CF Live Coaching – Facilitating Across Polarization – May-June 2025
A new CF live coaching offering is launching in May 2025, to support dedicated practitioners, with real-life examples focused on facilitating across polarization.
Why live coaching?
Many facilitators have taken intro and intermediate Convergent Facilitation (CF) courses, but struggle to confidently practice CF in their life or work. To more practically support a group of committed up-and-coming CF facilitators, a new offering is available for CF practitioners to role-play real scenarios, supported by experienced coaches coaching them along the way.
Why focus on polarization?
Current political and cultural events have contributed to work spaces or living communities becoming more divided into strong camps, which can show up in being unable to see the underlying needs of others, or closing down to seeing broader solutions that could work for all.
Who is this for?
This offering will include coaching for a small group, who have already completed intro and intermediate courses, and are ready to bring scenarios from their life to practice CF.
We invite CF practitioners, learners and CF-curious to participate and learn together – to role play, observe and hold the field.
When?
The dates and times below are automatically adjusted to your device’s time zone.
We will have 2.5-hour sessions, over 6 weeks, in May and June:
Gift economy
We offer this course as gift. This means we do not want that anyone gives anything in return to participate in this course.
And we still need financial support to care for our material needs from somewhere — and it doesn’t necessarily mean this support comes from this course!
We are making our financial needs visible in the registration form and intend to update it regularly. And we want you to participate based on purpose and capacity discernment, not based on your own access to financial resources. For us, this is part of becoming a Convergent Facilitator: to find integration across differences, we need to be able to let go of “deserve thinking” and deeply engrained habits of “fairness” and “exchange” and help others do so, too.
This way liberative and creative solutions can arise, which are not limited by how much someone has contributed already or “should” contribute, but are based entirely on who has willingness and capacity to do something.
Make a financial contribution
If you choose to register, you will be invited to make a financial contribution during the registration process below. This link is for anyone who would like to make a gift toward this offering without registering, and for anyone who registers who may wish to make an additional contribution outside the registration process.
Registration
The registration process is a discernment process, to help you determine whether this offering is within your capacity and aligned to your purpose. It is also here to support us to get a sense of participants, and to support you in committing to this journey together.
Questions? You can reach us at support-2025-coaching-series [at] convergentfacilitation.org.
If you would like to receive coaching or intend to participate in one of the role-plays please register by April 30th.
About Paul, Roni, and Verene
Paul Kahawatte
Paul is a highly experienced mediator, facilitator and trainer, who has worked extensively in supporting people through conflict, collaborative decision making and the development of collaborative systems. Paul is one of the World’s leading practitioners of Convergent Facilitation, as well as mediation based in Nonviolent Communication (NVC). He draws on numerous other approaches in his work, including Restorative Circles, Aikido, Focusing, Relational Neuroscience and many others. He has worked doing mediation and facilitation in community and social movement contexts, as well as work in the field of deliberative democracy, and has run trainings in the UK, Sri Lanka, USA, Bangladesh and several European Countries. Paul was the lead trainer for the March 24 course.
Roni Wiener
Roni’s greatest passion is supporting people and groups of all sizes in making more collaborative decisions. They see this shift as essential for everyone’s wellbeing and the future of life on this planet. Roni brings over 20 years of experience with facilitation, teaching, coaching, and leading systemic change. They draw on principles and practices from diverse frameworks, including Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Convergent Facilitation, Deep Democracy, Sociocracy, Reinventing Organizations, Theory U, and Open Floor. Their teaching and leadership style invites everyone to connect with their own wisdom, learn by doing, and work together to transform leadership and collaboration.
Find out more: https://sundragonrising.com/
Verene Nicolas
Verene is an experienced facilitator and certified trainer in Nonviolent Communication. She has delivered training and facilitated group decisions in many grassroots contexts. Her immersion in the Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) community where Convergent Facilitation is practiced daily gives her a deep grounding in the power of this approach to sustain ‘radical collaboration’ across differences of all sorts. Verene supported Paul in designing and delivering the March introductory course.