Jim Buckell, Author at Groupwork Centre

Normalising: How do we handle sensitivities around this microskill?

Posted by Jim Buckell on April 10, 2024 in Facilitation,

Who wants to be normal? It was a question I often asked myself in my youth. Normal to me meant straight, mainstream, suburbia. As a queer kid growing up without any role models, I didn’t know too much. But I knew this was not my thing. “Normality” often equalled repression or worse, oppression. The imposition […]

The course that changes lives

Posted by Jim Buckell on March 3, 2024 in Facilitation,

As we prepare for our next intake in the advanced program of group facilitation, we’ve been thinking about what this six-month course offers and why so many of our graduates refer to it as “life-changing”. That’s a big call, we know. It’s best summed up by a participant in our first intake in 2001, Victorian […]

Our year of transition

Posted by Virginia Gough & Jim Buckell on December 14, 2023 in Facilitation,

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein This year we reinvented ourselves at Groupwork Centre, embracing social change at our very heart. It was a year for dreaming and reimagining our future. We were alive to the fact […]

Our response to the Voice referendum result

Posted by Jim Buckell & Steve Ray on October 20, 2023 in Emotional resilience, Facilitation, Self awareness, Working well with others,

Jim Buckell and Steve Ray We need to find a way out of the impasse we are in. Pausing to reflect on what happened and how this came to be is the first step. The resounding No to the referendum has deeply disappointed a lot of people. Others are feeling relieved. Regardless of how we […]

What we are reading, viewing and listening to – August 23

Posted by Jim Buckell on July 27, 2023 in Facilitation, Management Gems, Working well with others,

Living Democracy: An Ecological Manifesto for the End of the World As We Know It By Tim Hollo New South Publishing, 2022 As facilitators and collaborators we tend to focus on our workplaces, our households and the community groups we belong to. But what if we scaled up and applied the principles of connection, participation […]

What we are reading, viewing and listening to – June 23

Posted by Jim Buckell on June 23, 2023 in Facilitation, Facilitation resources, Management Gems, Working well with others,

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups By Daniel Coyle rh business books We all want the groups we work with to buzz. US writer Daniel Coyle’s research on the recipe for success is so chockers with valuable tips and insights it’s hard to put down. Here’s a few startling revelations. Kinder kids […]

Bagpipes raise the temperature to boiling point

Posted by Jim Buckell on March 2, 2023 in Emotional resilience, Facilitation, Management Gems, Working well with others,

The penetrating sound of bagpipes can’t fail to grab your attention. There’s something undeniably formidable about this Scottish way of announcing, “Hear me roar. Are ye fool enough to compete with me?” Eek. No way! When a lone piper pierced the cloying summer air outside the venue where my colleague Sarah Norton and I were […]

All’s well that ends well

Posted by Jim Buckell on February 3, 2023 in Facilitation, Management Gems, Working well with others,

“Land them gently,” a colleague once said to me, “and all the good work will pay off.” Facilitated workshops and meetings unfold in a similar way to a great story. They get off to a good start by creating connection, build to a crescendo of activity and land well. A strong end to a workshop […]

What we are reading, viewing and listening to October 2022

Posted by Jim Buckell on October 10, 2022 in Emotional resilience, Self awareness, Thresholds of the soul,

Atlas of the Heart By Brené Brown Bantam, 2022 What a brilliant concept from one of the great writers on the human condition: a map charting the full range of our emotions. Drawing on 30 years of research and writing, Brené Brown navigates the turbulent waters of the emotional realm with dexterity and humility. Insights […]

From daunting to deadly – strategic planning in a big group

Posted by Jim Buckell on June 16, 2022 in Facilitation, Management Gems, Working well with others,

How big is too big? Size matters in group work … and so does a thoughtful process. I worked with a group of 30 recently constructing a strategic plan. Ordinarily so many voices in the room collaborating on a planning exercise might have been daunting. Not this time! That’s because the group had put a […]

Meet our Community – Nat McGlone

Posted by Jim Buckell on February 17, 2022 in Facilitation, Management Gems, Working as an independent facilitator, Working well with others,

Nat McGlone Manager of Community Engagement and Public Participation Moreland City Council My name is Nat McGlone and I lead a small team passionate about building trust between community and council to enable better project outcomes and decisions for the community. How being connected with Groupwork Centre has influenced my work … Groupwork facilitation is […]

The power of group agreements

Posted by Jim Buckell on December 13, 2021 in Facilitation, Facilitation resources, Management Gems, Working well with others,

Group agreements are a powerful tool we use to help people work well together. We encourage groups to spend some time formulating agreements and to refer to them regularly as a reminder of the importance of getting along. Items they come up with might be as simple as punctuality or not talking over each other. […]

The top five things that go wrong in meetings and how to fix them

Posted by Jim Buckell on July 26, 2021 in Facilitation, Facilitation resources, Management Gems, Working well with others,

Meetings matter. It’s here we bring people together to make decisions, set directions and find out what’s going on. Alongside their role as an engine room that drives our organisation or team, meetings are also places where we establish and maintain the culture of the group. If that culture is troubled, inevitably tensions surface when […]