation or they can't cope with the conversation, what do they do? What do you see them doing? They, disturb.
Speaker 1:They withdraw disturb. Why are we talking about that? There's no sense in this. Anyway, they leave or they start discussing about something that is granular, yeah, and tangible, to divert the conversation.
Speaker 3:It's my experience exactly in my experience in these settings they just check out. Sometimes they check out because they have another negotiation form that they can get things done. Or they check out because they feel they're very powerful, so they don't need to be engaged in this, they don't actually need this to happen. Or they check out because they're way too busy and this is too much and let's not engage with this right. So if you have participants that are still disturbing you, you're the lucky ones because they're still active and their energy is in the room. So I think when I was discussing, like when I brought the idea of resilience, what I was referring to is creating a space in which they're able people are still able to self-regulate and co-regulate, so that when discussions get uncomfortable, let's say, we're talking about the energy transition and it was all about megawatts generation, and all of a sudden there is a group that says, yeah, but you're creating. You're actually Brazil, for example. You're generating all the energy in the North and we are indigenous peoples and we live in the North and we don't have electricity, because all the electricity goes to the South. So it's generated there, but it doesn't stay there. So we have an equity issue. What does a person in a position of power would do is like, oh yeah, that's very interesting, but it's not my domain. I don't do energy policy. I'm just here talking about energy generation. Or they'll say, oh, thank you for saying that, and they move on to something.
Speaker 3:And resilience allows me to be present, to self-regulate, to feel. If I feel like ouch and there is an error, an error coming through me, I was like, really, tell me more. I'm so sorry, that's your experience. So, wow, there is an issue here. Where are we generating the energy and where is the energy arriving and how equitable is that? So let's put it on the wall as a theme. It's not mine, I'm just the energy company. Why would I put that on the wall? But there is this sense that what is in the space belongs to all of us. It's not only my point or their point, and as a facilitator, I can just help make them land on the wall very elegantly and swiftly, instead of saying well, but the energy company said I can just say, oh, that that. Thank you so much for highlighting that, john. So it's a person, not the hat anymore, and I just put and that's where the neutrality comes in.
Speaker 1:That's so important in a facilitator. Yeah, and you spoke about trauma and I think there are many levels of trauma and I two podcast episodes recently also about different levels of trauma informed facilitation, trauma, informed design and now we are speaking about collective trauma. I assume, yes, populations of countries. How does this play a role and how can you take this into account in these, in this context, as a facilitator?
Speaker 3:yeah. So if you hear colleagues in the trauma fields speaking, especially this year, they keep saying how, like climate change is the biggest manifestation of collective trauma. Right, thomas hobo says that, um, and it's like there is so much hurt and so much grief that has not been lived through and named that basically just destroying the planet through our inability to absorb new information, to relate to others, to find common ground, to care for the planet. So I stay either on reactivity, anger, fighting or flight, or I'm numb and meanwhile the planet is burning.
Speaker 3:And so if we look at this from this perspective, and also decolonization and the historical grievances that are really showing up now as we talk about the climate impacts, I find that healthy conversations around climate, even if it's energy policy or transportation policy, include our grief, our collective grief, grief as to how inept we've been to deal with this or how we've adopted ways of production, producing, consuming that landed us in the place where we are now. But it doesn't end there. That's why I said the conversation doesn't end in emotions or grief. There is the role of beauty in transforming that, in transcending that. So I find that in highly charged conversations in policy development with very diverse groups, slowing down is a trauma-informed approach. Groups slowing down is a trauma-informed approach. Slowing down for people to meet each other, having good food, having beauty, you know, bringing art caring for the body, yeah care for the body.
Speaker 3:Is it a comfortable chair? Are we sitting outside enough? Many intergovernmental negotiations happen in rooms without windows. Like, how can you create any beauty out of that? So it's so, like if you go back to the process as a place, so place as part of process. Where are we meeting? Are we honoring the traditions of that place? Do we have enough time for storytelling? Do we start with somebody opening?
Speaker 3:For example, I hosted a bioeconomy summit a year ago in Brazil with all the Amazonian countries and I told them from the beginning this is sacred land, so let's invite indigenous groups to open for us.
Speaker 3:And at the beginning I think people thought, yeah, they're going to say, hey, welcome, you know, on behalf of our land. And then, of course, the idea is that the indigenous groups would open in their way. So they open in a way that they would sing and dance and invoke ancestrals. And the beginning was an opening speech format, so it had 15 minutes on the agenda, but the opening and the ways that those people opened took one and a half hour, and it's just the way it is and that is part of the slowing down, you know. And it was such a beautiful summit in which the organizers invite Amazonian artists to display their art and there were women, indigenous women painters who had their painting exhibited. And so you think, oh, but you know that's so small compared to all we have to catch up. I said, yeah, but it's not nothing. It's, this is slowing down.
Speaker 1:This is a lot of places to come in yeah, and it's a yeah, bringing into the space, making aware. Yeah, just as a short tangent. How did the participants and the organizers react when they realized, okay, this is not a 15 minutes opening, it's taking one and a half hours. And what was the impact on the conversations from that?
Speaker 3:As the facilitator if those conversations happened. I was not there because I already had the agenda B, because I already knew. So the rest of the facilitation team was already ready to work in a certain timeframe that allowed for that to happen, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that was the. So I think I just kept smiling and nodding like everything's fine, don't worry, and then we're all in the. In that place and I must say, like the organizers was also like a group of women who were incredible and very, very sensitive so yeah, because I can imagine that nobody remains untouched, no something like that, especially if they've never experienced it.
Speaker 3:And then suddenly there's some context yeah and maybe some urgency in the space and it happens in ways that it's exactly what you mentioned. It's not because people heard that they're like now we have to do something, it's from inside out. So there was this, you know when, when, like it dropped, like the energy level dropped to a level of presence and this is like 150, 180 participants and I could feel like there was something sacred happening at that moment. And people were just landing and it's not cognitive, and then it's almost like someplace inside of them that's ancestral and that knows the land and knows they son or a daughter of the land is awakened by that experience. And I know that has happened in other multilateral meetings and other type of like high stakes conversations and negotiations.
Speaker 3:That happens in sacred land, and every land is sacred, but it happens in sacred land that people are aware of the importance of doing that and then you allow participants, again by slowing down time, to be present in a different way and you bring dance, you bring music, you bring art, you bring walking in nature as a you know, after lunch activity, visioning. I heard colleagues they had sweat lodges, you know, like shamanic sweat lodges for and people do fires for storytelling, honoring their ancestors, and you can do that in Latin America, of course have the Amazon, but if you have a summit also in the Lapland or in very northern parts of Europe I mean the Arctic you also have the wisdom of the local indigenous people, and so it's everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and especially in Europe, we often forget that. Yeah. And I parked the individuals and the emotions quite a while ago. Get them out of the drawer. How do we allow the space, or where do you draw the line between the individual, the representative, allow the emotions in without deluding, or where is time and space for emotions and the individual, and where is time and space for emotions and the individual, and where is time and space for the role and the representative?
Speaker 3:yeah, so I think process again becomes very important, right? So you are. We're here talking about ground rules. Are people present as you know, their own person, or are they present as representatives? And if they're present as both, do they want to name it? Now I'm speaking with this hat and process again. Are you offering people hats that if they're speaking as a representative, they'll just take a cap? I've had not me. I've seen this done before that people had caps and then you could know when they were speaking as representatives beautiful and it's making the implicit explicit.
Speaker 3:Oh, totally explicit, Exactly. Another thing that I find really important is it's one thing if you're hosting a dialogue and in dialogue we're there to get to know each other, to exchange there is no decision-making mandate. You can have an agenda for collaboration as an outcome or topics that come up for further diving in, but if you have a summit and there is a decision-making power making that power explicit, what is the mandate? How are we going to make decisions? Is it by consensus? Is it by consent? Is it two-thirds majority? Are we voting first? Are we voting as less resource? Do I have a right to disagree or to just leave a note on the final agreement that I disagree?
Speaker 3:And so in these settings, many times the decision making, there is either a governance system in which the group is making recommendations for a council that will make a decision or that will make the final recommendations for the policymakers, or you are going for consensus-based rules with the right to leave notes on things you disagree. Let's say right. And I find that, for situations that include decision-making, that clarity about the mandate of the representative is really needed. Are they showing up with the power to make decisions or are they going to go back to their we say capital, or to their company or to their organization to have a final approval. Because if that is clear, then we know what the representative is bringing forward, whether it's something they can stand by or if it's just a bunch of ideas or part of brainstorming, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I was just thinking that many of the meetings happen with some sort of public or media there that's such a big, big issue because we want to be transparent in many of the situations and other situations, to say no media today, no media until there is an agreement, or only media with an official statement that is approved by everyone. So it is a delicate one, because you really want to be transparent. So what I've seen work better and better. Imagine processes in which you're developing energy policy or energy transition policy, for example. It's not a one-off meeting, right? So you have a bunch of meetings and you start by diverging, creating multiple options, assessing the criteria for choice. Then you are choosing, then you are assessing the implications of the choices that were made trade-offs, who loses, what is acceptable or not and then you adopt or send it for adoption. So that could take five meetings, four meetings and the whole process. So the idea is that in between meetings there is always information that goes out to the public and that's also how some of the parties that are not participating in those negotiations can influence, can lobby, can call, can have their say, because you never have a process in which everybody participates. You always have like 100, 150, 200 participants. So you may have 15 CSOs, ngos participating, but from a universe of 200. So you have others that want to influence the process, and so what I find most exciting and you can see that because I love this stuff, I love it is when you do this type of design and this type of multi-stakeholder processes is that one of the indicators I have of success is that for every one thing that happens in the room, nine things happen outside.
Speaker 3:So I facilitated this process in Brazil 2014 and 15 about. It's called MAPS, so it's mitigation action planning scenario. So, long story short. It was about various options for mitigation in climate change in Brazil and what were the implications of those policy choices for the economy and for social goals that Brazil had Employment equality, gender equality all of that and what I saw happening is 150 people working in the room, six meetings, one and a half year, a team of like 40 modelists developing the policy options, running the models, and all of that, the Minister of Environment picking up on the recommendations.
Speaker 3:But there were many like conflicts or disagreements between participants that were sometimes historical, like they had, you know, had not seen eye to eye for like years. And then, because they're working together on this, all kinds of different initiatives started popping up, a coalition on this and, uh, you know the, the 23 industry organizations working on um communique for paris and the ngos developing a strategy for I don't know what, and of course I cannot report to the donor that. You know this is what happened because of this process, because there was a philanthropist financing this for the Ministry of Environment. But it was a big, big, big success because, you know, the goal of the multi-stakeholder collaboration is to create change. So if these people meet each other and trust each other and find ways to create even better outcomes for the country, the better yeah, and that really further collaboration emerge through that.
Speaker 1:That maybe and this also puts into perspective this one thing, because then, even if that may fail, or maybe the, the outcome is not as glorious as we thought it would be. There there are all these micro changes and opportunities.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's super exciting.
Speaker 1:And then it's yeah interesting. This is an absolute tangent could lead us to a different conversation. How to measure success? Because, as you say, you don't report this to the donor or to the sponsor and you cannot really follow up on that either because it's out of your control or hands, and still we might have our kpis on how to measure success of these set of meetings yeah there's so much beyond that and I think there is a big parallel to organizations. Precisely. Where this could happen. Yeah, that is totally ignored.
Speaker 3:Huh yeah, sometimes you have a meeting in an organization that you're trying to decide on project X, but because of that meeting other things got solved or people would not have met, sat down and created a new product, or Suddenly realized that they have more commonalities or they have a shared vision on something else and they take it into a different direction.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. What remains your facilitation challenge?
Speaker 3:yeah, what remains my facilitation challenge. I feel that the one thing that I've been working on ever since I started was devolving power so that this idea of the torch is more and more and more embodied. Because I was a lawyer when I started, I felt everything was my responsibility, so I would overprepare and I would follow up with everyone and I would produce the best report the soonest so they wouldn't lose momentum. And now I work very strongly in identifying the people who are torchbearers like in the group, who can be whether there is a formal governance system or an informal one who have the influence with the stakeholders to keep mobilizing for action, want to take responsibility for co-creating the agendas, but we'll take this forward long after I'm gone. That is, yeah, power. We talk about power over power with. I'm thinking of power through, so that ownership is really shared. And what?
Speaker 1:are your strategies then? To, because it's relationship building.
Speaker 3:It's very strategic yeah, it's strategic and, at the same time, clarity, right that this is a goal. I don't do this um, it's not a hidden agenda, like from the beginning I just say, well, this is your process. So I want to be able for you to understand this as much as you can from minute one, and I will be reaching out to people and if you're interested to be one of the ambassadors or you know torchbearers or something, just reach out and to make things. I'm very focused on making things as explicit as I can.
Speaker 3:Another thing that has been a goal of mine for a few years is also to have fun, because if I just hang on to the heaviness of this work and what is at stake it's high stakes, facilitation and like, if we don't have a decent policy, at the end you know the world is gonna end. And so for me, my Buddhist practice really helped me, like the, the idea of you know, like interconnectedness, that the earth is leading things and I'm just here working, that, like you know, she's big and I'm small, that really kind of crowns me. I don't think it would be doing this work because I've burned out before. So for me to be able to do this work in a caring only what's mine to carry. Spirituality has been very important yeah.
Speaker 1:And coming back to the resilience, yes and yeah, carry only what's your to yours to carry beautiful. And I think it's so difficult to distinguish sometimes because we get carried on, or and then there's obviously our own vision and maybe activism or higher goals coming.
Speaker 3:And you've just named it, I think. Another thing I think has made a huge difference in my life as a facilitator, doing this work, is to have my consensus building community in which we have buddies and we can debrief processes. And then that is one of the questions so who suffered there? Was it the facilitator, you or the activist? You welcome activist me.
Speaker 3:There is no shame for the coaching question yeah, come just have tea with me I can see you're hurting and that that ability to hold that because there is if. If you say there is neutrality, I don't think there is neutrality. I think there is impartiality and holding things in ways that I'm including every voice where there is process in service of everyone and in service of the main outcome Right. But like all the time, I'm noticing my own beliefs and what I think. I'm also a climate expert, so what I think should be the way forward. And I'm just sitting there and I'm like, oh, I wouldn't do it this way, let's see where it lands. But that self-compassion to just say, oh, the activists in me would have really liked this, so I don't put that under the rug, it's really there. And sometimes, at the end of the day, my inner activist does need a bubble bath Because it's been a tough day, but the inner facilitator is really happy because what happened is what could have happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hear the self-awareness and humility and curiosity to stay open all the time and ask the questions. Thank you, before I ask the, because I'm so curious and I'm watching the time, so before I asked my last questions I would be curious and maybe there is a nutshell to it. I think it could be a very long answer. Maybe there's a nutshell. How did you make the transition from your legal profession to becoming a coach and a facilitator and now it sounds as if you're living your dream?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so beautiful to hear you say that, because I really love what I do. So that is living the dream. And I find it kind of interesting because I do coach a lot of like CSO leaders, and these are folks that I end up finding in the room when I'm facilitating or end up facilitating their teams or multi-stakeholder consortium or multi-stakeholder partnerships that they're involved in, and we end up meeting at the Sangha because we all find Buddhism in a certain way, or the Plum Village in a certain way. So it's very funny and I'm one of those people that really trusts that the universe like whatever you're looking for is looking for you. So in that sense, I have many memories of moments that I I was supposed to turn right but then I turned left and at the left that was what was, you know, expecting me.
Speaker 3:But a journey point in my life for sure was this course that I mentioned in the Netherlands in 2008. That was when I was introduced to interest-based negotiations. That was my first facilitation training. It was one and a half hour facilitation training and you were still a lawyer back then. I was still a lawyer working carbon credits contracts and I had just come out of the UN and I had just come out of the UN and I remember in one of the simulations because when you learn negotiations that way, there is a lot of simulations and role-playing I was the chair in the game Pablo Burford is the name of the game.
Speaker 3:It's a groundwater contamination in a border two countries that are bordering and I was sharing in the meeting and it was just the beginning of the meeting and I was listening initial opening statements and holding the pen and the flip chart and I remember this one participant looking at me and I was writing down his words and I looked at him and I said I'll never forget Nestor, his name, and I said, nestor, does this capture what you just said? And he looked at me and his eyes there was just trust.
Speaker 3:And his eyes said that's exactly what I said I need. Those are my needs, thank you. And I remember feeling like, please, god, can I do this for the rest of my life? For me it was so powerful because I was like, if my work is to be trusted with other people's words and to help them bring their voice into the space, this is sacred work. I want to do this for the rest of my life. I felt like you know somebody's sharing a secret, although that was a public thing, right, they were saying what they needed in front of everybody.
Speaker 3:So I think from that moment on I did more facilitation trainings and then I just started telling clients like, can I facilitate this meeting when you're? So, instead of just taking let's say taking the brief that they had for that particular, I was working on sustainability, like especially corporate sustainability, instead of just taking the brief and the client would have had the meeting with multiple people in the organization, I would say can I join that meeting? Can I see if I can facilitate that conversation, to see what comes up? And that's how I started kind of doing it and I became more and more interested in helping the conversations happen, then doing the content work, then writing the strategies for them, and so that was yeah. And then a few years later, maybe two or three years later, from that experience, I was working as the climate director on the business school.
Speaker 3:We had a sustainability center and there was this one meeting and then one of the participants was a bank was really upset about the conclusions of the report that was being presented and they were going to come out, walk out, but this was like one of the main parties that we needed to influence as a sustainability center. And I just remember I walked in, there was a colleague presenting the outcomes of the report and I said can I just do something here? And everybody's like the person is very upset. My colleague said sure, and I said can I transform the points you're making into questions? And the person looked at me and said, sure, okay, so let me help reframe what you just said.
Speaker 3:For example, this study is bullshit because it doesn't do that. Does this study cover the sources of income in a transparent and fair way? It's like, oh, that is exactly what I was saying. And so I transformed all the points in like 15 questions and this person stayed through the end of the meeting, and so I think those are the moments that, for everybody else and for myself, I was like I am a facilitator. I'm here to make things easier, not a difficult theater, I'm a facilitator yeah, not a difficult theater.
Speaker 1:I'm a facilitator. I'm so glad I asked the question, thank you, yeah, beautiful, and what I hear is you crafting your own career change by creating opportunities for yourself to practice the skill and to to create value through this new skill yeah, and being invited by colleagues as well.
Speaker 3:Many people open doors and I said, can I just come and help? Can I come and facilitate? Can I do a session? Can I do this? Yeah, beautiful, I think. I just I just took the chance, and then the rest is history somehow. And then, yeah, and really working with incredible people, yeah, I guess. And being completely fascinated by design, the process, design that's my legal mind, I think you know. So, from beginning to end, can I design something super exciting? Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what is it that you would tell your former self? Or that?
Speaker 3:you wished you had known before, honestly, that the sky is the limit. Yeah, really, listen to your heart and what you want to facilitate, and desire and trust that what you're looking for is looking for you yeah, mic dropping moment.
Speaker 1:Thank you so. So much, barbara but this glimpse into a different world with such clarity and precision and guidance.
Speaker 3:Thank you, learned a lot yeah, thank you for the opportunity and for saying yes and um yeah for inviting my experience in these stories in and made that be to the benefit of all beings on earth.
Speaker 1:That's what I wish for, thank you thank you for staying tuned and for listening until the very end. I hope that you found the inspiration and the wisdom that you are looking for, and I hope that you will subscribe to the show so that you never miss any of the interviews with another inspiring facilitator from across the world. I'm devoted to continue this podcast and to deliver weekly an episode that maintains the quality that you expect and you deserve, and if you would like to help me to maintain this quality and to keep the podcast free, please help us visit workshopsworkcom to make a small donation to keep the podcast free. Thank you so much. I hope to be in your ears next week.
