Encore Careers: Finding New Purpose Through Facilitation
In Canada today, shifts within the public sector mean that many long-time employees are rethinking their next professional chapter. For people who have dedicated years of service and developed deep expertise, such transitions can feel uncertain. Yet they also present an important opportunity: the chance to design an encore career.
What is an Encore Career?
If you have made a job or career transition in the past, you know the importance of your mindset. An encore career is more than simply “finding another job.” It is about bringing your accumulated experience, skills, and networks into a new role that offers purpose, flexibility, and impact. For many mid- and late-career professionals, this stage is not an ending but a renewal — a way to apply what you know in fresh and meaningful ways to continue to provide a valuable service. Take your accumulated experience to a new level of service with focus but without all the administrative burden. Think of it like graduation, except instead of graduating from school you are graduating from your current career.
Why Facilitation?
There are three reasons for adding group process facilitation to your skillset in time for your encore career. First of all, government employees build strengths in a range of broadly-defined “leadership skills” like policy development, policy implementation, communication, risk management, planning, and internal (cross-departmental) and external (stakeholder) collaboration. Organizations in every sector need those skills for their own development but your “leadership” is also subtle and personal not just a set of procedures. Did you just read a book and suddenly you were a leader? Not likely. It took time. As a facilitator, you could mentor, coach, and generally evoke the leadership skills in your “client” group. Isn’t that something you wished you could do when you were part of the civil service but it always sat at the edge of your desk instead of being the focus of your attention? Now you are free to share it in a way that empowers the next generation of leaders. They need it and want it.
Second, some graduates from a career in public service have subject matter expertise (SME) that might be lacking in the private and non-profit sectors. Typically, you might volunteer with an NGO or sit on the board of a corporation or job hunt trying to sell your expertise. That works. But how can you share your subject matter expertise with the next generation who deal with newer technology and emerging social situations and generational divides? Rather than tell them what you know, you could ask them questions that help them to deal with their situations. Asking great questions in a structured way is central to the role of a facilitator.
Finally, you might be thinking of how to transfer some of your expertise to younger generations in any sector. You could set up a conventional training program to share basic content, but how do these learners integrate new information into their practice? For example, you know a PowerPoint slide show will not transfer anything, but a conversation about the slide show could be lively. It could even be a life changing experience. How do you design and lead life-changing learning experiences? When your facilitation skills are well developed and grounded in your fundamental understandings about life, then you operate on a different level that we call “transformational facilitation.” Then you are not a low-cost “trainer” delivering canned materials, but an emerging guru.
The facilitation skills taught by ICA Associates Inc. are called “Technology of Participation”™ or “ToP Methods”™. ToP Methods are an entire body of knowledge that includes three layers of learning, like the iceberg image:
- tools, tips, and templates,
- methods, processes, and models
- underlying assumptions, values, and mindsets
ICAA has the most extensive / comprehensive training program in the world for developing your facilitation skills. We equip you to tap into the wisdom of others. Using facilitation skills allows you to transform your strengths into new opportunities that the next generation can interact with. Sure, we teach people to run meetings better, but a civil servant probably knows a lot about meetings already. At ICAA we are motivated by something deeper and so are you, we hope. Our mission is: “facilitating a culture of participation,” so, yeah, we want to change the world. Do you?
With facilitation training, you can:
- Bring an objective perspective to a situation, while having a clear understanding of the environment that many organizations must work within.
- Guide groups through change by creating inclusive conversations and effective decisions.
- Transform expertise into new roles such as consultant, trainer, coach, or community leader.
- Stay connected to purpose while gaining the freedom to design your career around your own values and schedule.
From Transition to Opportunity
We have seen many professionals move from government service into impactful encore careers in facilitation. They continue to make a difference — helping organizations and communities face complex challenges — while enjoying the autonomy and renewed energy of a new professional path.
Your Next Chapter
If you are asking yourself “What’s next?”, facilitation may be the bridge between your past experience and future possibilities. With structured training, mentorship, and a strong professional community, ICA Associates helps you turn transition into opportunity and build an encore career filled with purpose.
Arrange a meeting one-on-one to discuss your next steps….
👉 Learn more about our facilitation training at ica-associates.ca.