Fall Events and Offerings
Greetings All,
As fall heads our way and the days slowly cool in the Northern Hemisphere, I'm preparing a number of public workshops, classes, and offerings that I want to share with you.
The common theme of these offerings is they're all intended to help you work through the challenges of navigating power imbalances in relationships and groups with skill and grace.
I believe that power, at its best, is the ability to choose Love over fear. Each of the events below is intended to forge new insights into how we can support ourselves and the people around us to lean into that version of power in our personal lives and professions.
Below you will find ten different free and paid offerings that I believe will support you whether you're a facilitator, educator, trainer, coach, leader, or supervisor. Take your time to scroll through to see if one feels right to lean into. I would love to have you!
Innerwork for Facilitators and Leaders: A Free Power Matters Lab Taster
October 1, 3:30 - 4:45pm Pacific: Register here for free
October 16, 3:30 - 4:45pm Pacific: Register here for free
Those of us leading teams and facilitating groups need a type of innerwork that helps us navigate the triggers and challenges that can show up when we’re supporting group processes. In this taster session we will offer an approach to innerwork—or doing the internal personal work—that can help expand your capacity to facilitate complex power dynamics in groups with skill and presence.
Facilitating groups means stepping into the unknown—where power differences can surface in surprising ways. How you respond in those moments can transform a group’s capacity for connection, collaboration, and change.
Our inner experience, if not tended to, can erect barriers that stop us from engaging in the facilitation we aspire to—preventing our clients, teams, students, or groups from going where they need.
In this 75-minute virtual taster, my colleague Greg Flynn and I will introduce Processwork, a facilitation approach that offers a style of innerwork that can help leaders and space holders work with the dynamics that emerge in real time, rather than relying only on pre-set plans or tools.
In this session, you’ll get a taste of the two-day in-person Power Matters Lab (happening November 13–14) and explore how this approach can help you:
- Stay grounded and resourced in difficult moments
- Read the “field” of what’s happening beneath the surface in a group
- Turn discomfort and uncertainty into doorways for deeper learning
Whether you’re a facilitator, supervisor, leader, educator, or manager, this session will give you practical innerwork tools to strengthen your presence and help you decide if the full Power Matters Lab is right for you.
What to Expect
In this free 75-minute online session, you will:
- Learn what Processwork is and why it’s a powerful framework for group work
- Explore the unique lens Power Matters Lab brings to working with power and rank dynamics
- Experience a guided innerwork practice you can immediately apply in facilitation
- Get clarity about what the two-day Power Matters Lab (Nov 13–14) offers and whether it’s the right fit for you
Power Matters Lab
November 13 - 14, 9:30am - 4:30pm | Phinney Ridge Community Center, Seattle
Click here to learn more and register
Power is always in the room. It’s usually the thing no one wants to name—so it runs the show. It subtly (and not-so-subtly) dictates who speaks, who stays silent, who leaves. It makes the same conversations repeat themselves for years.
Most people pretend power isn’t there. Or try to control it. Or get run over by it.
Want to try something different? Read on.
WHY THIS LAB?
On November 13 & 14 at Phinney Ridge Community Center, Greg Flynn and I are inviting a small group of facilitators, leaders, and space-holders to step into an experimental lab to explore power and facilitation.
Two days to test out what happens when we notice power instead of ignoring it. What happens when we work with it instead of fighting it?
Processwork is our container. It’s a lens, a practice, a weirdly wise framework that assumes every group has a shape, a mood, a secret unfolding. A group isn’t just a pile of people. It’s a field—alive, full of signals, pushing towards something.
Part of this lab is about feeling that field. Sensing its shape. Messing with it. It’s also about understanding our own inner experience—seeing what shifts when you touch the edges you usually back away from.
This is a beta test. A practice ground. A chance to poke at your own use of power—the obvious bits and the sneaky bits—and see what changes when you stop pretending it’s not there.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
This lab is for you if:
- You hold space for groups, teams, or communities.
- You know power’s in the room but don’t always know what to do with it.
- You want to get braver, weirder, more alive in how you navigate power.
- You’re curious about Processwork and its deep democracy approach—where even the stuff we’d rather ignore is invited in.
WHAT WILL WE DO?
We’ll move, talk, listen, play, mess up, notice patterns, get uncomfortable, try again. We’ll follow the process. We’ll hold each other. We’ll learn.
WHAT THIS IS NOT:
This is not a perfectly packaged “train-the-trainer.” This is a co-created lab. A test kitchen for your facilitation edges.
COME EXPERIMENT
November 13 & 14 | 9:30a - 4:30p both days | Phinney Ridge Community Center | Seattle
Bring your questions, your edges, your curiosity. Let’s find out what happens when we stop pretending power doesn’t matter.
Creating the Conditions for Generative Conflict: Essential Understandings for Mission-Driven Leaders and Groups
September 24, 3 - 4pm Pacific: Register Here for Free
October 24, 3 - 4pm Pacific: Register Here for Free
Conflict is inevitable in any group. For mission-driven organizations, conflict will often arise not in spite of your values, but because of them.
Conflict that is skillfully engaged can offer a number of valuable things. It can prevent wounds from festering, unnecessary turnover, and toxic rumor mills. More importantly, it can also help forge trust, sharpen purpose, and support meaningful transformation.
Designed especially for formal and informal leaders, this free 1-hour workshop introduces a 30,000 foot overview of my approach to creating the conditions in which conflict can become a resource in values-driven environments.
You'll will leave with stronger answers to the following questions:
- How can conflict be a generative force?
- How can we work together to create the conditions under which that is most likely to become true?
This workshop is ideal for professionals working in schools, nonprofits, businesses, coalitions, associations, or any other small to mid-sized mission-aligned community members ready to grow their capacity for courageous conversation and collective growth.
Conflict Improv With the Deep Play Institute
September 28, 10am - 12pm Pacific: Click here to learn more and register
What if conflict could be fun?
In this workshop, we’ll explore how humor and play can shift the way we relate to tension. We’ll start with a body-based icebreaker and a brief introduction. Then we’ll dive into conflict improv—silly roleplays like confronting someone for faking a British accent at a retreat. After each scenario, we’ll pause to reflect on what we noticed and learned. We’ll end by creating our own “conflict monsters”—the parts of us that show up when things get tough.
You’ll leave with new awareness about your conflict habits and how to make light of them in a useful way.
Facilitate Generative Conflict
A four-week virtual training offered through the Processwork Institute
Nov 10, 17, 24, and Dec 1 from 4 - 6pm Pacific | $320
Click here to learn more and register
Conflict isn’t just a problem to solve — it’s a living process, rich with signals, roles, and potential. Beneath the surface of most conflicts lie multiple realities, unspoken experiences, and untapped resources that, when brought forward, can transform the entire situation.
This series is about supporting formal and informal facilitators of conflict to develop their capacity to follow those processes — in themselves, in the other people involved, and in the larger field that holds us all. Whether you’re working in your own family, inside an organization, across political divides, or in cross-cultural or international contexts, these skills help you navigate conflict with more awareness, creativity, and care.
Facilitating conflict is not a quick fix. It’s a living discipline—a practice that deepens over time. It draws on awareness, skill, and creativity rather than a simple step-by-step formula. In this four-part online training, you’ll have the chance to strengthen that practice in ways that are rooted in Process-Oriented facilitation and enriched by other leading-edge paradigms.
Bite-Size Processwork
Metaskills | October 4, 4 - 5pm: Click here to register for free
Edge Signals | November 11, 10 - 11am: Click here to register for free
The Quantum Physics Connection | December 3, 4 - 5pm: Click here to register for free
Each month, I offer a one-hour bite-size teaching about an essential Processwork concept through the Processwork Institute.
Click on the links above to register and join for free for the October, November, or December sessions. I'd love to have you!
Private Practice
I continue to offer private sessions for individuals, relationships, and groups. Although my focus these days is primarily on helping people use conflict well, I also work with people to help them actualize their dreams, understand their deeper life purpose, and make meaningful life decisions guided by their own deeper knowing and wisdom.
Check out my website for more information about these offerings, my last newsletter for more information about unique packages I offer, or book a free consultation to see if I might be a good fit for you.
Questions or feedback? I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at james.boutin@mailfence.com.
Lots of Love,
James
James
www.jamesboutin.com
james.boutin@mailfence.com
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Other Upcoming Events
Monthly In-Person Men's Circle
Tuesday, September 30, 6 - 8pm
Facilitated by Gregory Flynn
Click here to learn more and register
Book Club: Living in the Shadow of the Cross
Beginning Oct 8
Facilitated by Martha Hurwitz
Click here to learn more and register