NOVA Scribes

Your Facilitation Operating System with Joran Oppelt

As facilitators, consultants, and coaches, we all carry an internal operating system. It is a set of mental models, frameworks, metaphors, and lenses that quietly shapes how we listen, interpret, decide, and intervene with groups. Some of these models come from formal training. Others come from religion, recovery, education, or lived experience. Most of them operate in the background, unnamed but powerful.

In this highly reflective and generative session, Joran invites participants to surface the mental models they are already using and examine how those models influence their facilitation choices. Together, we will explore a wide range of frameworks, from listening and learning models to developmental and process-oriented theories, and look at how different practitioners combine them to make sense of complexity.

Rather than treating frameworks as rigid tools, this workshop treats them as living components that can be combined, nested, and remixed. Participants will experiment with metaphors, mash-ups, and integrations that reveal new possibilities and help clarify how they uniquely create value for clients and partners.

By the end of the session, each participant will leave with the beginnings of a personal Facilitation Operating System. Something custom, intentional, and reflective of how they see the world and how they choose to show up in it.

What we will explore

• How mental models shape perception, decision making, and facilitation choices.
• A broad spectrum of frameworks used by practitioners across disciplines and life experiences.
• Ways models can be combined, nested, or integrated using metaphor and imagery.
• How to design a personal, coherent operating system for facilitation practice.

Key takeaways

• Understand how your preferred mental models can create both insight and blind spots.
• Discover frameworks other practitioners use to frame perspectives and problems.
• Learn how to consciously leverage and evolve your models to better serve the people you work with.

This session is ideal for facilitators, coaches, consultants, and reflective practitioners who want to deepen their self-awareness, sharpen their practice, and articulate the invisible architecture that guides their work.

Joran Oppelt is the Senior Consultant at The Grove Consultants International. He has over a decade of experience in visual consulting, graphic facilitation, and executive coaching. He has helped shape strategy with clients in the fields of technology, sport, healthcare, and finance with a passion for leadership development and team alignment.

With certifications in coaching, storytelling, design thinking and virtual facilitation, Joran holds a deep belief in the power of human potential and in art-making as a tool for healing and community building. Joran uses a strengths-based/Positive Psychology approach when coaching leaders and sees teams and organizations through a developmental lens. He enjoys creating safe spaces for groups to play with rigorous frameworks. These have included The Grove’s Team Performance and Strategic Visioning models, innovation/design thinking, OKRs, Integral Theory, Gamestorming, Storybrand, and more.

Joran is the author of Facilitation: A Human-Centered Guide to the Art of Collaboration; Visionary Leadership; and The Visual Meetings Field Guide.

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NOVA Scribes has entered into a partnership with the IFVP: the International Forum of Visual Practitioners! This workshop is an IFVP Learning Lab. All IFVP members have access to Learning Labs at https://ifvpforum.circle.so/c/learning-hub/

This workshop will be recorded and posted on YouTube for anyone who cannot attend. You can find the YouTube link in the Comments section of this NOVA Scribes Meetup event once the workshop video has been uploaded to YouTube.
You can find previously recorded videos at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJfInZHmS8prj2_DUaJ35CYY8n7SzoPMJ

We’re not charging for this workshop, but we will be asking for donations! Donations cover the costs of hosting events on Meetup, to honorariums for new graphic recorders, and scholarships.

Please be sure you are registered on Meetup! If your Zoom name doesn’t match your name on Meetup, you will not be admitted. (We’ve had Zoom bombers.)

What does it look like when ideas come to life?

Join NOVA Scribes and MAFN for a full-day, in-person open house where the public is invited to step inside the world of facilitation. This is a come-and-go experience designed for curiosity, exploration, and conversation. Whether you are new to facilitation groups, you are welcome.

The space will be set up as a "theater in the round," (see the image) with facilitators working live around the room. Throughout the day, you will see different techniques, styles, and modalities demonstrated in real time, from visual templates, facilitation tools, and decision-support methods. You can observe, ask questions, and engage directly with the practitioners as the work unfolds.

What you can expect

• Live demonstrations of facilitation techniques
• Multiple practitioners working simultaneously, each with their own approach and style
• Short, informal demos and tiny teaches that explain how and why specific techniques are used
• Opportunities to talk one-on-one with experienced facilitators
• A chance to see how facilitation can support sensemaking, alignment, and group dialogue

What you might explore

• Methods and templates for planning, strategy, and reflection
• Facilitation methods that support participation and decision making
• Tools, materials, and setup considerations for live work

This open house is designed to be accessible, hands-on, and inspiring. You do not need to stay all day. Come for 20 minutes or stay for hours. Watch ideas take shape. Notice how facilitation can change the energy in the room. Ask the questions you have always wanted to ask.

If you have ever been curious about how facilitation works and supports groups, this is your chance to experience it up close.

Open to the general public. No prior experience required.

We’re not charging for this workshop, but we will be asking for donations!