ICA Associates Inc

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.
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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....

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 …

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. ...

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 l…

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....

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 facili…

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....

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 whi…

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....

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 h…

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

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…

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....

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…

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....

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…