Adaptive facilitation in practice with Dr. Gemma Jiang

In this Candid Craic, Gemma Jiang talks about her role as a catalyzing and unifying presence in the massively transdisciplinary research on the circular economy; how she employs a range of facilitation techniques to hold transformational spaces in which pluralistic solutions get generated via civil dialogue between experts in different domains; and how she operates in the enabling spaces between adaptive entrepreneurs and administrative bureaucrats.

Gemma explains how adaptive facilitation works in practice, providing two concrete examples; talks about the struggles she has faced and still faces in getting traditional institutions to take seriously adaptive facilitation methodologies; and how egocentric posturing from subject-matter experts can suck the air out of even the best intentioned discussions without facilitation.

We close with a deep exploration of why so few organisations take such methodologies of working seriously; why it is vital for them to start doing so if we are to move beyond the linear, scarcity-focused, industrial models of work; and what the world might look like if we could do so.

NB: while the audio is clear, there were a few bandwidth challenges during the craic, meaning the sound and picture sometimes goes out of sync.

Timestamps
00:22 Hello Gemma
01:22 Just what is it that Gemma does? A Catalyzing, Unifying Presence
06:19 Catalyzing Circular Economy Research
08:10 The Three Containers of Transformation
17:20 Adaptive Spaces - between Entrepreneurs and Bureaucrats
21:40 Working in the Adaptive Space - a Liberating Experiencing
27:30 How do you learn how to facilitate?
31:00 The Struggles of the Adaptive Facilitator
33:45 Is Expertise Leadership?
38:45 Soft Skills are Hard! Human Behaviour is Simple!
42:56 Exploring a Regenerative-Adaptive Future of Work
49:36 The Nine Trillion Dollar Question