Facilitator Pack A — Running Organisational Resilience with groups

F1. Orientation — the facilitation stance

You are a host, not a teacher. The room holds more resilience experience than you do — your job is to create the conditions for it to surface. Everything in Pack A's Section A2 applies to you first: open, curious, reflective; recognise assets; perfection is the enemy of the good. The programme's own line is the stance in full: reflection and action, not perfection.

Three working habits from the live programme:

• Conversational, not report-backs. Breakout feedback is "what came up in your group?" — themes, not minutes.
• Specificity matters when everyone's listening. Push commitments from "improve our strategy" to "have the conversation with my board about X."
• Disagreement is data. When colleagues from one organisation score a principle differently, that gap is the finding. Never smooth it over.

Co-facilitation pattern (the Liz/Tom model): one host holds welcome, check-ins and the room's energy; one holds the content blocks. Swap by session, not mid-block.

F2. Programme shapes

The 90-minute taster. Check-in (10) → the definition + "Resilience is…" mindset sequence (20) → one pillar's three principles with key questions in trios (35) → Compass-lite: each person places themselves Emerging/Developing/Mastering on that pillar (15) → one tangible thing + checkout (10).

The full day. Morning: conditions + mindset (A2–A3), the framework spread (A4), self-assessment Step 1 for all three pillars (A6). Afternoon: "Stop the press! It is 2028", priorities (one quick win + one longer-term per pillar), commitments, checkout. Materials: Gathering deck + workbook.

The cohort arc (the full programme as actually run, 2026):

1. Onboarding & welcome — expectations, conditions, Learning Log issued (learning intentions completed before session one).
2. Gathering #1 — intro to OR + the three pillar sessions (existing decks: Intro, Money, People; Purpose within the Gathering deck).
3. Diagnostic Workbook — completed between gatherings; Resilience Rating established.
4. Skills sessions — guest-expert slots keyed to principles (see F7).
5. Residential — deepening + the collective bridge.
6. Reflection sessions ×3 — spaced across the back half (see F6).
7. Final gathering — celebration, storytelling, intentions (see F8).

F3. Section-by-section facilitation notes

(Keyed to Pack A. Format per section: purpose · timing · the exercise · listen for · stuck points.)

A2 Conditions — open with a check-in before any content (F5). Walk the six conditions; ask the room which one their organisation finds hardest. Listen for "we don't have time" — that's the Give Yourself Space condition making the case for itself.

A3 Mindset — run the "Resilience is…" statements as a slow reveal, one breath each. The Money deck's "How financially resilient are these charities? A / B" comparison format works for any pillar: two sketched organisations, the room argues it out. Stuck point: the anti-fragile idea can read as jargon — anchor it in the 15,000–35,000 decisions line.

A4–A5 The pillars — each pillar session: principle statement → why it matters → the three key questions worked in trios (solo two minutes first, always) → "Your turn" capture. The pillar decks carry ready "Your turn" question sets. Listen for the organisation that answers every question with a funding story — that's a Purpose conversation hiding in a Money session.

A6 The self-assessment in a room — see F4.

A7 Tools — never demo a tool abstractly; run it on a live example volunteered by the room. The Money Mission Matrix and the Pre-Mortem are the two most reliable room-energisers in the kit.

A8 Reflective practice — model it; don't assign it. Every session ends with a Learning Log moment in-session, not as homework.

F4. The self-assessment in a room

Sequence (75–90 minutes per pillar, or all three across a day):

1. Solo: Rose/Bud/Thorn against the pillar's three principles (10 min, silence).
2. Organisation pairs/groups: compare, then agree a maturity level per principle — Emerging 1 · Developing 2 · Mastering 3. Where they can't agree, record both numbers. Both numbers are the truth.
3. Score the pillar; place it on the room's shared wall-chart Compass.
4. Whole room: what patterns do we see across organisations? (No league tables — patterns.)
5. "Stop the press! It is 2028" in groups, then one quick win + one longer-term move each.

Facilitator cautions: boards and staff score differently — if both are present, let them score separately first. Watch for modesty-inflation in both directions ("we're definitely Emerging" can be a flinch; "we're Mastering" can be a wish).

F5. Opening & closing — the check-in/checkout bank

(All field-tested in the live programme.)

Check-ins: One word for how you're arriving · What's alive for you right now? · What's changed since we last met — in your organisation, in the place, in you? · What's something you've drawn inspiration from recently — ocean, desert, mountains, forest? · Vibe check · Chat waterfall (online: everyone types, holds, sends together — no anchoring).

Checkouts: One word you're leaving with · One sentence: what are you taking away? · What's the one concrete thing you're committed to? (the "one tangible thing" — push for specificity).

F6. The reflection sessions

Three sessions, spaced; each ~90–120 minutes online. The arc across them: what landed → what's live → what ends with us.

Session 1 — after the residential. Check-in → What was good (what landed? what surprised you? what have you found yourself thinking about since?) → What are you working on now (breakouts, conversational) → One tangible thing → "What do you need more of: a capability, a relationship, a type of support?" → checkout.

Session 2 — mid-arc. Learning exchange: where are you on your resilience journey; what will you share at the final gathering? Pairs into accountability: swap a card with a buddy — a written commitment held by someone else until next time.

Session 3 — the last reflection. Name the ending ("this is the last time we sit down like this"). Two questions to sit with, not solve: "What have you continued that maybe you should have stopped?" and "Is there a situation you'd have handled differently since the start?" → the four-capacities lens: which do you lean on most — and which do you quietly neglect? → accountability beyond the programme: who holds you to it once this ends? → "You're the experts" (if you were advising someone else on building resilience, where would you start?) → Start / Now / Next journey reflection, opened async (words, voice, photos) and left open until the final gathering.

The ecosystem story set (from the March reflection — also the perfect seed for Pack B): wolves of Yellowstone, beavers in river systems, sharks and seagrass. "Resilience isn't about any single organism being strong — it's about the relationships between them." Then: what's missing from your ecosystem — and could this group start to be some of what's missing for each other? That question is the hinge between the two packs; use it deliberately.

F7. Skills sessions — the guest-expert slot

A repeating pattern, not fixed content: a 90-minute slot for an invited specialist, keyed to a principle the cohort's Compasses flagged. 2026 exemplars: Collective Governance in Action (Bold) and How to Fail Well — designing experiments where failure isn't catastrophic (Flexible). Brief guests with the principle spread and the cohort's RBT themes; ask them to land on "realistic, concrete next steps."

F8. The final gathering

A celebration, not a wrap-up meeting. The shape: a morning of storytelling and shared reflection (each organisation shares its resilience journey in whatever format feels authentic — slides optional, the async Start/Now/Next contributions feed in) → a celebratory lunch with an invited guest reflection → an afternoon of resilience intentions and future commitments (specific, dated, witnessed) → closing reflections. Expenses reimbursed; the bar for "sharing" kept deliberately low and warm.

F9. Materials index

Organisational Resilience Programme · Liz Pepler & Tom Watson · CC BY-NC 4.0