ICA Associates Inc

05/15/2026

ICA Nepal is pleased to announce a series of public courses, trainings, and workshops for 2026, aimed at building professional capacity, leadership, and social impact.
Enroll now and invest in your growth in 2026 !

05/15/2026

05/01/2026

Resolving Destructive Dispute Behaviour

It seems to me that this is a time in history when differences in opinion easily escalate into polarization and from that to destructive behaviour. This is not a new pattern, though it seems to be happening more often and with wider implications: at least it is more visible. Perhaps a story of how behaviour like this was resolved in the past is useful....

It seems to me that this is a time in history when differences in opinion easily escalate into polarization and from that to destructive behaviour. This is not a new pattern, though it seems to be …

04/17/2026

Listening as a Leadership Skill

A number of current events and posts by colleagues have catalyzed my thinking about leadership. As a facilitator, I have experienced a range of situations with clients where leaders thought that leadership was about presenting their own insights and requiring others to follow them. Telling, Not Listening One was a CEO who brought a whole team together from across the country and then started the meeting by telling them they were all incompetent. ...

A number of current events and posts by colleagues have catalyzed my thinking about leadership. As a facilitator, I have experienced a range of situations with clients where leaders thought that l…

04/03/2026

A First Step in My Facilitation Journey

Someone asked me this question: If a career as a facilitator is lifelong, when did you decide you wanted to become a facilitator? When I started facilitating, there was no profession called facilitation. I started out as a teacher. I had wanted to be a teacher ever since I taught my sister how to read when she was four years old and I was 6....

Someone asked me this question: If a career as a facilitator is lifelong, when did you decide you wanted to become a facilitator? When I started facilitating, there was no profession called facili…

03/26/2026

Using the Focused Conversation Method with Dots to Prioritize Consensus Workshop Results

I'm not sure when I discovered this process based on the Focused Conversation Method, but it allows thinking through a number of perspectives on priorities at different levels to discover which item is the biggest priority overall. Instead of just gut level reactions to "What is our biggest priority?" participants have a chance to think through and record different perspectives on priorities, which makes the conversation on priorities as the whole group more accurate....

I’m not sure when I discovered this process based on the Focused Conversation Method, but it allows thinking through a number of perspectives on priorities at different levels to discover whi…

03/12/2026

ORID Thinking to Address a Facilitation Emergency: A Participant Who Tried to Take Over a Meeting

I was facilitating the first meeting of a steering committee for a proposed province-wide public consultation on a painful and difficult topic involving abuse. My colleague and I had worked hard to find a wide range of participants who all had a good deal of wisdom on how to deal with the topic and had a stake in the results of the conference....

I was facilitating the first meeting of a steering committee for a proposed province-wide public consultation on a painful and difficult topic involving abuse.  My colleague and I had worked h…

02/25/2026

Focused Conversation On Current Events with One or a Few Others (Or with Self)

This conversation was catalyzed by a conversation with a couple of other ToP facilitators in this month’s ToP Community of Practice meeting about how in current times it is challenging to have conv…

02/25/2026

Focused Conversation On Current Events with One or a Few Others (Or with Self)

This conversation was catalyzed by a conversation with a couple of other ToP facilitators in this month’s ToP Community of Practice meeting about how in current times it is challenging to have conversations about anything because people cannot agree on whether something is objective data or not. Arguments break out before a conversation can even start. The question was how to have these important conversations to begin to address polarization....

This conversation was catalyzed by a conversation with a couple of other ToP facilitators in this month’s ToP Community of Practice meeting about how in current times it is challenging to have conv…

02/19/2026

Facilitating Diversity

(Photo from the front cover of The Art of Focused Conversation, Second Edition) This week in February 2026 marked significant religious events in several different traditions. Lunar New Year, the beginning of Ramadan, and Ash Wednesday all happened within 2 days. And within a month, there will be Purim and Nowruz, followed closely by Easter. This led me to a reflection on facilitating diversity....

(Photo from the front cover of The Art of Focused Conversation, Second Edition) This week in February 2026 marked significant religious events in several different traditions. Lunar New Year, the b…

02/05/2026

My Working Assumptions as a Facilitator

I have recently read reflections by several facilitators on group norms, facilitator neutrality, and "facilitation as manipulation". I think that this is an important topic, especially in these times. Thirty-two years ago a group of people (I was a part of it) began the International Association of Facilitators to separate the role of a group meeting leader (a consultant or content provider) who has knowledge or wisdom to present to a group, and the role of a group meeting leader (a facilitator) who has questions and process to help a group discover and create its own knowledge and wisdom....

I have recently read reflections by several facilitators on group norms, facilitator neutrality, and “facilitation as manipulation”. I think that this is an important topic, especially …