By Lindsay Sumner

How do different cultures influence our facilitation? The IAF Core Competencies framework was developed over several years by the IAF with the support of its members and facilitators from all over the world. Tested over time, the six competencies form the basic set of skills, knowledge, and behaviours that facilitators must have in order to be successful facilitating in a wide variety of environments. 

Yet in our work we all do and see things very differently.  How do the Core Competencies work wherever we go?  There are geographically-based cultural differences and work-based cultural differences. That is why we are currently working on Cultural Variances of the Core Competencies, starting with conversations at IAF conferences and input from the IAF assessor community. We are not looking for standard cultural norms such as any traveller to a different country might observe.  These are cultural differences specific to facilitation.

As the IAF expands the CPF into different languages we need to be more aware of cultural differences and this will continue the development of a Quick Reference Guide which can also be made available for wider use.

If you would be interested in contributing to this work, please contact me: lindsay.sumner@outlook.com.  It should not take much time: you would need to review the competencies and then outline what you may observe happening in a workshop that is different from the expected behaviour.  I do not expect that there will be an entry against many of the competencies, as I believe that most of them are indeed global in practice. We will then discuss our findings asynchronously.  We welcome your input!