In this blog post, I’m going to lift the lid on the core of my facilitation practice. I specialize in complex facilitation for addressing complex issues and this requires a special approach to working with groups. In the Art of Hosting world, we call this approach “hosting” to signify that it has its primary focus on the spaces and processes that we use to host dialogue rather than a more traditional facilitation approach that manages the content, meaning-making, and dynamics.

For me, this approach is defined by a focus on the two key dynamics of emergence and self-organization. After 15 years of trying to figure this all out, I think I finally have this down to a simple set of underlying principles that have been heavily borrowed and deeply influenced by the work of Dave Snowden and Glenda Eoyang.

I first learned the term “complex facilitation” from Dave Sno