Our members are a diverse group of facilitators, managers, coaches, trainers, consultants, HR professionals, learning and development consultants and charity and community representatives.
The founders of AoF are Brian Watts and Bella Mehta who work with partners and board members (Professor Paul Barber, Dr Mike Field, Dr David Best, Robin Shohet) on all aspects of design and delivery of courses, supervision days, accreditation, re-accreditation and resources. For more information, please click here.
Community Manager, Hannah Wood, takes the lead on communication with new and established members.
Between us, we represent a wide range of personal profiles, professional interests, strengths, skills, backgrounds, life circumstances and outward appearances but share a commitment to developing individuals as facilitators, including ourselves, and facilitation as a profession.
My early background is in the Police Service where I specialised in
learning and development, teacher training, and the assessment of
staff in their attainment of Higher Education qualifications.
There I discovered my vocation as a facilitator and began exploring
the world of group facilitation and its interface with leadership and
performance.
Since then I have studied Facilitation at both
Masters and Post Graduate level. For over 20 years I have worked
independently across a wide range of organisations, training and
supervising facilitators, and facilitating learning programmes.
I’m particularly interested in the type of work that
positions facilitation as a core component to other disciplines, and
makes explicit the link between personal and professional
development. Such work has included leadership development
programmes, mediation, team development, and qualitative
research.
My approach to facilitation is eclectic. I aim
to help participants go beyond their current levels of skill and
awareness, and to gain confidence and creativity in their chosen
arena.
I have a mixed educational background which includes music,
biochemistry (to graduate level), information technology (to masters
level), project management, systems theory, constellations,
personality types, counselling, writing & editing, leadership,
change management, gestalt and group facilitation (to post-graduate level).
I have previously worked as a management
consultant at Deloitte Consulting, a project manager at BBC News and
subsequently smaller consulting organisations. I have
facilitated many conversations, team meetings, workshops, events,
away days, debates, research and communication programmes within
organisations. I have a keen awareness of the dynamics and
pressures within groups and organisations, a clear eye on the
business case for change and many experiences of change brought about
through a facilitative way of working. I have taken several
career breaks to travel, study and write books and articles.
I
have run as well as supervised facilitator training courses, and am
committed to developing self-directed, experiential learning,
reflective practice and facilitation skills in professional
environments.