Welcome to the Workspace of the Chairing Skills Program (CSP)!

The second pilot CSP has been completed.  A total of 8 Coaches and 14 Chairs from across the ICANN community participated in the program during ICANN64 in Kobe, Japan.

Background of the CSP:

Active ICANN community contributors, and in particular, Chairs, can be easily challenged when taking up the responsibility of leading a working group or stakeholder group. Participants and facilitators of the ICANN Academy Leadership Program (LP) in Dublin 2015 agreed it would be valuable to offer a course to develop chairing skills, both for telephonic as well as for both virtual and face-to-face meetings. As such, the new Chairing Skills Program (CSP) was piloted during the 2016-2017 fiscal year, beginning before ICANN58 in Copenhagen and ending at that meeting.  We took away several lessons from the pilot that will be applied to the second iteration. 

The CSP is different from the Leadership Program in many ways.   It is a peer-coaching program, specifically focused on current chairs, and deals primarily with virtual facilitation as well as F2F interactions.   This course program is designed for chairs of working groups or stakeholder groups who would like to develop their chairing skills through coaching and feedback.  

The CSP 2018-2019 will begin with a call for Coaches and Chairs at the Barcelona meeting in October 2018.  The Coaches will be vetted as to their experience as Chairs and willingness to be a coach. 

Details of the 2019 Program:

The ICANN Academy Chairing Skills Program will be divided into two parts:

1)     Face-to-Face Chairing Skills

2)    Telephone Chairing Skills

The aim of dividing the course into two parts is to focus both on the development of one skill at a time as well as to incorporate feedback from the first session into the second. 

The Face-to-Face Chairing Skills (Part 1) is planned to begin during ICANN64 in Kobe, Japan. The results of Part 1 will feed into the Telephone Chairing Skills (Part 2) that will continue beyond ICANN64 until ICANN65.  

The program will be conducted by a professional external coach from Incite Learning, Inc., David Kolb, in cooperation with a community member from the ICANN Academy Working Group. These are the CSP organizers. 

Role of Coaches:

The community Coaches for the CSP will work directly with Chairs. This interaction will include observing the Chairs on calls and in meetings, and providing specific feedback on how to be even more effective as a Chair.  Coaches will ideally be alumni of the LP and have previous chairing experience, as they need to know what it is like to be a Chair.

Coaches should have a deep understanding of ICANN, having not only been actively involved for several years, but also playing various roles within the ICANN Community. In addition, Coaches should meet the following criteria:

• Must be able to effectively communicate and understand and English (observing the chair without using the interpretation tool)

• Must have secured travel support for ICANN64 (Kobe)

• Must be able to dedicate time according to the agreed upon schedule
•  Preferably has had experience as a Chair within ICANN

The training is in real time, using current challenges and specific issues facing the Chair. Coaches will be available to their Chairs throughout CSP Parts 1 and 2 for just-in-time questions and concerns. Coaches will meet with program organizers for content overviews and to discuss specific Chair issues and concerns.

As a Coach, you will be trained in coaching skills. You will have other coaches, as well as the program organisers to support you. You will be assigned one or two chairs to work with during the program. You will set up times to listen to their calls (either live or by using recordings) and afterwards, will provide feedback on chairing skills. A training focused on how to coach Chairs will take place at the ICANN meeting in Kobe in March 2019. A meeting with the Chairs will take place at the same meeting to kick off the program.  The most important task you will take on is being able to impact the ICANN Chairs and how they lead the community into the future.

2019 CSP Program Outline:

Part 1 – Face-to-Face Chairing Skills Development taking place during an ICANN meeting

• Coach introduction and training – Aim is to train the coaches in F2F chairing skills and acquaint them with how to coach others and provide useful feedback (in person at ICANN64; 2-3 hours)
• After Coach training, Chairs will join for introductions and CSP orientation. 
• Group introduction to F2F course – Program organizers, community Coaches, and Chairs. Aim is to introduce the course and introduce the coaches to their chairs, F2F (in person 2 hours at ICANN64). 
• Individual observations – Coaches to observe a F2F meeting that their Chair is chairing (f2f; 1-2 hours)
• Individual Coaches and Chairs meetings – Coaches to meet f2f informally with their chair to provide feedback (1 hour)
• Group call – Call to discuss best practice and lessons learned as well as to review the second part of the program.This call will include Coaches, Chairs, and CSP organizers (telephonic; 1 hour)

Part 2 – Telephone Chairing Skills Development

2019 CSP Program Timeline:

Date Estimate

Description

21 December, 2018

Application deadline for Chairs and Coaches

February 2019

Assign chairs to coaches and introduce the course to the participants.

ICANN64: March 2019

Specific times to be determined based on meeting structure

• F2f workshop/meeting with coaches and program organizers to discuss meeting sessions during ICANN64. 
• Workshop on f2f facilitation with program organizers and Coaches.
• F2f meeting with Coaches, Chairs, and program organizers.
• ICANN64 f2f observations and session during meeting. Coaches to observe a f2f meeting that their chair is chairing (f2f; 1-2 hours).
• Individual coaches and chairs meetings – Coaches to meet f2f informally with their chair to provide feedback.

March-May 2019

• Individual observations:
  1.  Coaches to observe a call that their Chair is chairing (telephonic; 1-2 hours)
  2.  Evaluation and discussion among the coaches before providing feedback to the Chair (Telephonic; 30 min plus email)

 March-May 2019

• Individual observations and feedback – Coaches to offer feedback to individual chairs; segments of meeting recordings to be used as training tool; (telephonic; 1-2 hours for call; 2 hours preparation)

ICANN65 or before

• Group call or meeting at ICANN65 – Call to review program and discuss best practices and lessons learned. This call will include program organizers, coaches and chairs (telephonic; 1 hour) 

Time commitment for Chairs: <3h

Time commitment for Coaches: <7h

2019 CSP Participants

Coach

Chair 1

Chair 2

2017 CSP Participants

Telephonic Session Status

(Date of Meetings Observed)

F2F Session Status

(Date of Meetings Observed)

F2F Intersessional 15feb

31 March 2017,

6 April 2017,

26 April 2017

The CSP started off as a peer-coaching program, but most recently, the ICANN Academy Working Group has worked with Incite Learning, LLC to further evolve ways to enhance chairing skills. The program has now been revamped to become a one-day, face-to-face program that will better serve new ICANN chairs.

The plan for the CSP in 2020:

Unfortunately, as we are now facing a global pandemic, ICANN’s meetings have been virtual this year, which is an additional challenge for the chairs to be able to lead a group effectively. Therefore, as a preview to the new, revamped CSP that will eventually take place in person, we will be holding a 90-minute webinar on Monday, 7 December 2020 from 3:00-4:30pm UTC.

The target audience for the webinar is ICANN Chairs that want to develop their chairing skills, especially newly elected chairs.

The webinar will focus on three areas that emerged from our design process as critical to success for chairs: Leadership, Communication, and Organization Skills. We will devote 30 minutes to each of the topics. Leadership skills will cover how to build trust in a group and how to convey the right balance of strength and warmth as a leader. Communication skills will explore asking questions, understanding positions, and building consensus. Organization skills is a combination of time management and meeting management - how to effectively prepare for meetings and get things done as a chair. The webinar is not meant to replace the full day experience, but rather to provide participants with both an overview to gain understanding and an opportunity to develop their personal network with other chairs.

The webinar will be delivered by David Kolb, Ph.D., the Managing Director of Incite Learning. David has been working with ICANN since 2013, providing training and coaching to the ICANN community, ICANN org, and others in the ICANN ecosystem. His focus is on leadership, interpersonal skills, and personal effectiveness. He has worked with several of the SO/ACs over the years and provided targeted training designed for their specific needs at the time.

If you are new/current chair (or vice chair) at ICANN and are interested and available to participate in this webinar, please register here by Monday, 30 November 2020 at 23:59 UTC.