Transformative facilitation: the never-ending path in the act of becoming

This autoethnographic critique is based on four decades as an international facilitator. It describes how my transformative facilitation framework emerged in practice, in the forming of my company Alchemy Worldwide in 2016, and in the writing of my book Provoke: The Art of Transformative Facilitation in 2019. I have chosen four influential "mirrors" to critically reflect on and articulate the complexity of my practice: my background in Japanese martial arts (Budō); my influential spiritual teachers, or gurus; the beautiful revelations of working in 48 countries; and the alchemy of integrating Western methodological theories, including applied psychology, with Eastern philosophies. The critical lenses I move between are phenomenological hermeneutics, the study of reflective learning and integration, and ontology, the philosophical study of existence and the nature of reality. Autoethnography has provided me with a reflection of my own positionality, which is the inclusion of the person behind the narrated experience, both personally and in a reflexive relationship to the groups and sectors of which I am a member, and what I have shaped and what matters in my existence.

This approach goes beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries to address complex problems by integrating knowledge from diverse fields and involving various stakeholders, including non-academic participants. It moves beyond simple multidisciplinarity or interdisciplinarity by incorporating perspectives and expertise from outside academia.

This critique documents my transformation from an "uneducatable" child to an international facilitator, and how deep inner conflict, a remorseless sense of knowing the norm was not working, and the emergence of a better way of learning guided my vision and implementation of change.

I reveal the inexorable, lived alchemy of my artefact, Provoke: The Art of Transformative Facilitation and the TRANSFORM8© framework, long before I even realised that was what I was doing, and the dream where I saw the framework unfold as a tangible thing I could describe in written form.

This critique presents my experiment with how phenomenological hermeneutics and ontology bridge the East and West, the philosophical teachings of both ancient and contemporary teachers, and an exploration of my passion for understanding and embodying learning. This has led to the emergence of clarity within my practice and how it can evolve, positioned as it is, for the advancement of incremental understanding of self in relation to others and things, through beautiful and often troublesome processes. It demonstrates how, in conventional facilitation, A plus B equals C doesn’t work, as each of us is on a unique trajectory. I firmly believe this critique advances my facilitation sector by showing how both theoretical and philosophical understanding, lived experience, and concerted application can be combined for the betterment of self and human development, should we choose to embrace our personal, never-ending story of becoming.