At the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit, Kathy Ditmore led an impactful session on “Mapping the Change Journey”, offering valuable tools and frameworks for creating successful change processes within teams and organizations. This session focused on using a canvas as a “compass” to guide projects toward success and aligned transformation, emphasizing how to adapt and lead through change effectively.

Exploring the Canvas: Your Compass for Success

Kathy kicked off the session with an engaging icebreaker: participants placed their birthdays or favorite day on a sticky note, fostering connection and lightening the mood. This simple exercise set the tone for a session that combined reflection with actionable tools for leading change.

The heart of the session was Kathy’s introduction of the canvas, a tool she described as a guiding framework for navigating the complexities of change. The canvas wasn’t about adopting a one-size-fits-all solution—it was about offering a flexible, living document that helped teams clarify their vision, align on purpose, and identify what steps to take next.

The Journey of Change: Setting the Stage for Success

Kathy shared a key lesson from her career: change succeeds when people connect to purpose and have ownership of the direction they’re going. Her early experience as a programmer highlighted how even the most well-intentioned training efforts fall short without a clear understanding of why the work matters.

The session continued with a deep dive into the backpack essentials for change: staying open, being curious, and engaging fully. Kathy encouraged participants to leave behind preconceived methods or frameworks and focus on adapting their approach to the specific needs of the team and project at hand.

Exercise: The Tale of Two Changes

To help participants internalize the concepts, Kathy led them through an exercise titled “The Tale of Two Changes”. Attendees were asked to reflect on a successful change and a struggling one. They identified key factors that fueled the success of the former and what was missing in the latter. The group shared insights, revealing common themes: clear roles, communication, support, and leadership alignment all stood out as crucial for successful transformations.

The Canvas: Your Roadmap for Change

As the session unfolded, Kathy introduced the canvas, which was structured into three main areas:

1. Mindset: Aligning everyone around a shared vision and understanding of the “why.”
2. Execution: Defining the guiding principles, roles, resources, and risks that shape the change process.
3. Connection: Understanding stakeholders and engagement strategies to ensure that everyone is on board and moving in the same direction.

Kathy emphasized that this tool should be viewed as a living document, one that evolves as the team progresses and learns together. She also provided an example of how the canvas could be used in project rescue, helping teams reorient struggling initiatives through a purposeful re-evaluation of their vision.

Creating Clarity: Vision and Purpose

A key moment of the session focused on visioning: crafting a shared purpose and aligning everyone around the “why.” Kathy facilitated a story-building exercise to help participants break down complex ideas into manageable, clear themes. By engaging with a simple exercise that explored direction and clarity, attendees were encouraged to rethink their approach to projects—emphasizing the importance of alignment from the very start.

Practical Insights for the Road Ahead

Kathy concluded with reflections on the importance of dialogue in change processes. The canvas is a tool to guide these conversations, helping teams stay on track and adjust as needed. She shared examples of using the tool to identify potential detours, offering a framework for troubleshooting when change processes start to veer off course.

The session left participants with a renewed focus on how to approach change with clarity, empathy, and a structured plan—ensuring that transformation isn’t just about the end result, but also about the journey of alignment and ownership along the way.

The session left participants with a renewed focus on how to approach change with clarity, empathy, and a structured plan—ensuring that transformation isn’t just about the end result, but also about the journey of alignment and ownership along the way.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Kathy’s Session:

Kathy Ditmore:
Hello? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yeah, okay, great. Thanks. Thank you for having me today. So, as Eric mentioned, the topic today is Mapping the Change Journey and I’ve chosen a tool, I was thinking about this, what did I want to bring in so we’re going to be looking at a canvas as a compass for your project’s success. So, while you all are settling in and as we’re getting in, if you take a sticky and go ahead and put your month and day of your birthday. And if you’re not comfortable putting that out there to everybody, just pick your favorite day and put that on the table in front of you so the other folks at the table can see the month and day, don’t need the year. So, as you’re doing that.

So, a little bit about me and why this topic is important to me. Early in my career as a young programmer, I had the opportunity to engage with a client at a different level and it was great. Kathy, you’re connecting, we’d love you to train our client’s teams how to use the system. Wow, that’s great, I’m being recognized. So, I go in and I train. Blank stares, everybody’s looking at me. It’s very uncomfortable. So, while I found I could teach them how to click buttons, how to navigate the screens, there was something missing for everyone in that room and that was their why and how the work they were doing was going to transform how they did business, was going to transform the results that they were bringing in and the outcomes that they were seeking.

So, that set in motion what is at my core. We did a little work on purpose statements yesterday so I’m going to read mine out. I’m a facilitative project delivery leader creating space for teams to align around a shared purpose and co-create their path forward. And what does that mean? I thought about this. Through my roles over my career, I’ve always been in the technical industry as a programmer, a business analyst, project manager, a change practitioner, change leader both in commercial and nonprofit. I’ve seen over and over again that change succeeds when people connect to purpose and have ownership in the direction they’re going and agency in how they adapt, they have a say. And even if their say isn’t heard … Even if their say doesn’t change the direction, it’s been heard, they can weigh in, they can frame the messaging.

As we go through today, I may use some terms. These are not industry standard terms, these are just definitions that I’m throwing out there for you. So, some reference points as we go on this journey. The first one is a project, it’s a temporary endeavor. We’re creating something new or different or making something different, it might be the next step. A change and that’s the human journey from what is to what will be, also known as transition. Done well, it’s nice. Not done well, looks a little like Swiss cheese. In fact, I think Prosci likes to use that term. As much as I love Swiss cheese, it’s probably not a great way to do change. Change leadership, it’s creating that space and the conditions for teams to navigate the change together. And project rescue, I do reference this at some point. So, when I talk about a project rescue, I’m talking about reorienting your struggling initiatives through purpose.

Any things folks would want to add? Questions? All right. So, a little about our journey today, a bit of a guide for you. First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to check our backpack essentials. We’re going to check what we don’t want to carry with us as we go on this journey and we’re going to check those things that we want to keep in mind as we go through. We’re going to explore patterns in change, we’re going to explore change dynamics, we’re going to discover our compass, today we’ll use the canvas. We’re going to practice orientation, orienting with the compass and then we’ll talk about some insights for the road ahead. So, hopefully, you all are ready to go on this journey.

So, the backpack essentials. The first one, stay open and stay curious. I had some particular notes on this one and it’s really about … This may be familiar territory for a lot of you but try to approach it with fresh eyes. Engage fully beyond your methods. So, this isn’t about doing the right way so leave your methods, we’re talking about things you don’t want to carry on your backpack. This isn’t about Prosci, not about Cotter, not about Lewis models of chains, leave all that aside. This is about the process we’re going to be going through as far as how we use this tool and it should apply regardless of a method. Ask you to lean in the detours because it’s in those spaces that your learning happens and then make it real. As we’re going through, I’m coming from one perspective. Each of you have different backgrounds so think about what you’re going to be able to pull from today to bring into your practice with your customers and how you show up and how you bring your teams along on their journey.

Is there anything folks would like to add to the agreements today? Great. So, our first exercise is going to be exploring the tale of two changes. Each of you, I’m sure, has been through a change that went really well but you’ve also been through a change that just went not quite so well, it struggled. This poor guy, he’s trying to limp over the finish line, it’s quite sad and there’s cost to that. I think earlier it was mentioned, the adoption, that can be painful. So, I’d like each of you to think about, and I’m going to put it on the next slide too, the instructions, what are some key factors that gave momentum to a change done well. Think about that change, think about how you felt, how the team engaged, what was right about that particular endeavor and the same for your struggling change. What was missing from the change that struggled?

So, we’re going to do this. Step one, everybody got their birthday or their favorite day on the table, that’s actually step four. But go ahead and take a piece of paper, your sticky notes, fold it in half or use the individual sticky notes. Individually, take a couple minutes and think about both of those, a change that went well and a change that didn’t go quite so well and pull out those key factors of what contributed or what was missing. Then you’re going to pair share at your table and, if you have an odd number at your table, you’re welcome to triple up or look at somebody from another table and create your sticky notes and then you’re going to table share. You can use the backside of the giant canvas and put out your sticky notes, theme them out and I’d like, as a table, for you to pick your top three for both. And your spokesperson, lucky winner today, if you don’t have a volunteer, if you have a volunteer, that’s great. But one way to find your volunteer is whoever has a day that’s closest to today. And if your birthday’s today, happy birthday. So, with that, we’ll let you go for a few minutes.

Okay, you should start moving to your table shares. You may not have all completed getting to your top three so, if you have a few more to read out, that’s fine. But that looks like there was a lot of great discussion happening so I’m really curious to go around and hear from folks in the room. Who would like to share for … We’ll start with the change that went well. What were some of the key factors that gave momentum? And mics will go around.

Speaker 2:
Okay. So, there was a couple of key things that came out from our table on what were success factors. One of those being that the organization supported a culture of change and a culture of experimentation so that people were more accepting of change. We just know we’re changing and we have a purpose for it and we’re evolving and to expect it. So, that was one of them. Another program that was used for some change was some early adopters that accepted the change, were able to proactively advocate for the benefits of those change and speak to it in a positive format. And then the last one is buy-in from the top down, that’s always a big one. Making sure that leadership understands, accepts and clearly communicates the change and the need and the why and that they can speak to it.

Kathy Ditmore:
Oh, thank you. Excellent. Are there things folks would want to add to that? Any other table want to add to that?

Speaker 3:
Hi. It is my birthday today so … I think there’s another birthday too.

Kathy Ditmore:
Whoo, happy birthday.

Speaker 3:
I think there was another birthday as well. Was there?

Speaker 3:
Yes.

Kathy Ditmore:
Who was it?

Speaker 3:
Okay, close.

Speaker 3:
Cool. So, for positives, we said that effective communication was essential and using one standardized system, people know what to expect, how you’re going to be communicated to in a certain timeframe. One that I brought up that was a bit, I think, unique was we call it the source booth at a company, our company and it’s that there’s one place to find all the information you’ll need. It’s equal opportunity so everyone has access to it, everyone has permission. If you’re out of office, you come back, you know where all the details are, it’s right there in the source of truth. And then third, having lead time. So, if you’re going to make a change, we made a big payment provider change at our company recently, we had a few months lead time and that wasn’t really enough. So, the more time, the better to make that change possible.

Kathy Ditmore:
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing and I appreciate that source of truth, that central place that speaks a little bit to the agency that people can find their information as well. Anybody else want to add to that?

Stacy:
I’ll go. Hi, I’m Stacy, my birthday’s on Friday.

Kathy Ditmore:
Happy birthday.

Stacy:
One that came up again and again for us was really clear roles and responsibilities. So, everybody knowing what their job is and what their purpose is, that’s the biggest one. And then just affirmation that you’re valued and knowing that you’re valued and trusted, that was another big one for went well.

Kathy Ditmore:
Great, thank you. We have one more in the back and then we’ll move to change that struggled.

Jackie:
Okay. I’m Jackie, my birthday is in about three weeks so I just put myself out there.

Kathy Ditmore:
Happy birthday.

Jackie:
So, I’ll just try to add the ones that we haven’t already had but we talked about not just clarity of vision but having a shared vision and purpose certainly contributes to a successful outcome. Believing in yourself to make the change, doing the internal work as the facilitator and to have the right people in the right roles. In other words, a match of talents and skills with what a project needs and what people want to give to the project to have a successful outcome.

Kathy Ditmore:
Excellent, thank you very much. So, I’m sure there’s a lot more folks can add on but a lot of things stood out here. I am curious, before we compare the two, who would like to share some of the findings for what was missing in a change that didn’t go quite so well?

Harry:
My name’s Harry, birthday is in 10 days.

Kathy Ditmore:
Happy birthday.

Harry:
One was actually understanding the difference between workload and the resources you had. So, even if you have the great plan, have you actually understood the resources available to make the change? Another one was either missing wise or even bad ones that don’t resonate with the group. And the last one was also the forced feelings you get, isn’t this exciting. If it’s not exciting, you don’t want to nod your head and agree but you may not have the space to disagree so, yeah.

Kathy Ditmore:
Thank you, appreciate that. Anybody else?

Speaker 8:
Okay, I [inaudible 00:13:46]. I was going to say empathy.

Kathy Ditmore:
Yeah.

Speaker 8:
But also, one thing that came up at this table is having leadership say that they’re open to feedback but appearing not to take it seriously. That seems to be a rough one.

Kathy Ditmore:
Appreciate that. I heard a lot of hmmm on that and I’m seeing a theme to the sessions we had earlier too. So, anybody else? One more. Please, go ahead. Oh, we’ve got one. We’ve got two more. Thanks.

Speaker 9:
Oh, sorry.

Speaker 10:
Sorry, I did not mean to cut in. We didn’t discuss it at our table but, when you were talking about leadership, it reminded me of how many changes I’ve seen fail because senior leadership is not aligned. So, it’s not enough to just have that change be communicated from the top down but the top needs to be on the same page first.

Kathy Ditmore:
Thank you for that.

Speaker 11:
At this table we did a little bit of a grouping and we didn’t quite get into all of the not well but I do see some repetition of progress report. So, understanding how that change is being received and how is it going so you can adapt and you might get all the way down the line and realize this didn’t actually go well but we didn’t have that visibility into what’s going on.

Kathy Ditmore:
Yeah, I appreciate that. I’m curious, as you’ve heard things today such as around support, things that contributed to things that went well, support experimentation, early adopters, buy-in from the top down, knowing the whole system, how to communicate, knowing where that source of truth is, clear roles and responsibilities. And then I’m going to jump, I know there were a lot more, I’m going to jump over to things that contributed to change that didn’t go quite so well. Understanding the progress, feeds a little bit into maybe the experimentation, senior leadership alignment, being open to feedback, having empathy, those forced feelings and workload and resources. Are folks seeing any themes or connections come out across those? What about how people are coming together? I see a hand over there.

Speaker 12:
Whether you’re focused on the change or on the people experiencing the change? It’s the customer focused as opposed to the-

Kathy Ditmore:
Both.

Speaker 12:
… us focused.

Kathy Ditmore:
Well, we’ve been through … This has been great discussion and it sounds like everybody’s had experience with both sides of change and I’m struck with something interesting here. So, when changes work, it sounds like people seem to be moving the same direction whether it’s they know their roles, their senior leaders are aligned, they know where to find information, they know what the experience should be, there’s a feedback loop, there’s empathy. So, there’s a clear path of how you’re going to be moving forward together. So, I’m going to move on to another exercise, this is … Take this with us as we bridge over to … We’re going to go over to another interesting idea here. So, I want to dig into the idea of direction and clarity and I’m going to jump over to another exercise. We got the time.

We’re going to do this one relatively quickly. What’s going to happen is I’m going to put three images on the screen. You can use those images however you want for three minutes as a table to build a story, three sentences. If you want to go to four, it’s okay, you want to keep it short. Story needs to begin with once upon a time. You can use those images however you want. You can use them literally, you can ascribe meaning to them, you can think about what’s happening outside the frame, what happened before, what happened after. You can think about the individuals that might be in these images, what they’re talking about, what they’re experiencing, what they’re feeling. You can use those images however you want to build a story that’s three sentences. Are you all ready? And pick one person at your table to be a scribe. If you do not have a volunteer, pick the person who has a birthday closest to July 4th.

Image one, image two, image three and you have three minutes. So, I know it was a lot to squeeze in in three minutes, that three minutes goes fast. But don’t worry, you have an opportunity. I’m now going to give you a theme. The moment we chose to leap. Still three sentences about, still once upon a time, you can still use these images however you want in any order and I’d like you to take a look at your story, see if there’s something you want to shift in your story or adjust. And you have two minutes for this. I know that was a quick exercise but I am curious, in the room, is there anybody here that actually adjusted their story? I’d love to hear from at least one of your tables, talk to me about that.

Speaker 13:
The first story is about once upon a time my grandfather and granddaughter created a magic garden. They lived on top of a hill, had a steep Securitas road to get there until one day Gargamel showed up in his hot air balloon and then they made the garden disappear by going invisible. How we changed this was the grandfather and granddaughter lived a happy vegetarian life, plant-based vegetarian life until one day Gargamel showed up with his pet pig, crashed the balloon, killed the pig, they barbecued it and everyone lived happily forever.

Kathy Ditmore:
That’s fantastic. So, how did you get there as a table?

Speaker 14:
So, part of it was that we asked people who hadn’t contributed for the first time to contribute and then we got super silly. Not silly, we were very serious.

Kathy Ditmore:
Okay. Is there anybody … You had a shift to your story there, it was a bit of a rewrite. Did anybody do a complete rewrite?

Crystal:
Well, so … Hi, I’m Crystal.

Kathy Ditmore:
Hi, Crystal.

Crystal:
We in our group, we wanted to try out what doing something bigger could look like and then, once we got the theme, we rewrote quite a bit. So, ours reads, once upon a time, humanity was born. We needed to be equipped with tools to leap. So, then we added leap obviously. To see problems from above, support each other, to be part of each other’s journey. So, you can see problems from above, hot air balloon, helping each other and cultivating and then that journey.

Kathy Ditmore:
Great, thank you. So, for those of you who shifted, and thank you for the table shares, fantastic stories. For those of you who felt the shift, what made shift? Was it the theme that made you shift?

Speaker 16:
More direction.

Kathy Ditmore:
Anybody else? Agree? Anything else that may have contributed?

Kathy Ditmore:
I’m sorry?

Speaker 18:
That we had a second set of time.

Kathy Ditmore:
You had a second set of time, that’ll help too. You now know what it’s about as well, right? So, I appreciated the more direction and so, going on the theme of what we’re hearing about people being aligned, having purpose, I’d like to introduce a tool you may want to use. On your tables, there’s small versions, it’s a canvas. Many of you are already familiar with canvases. The business model canvas. If any of you do lean change, you’re familiar with the lean change canvas that came out in the early 2000s. There’s lots of canvases you can use. My first experience with a canvas was early in my project management days, I had a sponsor who didn’t want to read a charter. Put a document in front of him, his eyes glazed over. Project on a page, it was our canvas. So, there’s a lot of great uses for a canvas and you can tailor them however you’d like.
Today’s canvas is set up on three sections. The middle is your mindset and that’s aligning everybody. It’s aligning on your vision, feeding on what was offered earlier around that compelling future state, what are you aiming to achieve. Helping people understand the significance, the why this has to happen, what happens if we don’t do it now. And then describing the benefits to the organization, to the team, to your customers, to them as individuals. On the left, I call this execution. This is the guiding principles, this is what’s going to guide your decision making. It could be your even overs, it could be your polarities you have to work through, that was a topic that came up with the group yesterday. But how are you going to make those decisions in the project? How are your teams going to be allowed to make decisions?

Your resources and roles, we heard about roles and responsibilities earlier. Who do you need on this project? What are their roles going to be and where are your gaps is most important as well and how are you going to support those people? Your change risks and mitigations. So, this is looking ahead and saying where are those detours going to happen on this project, what do I need to worry about, what does my team need to worry about and you’d want to be tracking those even at a high level. The canvas isn’t meant to be in great detail, you may have a lot of supporting materials underneath of this but it’s meant to pull out the top themes, the top highlights.

On the right, I call this connection. It has your stakeholders and impacts, these are your groups. This is very high level. How are they going to be impacted? Their jobs are going to be impacted, their compensation approach is going to be impacted, who they report to, processes, maybe tools they use, technology, usually track that separately. So, it gives you an idea of what you need to worry about and how you may need to make them aware of things or engage them which is the next group, engagement. Each of these groups like to be communicated to in a particular way. Not everybody is going to read an email. In fact, I’m someone, if you send me an email, it’s the last thing I’m going to read if I have time at the end of the day. If it’s urgent, you need to message me. So, how do people want to be engaged with? How do they want to communicate back to you? How are you going to capture their input? What are the channels? Maybe it varies by team. What can you leverage within the organization?

In the bottom right, there’s progress and success measures. Somebody mentioned experimentation earlier, those quick wins. I worked on a project recently and we found that, before we implemented the system, we could actually roll out pieces of the process that needed to change beforehand. So, those were experiments we were able to push out in advance, they were quick wins for the organization. So, where are those quick wins either within your teams or within the larger project? That’s a quick overview of this version of a canvas. Any questions?

Speaker 19:
It took me a minute to figure out my question. When you’re in the beginning of a project, do you fill this out all at once? Is there some living part of this over time? What’s the lifetime of this and this information?

Kathy Ditmore:
Yeah. So, this is meant to be a living breathing document and the beauty of a canvas is you create it for your engagement. This is one. Underneath of this which I didn’t share today, teams have a canvas. They have the vision at the top but then they have the impact specific to their team and what they need to do to support the change or what they need from the organization to support the change. So, this is all visible and all bubbled up. I have a slide later we’ll talk through where you could use it but, yes, initiation, you’d start filling it out. You could fill it out on your own after interviewing or you can gather your teams like we’re going to do in our next exercise and capture the collective intelligence and have a starting point.
So, let’s read the instructions first. You have a big canvas on your table so feel free to open that up and use it. Today, I was thinking you’d want to focus on, where I like to start, vision purpose, significance, the why now and the benefits. You might find as you’re working through this that you come up with ideas that belong in other blocks and that’s okay, put those stickies in those other blocks, you’ll come back to them later. I gave you a prompt if you’re doing a vision, you come up with your own but I’m sharing one if that helps you. Your approach today is, first, individually and I’m going to give you scenarios. Is individually, quickly capture your thoughts on sticky notes once you read the scenario. One idea per sticky around the vision.

So, you’re going to read the questions here. What’s your why? What’s your cause? What’s your purpose? What pains exist in your significance? What happens if you don’t do it now? Why is it important now? And your benefits. What are your anticipated improvements to your employees, the organization or external parties? Then, as a table, you’ll look at the stickies, please start just placing them in the middle sections. Talk as a table and start grouping them coming up with themes and go ahead and create your vision. Try to draft one and we’re going to have a table readout. If you don’t have a volunteer spokesperson, we’re going to pick the person whose birthday is closest to Halloween. All right, we’ve got at least one lucky winner in the room.

So, for this exercise, I’m going to cut us short a little bit because I do want time for us to have dialogue so I apologize for that. I’m going to give you first three minutes to start doing your stickies individually then you can go into working as a table and I will give you 10 minutes for that. So, a total of 13 minutes to work through this and then listen for the chime. Any questions before you start? Oh, yes, hold … The most important thing, I was so excited. You also have on your table, I apologize, a scenario.

Audience:
Aaah.

Kathy Ditmore:
Aaah, the magic thing. Got so excited, sorry. So, you have three scenarios, I’m going to put those up and then I’ll come back. Your first adventure is your group has been given a $10,000 budget and you’re going to go on an unforgettable trip. You have different ideas about your vacation and you need to ensure that trip aligns with your group’s priorities while staying in budget. Your second scenario and the third is … The second scenario is around onboarding. Everybody’s lived that, experienced that. You have employees that are struggling in the first 90 days feeling lost, disconnected and unclear in expectations. So, your leadership wants to redesign onboarding for a smoother, more engaging experience while balancing efficiency and personalization.

If you pick the third scenario, Douglas is going to want to see this at the end. So, the third scenario, as facilitators, you understand the power of well-designed experiences, you are loving the conference this year and you want to help with next year. So, Voltage Control is welcoming your input as they begin planning next year’s event to maximize engagement, connection and actionable takeaways. Your team has been tasked with mapping key changes.
So, as a table, quickly pick your scenario. You have a couple minutes to start drafting your individual stickies, put them on this canvas and then start working together to theme those and build your vision.

Speaker 21:
Question.

Speaker 22:
Quick question.

Kathy Ditmore:
One question.

Speaker 22:
So, I’m hearing a lot of language that’s big picture, vision and then I’m hearing other language that’s pretty specific on how to. Is it intended to be intertwined? It’s a little-

Kathy Ditmore:
It’s intended to bubble up the themes. So, sometimes folks can only look at the detail and then you can bubble up your themes.

Speaker 22:
Okay.

Kathy Ditmore:
So, this canvas is intended to really be high level, maybe later supported by more detail.

Speaker 22:
Okay.

Kathy Ditmore:
Thank you. And you should start, working as a table, putting your stickies in the middle. So, I’m going to call for a pause in conversations and I know that’s a quick exercise. First, you would not go this quickly in your business changes, at least I hope not. How does this feel for folks using something like a canvas to work through this? Yes?

Speaker 23:
Thanks. I think I saw a difference between high level thinking and low level thinking and there was maybe even some discordance, discord over that, yeah.

Kathy Ditmore:
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that and we’ll come back to that. That does happen at times depending on the groups. We have a few more.

Speaker 12:
It was really useful to have buckets to put our ideas into but it was too much all at once. It would’ve been nice to roll out just the center strip and then the next piece and have a build.

Kathy Ditmore:
Great, thank you.

Speaker 24:
Yeah. To plus one on that, it was hard because there were just so many, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, where do I even start?” and then of course I went straight to solutions.

Speaker 25:
And they [inaudible 00:33:22].

Speaker 24:
Oh, of course.

Kathy Ditmore:
Great, thank you. Anybody else?

Stacy:
I have a microphone but I can’t figure out where all the voices are coming from. But I noticed there’s a really delicate balance between the beauty of the constraints and the prompts and then also allowing yourself to veer off the prompts when it happens and allowing that to happen organically.

Kathy Ditmore:
Absolutely, thank you. Anybody else? Over in front.

Speaker 3:
I sense some personal resistance to using such a formal system for … We used prompt one so it was a vacation. I was like, “Oh, I’m overthinking this, I don’t want to do that but I think it actually is I’m not overthinking it.” All these things are necessary but using them for a personal project feels like almost inappropriate but it actually is appropriate. You know? Does that make sense? I don’t know.

Kathy Ditmore:
I think it does. We have one more over there and then I want to see how … Did other folks align, run into the same things? I’ve heard discord, the ability to stay within the constraints but also permission, allowing yourself to veer off.

Speaker 26:
I think we did good and I love templates to help group our thinking. I think what is additionally helpful is examples. I think it would have been good if we would have seen an example, that would have just given us a little bit of a different-

Kathy Ditmore:
Different overview.

Speaker 26:
… perspective or helped us a little bit where we struggled at which bucket … And like you said, it doesn’t really matter which bucket it goes into but that would have helped us, I think, be not as confused.

Kathy Ditmore:
Okay. Indeed, thank you. One more.

Monica:
I just wanted to comment that I’m used to someone’s being like, “Fill out this canvas, Monica, for your product strategy,” and I’ve always really struggled with that and I think one of the reasons why is because I was doing it in a vacuum and there wasn’t a sequential process of prompts and thought to talk about that. I think that that’s the expectation that these conversations are happening and so it should be easy for me to go and synthesize it. So, I appreciate wanting to take this back and say how might we fill out this canvas a little differently, that’s more meaningful where everyone is more engaged.

Kathy Ditmore:
Interesting. The dialogue. Yeah, not in a vacuum. We have one more.

Speaker 28:
Do I go?

Kathy Ditmore:
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 28:
Okay. One of the things that was interesting for our table that I had to adjust is … We picked two for the onboarding and I actually facilitated my company’s onboarding transformation and so I’m sitting here going how do I share thoughts without, during a scramble, it’s human nature, who has experience at this and then you’re pulling in that but then I didn’t want to stifle other people’s ideas either. So, there was the natural tension of how do we have random ideas show up but who has actual experience doing this and how do you leverage it. So, I think, as facilitators, we have to leave space for the two types of people because I think there’s value in both.

Kathy Ditmore:
Indeed. Thank you for sharing that. And I appreciate that … Oh, we have one more over here.

Speaker 10:
I was just reflecting on a couple of comments around doing it all at once was challenging and it just made me think about how important it is for teams to be aligned on a north star. I was just wondering, if we had all agreed on our vision and then built out the template, would we have come from so many different perspectives? So, just something that dawned on me is like, “Oh, starting with the vision, starting with why”-

Kathy Ditmore:
Always start with that.

Speaker 10:
… “Is so important.”

Kathy Ditmore:
Thank you for that. Going to the compass, right? Always know the direction you’re going. Anybody else? We have one more, a couple more over in the back.

Speaker 28:
Yeah. So, I was struggling also, I noticed myself, I was reading every sentence and I was overwhelmed, my fault maybe. But I was thinking what if all of this was blank except for the colored items and we would have started with questioning what kinds of questions do we want to ask ourselves regarding guiding principles and, afterwards, maybe adding the missing important questions, et cetera. So, you take more ownership as a team or an organization towards what’s guiding principles for us instead of saying these aspects.

Kathy Ditmore:
Right. And that’s fantastic. Yes, the tool is intended for you to create your path forward together. Questions offered are certainly just for the purposes of today and I think that’s a wonderful idea to maybe, as a team, figure out what is it you really want to be answering about your project. Speaking to the discord, you might want to think about as a facilitator who you have in the room. So, do you want to do this with your senior leaders separately from your teams first, especially if you’re working on the vision, and then work with your teams and maybe one senior leader or your teams alone and then bring everybody together but it’s all about bringing that alignment. I heard looking at the whole canvas and so, for the purposes today, yes, I shared the whole canvas. But as a facilitator, you would probably block off the blocks that you don’t want to see with your group because, indeed, it can be overwhelming to dig into this.

So, I think there have been a lot of creative ideas here offered around how it could be used and so, hopefully, folks have some thoughts on how that might apply as you bring it back. So, I’m not going to make you redo your vision but I’d be curious what people think if you’d been offered a detour. So, somebody here had mentioned dialogue. I was doing this in a vacuum. Really, the tool is intended to promote dialogue. So, if you’ve been offered a detour after doing your vision, how would that have changed your discussions? How would the tool help you? How might you use it or not? Any thoughts on that?

John Rabasa:
Hi, Kathy, John Rabasa. So, I took from this that it was like a discovery tool where you had a lot of different prompts and so this is, as you said, a living document where things may bubble up that then informs, answer the question of your vision so you make sure you don’t leave things out. I look at these detours and I think that’s probably the information that you might pick up along the way and some of them are actually very helpful because they give you more definition.

Kathy Ditmore:
Indeed. And so, when you encounter these detours, whether you use a tool like this or something else within your teams, how are you evaluating that together on what those impacts are? Again, that tool to guide that discussion. Anybody else?

Robert Britton:
Yeah, I was going to … My name is Robert Britton.

Kathy Ditmore:
Hi, Robert.

Robert Britton:
I was going to add to this that I think the timing always gets people. Especially in a workshop, you’re like, “In the interest of time or because of time or take this for 10 minutes,” and I think what we do is we shut down our thinking and it’s not really exploratory. So, when you add these detours, I think that also gives us that breath of, you know what, if we don’t get it all today, we can come back to it. So, as facilitators, I think we also need to find ways to give them space afterwards to say, hey, you’re not going to be done when you’re here, this is just a starting point so you can keep going once you leave here.

Kathy Ditmore:
Indeed, thank you. Progress over perfection. We have another one over there.

Speaker 32:
Right. So, when I saw the detour, we were doing the employee experience and that was like, “Okay, yeah, you need to ask the people that are going to go through the change what … you need to get their inputs, design it around what they prefer.” And then it triggered something, I don’t know why, a second point, sorry for hogging the mic here, but when do you go and how deep do you go into this type of exercise. And sometimes just getting to vision can take days and weeks depending on what it is. So, I’m curious what other people think about that and what you think about that.

Kathy Ditmore:
Yeah, it’s like the theme I’m picking up here which ties into this is adapting. This is iterative, this is not a once and done experiment or tool. It’s not once and done, use it as initiation. I’ll show some other points, there’s various points where you’ll use it. So, you mentioned vision could take a long time and it does. I’ve had a vision take five weeks to develop with eight sponsors, that was quite a challenge just to get to the vision and that’s all we focused on. And then, after that, we were able to start digging into some of these other areas and it’s almost like peeling back the layers of an onion. You might start and only get so far and then it marinates, people start moving down a path. You might be building out your plan, you might be mobilizing your resources, you might be working through your procurement process if you’re bringing in a new solution, you might be still doing some of your pain points discussions, they may still be underway to work through things, you might be starting to do pre-mortems.

Whatever tools you’re using, out of those, more things will come out that bring richness to your project, your goals and how you need to work together so you’re always coming back to this. It’s also recommended to make this visible, whether you’re using a Miro board, some people post it on a wall although I know many of us are hybrid or remote now. I often will take sections and make sure that, when I go in a meeting with sponsors, we go back to the vision. If something comes up, how does it play into our guiding principles? So, I’m always coming back to these and so you have to think about what’s important to you and your team, your sponsors, your project leads, your stakeholders that you need to keep bringing back to them. Because they may say, “Oh, yeah, we said that but …” I don’t know if that helps. So, it’s like layers of the onion, digging, the details will surface over time. It’s a little more agile approach to change.

Carrie:
I’m Carrie. My sense is you asked how the detours might have changed things and, if our vision is visionary and broad and big enough, then the detours should … They’re a gut check to ladder up to that to ensure that our vision is really truly the north star and that the detours should be a part of that.

Kathy Ditmore:
Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Anybody else? So, I’m going to share … This clicker’s not … Got to get our check our bearings. So, how would you connect this to your practice? We’ve heard a few things here, I hear folks starting to think about this. Any ideas? It’s okay if it marinates.

Speaker 8:
Thank you. I have more than one word. For me, looking at this and thinking about the different boxes, it seems to me that some of these would be way more flexible than others. And so, while nothing is locked down, there are areas like guiding principles or vision that maybe, if those are starting to be in question because of the tactics of engagement, that goes up to another level of leadership versus my teams would be able to really be in the tactics of what engagement is. And so, I think that that is really helpful and something that I would bring back to my practice.

Kathy Ditmore:
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. We have one over here.

Speaker 19:
Just a question. When you said a minute ago the long vision exercise that was five weeks, wondering how you landed that, how you knew you were done and did the map help? Did you go into significance of benefits and cross connect that or was it totally unrelated to that?

Kathy Ditmore:
So, with that particular audience, not everybody, when you present the canvas, they’re like, “Ah,” the eyes glaze over. I think your head’s like … Right? And you don’t have to use this canvas, any canvas but it’s really helped to guide your conversations. You can use other tools. You had asked earlier how would I do this with my sponsors. Sometimes I’m interviewing the sponsors individually, I’m collating the information and I’m sharing it out to them to make sure we’re theming it correctly and we’re then evolving a vision together. Sometimes that’s an interesting exercise because it surfaces, they haven’t necessarily talked to each other, so it surfaces a lot of those polarities or personal agendas or something else that may not tie into what I’m getting from the most senior sponsor. So, you can use different methods to surface this information and bring it together. Okay, that’s it. Anybody else?

Tamara:
I guess the first thing I would say, hi, I’m Tamara. First of all, I applaud you and everyone else who is willing to get up and present because I think facilitating a group of facilitators, speaking of F words, is the f’in hardest thing on the planet-

Kathy Ditmore:
Terrifying.

Tamara:
… because it’s hard. And so, I also want to thank you for starting with your reminders that you really asked us to stay curious and to lean into it and make it real. I really appreciate that because this gave me an opportunity to think about my own impulses as a participant facilitator. But I recognized I have a lot of impulses around the use of posters, I use a lot of these too and what I realized is, oh, when you put something in front of me, I want to read every single word, I want to make sure I got it right, how do I get an A plus, what are we going to do. But I think that it helped me realize that I have to rethink the use of some of these tools to be thoughtful about different ways that people start to enter into something like a shared space like this. So, anyway, thank you.

Kathy Ditmore:
Thank you. I’ve got a couple minutes and I’m happy to keep talking about the tool after. I want to share a couple of things. Somebody asked, “Where would you use this?” I’ve mentioned it, anywhere. Use it at project initiation, you could use it as a health check, you can use it in your strategy sessions, you can use it when you encounter detours, when you need to do a project rescue, that poor guy, just lost. You can use it for your readiness checks, you can use it for your resource shifts, you can use it any point you need to align or realign, when you’re onboarding teams, when you’re offboarding someone, who’s still filling that spot, what does that mean to how you’re approaching things and you can use it at the beginning when you’re trying to develop your strategy.

Quick example of how I might use this from a rescue perspective or when I have a project going off track. This one, I might do with not the entire team but pieces of my team. So, the paper that you have has a bunch of questions. So, I might take one of these that’s filled out for what I know about the project but then I’m going to look at it and go, “Mmm, what’s really happening?”

Speaker 35:
H, M, L, C?

Kathy Ditmore:
Oh, I’m going to get into that. High, medium, low, complete and a green check mark. So, when I identify gaps, I might talk to my sponsors and say this is a high impact to our success or a medium impact or a low impact that might prioritize what we need to work on next. You see that it was something we talked about and it’s complete, we can remove it the next time we look at it. And a check mark is telling me we’ve got some good things going on too. By the way, we worked through some incremental process milestones, we’re going to see some winds along the way and generate some noise. Someone had asked about sponsors, it takes time to work through vision, indeed it does.

In this example, I happened to have a sponsor who had made a commitment that was not part of our original vision, our original benefits and so it resulted in a pause to the project where we needed to regroup and determine how serious that was because what they were asking for was a very different project. So, while we may have achieved what we all agreed to in our charter and our vision and our benefits, it wouldn’t be what the most senior stakeholder was looking for so it would have been considered a fail. So, this is another way to use the tool to evaluate how your project is doing. Okay, time. So, I think we’ve talked about our insights for the road ahead. Using a tool like this may help in identifying that clear north star, that purpose, that vision. It’s a tool for dialogue whether you use it as is or to help frame what discussion do you want to be having with your team so they can connect around that central vision and then, hopefully, you’re delivering together well.

My last one. So, I want to say thank you to my guides along the way, I’ve had plenty of people help me. Voltage Control and Douglas, Douglas took my phone call and was like, “Yeah,” but thank you for the invitation. This was terrifying and fun and I can go down many rabbit holes and it was really hard to pick which rabbit hole to go down. John Rabasa, amazing guide and mentor. Erin Nicole Gordon of The Wayfind, she was very helpful and I really appreciated her guidance that she gave me. Mark Reilley is my boss, he’s an amazing boss, he’s super encouraging at Pew. And my dear friends Claudia who couldn’t be here this year, Randy Logan and Penny Potts, they, any phone call, just let me ramble on for hours even though I’m sure their eyes were glazing over. So, thank you all and I’m happy to chat with you at any point. Thanks.

The post Mapping the Change Journey appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit, Dom Michalec led an engaging and thought-provoking workshop titled “Facilitating Transformation,” focusing on the practical aspects of creating lasting change—both personally and professionally. With a mix of theory, hands-on activities, and personal reflection, Dom took attendees on a journey of understanding how transformation happens and how we, as facilitators, can support others in driving meaningful change.

Defining Transformation: Starting with Ourselves

Dom began the session by addressing the essential question: What does transformation really mean? In his simple yet profound definition, transformation is about creating lasting change that sticks—whether for ourselves, our colleagues, our businesses, or even communities. The focus was clear: to facilitate meaningful transformation in others, we must first practice the skills of change within ourselves.

“Start with yourself,” Dom encouraged. “Practice the skills of transformation so you can help others develop those skills too.”

This message set the tone for the entire session, where personal growth and reflection were key to building effective facilitation practices. Dom emphasized that true transformation begins from within and that facilitators must be willing to embark on their own journeys of change.

The Power of Tiny Habits in Facilitating Transformation

A significant part of Dom’s session focused on how to make transformation more practical and accessible. Drawing from Behavior Design principles, Dom shared insights from Dr. BJ Fogg’s work on creating small, lasting changes through tiny habits. According to Fogg, one of the most practical ways to introduce change is to start small—tiny habits that can be integrated easily into everyday life. These small steps create momentum and build the foundation for larger, lasting changes.

“Tiny habits are not about big transformations all at once. They’re about starting small and building the muscle for change,” Dom explained. “You don’t need motivation to start. You just need to start.”

Breaking Down the Process of Behavior Change

Throughout the session, Dom guided participants through a hands-on exploration of behavior change. One of the key takeaways was the Fogg Behavior Model, which explains that behavior happens when three elements converge: motivation, ability, and a prompt.

• Motivation is the desire to perform the behavior.
• Ability refers to how easy or difficult the behavior is.
• Prompt is the reminder or cue to take action.

The key takeaway? To change behavior, we must focus on making the behavior as easy as possible to do, which eliminates the need for high motivation. For example, Dom shared a practical approach to creating tiny habits by breaking down large goals into small, actionable steps. By focusing on simplicity and celebrating success, even the smallest behavior can become a powerful habit.

Creating Lasting Change through Celebration and Identity

A central concept Dom introduced was the importance of celebration in cementing new habits. Unlike traditional notions of reward, Dom highlighted that immediate positive emotions, rather than delayed rewards, help behaviors become ingrained into our routines.

“Celebrate every small success,” Dom emphasized. “It’s the emotion that drives habits, not repetition. The more positive emotion you associate with a habit, the more automatic it becomes.”

Another critical point Dom made was about the role of identity in habit formation. He asked participants to reflect on their habits and how those habits align with their identity. When we design habits that reflect who we are and what we value, those behaviors are more likely to stick.

Practical Exercises and Insights

Dom’s session was filled with interactive exercises that helped participants apply these concepts to their own lives. One such activity invited attendees to reflect on a habit that sparks joy in their lives and how that habit reinforces their identity. By sharing these reflections with others, participants were able to connect with their motivations and understand how small habits can play a significant role in creating lasting change.

Through group discussions and individual reflection, participants discovered common themes of identity reinforcement, such as creative pursuits or physical activity, that enhance both personal and professional growth. These simple, everyday habits were identified as critical in building a foundation for greater transformation.

Key Takeaways from Dom Michalec’s Session

• Transformation begins with small steps: Focus on tiny habits that are easy to do and align with your identity.
• Celebrate successes: Positive emotions, immediately following a behavior, help solidify it into a lasting habit.
• Clarify your aspirations: Align your habits with long-term outcomes to ensure lasting change.
• Behavior design works: Focus on motivation, ability, and prompts to create change that sticks.

Dom’s session at the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit provided both actionable insights and valuable tools for facilitators to integrate transformation into their own lives and the lives of others. His approach reinforced that lasting change doesn’t require large, dramatic shifts but instead focuses on small, consistent actions.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Dom’s Session:

Dom Michalec:
Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Eric. Everyone hear me all right? Perfect. Before we get started, just to bring a little energy in the room, I want to use this as an opportunity to express a little bit of gratitude for Voltage Control for hosting us. Jamie, helping to put everything together. Douglas, Eric, y’all make it run really smooth in the background. Really appreciate that.

So to get started today, obviously you can see the title of this time, Facilitating Transformation. And I think it behooves us to have a really nice working definition of what we mean by transformation. How many folks in here have been a part of a transformation effort at work, and we have no idea what it really means at the end of the day, right? When I think about transformation, I think about it in a very simple terms. Creating lasting change, whether that’s lasting change for ourselves, for others, for our colleagues, for businesses, societies, communities. Creating lasting change that actually sticks. And in thinking about it that way, I think when we go into the session right now, the best way to practice those skills of change, those skills of transformation, of creating a lasting change, is to start with ourselves. Start with ourselves, practice the skills, so when we’re ready, we can take it out to the world and we can help other people gain these skills as well.

So, what are we talking about today? In the word of modern day philosopher and my favorite athlete of all time, Allen Iverson, we’re talking about practice. Not the game, not the game, but practice. And early this morning, we practiced a bunch of different skills. Skills of changing the narrative, creating change through how we tell stories, creating change for the conditions, creating psychological safety, creating that safety net, and creating change for our own and mapping our own change journey. So today what we’re going to do, is we’re going to practice skills of change of creating habits for ourselves. We’re going to create behavior change in ourselves. I’m going to show you, as Eric alluded to, why starting small, starting tiny is usually the right place to start no matter where you are.

So for the past, what, at this point seven years, I’ve been in pursuit of answers to this question. What’s the most practical way to create a lasting change? Does anyone have any ideas? Just throw it out there. I’ll give my answer here in a moment. Yes, sir.

Speaker 2:
Just start.

Dom Michalec:
I’m sorry?

Speaker 2:
Just start.

Dom Michalec:
Just start. I love it. What other ways, what other practical ways have you? Yes, please.

Speaker 3:
Create the environment that [inaudible 00:02:58].

Dom Michalec:
Create the environment. You read the book, that’s great. All right, who else? Yes.

Speaker 4:
Document it, and then reinforce the positive feeling.

Dom Michalec:
Document it and reinforce those feelings. Yeah, okay. One more, we’ll take one more. I think I saw your hand go first.

Speaker 5:
I read the [inaudible 00:03:15] book and I think you say start small.

Dom Michalec:
Yes.

Speaker 5:
[inaudible 00:03:20].

Dom Michalec:
Small is fast there yeah, exactly, tiny. You can start at any time, no matter the conditions you’re in.

So, what we’re going to do today is we’re going to walk through basically a workshop to together where we use what I consider to be the most practical way to introduce change into your life, whether it’s personal, professional, whatever it may be. Everyone’s here for different reasons, but we’re all here to learn. We’re all here to help create change in our societies and our businesses and ourselves. Everyone’s here for different reasons, that have different motivations, different aspirations, different outcomes you’re trying to shoot for after you leave this summit. But I’ve designed this session in a way that no matter what your aspirations or your intended outcomes are for coming to the summit, you can walk away with practical change strategies that you can take with you and put into your life immediately after leaving.

So, I think this is a great working definition, or not working definition, but a great quote from, as Eric alluded to, a colleague of mine, Dr. BJ Fogg. I’ve had the great pleasure of being able to work with BJ for the past four years. There’s really two people that inspire me in this line of work that I do, one being BJ, and another one is here in the room today. Steph Weldy. Steph Weldy has been working with BJ for, what is it 10 years now?

Steph Weldy:
Just shy, yeah.

Dom Michalec:
Yeah, just shy. Anyways, so this quote, it will help set the scene for what we plan on doing today. There’s really only three ways that you can create lasting change, according to BJ. Have an epiphany, change your environment. Someone said, redesign your environment back here, I believe. Change your environment or change your habits in small ways. I don’t know about anyone else in this room, but I’m not a magician. I can’t create epiphanies for myself. Maybe you can, I don’t know. If you can’t, that’s cool. So where can we start? If we want to create change, lasting change transformation in ourselves, where do we start? We’re going to change our habits today in tiny ways.

So as we get into this session, again, I’m going to give pretty detailed instructions, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to always make sense to you. So I do encourage folks as we go through today’s session, you got a question? Throw your hand up. Dom, that didn’t make sense. Dom, what about this? Dom, whatever, just go ahead and raise your question. Go ahead and interrupt, we have plenty of time to get through this.

So, just to get the blood flowing in true Voltage Control fashion, I want to ask everyone to get up. And we’re going to talk to each other. So I know it may be a challenge, you may have talked to a lot of folks already. I want to ask you to try to find someone new in the room. And I’m going to invite you to first think about this for yourself. What is that one habit that you have in your life today that sparks an absolute sense of joy? And how does that habit that you have serve your identity or some aspect of your identity? Think about that for a moment. What I want everyone to do, is I want you to pair up and I want you to share your reflection with a colleague or someone in the room. Let’s start with someone who you haven’t met yet. So, let’s start there. Share your reflection to those questions.

So we’ve had a chance to talk to two other people about that habit in their life that sparks absolute joy. And we asked them, what about that habit is reinforcing your identity? How does it serve your identity? We’d love to hear from someone and don’t share your, don’t feel free to… You don’t have to share the habits themselves, but what’d you learn from your conversations? What maybe themes did you draw from your conversations with folks? Anyone? Please, yes.

Speaker 10:
It’s such simple things that we’re doing, they’re not big activities, but it was tiny things that have spark joy.

Dom Michalec:
Yeah, cool. Awesome. Yeah, Stacy, is it? Okay, cool. I can see the tag.

Stacy:
Most people I talked to did something specifically in the morning, first thing.

Dom Michalec:
Yeah.

Stacy:
Do mornings, or-

Dom Michalec:
Sorry. We’re going fast here, we’re going fast here. Yeah, usually, I mean, we’ll get in this in a moment, but identifying the aspects of your routine. Usually morning routines are great and are great anchor moments for creating habits. Your name?

Frank:
Frank.

Dom Michalec:
Frank. Sorry, I couldn’t see your name tag. Go ahead.

Frank:
So actually, we had the same habit, is to focus on something creative, both with art. So using art as a way to be creative, and I noticed how that spilled over into my work as well. So, it’s making sure that we take time out to kind of be creative.

Dom Michalec:
Cool.

Frank:
And find a creative pursuit, so.

Dom Michalec:
That’s awesome. We’ll take one more and I will let… Yep, that’s fine by me.

Speaker 9:
Both of us had a common habit around being active and healthy, and I think someone else said it, but just to do the thing and not… And I brought up the fact that you don’t want to rely on motivation because you won’t have it every day. So just do a little bit of it, even if you don’t feel like it.

Dom Michalec:
Cool, excellent. Yeah, so you’ll notice that in these conversations, at least what I noticed, I saw a lot of people light up when they got to talk about their favorite habit, even with a complete stranger. I’ve never met you before, I want to tell you about my favorite habit. I also heard some aspects of reinforcing parts of our identity, our creative side, our physical. Some folks identify they like to be physically fit and active and like to cultivate habits that push that part of our identity forward. What’s important to take away from this exercise is that, I believe you hit on it. I didn’t hear anyone talk about anything that took a lot of motivation to get. You’re already doing things that you wanted to do and you’re just finding those habits that help support you in doing that. And as we get into more of the meat and potatoes of behavior design, I do, if you have a pen, paper, there’s a couple takeaways and I’ll call them out here throughout.

But here’s your first takeaway, the best way to create lasting change, and that’s for yourself, that’s for others, communities and businesses, is to do two things. These are called the maxims of behavior design. Help yourself or others do the things that you already want to do. And the second aspect is, help yourself or others feel successful. And we’ll talk about those two aspects a little bit more detail here. We’ll get a little bit systematic with this, but if you take anything away from this session, when you think about designing habits or starting new habits in your life, ask yourself, am I doing, is this something that’s, do I already want to do this? Is this something I already want to do? Are you helping yourself do the things you already want to do? And how can I make myself feel successful or others feel successful while doing it?

So, three superpowers you’re going to walk away with today, at least I hope you do. I want to do my best to make sure you get there. The first one is, you’re going to be able to explain what causes a behavior to become a habit. I’m going to get the trick answer out of the way. It’s not repetition. You won’t be able to analyze your behavior, any other person’s behavior like a true behavioral scientist. We’ll get into the model of that here in a moment. And the last one, which is my personal favorite and the whole reason why I’m here, is to help you intentionally design any new habit you want into your life. It’s really important to take into consideration the aspect of your identity that you want this habit to serve.

Today, we’re all facilitators. When we all go home, we’re brothers, we’re sisters, wives, husbands, aunts, uncles, and we nurture those aspects of our identity. So, whichever aspect of your identity or where you are, the context matters, I guess is what I’m trying to say. So when you think about the habits you want to design today, think about the context in which those habits are being designed and which aspects of your identity those habits are served. Are those okay superpowers? Are we cool with that? We walk away feeling pretty good about these like yeah, this is a good session? Okay, cool. All right, so those are your three superpowers and here are the models and methods that are going to help you gain those superpowers.
And these models and methods are the models and methods of a system called Behavior Design. The models are there to help you think clearly about your own behavior and the methods are there to help you design for behavior change. First model we’ll talk about is obviously the Fogg Behavior Model. It’s a universal model for understanding human behavior, and this is not all-encompassing, by the way. There’s a bunch of different models we could possibly go through. So I had to kind of pick and choose which ones I wanted to introduce during the session. And we’ll talk about the Spectrum of Automaticity too.

The main method we’ll talk about today, which I believe some folks maybe are already familiar with, is the method of tiny habits and the various steps to create a tiny habit. Going from a big lofty aspiration or a desired outcome, and systematically breaking that down into very tiny small steps that we can take and removing the guesswork along the way. So clarifying the aspiration, we’re going to explore our behavior options, and this is going to be a very personal session, by the way. So there will be aspects of engagement and sharing and all that stuff, but for the most part, this going to be very personal because I think habits are a fairly personal and intimate aspect of our lives. But we’re going to go through behavior matching as well, we’re going to show you how to take a habit that you want and scale it down or start with the starter step to get going. And help you find a good prompt, we’re going to help you celebrate that success.

But first, let’s start with the Fogg Behavior Model. Who here is already familiar with the Fogg Behavior Model? Steph, don’t you? Okay, cool. Got a couple folks. Again, the Fogg Behavior Model, and this is obviously named after the guy who created it, Dr. BJ Fogg, Stanford behavior scientist 20, 30 years, considered preeminent expert in this space. And when you write out the model, it goes something like this. A behavior happens when, and when I talk about a behavior, it’s any behavior. So like a behavior, or a habit is a type of behavior. A one-time behavior is obviously a behavior. Stopping behavior, it’s a type of behavior. A behavior happens when three elements converge at the same moment in time. Motivation to do the behavior, the ability to do the behavior in a prompt, a cue, someone that says, “Hey, do this behavior now.”
So when all three of those elements converge at the same time you will see a behavior performed. And if any three of these elements are missing, if a prompt is missing, if you have low ability or low motivation, you’ll see here in a moment, you will not see the behavior, you will not perform the behavior. And you can actually visualize this model on two dimensions across the vertical axis here we can plot out motivation, and motivation is a range from high to low or anything in between. So we can have high motivation to do a behavior, all the way down to low motivation to do a behavior. And like motivation, ability is also a range from high to low. But instead of saying high to low, we say easy to do for high ability, all the way down to hard to do.

And now I want to use an example here to kind of put this model into action. Let’s say the behavior we’re trying to get someone else to do, is we want them to donate $100 to the local dog shelter, let’s start there. If they have high motivation to donate to the local dog shelter and it’s fairly easy for them to do, we plot them up here in the upper right-hand corner of the Fogg Behavior Model. When prompted to make that donation, they’ll reliably do that behavior every single time. Conversely, if someone has low motivation to donate to the local dog shelter or animal shelter, I don’t know, maybe they don’t like animals for some reason. If you don’t like dogs, that’s a different conversation, but that’s just me. Maybe it’s really hard for them to do, right? Maybe they’re just not able to do it, maybe they don’t have enough money to do it. Maybe they just don’t have the time to do it, it takes too much physical effort to do. We plot them down here. What prompted to make that donation, they will not make that donation.

What I haven’t shown you yet, is there’s actually a really cool relationship between these first two elements, motivation and ability, and that relationship is represented by this cool little green curve line called the action threshold. Essentially, this action threshold is here to signify one thing. If anyone is above this action threshold or action line at the point of being prompted, they’ll reliably do the behavior every single time, that includes yourself. We like to say prompts are effective above the action line. And if anyone is below the action line of the action threshold at the point of being prompted, they will not do the behavior.

Speaker 10:
Is ability, ability, is it subjective or is it objective?

Dom Michalec:
Ability is dependent upon the person. So I’ll give you an example here. If I ask Jeff Bezos who loves dogs to make a donation to the ASPCA, he has high ability to do it. He has the time, he has the money, it’s not that hard for him, but maybe a college student who’s strapped for money and they don’t have a lot, they don’t have the ability to make the donation, they’re in class, it’s too hard. When they’re prompted to do it, they’ll fall below. So it’s all dependent upon the person. Ability is not a universal, everyone has the same ability to do a behavior. Everyone has different elements of ability to do a behavior.
I’m showing this to you now because I want you to think clearly about this model as you go through the next steps, and we’ll do some activities here to create our habits. What you notice here is like I said, there’s a relationship between motivation and ability. It’s called a compensatory relationship. The more you have of one, the less you need of another to get above the action line. So what you see here is if someone’s highly motivated to do a behavior, think about yourself in this example, if you’re super motivated to do a behavior. You can do both easy and hard to do behaviors. And if something is easy to do, you don’t have to rely so much on motivation in order to do that behavior. Hence, why we’re here today.

When we design our habits, we’re going to design our habits in a way where we can get into that upper right-hand corner, kind of stack the deck in our favor to get into that upper right-hand corner. We’re going to align on an aspiration or desired outcome, something that endures from a motivation perspective, because we know our motivation fluctuates from context to context over time, but we’re going to align to an aspiration or a desired outcome that we have, something that has enduring motivation, and we’re going to pick very specific behaviors, make them super easy to do, so we can reliably be above that action line when we prompt ourselves to do those behaviors. So that’s why I wanted to introduce this to you now, and this is a great troubleshooting, this is a great model for analyzing behavior.

So we think about maybe outside the context of this workshop, we’re at work, we want people to show up to a meeting and people are showing up late or not showing up at all. First thing we need to ask ourselves is, what’s making it hard for those people to show up to the meeting on time? Usually, a lot of times we start with motivation. We think, oh, if we just motivate people, they’ll do the things that we want them to do. We just need to motivate them, motivate them, motivate them.
What I hope you take away here is, ability is probably where we should start. How can we make things easier for people to do, for things we want them to do, including ourselves? And for things we don’t want people to do, how can we make them harder? How can we get them below the action line? So thinking about this, this adds a little bit more of an element of first starting with, how do we make something easy? How do we make a behavior easier to do so we can create a habit out of it? And then we’ll talk about motivation later, because motivation fluctuates over time, as we know.

It’s oftentimes that we hear when people create habits that they start at a desired outcome or an aspiration or a goal, and they just kind of guess as to how to achieve that goal. I want to get better sleep, so I’m going to buy this fancy pillow, or I’m going to get these new sheets, or I’m going to get to bed at 9:00 PM every single night without fail, and they just scatter shot a bunch of different behaviors to hit that goal. When you clarify the aspiration, and you’ll see here in a moment when we explore behavior options, what we’re going to do, is we’re going to ask ourselves, if I could do anything, we’re going to generate a big list and we’re going to whittle it down to the ones that are most effective for you, instead of just guessing. It’s important to have a clarified aspiration or an outcome so we know which are going to be most effective for us moving forward, so we’re not just guessing.

I know we just flew through probably the hardest thing to do in behavior design, and I’m not going to just gloss over that fact. But again, we’re just practicing this, but I hope you see now that folks who studied, folks who use behavior design, we like to get very specific about the behaviors that we like to change, whether it’s our own or for others. And you’ll notice that a lot of times, and I think everyone here at one point in time raising a hand like, I’ve been a part of a change transformation. I’ve been a part of a transformation effort in the past. In the context of work, when you go back to work, maybe you’re already still in that transformation effort. When you go back to work and you hear people talk about what we need to get done in order to transform our business.

In my experience, I’m going to project a little bit, rarely will you ever hear them speak specifically about very specific behaviors that people need to do. They’ll speak in generalities. We need to create value chains, we need to align business incentives. The hell does that mean? What are people actually doing? So this is an opportunity for you to look at your behavior in other people’s behavior in a different lens and start maybe to coach them a little bit like, well, what do you mean by aligning incentives or creating value streams? What are people doing to… If you were to watch someone create a value stream, what are they doing in order to do that? You start to think about behavior, your own and theirs, in a little bit different way.

So what have we done up to this point? And continue working, I’m just going to keep talking here. So, what have we done up to this point? We’ve clarified an aspiration or a desired outcome that we want, whether it’s a professional, personal, whatever it may be, something that matters to us. We’ve explored various avenues to achieve that aspiration or desired outcome. Again, we did a generative exercise to just explore what we could possibly do to achieve something that matters to us. And now, we’ve done focus, this is called focus mapping, by the way. We’ve brought focus to the high-impact things that we want to do that allow us or help us achieve that aspiration or desired outcome.

Now we get to the meat and potatoes of the tiny and tiny habits. We’re going to start tiny. If you were to distill down this whole idea of creating these tiny habits, it really boils down to this. Take something you want to do, distill it down into its smallest form. Find where in your environment, in your life, that habit fits best, and nurture its growth. That’s no different than how you create habits naturally, now we’re just designing very specifically and systematically in a way that habits naturally form anyways. So, what are we going to do now? We’re going to take those golden behaviors and we’re going to make them, create the tiniest form possible, that’s still providing meaning to us at the same time.

In a moment here we’ll talk about, I’ll talk it about now, with the tiny habits recipe. Remember, can someone remind me what the three elements are? A behavior happens when three things come together. What are those three things?

Audience:
[inaudible 00:23:34].

Dom Michalec:
Okay, I heard it. We have this recipe set up this way because after I do a behavior, I will do my now new behavior and immediately celebrate by, we’ll get that here in a moment. The after I, we will focus here first. The after I is the anchor moment. You’re going to use your existing routine as your prompt. So it’s not going to be an external prompt, it’s not going to be your phone dinging, it’s not going to be you putting up a sticky note. You’re going to use your existing routine as a reminder to do your new habit. Things that you are

ady do consistently in your life, you’re going to use those as your reminder, and those are called anchor moments.
I will, that’s your scaled back gold behavior. That’s the new habit that you want in your life. So let’s find a good prompt for you. I already hear some folks talking about their morning routines, you’re already kind of ahead of the game here. That’s cool, that’s cool. We’re going to identify some good prompts for you. One more new term here I want to introduce is, identifying the trailing edge of that anchor moment. Identify instead of the first thing you do in a sequence in a starter step, you identify the last sequence of something you do in your daily, weekly, monthly routines, whatever it may be. And I’ll give you an example here.

I chose the prompt of brewing a cup of coffee in the morning to wipe down one countertop in the kitchen. This is important, because it matches the physical location of where I’m want to do my new behavior, matches the frequency, and in some aspects, it’s kind of thematic for me. So this is a good match for me because I was already in the kitchen brewing a cup of coffee, let me wipe down the countertop. But that wasn’t the trailing edge prompt, that prompt didn’t have its trailing edge identified.

So, what’s a trailing edge of brewing a cup of coffee, at least in my life? Press brew on the Nespresso machine. Anyone have a Nespresso machine or a Keurig or anything like that? Okay, y’all know you have to do something, you have to get the pod, you got to put the pod in, you got to check for water, make sure that there’s a cup. Hit the button. There’s actually four or five things that you do just to get a cup of coffee. So what’s the last thing that I do? I hit brew. Hitting that button is my prompt to wipe down the countertop in the kitchen. This is the power of using your existing routine, not reminders on your phone, not the dent, not sticky notes on your computer, using your existing routine to help you identify and do a new habit.
I want to talk about one more model. And again, the models are here to help you think clearly about behavior. The methods on the right are here to help you design for behavior change. So, I did have this cool little thing pulled up on Menti, but we’re going to skip it. I just want everyone to shout out some answers. What do you think causes a behavior to become a habit? I gave you a hint earlier, it’s not repetition. One more time.

Speaker 3:
Positive reinforcement.

Dom Michalec:
Positive reinforcement. Cool. Anyone else?

Speaker 3:
Desire.

Dom Michalec:
Desire? Is that what you said? Desire? Okay, great.

Speaker 3:
Knowing your why.

Dom Michalec:
Knowing your why, okay, cool. Okay, we have the scientists in the group. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 10:
It has a low cognitive load. I don’t have to think about it, it’s easy to do.

Dom Michalec:
Okay, we’ll definitely talk about automaticity for sure. One more. These are all great by the way. Do you have any other guesses as to what causes a behavior to become a habit?

Speaker 3:
[inaudible 00:27:08].

Dom Michalec:
I didn’t want anyone to say… Because I’m about to say “No, that’s wrong,” and I didn’t want to embarrass anyone. So I was like, “No, it’s not repetition.” Go ahead.

Speaker 3:
Reward.

Dom Michalec:
Reward? Okay, let’s talk about that for a moment, before we talk about… So Dr. Fogg likes to talk about these ideas of rewards. You hear about it in pop culture, you hear about it, where if you reward behavior you’re reinforcing the behavior. What’s important to take into consideration is that the word reward is kind of circling the right answer, but it depends on when that reward is given for the behavior. If it’s an incentive, frown to the future, that’s not going to create a positive emotion, which increases your automaticity. But if it happens immediately after you do a behavior, that’s getting closer to the answer. So we’ll talk about how celebration, creating positive emotions helps create that aspect. But be very careful when we use the word reward, the timing of the reward matters a lot.

So, let’s get into it. When we think about behaviors, let’s first talk about habits. When we talk about habits, usually we talk about them in terms of, these are things that we can do just automatically. It doesn’t take a lot of thought, it doesn’t take a lot of effort, it’s just boom, we do it. We jump in the car in the morning, we drive to work, sometimes we don’t even think about how we get there, and boom, we show up to work. Whatever it may be. So these are, habits are behaviors that are fairly automatic.

So you can think about behaviors living on a spectrum of automaticity. How automatic is this behavior? How automatic is that behavior? And you can think about this on a range from left to right, things with no automaticity, behaviors are choices or decisions that we have to make. Where am I going to go on vacation? What am I going to eat for dinner tonight? Which plane ticket am I going to buy to get to Austin, Texas for this summit? Which airline am I going to use? It takes deliberation and some choice in decision-making. Whereas behaviors with high automaticity are very automatic, you can almost think of them as reflexes. And on this range, you can think of anything towards the right-hand side as a very strong habit. You have very strong habits with high automaticity. Weaker habits with still some automaticity but not quite as much as your stronger habits, and then everything else to the left is not a habit.

So the question that I’ve been asking is, what causes a behavior to become more automatic? What causes a behavior to move closer to the right-hand side of this model? And I heard some great answers. I heard pretty much, I think some folks even got it correct. It’s not repetition. Emotions make behaviors more automatic, it’s the emotion that creates a habit. It’s not the repetition. I’ll ask a quick question before we move on here. How many folks have used Uber to get around town? Okay. How many times did you have to use Uber to know that it was superior to calling a cab? It felt amazing, right? It felt like you were just, it was magic. I just put in an address, a car came by, picked me up, whisked me up, nice person drove me to my destination. It felt amazing. Feeling that emotion, that positive emotion probably made you want to use Uber again the next time and the next time and the next time. So, it’s the emotion that created the habit.

The repetition makes a behavior easier to do. It gives you more skill to do that behavior. Lifting a five pound weight every day for five minutes, you’re going to get pretty skilled at that over time. It’s not the repetition that’s creating a habit. You’re creating a skill. It’s making it… that five pound weight’s going to get easier and easier to lift in every subsequent time. So you’re increasing your ability through repetition, but it’s actually the emotion that creates the conditions for a habit to form. And someone had mentioned dopamine, the brain reward circuitry. We won’t get into the science of it, but essentially, yeah.
So, why am I talking about this? In order to wire in these habits effectively, we need to find, we need to somehow create a positive emotion. And we think about creating a positive emotion as a skill that we can bring into our tiny habit, is celebrating our success. After I hit the Nespresso button, I will wipe down one countertop and give myself a fist bump, create a positive emotion immediately after doing that behavior, so it wires in the habit and I feel good, I feel successful, and I want to come back and do it again. So after I brew my Nespresso machine or I have to hit brew on my Nespresso machine, I will wipe down one countertop in the kitchen and immediately celebrate by, yeah, give myself a fist bump and smile in the… Oh, I forgot that part, yeah, I look in the microwave mirror. I’m a huge weirdo. I do smile in the microwave every once in a while. I forgot I put that in there. Wow. Didn’t think.

Speaker 2:
[inaudible 00:32:21].

Dom Michalec:
There you go. Things that are revealed in front of 100 people that you didn’t think would be revealed. All right, cool. A big part of wiring in a new tiny habit is rehearsing that habit. So for instance, when I showed you a habit of wiping down the countertop, I did it 10 times in a row. I walked out of the kitchen, I walked in. I didn’t actually brew a cup of coffee every single time, I brewed the water, just hit the button. I walked in, hit the button, wiped down a countertop, fist bump, walked out of the kitchen. Turned back around, did it again. It looked really silly but it helped and it wired it in. And the very next day, it was very automatic. I didn’t even have to think about it. I was like, oh, of course I hit the brew button, I wipe down the counter.

So take these cards with you, put in your back pocket, your bags, whatever it may be. And whatever environment that your new tiny habits you want to do these in, make sure that you rehearse them after you leave today. And make sure you’re rehearsing the celebration aspect of those tiny habits, that’s the important part, a lot of people skip that. It’s like, I’ll just do the tiny habit, I’ll do the celebration later. No, celebrate every single time. Again, it’s that positive emotion. It’s the emotion that creates the habit. It’s what moves it into automaticity. Celebrate every single time.

This is going to maybe sound a little, I don’t know, I don’t want to say overstated, but I do want everyone to take a moment to recognize how far you come in just an hour and a half. Not to compare, but think about how many people are outside of this room right now who want to make a change in their lives and they don’t know where to start. Y’all have taken an amazing first step today, and the idea here is, as you walk out of this room today, share what you learn. Teach people the Fogg Behavior Model. Learn about the Fog Behavior Model, teach it to people. Use your skills of change to help other people change their lives as well. Don’t just hold all the magic for yourself. Apply these skills, get better at them. Create habits. Put those habits, troubleshoot those habits. If you miss a habit, ask yourself and go, what can I do to make this easier? Do I need to switch up the prompt?

There’s another method in tiny habits called iterate, troubleshoot, and expand. We didn’t cover that today because obviously there’s nothing to troubleshoot, we haven’t put them into practice yet. But do take note that if you don’t do a habit, take it as a moment of curiosity. Why did I forget to do that, or why am I not doing this? Explore that. But take a moment to recognize how far you’ve come today in just an hour and a half, officially, hour and a half in about five seconds. But also don’t hold it all for yourself. If you learned something that you really enjoyed, share it with others. Get them curious as well. Maybe you can have a big impact on their life as well, in very tiny ways.

For those who don’t want to share vocally what they thought or what they learned, feel free to scan this QR code, give me some feedback. But I’m looking for feedback. How’d it go? What’d you learn? What’s one thing that resonated with you in today’s session? Outside of, my hand is hurting because you just made me write a mile a minute for an hour and a half.

Speaker 12:
Dom, thank you. I do think we did come pretty far, at least I feel like I did.

Dom Michalec:
Good.

Speaker 12:
The emotion nugget was definitely something that was sort of a new nuance to me.

Dom Michalec:
Cool.

Speaker 12:
And I like the idea of cheesy celebrations. So, you the man.

Dom Michalec:
Good.

Speaker 12:
I’m the woman.

Dom Michalec:
Let’s go.

Speaker 12:
You are awesome.

Dom Michalec:
Let’s go. All right, we’ll take time for one more because I know we’re out of time. I know Eric and Douglas have some pretty important things to wrap up. So we’ll take one more insight, one more aha moment.

Speaker 13:
I really like the idea of going deeper, because we could have stopped at this first step and been like, okay, we feel good about that and then tried to figure out how we can activate against it. But it was like, no, take it kind of a step further. What does that mean? Kind of just dig deeper, dig deeper, and then put it on a grid so that you could really, really understand which ones are the easiest ones, but still going to help you the most. So, just the overall framework was very good.

Dom Michalec:
Cool.

Speaker 13:
And then specifically just not stopping at the first thing that you come up with. It’s like, dig a little bit deeper, like doing the double click.

Dom Michalec:
There’s so many paths to achieving the things you want to achieve in life, and you learn the skills of how to navigate that. It’s cool.
Thank you all so much. Appreciate that.

Speaker 13:
Thank you.

The post Facilitating Transformation appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit, Caterina Rodriguez led an insightful workshop exploring the powerful role of non-verbal communication in facilitation. In a room filled with facilitators, leaders, and team builders, Caterina took participants on a deep dive into how our bodies, gestures, eye contact, and even silence contribute to the effectiveness of facilitated sessions. Her session emphasized that facilitation is not just about words; it’s about how we use our physical presence to guide and influence group dynamics.

The Power of Non-Verbal Cues

Non-verbal communication, while often underestimated, plays a crucial role in holding space and fostering connection. Caterina kicked off her session with a fun, energetic exercise to shake off the “lunch slump” and get the room moving. As she led the group through a few lines of the Cha-Cha Slide, it became clear that how we move in a space—whether it’s dancing, standing tall, or leaning in to listen—has a powerful effect on the people around us.

Caterina’s focus on non-verbal cues was not just about body language; it was about the whole spectrum of communication that goes beyond words. She walked participants through three key forms of non-verbal communication:

Vocal Cues and Silence: The tone, pitch, and pace of our voice influence how participants interpret our words. Silence, often overlooked, is also a powerful tool in guiding reflection and allowing participants time to process.

Facial Expressions and Eye Contact: These are the most obvious forms of non-verbal communication. Facial expressions communicate emotions, and eye contact signals engagement and attentiveness.

Body Language: Posture, gestures, and proximity all shape the physical space of facilitation. How we stand, where we position ourselves, and how we physically interact with the room can significantly impact how comfortable and engaged participants feel.

Understanding Your Non-Verbal Style

Before diving into strategies to refine our non-verbal communication, Caterina emphasized the importance of self-awareness. Participants were guided through a self-assessment to identify their unique non-verbal style and how it translates into their facilitation work. She encouraged facilitators to recognize that there is no single “right” way to use non-verbal communication—it’s a matter of authenticity and adaptation.

Practical Strategies for Facilitators

The bulk of Caterina’s session was dedicated to hands-on strategies to improve non-verbal communication in facilitation. Here are some of the key techniques she highlighted:

1. Own Your Physical Presence: Your posture and body language immediately set the tone of the room. Facilitators who stand tall, make eye contact, and use open body language invite participation and set a welcoming tone.
2. Leverage Eye Contact: Use eye contact to engage participants and guide the flow of the session. By intentionally making eye contact with someone, you encourage their participation and create a sense of connection.
3. Experiment with Vocal Variety: Varying your tone, pace, and volume helps shape the energy in the room. For example, slowing down your speech or lowering your voice can signal a shift to a more reflective or serious moment.
4. Play with Proximity and Space: How you move through the room or position yourself relative to participants can impact engagement. Caterina encouraged facilitators to experiment with proximity, moving closer to build connection or stepping back to give space for others to contribute.
5. Embrace Silence: Silence can be uncomfortable but is an essential tool for reflection. As a facilitator, allowing moments of quiet after a prompt can encourage deeper thinking and invite more thoughtful responses from participants.

The Role of Non-Verbal Trust

One of the most powerful insights Caterina shared was the impact of non-verbal communication on group trust. Research has shown that facilitators who use positive non-verbal cues—such as open body language, making eye contact, and aligning their energy with the group—help build stronger trust within the group. When people feel seen and heard on a deeper, non-verbal level, they are more likely to engage and share openly.

Whole Body Listening: An Essential Skill for Facilitators

As the session drew to a close, Caterina introduced the concept of “whole body listening.” This technique encourages facilitators to listen not just with their ears but with their whole body—paying attention to verbal cues as well as non-verbal cues such as body language, facial expressions, and even silence.

Caterina provided exercises to practice whole body listening, encouraging participants to be present in the moment and to respond to not only the words but also the underlying emotions and energy that participants are conveying. This method helps build stronger, more meaningful connections and fosters an environment where participants feel truly heard and understood.

Key Takeaways

Caterina’s session reminded us that as facilitators, we are more than just speakers or presenters—we are the ones who set the tone and create the environment for connection, collaboration, and transformation. By refining our non-verbal communication, we can hold space more effectively and create deeper connections with participants.

• Non-verbal cues (body language, eye contact, vocal tone) are just as important as verbal communication in facilitating meaningful conversations.
• Being self-aware of your non-verbal style can help you adapt and engage more effectively with diverse groups.
• Silence and body language can guide the flow of a session, build trust, and help you connect with participants on a deeper level.
• Whole body listening is a powerful tool for facilitators to enhance their presence and ensure that everyone feels seen and heard.

Caterina’s session was a vibrant and enlightening exploration of the often-overlooked aspects of facilitation. It reminded us that facilitation is about the whole experience—the spoken, the unspoken, and everything in between.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Cat’s Session:

Speaker 1:
Thank you. So Eric did give you a teaser, and I’m going to ask you all to get on your feet because it is lunch. It’s that lunch slump of the day. It’s day two. People are a little tired. So we’re going to do little exercise. You might recognize this as it starts to fade in, and I expect all of you to follow. Yep. Ready? We’re going to… And I want you to get funky.

MUSIC:
To the left.
Take it back now, y’all.
One hop this time
One hop this time.
Right foot, two stomps.
Left foot, two stomps.
Slide to the left.
Slide to the right.
Crisscross.

Speaker 1:
All right. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. I let DJ Casper do a little bit of our warming up for us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I am Cat from Orlando. It’s lovely to be here with you all. I wear actually dual hats in my work. So I actually have a full-time job where I do a lot of program design, learning and development, and internal org development facilitation for my full-time employer, which is ADL. Never a dull time to be in a civil rights organization right now. And then my other hat is as a consultant. That’s actually how I got plugged into this community. And I’m so, so excited to be here with you all to really dive into what we all love and eat and breathe, which is gathering people.

When I thought about what I wanted to bring to the space, I really wanted to think about the bodily experience of both facilitating and being a participant in a facilitated space. So a little fun fact about me is that I’ve always been in the social justice space in some way, shape, or form, but I actually got started in the theological space. I was training to be a hospital chaplain, quickly realized that I do not compartmentalize well enough to last in that profession. So God bless to those who do it. But what I realized as a chaplain in training was the importance of my physical and non-verbal presence in that space, because it’s often in situations where words just fail. And I got to really reflect on what was the transformative power of hearing and seeing someone without using my words.

And so ever since then, I’ve always really wanted to explore ways to bring that to the forefront of my practice. And so that’s what we’re going to be doing today. But first, why is this important at all for you all as facilitators? We don’t just create containers, we hold them, and how we hold them matters. And so as facilitators, the ways in which we hold that container are going to determine the outcomes, not just of what you’re trying to do, but also the connections that you’re making. So, we’re going to be doing a couple of things over the next hour and 25 minutes that we have left. We’re going to start at just understanding why non-verbal communication is important. We’re going to take a look at what does that even mean. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Sometimes we have ideas of the most obvious forms of non-verbals, and sometimes there’s some more unspoken ones that we’re going to also dig into.

We’re also going to be reflecting on and doing a little bit of a self-assessment. Because before we can even talk about how am I going to go into space and use this to both hold a space and engage my participants, I need to figure out, well, what is my non-verbal style? And I’m going to give you a spoiler, there’s no one right way to do that. It’s going to be heavily relying on a lot of personal factors that we’ll explore. We’re going to learn some practical strategies about how do we start to fine-tune our non-verbal styles in facilitation spaces to create those deeper connections and deeper more meaning-making conversations. And then we’re going to practice, right? That’s the theme of this summit, right, practice makes practice. We’re going to practice quite a bit towards the end in using non-verbal cues to both listen and respond.

So with that, I want you to ground yourselves in a time. Ground yourselves in a time, the very first time you realized the impact of non-verbal communication. This can be in a personal setting or it can be in a professional setting, either way, but one of the earliest memories you became keenly aware of non-verbal communication. What I want you to do is hone in on the impact that realization had on you.

So I’ll give you an example. My earliest one is personal. I immigrated to the United States with my family when I was 13, I’m originally from Dominican Republic. I come from a family that has a huge Latin American and Mediterranean background. Hint, hint, I may or may not be the facilitator that has three citizenships. So bingo for you. And so I grew up being very physical touch and proximity, not an issue. In fact, every space that I entered growing up, it was expected that you would, I mean literally find every person in that space and go [foreign language 00:06:15]. It was just you went around and you found every person in that space or else you were kind of seen as a little bit rude.

And then when it was time to say goodbye, we’d reverse it, ” [foreign language 00:06:31]. Yeah. Not a fun time during COVID. Not at all. So when we moved to the United States, when I was 13 years old we moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Yeah, lovely place. I’m just saying yeah because of the shock, right? Imagine that drastic change in culture. I will never forget the first time that we met our neighbors and we went to go in and say hi. I was like, “Hey, nice to… ” and I literally leaned in and they went, “Nice to meet you.” I was like, “Oh, right, that’s not a thing that I guess people do here.”
In that moment I realized two things. One is I wasn’t even reading the situation. Non-verbals were not a thing to me up until that point in my life. And what the impact that stuck with me was I’m different from these people and there are big adjustments I’m about to have to make. And what that would mean later on in life and all the other thing,. But that’s where I think that realization of really big difference started for me because DR is a tiny country, it’s very homogenous. The US is not that. And so that for me was the first realization of difference.

So that’s what I want you to do is take the next two minutes and I want you to hone in. You don’t have to write it, you can if that helps you record it, but I want you to think about that first moment you became keenly aware of non-verbal communication and the impact it had on you.

All right, we’re going to keep that music going, but what I want you to do now, stay at your tables. So I just had you up and moving a lot. We’re going to move again a little bit later, but I’ll let you chill for now. Turn to your neighbor and if you have an odd number, it’s okay if there’s a triad at your table, and take the next five minutes to talk about that moment and that impact and what it meant for you.

So would love to hear from a couple of folks. Tell us a little bit about what surfaced in your conversations, whether you drew up an insight or something came up for you unexpectedly. Please share your name when you speak.

Speaker 3:
I have to share my name? Sarah. It’s Sarah. It’s Brian Terello, the one that won the gravy packet yesterday. So Granny and I are here talking about our experiences. They were both young, traumatizing experiences with a mother. Her mother gave her a look, and then I got a look in junior high school. I moved to a new school in a new part of the country where I didn’t know anybody and didn’t know the culture and wasn’t part of a group or anything. And I said something, I don’t even know what it was, but the girls gave me the look and I was like, “What is that?” I felt terrible and they just all dispersed, and I was like, “I don’t know what I said.” It was terrible and it was an icky experience. And they were wondering if anybody actually had a positive experience with this.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean, y’all are in conversation with each other. Anyone have positive experiences? So many. Anyone want to share? Oh gosh, there’s so many hands.

Speaker 4:
I’d love to share. Oops. Can I share here in the middle since I have the mic? I’m Jackie. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
I was like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait.”

Speaker 4:
Not that I want to be authoritative in that way, but I’ll take advantage. It took us a moment to think about it, first of all, it’s not an easy prompt. And then when we talked about really that I shared that feels so powerful to me, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily early, but it’s powerful and it has to do with certain morning rituals. I’m Jewish, and so when you make a condolence call, you do something you call you sit shiva. You sit down with a person, you might not even say a word to them. You sit with them and you let them lead if they want to speak. And just your physical presence of being there with them brings comfort to them and to you and you’re so attuned in that moment. It’s incredibly powerful.

I’ve also had the experience with people who have sadly been ill or had a loss in their family and just as a close friend sitting with them looking deeply into their eyes and feeling what’s in their heart. There’s something so incredibly powerful about it. And yeah, thank you for asking the question because that’s a positive non-verbal. I mean, it might’ve been in a sad occasion, but it’s positive in terms of the power of being present with someone.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Jackie. Really appreciate that. Maybe a couple other folks. Yeah, Catherine.

Speaker 5:
Okay, so my first memory, it came to me really fast unlike some of you, I don’t know why. But my mom was driving with me in a car. I was probably maybe two or three, I’m not really even sure. I was sitting in the front seat, so you know how long ago that was. I remember her at a stoplight, we stopped the car for some reason, and I remember her leaning down and giving me an Eskimo kiss. And it makes me a little bit clumped here because physical touch matters and that the small moments count.

Speaker 1:
Thanks, Karen. All right, maybe one more over on… Yep, right here, perfect timing.

Speaker 6:
Hi, I’m Lily, and I wanted to share mine because mine felt like a little bit of a cop-out because I’m actually deaf. I have bilateral cochlear implants, and so my parents really tried to do over-exaggerated facial expressions, like mouth movement, like ways to help me realize that when you speak you have to speak it, you can’t just move your mouth and make words. So especially before I had these cochlear implants, I couldn’t hear, and so they had to use those gestures, those facial expressions, the eye contact, the exaggerated looks of surprise or happiness or whatever to get me to make that connection to whatever the thing went on at the time.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, thanks, Lily, for introducing also that level of accessibility when we lean into not just our verbal, but also our non-verbal communication.

All right, so I want us to stay anchored in that. I think the big theme that’s coming up for us is the power and the lasting impact that non-verbal communication can have on us, whether it’s for the better or the worse. And so let’s talk a little bit about what we mean when we say non-verbal communication before we dig into exploring our own styles. I am a very systematic thinker. I love buckets of categories. You can tell I might be a little bit of a Virgo. Aye, my Virgos. Don’t worry for my Leos in the room, I’m actually a Virgo Leo cusp, so I got you too. Yeah, I see you.

Actually, what we’re looking at here is by column. Our first column is what most people immediately think of when we say non-verbal communication, it’s what’s happening on our face. So our facial expressions, how we’re using our mouth, our eyebrows to express different kinds of reactions and emotions. And then, of course, there’s our eye contact, so how we’re using our gaze. Where is it going to? Is that where I’m focusing? Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and you’re talking to them and then all of a sudden they’re like, “Uh-huh. Yeah,” and they’re over here and I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, I got you.” And so how we use our gaze. That first column we’re talking about face. That’s the most common recall of non-verbal communication.

Our middle column here is our whole body, our whole body and movement. So we’re talking about our gestures and our postures. This is much more upper body, so our gestures, how we’re gesticulating with our arms, with our hands. I actually tend to gesture a whole lot more, but I have a handheld mic because these curls will not be tamed and the mic would land right where it hits. So I would typically be gesturing a whole lot more with both of my hands, just because that’s how I grew up. And then our posture, how are we standing. We’ll talk a little bit about what those different kinds of body cues might mean in a bit. And then proximity and movement. So this is how we are inhabiting the space in terms of the actual spatial awareness, as well as in relation to people. So I’m here right now delivering some kind of information, but as you all were talking, I was moving around the room trying to glean some of your incredible nuggets of wisdom that you were talking about.And also, if I’m having a direct conversation with someone, if I move in a little bit closer to listen as I make that eye contact versus maybe move back as I’m trying to address a larger group of people. So all about the movement of our whole body.

And then that last column, that’s the one that actually most people don’t think of, which is sound. We think non-verbal means that it’s all about non-sound things of our body, but actually, vocal cues are a huge part of our non-verbal communication. So it’s not what we’re saying but how we’re saying it. So the tone, the pitch, the pace. You could probably tell right after we did the Cha-Cha Slide and I started, I was talking up here and a little bit quickly. Part of that was absolutely you should probably not dance that hard right before you’re about to be the one speaking, because I was definitely a little bit winded.The other part is just like those jitters that come in the first two to three minutes. I’ll be super vulnerable with you, it was absolutely the Cha-Cha Slide and nerves at the same time that had me up here, where I almost couldn’t catch my breath.

So that is what we mean when we say vocal cues, like how are we holding that voice, how fast are we talking, how high or low are we talking? And then my favorite one is silence. So how and when do you choose to lean into the absence of sound? We’ll talk a bit about what that looks like. I just want to leave you with just three really interesting key insights to drill down on this idea of why non-verbal communication is so important, especially for facilitators who are people-gatherers.
So there’s this thing called the 7-38-55 rule, which is often misunderstood and people actually think that the research says that 93% of all communication is non-verbal. That’s actually not what that means at all. What this actually means is it’s taking a look at when verbals and non-verbals don’t match, what happens, which happens a lot. I’m sure that for all of you in this room that are facilitating groups of people, often you realize that what’s surfacing verbally is only 30 to 50% of the story, right? Yeah, I’m starting to see some nodding heads in there.

What actually happens when those two are not aligned is that people actually pay way more attention to the non-verbal cues in the space than they do verbally. So when those aren’t in alignment, people are only making meaning at 7% from what’s being said. The other 93% is from vocal cues, so how it’s being said, and from all of the silent body language, facial expressions, all those other things that we just talked about. So this is point one as to why it’s really, really important for us to refine this and become really aware of what our style is and where we can lean in to engage our groups.

Next we have emotional synchrony. So this is that as facilitators who hold these containers, we have the power to shape the energy in that room without saying a single word with how we show up. I mean, granted, DJ Casper was saying all the words, but I didn’t say anything. I was just moving with y’all, right? There’s also something that happens where people start to unconsciously mirror the energy and the non-verbal language that we’re giving off. It’s not that it’s going to magically happen all at once, but because of the role that we inhabit as facilitators, they do look to us at a certain point, especially at the very beginning. Once we start to dig in, because our goal as facilitators is to create that incredible conversation between each other, not just with me, so they’ll start to take those cues from each other as well. But at the beginning, in that foundational first five minutes, they’re taking their cues from you for the most part.

And then our last little piece of research before we start digging into our own styles is around non-verbal trust. Research has actually shown that facilitators who use non-verbal cues and communication build stronger group trust. And so what that might look like, it can really differ. In this study, they looked at these three categories, but we’ll talk a little bit about a variety of different ways we might be able to use non-verbal communication. So here they were talking about open body language and expansive posture… I almost held it over here… eye contact and facial responsiveness, so being engaged with you, very actually visibly engaged and reacting to what you’re sharing. And then lastly, marrying an attunement to group energy. So a little earlier, Karen was talking a little bit about that mirroring piece and language. We’re going to talk actually about that mirroring piece as well in terms of body.

All right. So this is a lot of really nice information, but it means nothing if you don’t end up applying it to yourself. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do next. So there should be a three-page worksheet that is only two pages because we print double-sided to save the environment. No, it’s not double-sided, never mind. The printer made a choice. They did not get the two ply to one ply memo, and here we are. So I’ll briefly explain how this worksheet works and then I’ll give you a little bit of time. So the first part, part one, as you can see is called scales. And there’s different kinds of non-verbal communication methods in here. I want you to think about it in regards to two categories, your personal context and your facilitation or professional context.For some of you, those might be very aligned. For others of you, they may not be. And for some, you might be in the middle about some being aligned and some not.

And then the second part is rankings. And again, this is very personal to you, which is understanding your facilitation purpose, your facilitation style, and your non-verbal style. Which of those are most impactful in your facilitation practice for achieving your purpose in that space? So I’ll give you about five minutes. And as you’re filling that out, it won’t take you long, but the reason I’m giving you five minutes is because I want you to be thinking through these questions that we’re going to discuss afterwards. So for those of you that are like, “Boom, boom, boom, boom, I’m done in 10 seconds,” here are the questions I want you to start percolating on and maybe taking some notes. How has your culture, social upbringing, or conditioning shaped your non-verbal communication?How do your non-verbal behaviors shift in different settings? So start to dig in a little deeper and analyze that. Why might I change my proximity in a professional setting than I do in a personal setting? Or why might my eye contact shift? And then what surprised you most? What surfaced for you, whether it was a delight or whether it was, “Oh, that’s a challenge. That’s something that I need to think about.” We’ll do some focus music. I’ll give you all about five minutes to fill out that worksheet, think through these questions, and then we’ll move on to discussion.

We are now going to talk as a table. We’re going to do intensive pair work in a bit, so I want you to have a little bit more of a larger group discussion at your tables. If there’s a lot of people at your tables, feel free to split up into two groups of three or four, because I want to make sure you all get to dig into these questions really well. But if you’re at smaller tables, talk as a whole group. And we’ll give you about 10 minutes in those to explore, see what comes up for you and the insights you gain from those conversations.

So those were some pretty meaty conversations y’all were having. I mean, I walked around and the stuff that y’all were sharing and starting to dig into, incredible. So I know that there’s lots of interesting insights and connections that were made, and I’m curious to hear from you all what surfaced in those conversations.

Speaker 7:
Hi, everyone. I’m Pooja. One thing that I’ve always struggled with is projecting my voice. I am really great in a small circle of people or on one-on-ones, but when talking to one-to-many like this, unless… I mean, I have a mic right now, but I do ordinarily struggle with that. But I’ve also been told that I’m very facially expressive, that I use a lot of gestures, my body language is more open. And so in filling this out, it just occurred to me that maybe I’ve been overcompensating for my lack of projection with all of these other ways of communicating with folks. So I thought that was really interesting as I was filling this out.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, thanks for sharing that with us, Pooja, and having a very holistic view of, okay, not just what my one skill says about this, but as a whole, what does this mean and how am I balancing those things. Absolutely.

Speaker 8:
We had a really interesting conversation about the impact of COVID on our non-verbal cues, all the way from, first of all, proximity was a no-go. Even though we’re past that, I still almost pause for a second, I’m like, “Are you okay with me being near you? Are you okay with me touching your hand?” And then when everybody was wearing masks, I was saying I really struggled to read people without being able to see their mouths. And you had to learn how to smile with your eyes. And then just everything moving to virtual, your body language is just here up. And so then you have to readjust and be like, “How do I convey what I’m trying to say without the ability to move the majority of my body?”

Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for bringing in the virtual element as well. A lot of times you think, “Well, it’s online, so there’s not much I can do.” But how do we inhabit that square of ours and how do we lean in and lean back and how do we use that space? Absolutely. I guess, sorry, your hand up first, and then we’ll go to you.

Speaker 9:
Oh, thanks. Two things. One is that I’m definitely better at facilitating than I’m in my interpersonal relationships, so I was like, “Wow, I’m much more comfortable with silence in a room of 300 people than I am at silence one-on-one. I’m much more comfortable with eye contact when I’m in a room with a bunch of folks than I am in… ” That was just an interesting personal reflection.

Our conversation veered towards the gender nature of things. I was thinking a lot about how I taught Designing Your Life at Stanford for a number of years, and the founders who taught it, one is a six-foot-five pastor of a male who has just this commanding presence of a room. And I’m like a short little Italian lady with boopy energy. Just like I could practice and I could say everything the same and I could make the most resonant points and people are just never going to look at me the same as they looked at him. So we had a really just cool conversation around different things that women have tried or not tried and projecting voice and not projecting, all the things. No real huge insights, just generative dialogue in that camp.

Speaker 1:
That is huge. Absolutely. Right? Yes.

Speaker 9:
Thank you.

Speaker 1:
Absolutely. And actually, I’m really glad that that’s what came up for y’all because that is what that question is asking, right? Because realistically, non-verbal cues are read differently depending on the identities we hold. And it’s not because of the identities themselves, but because of the conditioning and the systems we live in that teach us how to react to certain identities in certain ways. So that’s a huge insight. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that to the group.

Speaker 10:
Hi, everybody, my name is Adam. I grew up in California. My parents are from Wyoming, and they’re big personalities. So in this context, my house was never silent. There was always a TV on, always a fan on. There’s never silence. I associate silence with sadness, funerals, really dark moments. And so in my personal life, I’m a big personality, I’m very expressive as my coworkers totally know. But silence is very scary to me personally, but also in facilitation. And that’s a big weakness of mine that I recognize totally. But then I in this ranking, I put it at my bottom because I’m afraid of it. It’s scary. I don’t want to touch it. Get away from me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I think it comes from, the first question, it comes from my home life for sure. I want to address that and maybe learn some more from today and in the future.

Speaker 1:
Thanks for sharing. So I think that was about six nos, so I take it you don’t like silence. Okay, just noted. Noted, noted. All right, Peter.

Speaker 11:
I have a quote for you from Edwin, my neighbor, when we did a one-on-one, “Let the silence do the heavy lifting.” It was so cool because we were talking about the earlier case of all the non-verbal cues and how silence… Like my example was a virtual meeting and how put the question out there and just let it sit for 10 seconds and 15 seconds and 25 seconds. Pretty soon someone starts to talk and it really unlocked a whole thing, which is really cool. So just want to add that.
One other thing, we talked a lot about virtual here. Often if I have a high-stakes conversation, I’ll switch my mic and I’ll have one really close to my mouth and I’ll have headphones on so I can really hear and I can talk very low. Seems to really make a difference, versus if I’m speakerphone and all that. And for a facilitator for me, it really puts me in a different space.

Speaker 1:
Thanks for sharing that.

Speaker 12:
So this is a trick that NPR uses, just to build off of the idea that we heard a second ago. So if you’ve ever been interviewed on NPR, especially in the studio, one of the things that they’ll do is they will turn up your own voice in your own ears. And so when they do that, there’s a tendency to bring it a little bit lower and say, “This is [inaudible 00:30:37]. Welcome to NPR.” And so you can do the same thing depending on the tone that you’re trying to go for. So thank you for adding that.

Speaker 1:
And thank you for your NPR tone. I love it. I love a good NPR tone. All right, maybe… Yep, we’re here.

Speaker 13:
I didn’t even bring this up to my friends here, but something Adam said made me think of something really funny. So I’m from Texas, and when I used to travel around consulting in the Northeast, they would always be like, “You don’t sound like you’re from Texas.” And I was like, “Well, there’s like 30 million people down there.” All the accents are homogenous now basically. But almost to a point, every single client would say that. At one point there was even a dialogue with my team about if I should start hamming up the accent to play on that idea, but it never happened. But just going through the notes, my tone and inflection and volume is something that I really deem myself on, and I just now recalled that story.

Speaker 1:
Thank you. It’s such a crystallized example of how our non-verbals completely get impacted by experience, whether we’re conscious of those experiences or not. Absolutely. All right, we’ll go to these… Oh my gosh. Okay, final three, final three. No one else raise your hands. We’ll go 1, 2, 3.

Speaker 14:
I actually have a question. I was wondering, so much of what I do is and what we all do. How would you augment some of that information to make it more accessible for neurodivergent folks or more? If you’re working with a group that’s really autistic, a lot of people on the spectrum, do you have any advice for that? Do you just make it really explicit? Is there something else you would do?

Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, so it’s tough because being on the spectrum means so many different things. And so it really depends on the group you’re going to work with. So there are some groups where you are going to want to lean more into your non-verbals because they don’t do subtlety. And that is super important.

Then there are some groups where your words become hyper important because it is just that the social reading is really, really tough. But I would say that’s a little bit tough to answer generally, just because it truly depends. Being on the spectrum, I mean, these days words are changing so fast, it used to be that we had autism, Asperger’s spectrum, now it’s all in the spectrum. And then there’s other things being lumped into the spectrum, so it really depends literally group to group. So what I would say is discovery is always critically important, including understanding how you’re going to be facilitating non-verbally and understanding those group dynamics and group needs before you even get to that space with them. And that will help lead you to some more insights and answers to that. Yeah. All right, my other two hands. Go here and here. Where’s my back mic? Where’s the mic in the back?

Speaker 15:
Sorry, mic’s getting…

Speaker 1:
Okay, no worries.

Speaker 15:
Real quick. One of the things when I saw proximity that I think about a lot as a facilitator, and I learned this from another co-facilitator, was even the design of how you do work in groups. Obviously because we’re constrained in space here, we have tables, but my co-facilitator, Taylor, would tell me, “Hey, oftentimes it’s not really democratized when it’s in front of somebody.” Even how we were doing some of our exercises today to have it on a wall versus on a table. And so even that kind of spatial awareness for me is a non-verbal exercise, not just my non-verbal, but when I put a thing on the wall and start posting and we’re all looking at it together, we’re all equal now versus it being the paper in front of myself or another colleague. Anyways, when I think about proximity, I’d love to expand that to this idea of how do we create spaces by which we all feel like we’re contributing equally.

Speaker 1:
I love that, designing for non-verbal inclusion. Absolutely. Thanks, Danny. All right.

Speaker 16:
I wanted to say something about tone and vocal cues. I also do what Sarah does up there in the graphic recording and people often ask, “How do you know what to capture?” And whenever anybody goes… what they’re going to say is going to be capture-worthy. And when they go through a slide like da, da da da da, da, I’m not capturing any of that because that’s not what it’s about. But I can tell before they’re going to say something that matters, so that’s how you know. And you all know that too. I mean, we all know that intuitively.

Speaker 1:
I love that. And that brings us back to sound. That’s the sound of breath. So relying on that non-verbal cue to be like, “That’s an important point to them.” Absolutely.

So before we move into our final practice, let’s talk a little bit about what are some of those non-verbal strategies that we can try to leverage, especially as we look at our scales. What I mean is you do not need to be at a level five across all your scales. It needs to be authentic to you, and it also needs to meet the needs of your group. So also how you show up non-verbally might have to be adaptive to your group’s needs and to what emerges in that space in a way that still feels like you’re showing up authentically.

But so own your physical presence to set the tone. Your posture and your body language are going to immediately kick off the tone of that session. So if I’m talking to y’all and I’m a little bit slouched and I’m just really closed off, that’s not quite as inviting you into a conversation with me as if I’m here and I’m facing you and I’m standing up tall, leaning into that generous authority. Thank you, Priya Parker. And owning that space as your own. You’re holding that container for those people on purpose.

Leveraging eye contact to guide participation, so that’s super important, whether it’s that I’m specifically focusing in on someone’s [inaudible 00:36:42] to let them know I’m paying attention and I value what you’re sharing. And just that gaze, that focus as a facilitator will make others start to mirror that behavior and focus in. Or whether I’m scanning the room and making sure that people know, “Oh, she’s not just here to listen to some of us. She’s paying attention to all of us.” Super important.

Experiment with vocal variety to shape energy. So who just talked a little bit about how she leans a bit more into these other strategies and interesting things with voice, because volume is not the only thing. And so understanding, if we want to really emphasize a point, does our pitch go up a little bit? Are we excited about that? If there’s something difficult in the space right now, I’m not going to be like, “Guys, this feels like there’s a really big tension here.” That seems like really… Right? “You know what? I’m sensing that there’s a sticking point here. Let’s explore that.” So tones go down. So managing the energy in that way.

Play with space and proximity to influence engagement. So Danny kicked us off a little bit in how do we start to think about playing with that proximity piece in our design and in the choices we’re making about how we structure our activities, but playing around and seeing how to inhabit the space and what’s working for your group and adapting to what they respond to.
So also a big piece is you should not be keeping the same exact levels of non-verbal communications throughout the whole time. You should be paying attention to what’s emerging and how they’re responding to you and leaning in when you start to notice, oh, okay, this brought them in more, that kind of not so much. So maybe I do a little less of that.

I don’t know if you all have ever worked with law enforcement, but I’ve done sessions for law enforcement before, and those look really different than when I work with educators, with students, in mission-driven orgs where I really lean into bringing that emotion full forward and using all different kinds of non-verbals. Whereas law enforcement, it is very much like you stand up straight and you connect with them. They’re much more around, “Give me the information. Tell me how it applies to me. I don’t want any of that woo-woo stuff.” And understanding what the needs are. If you have time to work with them over long term, you can start to crack that shell a little bit. But so understanding what your different group’s needs are is really important.

Mirror and match to build trust and connection. This goes back a little bit to what Karen talked about in mirroring language. Same thing with non-verbal language. Starting to mirror a little bit of the language that your participants are giving off with their bodies helps for them to start to create this really subtle form of connection with you, and they start to see themselves a little bit.

And then lastly, I’m sorry Adam, I’m going to tell you to embrace silence just a little bit. My rule is if I ever prompt the group, I do not talk for at least 10 to 15 seconds. At least. Sometimes I let it go for 20 to 30, watch people squirm a little bit until someone talks. But honestly, oftentimes we mistake that silence for people are not engaged when in reality what it means is just they’re thinking, they’re taking it seriously. And it’s going to help you do two things. It’s going to help get you to deeper meaningful dialogue with your groups. And it’s also going to help create a space where those that might hesitate to speak up don’t feel pressure that they need to do it now. Have you ever been prompted and then all of a sudden, two to three seconds later, it’s like, “Anyone? So any thoughts?”

And if I’m the person that has a hard time speaking up, I’m going, “No thoughts. No, just anxiety.” So playing around with those different kinds of non-verbal communication methods. I use the phrase playing around on purpose. Like I said, there’s no one right way to do it. Every group is going to have different needs, so play with it. See how your groups react, engage or don’t engage and make adjustments.

Our last exercise for the day, I said we were going to deepen our listening skills. We are going to do whole body listening. What does that mean? That is the wrong arrow. Yes. So what does that mean? So three levels of listening, we have focused listening… oh, sorry, we have internal listening, focused listening, and whole body listening. What internal listening is level one, is that we are listening to respond. This is where a lot of folks, especially in the spaces that we work with, are typically at, where I am listening and trying to figure out what I’m going to say to you next to the point that I miss all non-verbal cues and half of the verbal ones too. I’m just like listening to formulate my own response.

Then we have focused listening. This is where a lot of facilitators are at, where we are paying attention, we’re doing active listening, we’re paraphrasing to make sure we got it right. We’re asking those curious questions to probe a little bit deeper, right? We’re listening to understand. And then there’s whole body listening, which is when we listen to connect. What whole body listening looks like is that I am responding to what you are saying with your mouth and with your body. And so, all of a sudden my curious questions aren’t necessarily just based on what you’re saying to me, but how you’re saying it. “Hey, I’m curious, you hesitated in that moment before you shared that. I just want to know why. What about that made you hesitate?” or “Your face lit up when you were talking about this? What about that excites you?” So all of a sudden, your curiosity, your questions become about what their needs and values are, what’s important to them, not what I’m trying to understand for myself alone. So that’s whole body listening. S.

O what’s going on underneath the surface? Level one, when we’re listening to respond, it’s very ego-driven. It’s just about me and what I’m bringing to it. So we’re easily activated, we have very low regulation because it’s all about me, and anything that even slightly challenges my perspective I feel very defensive about. The outcome of this is that people do not feel heard. They feel shut down.

And then when we think about focused listening, what’s going on here? We’re better emotionally regulated because it’s not all about me. I really want to understand you, so there’s a little bit more cognitive engagement. I’m really trying to pay attention and respond to what you are saying, not what I’m thinking. And we’re starting to practice not just active listening, but that active curiosity.

And then when we go into whole body listening, our level three listening, that’s where we get into a space of deep empathy, because our responses are to try to meet the needs of that other person and drill deeper into what’s important to them. That’s where we get into that heightened sense of awareness where I end up paying attention and listening to everything about you. That’s where we get to that relational [inaudible 00:44:19] where all of a sudden I am feeling this connection because I have been listened to in a way that took me to places that I never knew I needed to go, and that’s where we ended up.
So with that, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But we’re not going to do two rounds. The conversation was so rich that as a facilitator I adapted to what emerged and I made some quick changes. So here’s what we’re going to do. We are going to do one full round. We’re not going to do the last step, which is repeat. Your prompt is, what is a moment in your facilitation practice that changed the way you lead? I know I didn’t bring any easy questions today, I am sorry. It doesn’t have to be the first moment, not the earliest moment, but what is a moment in your facilitation practice that changed the way you lead? It could be something you did and the way the group responded. It could be something a co-facilitator did. Anything, right? And it doesn’t have to be negative, it can be positive, but something that changes the way you lead.

I’m going to give you a minute or two to think about it, but the way it’s going to work is like this. I’m going to give you all 10 minutes. You’re going to find a partner. Now we are going to stand up. I’m going to challenge you to find someone you still have not partnered up with throughout this summit. What’s going to happen is one of you is going to share and respond for five minutes. So partner A is going to be answering this prompt. Partner B, I want you to do whole body listening as they’re answering this question to you. Don’t just hear what they’re saying, but see them. See them in their wholeness and start to ask questions based not just on their verbal, but their non-verbal language. So start to pick up on things and drill down on things that are exciting them, making them fearful or hesitant or anxious or question things.

You’re going to do that for five minutes. Then we’re going to switch. Partner B is going to share their prompt and partner A is going to do whole body listening and respond accordingly with curious questions based on what the other partner is not just saying with their mouth, but with their body. Anything I can clarify before I start giving you that thinking time? All right. So I’ll just give you a brief two minutes to think about this existential question. Seems enough. And then I’ll cue you to stand up and we’ll go ahead and chat on those pairs for 10 minutes. All right, so if you could, as you’re ready, stand up and find a partner you haven’t spoken to yet at the summit. And I’ll give you the five-minute cue when it’s time to switch.
All right. If you have not switched yet, please go ahead and switch.

Please thank your partner for listening and getting curious. So let’s spend just a few minutes or last few minutes together unpacking. I’m curious to hear from you all not necessarily what it was that you were talking about, but what the experience was like and you can choose to respond in either way. What did it feel like to be listened to in that way? How was that a different experience than your regular conversations? Or on the other hand, what did it feel like to listen and get curious in that way? What about it was maybe easy or challenging for you? And how did you find the conversation went for you as a listener?

Speaker 17:
Hi, I am Marsha. I was just having a conversation with Pooja here. Since the exercise was all about whole body listening, she spoke to me about three situations. The first two situations I’m like, “Oh, am I supposed to respond to this? Am I listening the right way?” So I got a little conscious there, but in the third situation, I was being a little more present in terms of what is she exactly trying to convey. And then I put myself in that situation and I was like, “Yeah, that is what I get.” And I think there was a little learning that I did through that exercise, so thank you so much.

Speaker 1:
Thanks, Marsha. Absolutely. Anyone else had that same moment of like, “Oh crap, am I doing this right?” Yeah, yeah, so you were not alone.

Speaker 18:
Yes, and I was super conscious when I was talking with Dan, which thank you, Dan, great job. I will say one thing that going to him I knew that I could already trust him because I knew that he was going to show up in that space for me. So that was something that was different in terms of how my expectations changed because I understood that. I noticed when I was talking, I was shouting at him. And I noticed that when I was listening that I was very conscientious about my body at that point and what I could give and how I could show that to him. So just giving and receiving in that conversation is very different for me in terms of how I’m going to try to show up is what I noticed.

Speaker 1:
Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, Monica. Yeah, it takes a whole different level of intention. Others?

Speaker 19:
I was going to say the exercise worked so well that we… or Brian was such a great listener that I spoke the entire time, so we didn’t even get to hear what Brian had to say. But he was so engaging as a listener that it just kept inviting more out of me that I wasn’t even thinking about to begin with. So fantastic facilitator in Brian.

Speaker 1:
Kudos to you both. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that experience. I think I saw… Yeah, and we’ll go here.

Speaker 6:
Hi, it’s Lily again. So at first I was like, “Oh my God, am I doing this?” And then it got really hard because I mentioned I’m deaf, and so the way I look at people is I read their lips, and that’s my connection of what they’re saying to what I’m hearing. And so I’m like, “I can’t look at their face and look at their body and then look at their face and use my ears and try and all of that.” It was a hard connection for me to make. I think I did okay. So it was just like, “Oh yeah, it’s kind of looking at all places at once and then taking it in and trying to respond in a way that’s like I’m not trying to respond just to respond, I’m trying to actually unpack it and get after what you’re saying.” So it was an interesting experience.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, definitely. Someone mentioned I got that practice, and this is also a muscle we don’t flex often, so it’s going to feel awkward at first where we’re like, “I need to pay attention to everything about you as you’re talking.” Where eventually it’ll get to a place where you’re just focused on their face and you just also soften your gaze to make yourself aware of the rest of them. But it’s not that you necessarily have to draw your attention to their whole and it’s like, “Oh, they bent the knee a little bit. What does that mean?” I’m exaggerating on purpose, but it is something that needs to be practiced and refined. And so I’m not at all surprised for folks not feeling quite there. Absolutely. All right. I think I’d seen… Oh my gosh, so many. It’s amazing.

Speaker 14:
I was really conscious of my height. I had this desire to get myself at eye level or below, like lower myself to them height wise. But I didn’t do it because it would’ve been super distracting because we were standing up. But yeah, sure.

Speaker 1:
That’s really interesting that that’s what became really hyper aware for you.

Speaker 20:
Hi, I am Jane. We didn’t talk about this, but as you were speaking I thought about animals and how in-tune you have to be with them, especially if you’re around horses, because they’re prey animals and they’re fearful and you’re always watching to see if they’re going to blow up over something that wouldn’t scare you. So I was just thinking about that, that if you pay attention to your animals to understand them, that could translate to people.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, because our bodies are the only way we can communicate with animals.

Speaker 21:
I would just like to say kudos to the Facilitation Lab and Voltage Control. In two days, I’ve already seen things a different way. So that’s pretty amazing that in two days that you can change the way somebody thinks. I’ll get my wife to come next week and y’all can help her understand me better.

But when I was talking to Lindsey, in our business, in the utility business, a lot of the things we facilitate just so fast-paced, aggressive. It’s all about this event could have killed someone or this event could have cost us $10 million. But when I was listening to Lindsey, I really caught myself wondering how she felt because she was put in a difficult situation instead of just nodding your head okay. But I was really sensing and I was even asking her, “How’d that make you feel?” I really got into the listening part. And then when she listened to my story, it really felt really good to be listened to, just the simple things in life that things get complicated and you tend to not appreciate.

Speaker 1:
Thanks for sharing that, Galen. Thank you. All right, I think I had a couple hands here, so I’m going to go one, two.

Speaker 22:
So I come from the K-12 education space, so I definitely noticed this, and I do something similar to this in my facilitation with teachers in having the ability to assess students without having grades on paper. What it felt like with the scanning was we were assessing the conversation and then we were able to dig either deeper into the conversation or to find another avenue to where the conversation was going. Through my conversation with Edwin, I noticed that he was able to tell me about a moment that helped him grow, and then I was able to assess to say, “Tell me a little bit about that moment of growth and then what can you do in the future to make this a better situation for you.” So that’s something I think that could be lovely in the K-12 education space.

Speaker 1:
Yeah,, starting to connect that forward-thinking as well based on the insights you get. All right. Going to be our last comment because there’s my walk-off music right there.

Speaker 23:
No pressure or anything. Hi, I am Susanna. I’ve been for the past few years thinking about eye contact because I’ve noticed myself, when I listen to people, I will look away. I was like, “What is that telling them?” And I’ve been thinking a lot about why is that. I find it’s like a sensory overload when I have to do all of the non-verbal thinking about it, but then also hearing and processing. And so it’s almost like I’m choosing to listen or I’m choosing to pay attention, but doing both at the same time is extremely… My ram is not catching up with this.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that, Susanna. Absolutely, this is something that is not intuitive. It’s not the ways in which we have been taught and conditioned to interact with each other and listen to each other. So it is going to take that practice. Like I said, I encourage you to lead into the word play when you think about practicing whole body listening, when you think about how to use different non-verbal communication styles and tactics. Use Facilitation Lab community as a place to be like, “Hey, you want to get on Zoom for 15 minutes and do some whole body listening practice, right?” That’s totally valid. That’s what this community is for. What I’ll leave you with is I know that it is a challenging practice, and I’m using the word practice on purpose, that’s our theme, but practice makes practice. Because being heard, powerful. Being seen is powerful. But being heard and seen that’s magical. And so as facilitators, as people-gatherers, I challenge you to hear them, to see them, and to go out there and make that magic happen. So thank you.

The post Non-Verbal Communication: The Key to Deeper Facilitation Connections appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit, Alyssa Coughlin led an engaging workshop that dove deep into the power of storytelling for successful change management. As the Director and Chief of Staff at Autodesk, Alyssa has seen firsthand how effective storytelling can drive adoption and align teams. Her session, titled “Storytelling for Change,” introduced attendees to the essential components of compelling narratives and their role in overcoming organizational challenges.

Alyssa’s approach started with an interactive exercise called “Color This,” which asked participants to pair up and practice storytelling by embellishing details to create engaging, personal narratives. Through this exercise, Alyssa emphasized the importance of reading your audience and knowing when to provide just the right amount of detail to captivate and maintain their attention.

Key Insights:

• Tailor Stories for Your Audience: Alyssa stressed the importance of crafting stories for specific audiences, highlighting that what you share with executives will differ from what you present to a project team. Simplifying complex concepts and making them relatable is key.
• The Power of Emotion: One of the most critical takeaways was how emotional connection is a driving factor for successful change management. As Alyssa shared, “People don’t have to agree with you to commit. They just need to understand why you’re making the change.”
• Addressing the “So What?” In any narrative, the “why” is paramount. Alyssa discussed the significance of explaining not just what is changing, but why it’s necessary and beneficial for everyone involved.

Alyssa’s session also featured playful and exaggerated examples of change management, such as the “toilet paper gamification” challenge and “spirit animal” identity exercises, designed to make change more palatable and encourage creative thinking. These exercises served as a fun yet poignant reminder that storytelling is not just about delivering information, but about engaging the audience, making them part of the journey, and ultimately gaining their buy-in.

Final Thoughts:
Alyssa wrapped up the session by challenging participants to reflect on past changes that were poorly managed and what key pieces of the story were missing. She encouraged them to consider how they would approach upcoming changes, with a focus on clear, empathetic storytelling that brings people along.

Alyssa’s insights left attendees with a renewed understanding of how vital storytelling is in the change process, offering practical strategies for facilitators to foster understanding, collaboration, and commitment across teams.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Alyssa’s Session:

Alyssa Coughlin:
So how awesome was Skye? What a great way to kick off the summit. So I got the memo on yellow, but I did forget to wear something I can clip a microphone into. So I’m going to try to use both hands, and it’s kind of this thing, but I think I got it.
So my name is Alyssa Coughlin. I am a director and chief of staff for Autodesk. Yes, yay, somebody out here likes Autodesk. Which means facilitation is a lot of what I do every day, and I’ve had a lot of lessons learned along the way and I’m really excited to share some of those with you today.

So let’s jump in by just putting our storytelling hats on. We’re going to do an exercise called Color This. So you’re going to pair up, you’re going to find a partner. You are going to think of a story that comes from one of these three prompts, and you are going to tell your partner your story. As you’re going through, if you get to a detail that your partner would like to know more about, they’re going to say, “Color This.” And that means elaborate, talk more about the details, the feelings, whatever comes to mind. And then after they’ve heard enough detail, they will say, “Advance,” and you continue the story. So we’re going to take about five minutes per person and then we’ll switch and we will rinse, wash, and repeat. And we’re just going to kind of warm up and get going with storytelling. So with that, find a partner and you’ve got five minutes for your first story.

All right, what did we take away from that? Did you learn anything with just silly stories? Okay, JJ’s a good time, kind of knew that. So when you’re telling a story, it’s important to read your audience and to know the right details to go into to really get that engagement. And so we’re going to hear about other ways to do this when we talk about nonverbal cues and just reading the room in general. But your story won’t go anywhere if you don’t find that hook that your audience cares about.

Okay, so here’s my personal story. This is everything you need to know about me in a nutshell. I live in Portland, Oregon with my partner Chris. I have a six month old puppy named Nandor the Relentless, who very much lives up to the name. And I have a cat named Kalinka, who has infamous RBF.

My professional story and how I got here today, being a chief of staff is actually my second career. I started as a pharmaceutical rep in the neuroscience space. So I can tell you useless information about things like pseudobulbar affect disorder. But that was actually a great way to segue into the career I have now because I learned to read the room, I learned to tell a story, I learned to tailor for various audiences.

And so it led to where I am now at Autodesk. Peter over there, we work on this project together. But I work in a deeply technical space, so I work on the platform team, and the biggest hurdle to having a platform is adoption, is getting your product teams to want to adopt whatever capabilities you’re offering them. And so storytelling is something I’ve been really working with my organization on because we have to give a compelling value proposition. Otherwise, we’re building stuff that nobody’s ever going to use.

And then of course here is my facilitation journey from my certification that I did last spring. So if you have any questions about that, feel free to let me know. Yes, everybody should have one of these. So if you haven’t done it yet…
So let’s talk about change management. There are a million different guidelines for change management. There’s the five Ps, the five Cs, XYZ. I follow ADKAR. It’s from the Change Management Institute. Okay. I have a certification from ADKAR, I’m sorry, from the Change Management Institute. And so they say for successful change management you need awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement.

What do you think is the hardest part of this formula? Exactly. You can tell people what the change is, you can give them the tools to adopt it, you can reinforce the change, but if they don’t want to change, if they don’t see the what’s in it for me, they don’t see the value in this change, it’s not going to last. It’s going to be one of those, like I told you kind of things. And have you ever seen a change where somebody’s like, “Because I said so?” Was it successful? Probably not.

So we’re going to double click on desire, and that’s where storytelling is going to come into play. And so my definition of a story is it’s a narrative that gives compelling information in context with reason. So it’s the why. It’s the why are we doing this? What led to this decision? What have you considered up to this point to come to this conclusion? And it’s how you’re going to get that buy-in from whomever you’re trying to bring along the journey. And the story can be about anything. And so we’re going to practice that some today. I’ve got some really silly scenarios for you. And it’s not what you’re saying that’s important, it’s just the practice.

And so the important thing on that journey is that you are taking your customer, your user, your stakeholder, whomever, with you. If you’re going along by yourself, you’re going to end up at the top of that mountain alone and you’re not going to have successful change management. Your story will have not done its job. You will not have a compelling value proposition. So a successful journey is when you bring people along willingly. And without the journey, there’s no understanding, there’s just that, “Because I said so.”

So how do you build a story? Well, first you have to know who the story is for, and you want to tailor your story to their specific needs. So for example, if I am building a story for a C staff, I’m going to have very different details and information than if I’m building a story for the execution team. C staff is going to care a lot more about the strategy, the business value. They’re not going to care as much about the actual solution and how we’re doing it, but the implementation team very much cares about that. So the story I’m creating is totally going to vary based on who I’m creating it for.

You also want to simplify complexity to just the basic ideas. What do you need to know? What does this group or this person need to walk away from this conversation knowing? If you give them information overload, you get analysis paralysis and they might miss the one important detail that you want them to know. What is the one critical thing that they need to walk away from after hearing your story in order to buy into it or at least to understand it? Because remember, the journey is about understanding. It’s not necessarily about they like it, but they understand how you got there.

You also want to make it compelling. So remember, your story is just one of many your audience will see, especially in the context of change management. So if you have a big organizational change, you know everybody’s talking about it, everybody has their opinions. They’re hearing this answer from this person and, “This is why we did it,” from that person. And so you need to make sure that your story is standing above the noise and that they are actually hearing the information that is important for them to understand the journey.

And you don’t want them to guess what you’re trying to tell them. Be explicit, be direct, say, “This is why we have made this decision. This is why we are implementing this change, and this is why you should care.” The corporate flowery words you hear sometimes, you’re just like, ah, I think I just got lip service and I don’t know what they’re saying or what it means for me, that’s not how you tell a compelling story. And so that’s something you’re going to want to avoid.
And then most importantly is the so what, the why, the what’s in it for me? It goes by a whole bunch of different names, but it’s that personal connection to the story where you’re really going to drive it home and that people are going to remember. It’s like the Maya Angelou quote. People are going to remember how you made them feel, and that feel is going to come from the why.

So I kind of break this down into three categories. Again, you want to be explicit and succinct, the what’s in it for me? And in order to do so, explain, connect, and remind. So explain what you want your audience to know in clear details. And then you want to connect what you want them to know to why they care about it. And then lastly, you want to remind them. Like we’ve all heard it, you have to hear things X amount of times before it really sinks in. So it’s not a one and done. If you want your change to last and to be successful, you have to revisit it and continue to revisit that why.

And so here’s just some examples, some notes. So Start With Why, Simon Sinek. If you haven’t read the book, you totally should. But remember, what does your audience need to know? Why does your audience need to care? What’s in it for them? Where is their so what? Is the goal of the solution clear? Did you cut through the noise? What do you want them to remember? And why does your story stand out? If you’re doing this in a presentation, my guidance is generally less is more. If you have a slide that’s super wordy, nobody’s even going to listen to you. They’re just going to be trying to follow along with the words, and your story and the details and the message you have for them will get lost in that.

Again, are the most important details obvious? So I will put certain words in bold or change the color or something to really draw their eye to it and be like, “This is what I need you to take away from this slide and this conversation.” Visuals go a long way. You have to remember, people are different kinds of learners. So some people are listening to you, some people want to see a chart. I would recommend you hit on multiple solutions. And then does it clearly serve the purpose? Did people walk away from this meeting saying, “Why am I here? That was not a good use of my time. This could have been an email,” or did they see the value and they walk away with understanding your journey and wanting to go along it with you?
So a common narrative or story arc breaks down the solution and the problem, and then in between is the why should I care. And that’s what we’re going to practice today. So obviously you start with just identifying the problem that needs to be solved. And then you want to figure out what is your current state? What is your baseline? Where are we now, and where are we trying to move to? Why is that current state a problem? Why are we changing this in the first place?

Then you want to propose your direction, your solution. And then this green box, which is the most important one, why is this better? Why did you propose this solution? Why do you want to go in this direction? And then lastly, summary. We all talk about the importance of closing and facilitation, bringing back that reminder. So you want to make sure that you’re revisiting.

So here’s what we’re going to practice. This is what we’re going to do for most of the time because I am really excited to hear the solutions you come up with. So each table has markers and a large sheet of paper, and you should also have a flipped over piece of just like computer paper. And that has a scenario on it. It is a ridiculous scenario. And what I’m going to ask everybody to do is to create a storyboard proposing your solution for your audience. For the purpose of this exercise, it is the general organization. You have a change that you were proposing at an all hands. And this is just from Luma. I don’t know if anybody’s familiar with it, but just an example of what a storyboard would look like. Consider it like a comic strip.
So then we’re going to take 10 minutes to create our storyboards. They do not need to be practical solutions. I encourage you to be as silly as you want to be with this. The point is that you’re going through the steps and that you’re finding the why within the story. And then we’re going to do lightning pitches. I’m going to give each table, send one representative, and you’re going to have three minutes to pitch your silly solutions and practice telling your story.

Give a round of applause for table one, who’s going to kick us off. So if you want to, you can send representatives or the whole table can come up. We have a second microphone over here that I’ll grab for you. The ask is to read the situation, the change that your table was solving for, and then present your story. All right, table one.

Speaker 2:
So do I have five or 20 minutes? Which one was that?

Alyssa Coughlin:
Two to three.

Speaker 2:
Oh, okay. So here’s the situation. Your company has determined that as part of a well-being initiative, they’ll be replacing all coffee and tea offerings in the break rooms with room temperature sparkling water. Sounds like it almost sold itself right there. So what we have determined is, I don’t know if you know about caffeine, but that’s a [inaudible 00:13:36] liquid, right? It doesn’t really refresh you. It’s dehydrating by its nature. So what we have are people who are completely dehydrated by coffee. We have dry eye syndrome, people are just breathing in dust, they’re showing up as raisins to work.

So we care about your well-being, but we also care about the planet. So what we have determined is that we’re working with some power plants and we’re taking their carbon and capturing it. So we’re doing a carbon capture technology, and then we have the whales take that carbon and ingest it. And then when they blow it out their blowholes, we capture that water as sparkling water, now with free mucus. And also antibacterial. And so we capture that and we put it into our break room. So we’re not only being healthier, we are actually saving the whales and the entire planet.

Alyssa Coughlin:
All right, way to go, table one. What do you think? Did they take you on a journey? Are you sold? All right, table two.

Speaker 3:
All right. Hi, y’all. First of all, some grace with my drawing. I’m a much better musician than I am artist here. But our situation is your company has determined that as an effort to develop an interest in business from an early age, they will be expanding their internship program to include kindergarten through 12th grade schools. Okay, that’s a tall order, I have to admit.

So first off, we have to know about the problem we need solving. So the kids, they’re just not interested in business, not interested. They’re more interested in being on their phones, more interested in playing with their dog, playing music. We need kids interested in business, stocks. Okay, yeah. So the current state of the market, market’s bad, people are crying. Not a good moment for this in the market right now. So this is bad because markets are low, stocks are low, things are not good. Money, not happening. Mushroom cloud, bomb going off. Bad news across the board. Everyone agrees on this.
So our proposed direction is that we are going to put these kiddos, as we call them, into our business, and this is going to be essentially K through 12 care. So we all know how expensive childcare is, and this is a big problem in our country. So put them to work. That’s what we’re saying. We love this. We love child labor in this country. So putting the kids to work, very essential.

And this is a good decision. It’s better for us because people love a job. People love going to work, people love that. But also it makes our wallets thicker. So we love money. So this is going to be good for the economy, good for the heart too. And people love a resume builder. So the kids are going to love having that first job on the resume. This is a win-win-win across the board. I see no problem with this.

And in sum, we have more money and also we get all the bright ideas. So we also said if anyone has a good idea when working for our company, we get a royalty on that idea. So in perpetuity, we get pennies on the dollar for any good idea from these children. So they’re going to be in our business for life. That’s a win. Anyone with me?

Alyssa Coughlin:
All right, table two, give it up for their story. Table three. Oh, it got so quiet. Make some noise for table three.

Speaker 4:
Our situation is that our company has determined that our February one team offsite should be moved from Tulum to Siberia, due to optics and concerns about the company meeting at a beach destination. So here’s a problem. People are very, very unhappy because they think that we’re not getting work done because everybody’s at the beach, enjoying themselves. However, because we made this shift where we’re moving the team to Siberia, our whole team is really, really unhappy and they’re just bummed.

And what’s causing it is that their productivity is just tanking. So we’re having a problem on our hands. Solution, we have to really sell Siberia to them. We have to make it really, really attractive. And so we go and hire a Voltage Control alumnus, alumna from Siberia, who’s got a special method of using vodka in her facilitation. The team rises to the challenge and their productivity goes back up, and the company and the optics are preserved.

Alyssa Coughlin:
All right, table three, thank you for your story. Table four, take us on a journey.

Speaker 5:
Situation, your company has determined that there is a need to cut costs due to the current macroeconomic environment. They will be closing the company funded doggie daycare and combining the dog and human daycare into one program. And now cutting over to our president, Rob, of the Acme Company.

Speaker 6:
Let me start you off by saying, who let the dogs out? Need help? They do too. Kids, dogs, and even grandma. So let’s say we’re going to do this in a different way. So let me introduce you to our team that’s going to take you on a journey, for Casey, who’s our VP of Doggie Care, and from Tamara, who’s our VP of human care.

Speaker 7:
Did you know that 38% of dogs say that smells at the office remind them of home? Did you know that 48.46% of dogs say that they get more treats and have an expanded network if they go to the office every day? Did you know that 92.7% of dogs that spend time out of the home report feeling better about themselves?

Speaker 8:
But wait, there’s more. Did you know that 85% of young children who spend time with emotional support animals actually read better? Did you know that kids who spend time with dogs and the elderly, yes, your grandparents, they have much lower cognitive, emotional, and behavior issues, and they’re also more likely to be kind? And of course, we all know, and research shows elderly people who hang out with kids and dogs are proven to live 20 years longer.

Speaker 7:
So our solution is that we combine the doggie daycare with the elderly and kid daycare, come up with a curriculum to help them support each other.

Speaker 5:
Problem solved.

Alyssa Coughlin:
All right. Oh, it comes with a dance. Thank you for sharing your story, table four. All right, table five. Yeah, table five.

Speaker 9:
POV, your company has determined that as part of their sustainability initiative, they will be moving from two-ply toilet paper to one-ply toilet paper and enact daily toilet paper limits per person. And action.

Speaker 10:
Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming here this morning. We have a very exciting announcement to make. So we took a look at our sustainability efforts as a company. We want to be carbon neutral by 2027. So we’ve got a couple years.
We’re not making progress towards that. And I know you know that paper waste leads to environmental negatives that impact us all in our home communities. So we want to be better as a company and do what we can every day. And so we’ve identified two-ply is bad for the environment, and you know going to the bathrooms, that there are long lines because our toilets are clogged. Our pipes are not able to flush the two-ply. So I know it’s super annoying. You have to go across the street to go to the other restroom when you’re like, “The restroom’s right there, why can’t I go?”

So what we’d like to try out is we’d like to do one-ply instead of two, so your toilets can flush and you don’t have to wait anymore. And we will enact a daily limit. That way people aren’t just stuffing toilet paper into the toilets and flushing. So this will mean you’ll have less wait for the restrooms. And we get to meet our sustainability goals.

And then in summary, all these changes, so two-ply and daily limits, will be better for our environment, meet our sustainability goals, and you get to be happier. So yeah.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Woohoo. I lost count. Thank you, table five. All right, table six, come on up, share your story.

Speaker 11:
Continuing on the saga of one or two-ply, this is option B. But to remind you of the situation, our company has determined that as a part of our sustainability initiative, we will be moving from two-ply toilet paper to one-ply, as you’ve heard already, and we’re going to enact a daily toilet paper limit per person. This is option B.

Speaker 12:
So yeah, we heard from our leadership that we really need to make a positive impact on the environment. It turns out there’s a global paper shortage. There’s only two trees left on the planet. And we really sort of leaned into this as employees. We’re seeing the graph of paper supply going way down. So we had a Voltage Control facilitator come and facilitate us through a co-creation workshop as employees. Lots of ideas down here. We were going to get bidets, poop at home, a clench and trade TP, charge for change eating habits, compete for lowest amount of paper use.

So yeah, we were really saying, okay, yeah, you said two-ply to one-ply. We are going to go all in on this thing. And any good co-creation workshop that has lots of ideas, we created an app to gamify all of these ways to reduce toilet paper. And it’s called the Paper Saver app. So we have an interaction screen here in the middle where you push buttons, and then of course whoever wins the gamified app thing gets a bunch of money. You win. So that’s our idea. We are super happy.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Thank you, table six.

Speaker 11:
In case you were not clear on how you win money, we also tied paper to performance.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Ooh.

Speaker 11:
You’ve heard pay for performance. Well, this is paper for performance. Thank you.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Thank you, table six. I hope your office has hand sanitizer. All right, table seven, come on up.

Speaker 13:
All right everyone. So our company has determined that in an effort to consolidate vendors that everyone must now solely use Microsoft Teams. So yeah, I know it sucks.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Hardest one of all.

Speaker 13:
We all don’t like it. So look, our problem right now is that everyone is using different vendors or platforms, communication. We’ve got John using Slack, we’ve got Bethany using Google Chat. It’s just all across the board too many things. We need to be more efficient. So sorry, the current state is that we are going all over the place. We’ve got everybody not knowing what to do. We’re missing deadlines. We’re losing revenue overall for our company.

So by centralizing, cutting out all our subscriptions from all the other platforms, we will not only be more efficient, but we will increase our revenue overall. And because of subscribing to Microsoft, we get a lot of new bonuses as a result from working with them. So first off, because of our efficiency, we’ll meet more deadlines, we’ll make more money overall. And because of that, we get more bonuses five times fold per year, which you make sure that you get all those [inaudible 00:26:42] Christmas gifts for your family at the end of the year.

And because Microsoft Teams is so nice to us, they want to give us all the money so we can go yearly to Disneyland, take the whole family, take all your kids, and have a nice time with us over there. And we all know that we like Taco Tuesday, but because of that extra money, we are able to get free lunch every single day at the office.

So as we all know about Microsoft Teams, we’re not all on the same board of that, but because of that centralization of communications, we will get more money in your pocket, more money as a cut for the shareholders, and all the nice trips, all the free food throughout the year. Thank you.

Alyssa Coughlin:
All right, table seven, thank you for sharing your story. You might even be able to afford more toilet paper with that. All right, table eight, let’s do it.

Speaker 14:
Picture this, your new CEO, Dwight K. Shrewt, has decided to replace free pretzel day with free beet day. He claims this will save money and improve company health. The beets are even from a local organic farm.

Speaker 15:
All right, so our problem is that the CEO is now saying we’re going to serve beets. And unfortunately, our staff are all on team pretzel and they’re not so motivated by this. So it is our job to convince everyone why this is really a great idea.
So I don’t know if you know this, but beets are actually super healthy. They’re good for your cardiovascular health, they’re good for iron absorption. So you can work those muscles. All kinds of good fiber. So beets, much healthier for you than pretzels, but we know that’s not enough. So we’re also, we are a pretzel company. I don’t know if we mentioned that earlier. And so this is really a problem for us. But we’re looking at the trends out there and we’re noticing there’s a lot of people with celiac disease, there’s a lot of people with diabetes who can’t eat pretzels. And there’s also a lot of people who are just trying to be healthier.

So if we want to follow the market trends, we really need to get ahead of it so that we can sustain our profitability and our market share as these trends develop. So what we’re going to do to help smooth this transition, we’re going to create a beet pretzel to help just smooth the way. And that means that we will all be healthier and wealthier altogether.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Woohoo. Thank you, table eight. Okay, table nine, what do you have for us?

Speaker 16:
Hello. All right, so we’ve got scenario three, your company has determined that part of the well-being initiative, they will be replacing all coffee and tea offerings in the break room with room temperature sparkling water. I know there was an earlier group, they missed it. Charles, sorry. We’ve got it. We’re going to give it to you.

Okay, so here’s our problem. Too much damn energy in the room. I like to come to work and feel mellow. I’m from California, I want to feel the groove.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Use your mic.

Speaker 16:
[inaudible 00:29:52] our current. Dull smiles, where does dull smiles come from? Where do dull smiles come from? Tea and coffee. So we’re part of the problem. We’re going to fix that. Insurance expenses for whitening are out of control. We’ve got an insurance expert at our table. That’s her point there. It’s out of control.
So our current state, way too much productivity going on in our group, just way too much productivity. We need people to slow down.

They’re not focused on their looks. I mean, everybody should be taking pride in their looks. What’s this stuff about whales? You need to focus on you.

The people that are producing and working really hard, what do they want? They want money. No money. No money. We make enough. So we’ve got this corporate wide ban on coffee and tea in the break rooms, okay? It’s going to improve glamour shots, websites, LinkedIn. You guys are going to sparkle like nothing. Who cares about that whale?
Better sleep. You’re going to sleep better. You know caffeine has a half life of 12 hours? We want you getting a good night’s sleep. And when it hits lunchtime or afternoon, we want you to have a quick nap. All right? We want you rested, calm. Does that sound good? Does that sound good? All right. But at the end, you get what you get, if you don’t fuss a bit. Bye. Thank you.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Thank you, table nine, for sharing your story. Table 10. I can’t … There we go. Thank you. All right, give it up for table 10. Take us on a journey. Oh, oh, they’re going on stage. They mean business.

Speaker 17:
Imagine a time when you’ve been faced with an incredibly huge challenge and you’ve had to make an enormous change to adapt. We’ve all had to do it here together at Guber Inc. We’ve weathered a lot of hard things together. And in this moment of difficult macroeconomic times, we all know that Guber Inc is being squeezed. And we care so much about you, about your pets, about your families.

And so because of that, because of that, we are unveiling a combined doggie and child daycare starting tomorrow. And what does this mean for you? What this means for you is better relationships. Better relationships. Because research shows that when children under the age of five spend at least 17 minutes a day within the vicinity of a dog, they are 75% more likely to be kind to their parents and to be a good human. And we know that when dogs look into a child’s face, they will live 13% longer. So we are thrilled to unveil this new program for all of you. And that’s it. And that’s it.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Thank you for sharing your story, table 10. I think we’re all better when we pet dogs. All right, table 11, take us on a journey.

Speaker 18:
Shout out for [inaudible 00:34:14]. So our situation, your company has determined that as part of their inclusion initiative, everyone must be addressed by both their name and their spirit animal. Accompanying interpretive dances are encouraged and we are making them required.

So as we were developing this, we came up with why do we want to bring forward our spirit animals? We have a problem. Our problem is we don’t understand each other’s work styles. I mean, imagine that your cubemate is a cat. They’re very busy chasing laser pointers, climbing on the laptop, putting their butt in the camera. You ask them a question, they swat at you and they hiss and then they run away. It’s not very productive.

You have your other cubemate, a dog. They are just way too happy. Somebody gave them way too many treats first thing in the morning. They’re chasing their tail. You can’t understand them half the time because they have this insatiable desire for peanut butter. And when a ball rolls by, you are just done for the day.

So what this causes is silos, confusion, swirl, missed deadlines, and miscommunication because your cat’s aloof, your dog just wants to play. And let me just tell you, it creates problems, especially when the dog wants to sniff the cat’s butt.
So these problems have caused issues with engagement, retention, and as I mentioned, HR and legal issues. So the new direction that’s been proposed about bringing forward your spirit animal is highly encouraged. Imagine Sarah is a cow. Using her pronouns she/her, always announces, “I’m Sarah, she/her, I’m a cow.” It gives you an idea of how she may be coming into a meeting.

And then you have John, who’s a goldfish, which explains why he doesn’t remember anything. And he shares his pronouns, he/they, so you know where he’s coming from and you know how to work with him. He’s very busy taking notes, by the way.

So giving this will help us understand how we work, as well as how we need to work with each other. So why is this better? It creates vulnerability. We’re all vulnerable with each other, sharing our spirit animals. We have a better idea of where each other’s coming from. Be more inclusive, higher retention, give each other grace, and it would be a lot of fun.
So in summary, we think doing this will move us from misalignment, we’re all headed different directions, we’re all speaking different languages, and we’re going to move forward together, understanding each other so that we can communicate better, have better human connection, and move towards alignment.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Woohoo. Thank you, table 11. Interpret dance off the stage. All right, table 12, take us on a journey.

Speaker 19:
So our situation is that your company has determined that as an effort to develop an interest in business from an early age, they’ll be extending their internship program to include K through 12 schools. Any parents in the room, any parents? So you guys get this. Kids keep pursuing unrealistic goals. They want to be marine biologists, they want to be doctors, they want to be nurses. But what the world really needs is more middle managers.

Here at Business Functions International USA Incorporated, we understand that problem. These kids are out here trying to pursue these lofty goals, but what we really need them to do is sit in a cubicle and learn business lingo. So that’s why we developed the Kid Internship Program. K through 12, we’re talking elementary school. Your third grader Sally could be a VP of product in no time. Timmy can ditch the slide and slide into his quarter four sales projections with ease. We’re creating a cradle to CEO pipeline. We’re increasing our kid performance indicators nonstop. And this pipeline will not only project these kids into greatness but our country into greatness. So join the Kid Internship Program, and like Ricky Bobby said, “If you’re not first, you’re last.”

Alyssa Coughlin:
Thank you so much for sharing your story, table 12. Last but certainly not least, table 13, take us on a journey.

Speaker 20:
Hello, everyone. I didn’t know that we had to be theater majors to be in attendance today. So thank you for all of you for putting on such beautiful shows. Our situation was very similar to the table two tables before us, but of course I forgot my sheet of paper because I’m a goldfish. We identified that our problem is that … Oh, sorry, yes.
So our situation is that people are not knowing each other well. And in order to solve that problem, we all are now going to be able to use each other’s names and our identity animals. We are using the term identity animals, that was a team choice, to talk about how we are able to relate with one another. So our situation is we’re in the office, we’re wandering around, no one’s using our names. No one knows anything about each other because we don’t have a shared language. We don’t have anything that keeps us together.

But what do we all love and adore? Animals obviously. Obviously animals. The fuzzy ones, the big ones, the mean ones, the cute ones. We love all animals. And that is our shared language with one another. And so instead of sitting in our meeting saying, “Oh hey, you over there,” and not talking to one another, we’re all looking on LinkedIn. We’re like, “Hey, indeed.com, I don’t want to work here anymore. They don’t feel me. They don’t feel my vibe.” And so at our next team meeting I say, “Hey, you know what, my name’s Samantha and I’m a manatee.” And my friend says…

Speaker 16:
I’m Tom, and I’m an emotional support bear.

Speaker 20:
And you know what? Manatees and bears have more in common than you think they do. We both don’t like the cold. We get into warm places over the winter and we hang out and we just vibe, we nap, we vibe, and we have a great time. And you know what? Now Tom and I are best friends. And no longer are we in our meetings job surfing on the internet. We are now sharing our connections amongst a group of two foxes, a duck, a horse, a chihuahua. And we would love to hear all of y’all’s as well. Thank you so much.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Thank you, table 13 for sharing your story. So of course these were all very silly. I got every table, right? Okay, these were all very silly, over-the-top examples, but the point is these were changes that would probably not be very well received. And so in order to get that buy-in from your organization, it’s really important that you go through the process and you sell them on why this is better. Why are you making this change? What is on the other side of this change? What’s in it for me?
Is there anything you all noticed throughout this process? Yes, emotion, absolutely. I mean these were silly, we’re laughing. But when you can make that human connection, when you can make something personal, you can make the change linger. It’ll last. People understand it. People have that value prop, people have that buy-in. Anything else? Yeah … You’ve got to wait.

Speaker 21:
So yeah, it was spirit animals, everything was a joy. As far as the humor thing, how do you know the line? And I know there’s just read the room, but I’m curious if you have any more advice in terms of more tactical, like if maybe you don’t always sense these things or know where that line is of when it’s appropriate to throw in humor if the topic is more serious or it’s something objectively bad that the company’s got to do. Do you have any guidelines or advice around that?

Alyssa Coughlin:
I wouldn’t say firm guidelines. It’s kind of situational. And so I try to think about, I mean this is a great place for empathy, too. So what would I want if I was on the receiving end of this change? Would I want you to just tell it to me straight because I’m really concerned? Or do I want you to make me laugh a little? This is rough, but how can we make it a little bit better?

There’s also just kind of the know your audience thing. So for example, when I’m working with my team, who I work with all the time, I know that I can joke around with them more. Versus when I am presenting to the CTO staff, I’m probably not going to make a joke unless the moment just really presents itself. But I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule. It is a tricky one. Humor can be tricky. But for the most part I just try to think about how would I want to receive this news?
Yeah?

Speaker 22:
I think it’s important. Our group was actually having a little bit of a hard time getting consensus on what the problem was. And I think oftentimes we just jump into what’s the proposed direction versus us saying what are we actually trying to solve? And I think it’s just a good meta reminder for me to be like, are we aligned on the problem as a group, as a starting point? Or is there one problem we’re going to tackle for this scenario because maybe there’s three, but for this situation, how do we differentiate before we integrate?

Alyssa Coughlin:
Yeah, absolutely. That is a great call out. I appreciate that.

Speaker 23:
I think it’s important to be real about the problem and to acknowledge that people, not everyone is going to be excited about the problem, but then I think it’s also really helpful to not give huge bonuses and so forth, but give, do something, have a company do something to lighten the burden.

So we had to move to a new area in the building and nobody wanted to move to the new area because we had to share desks and so forth. But they made it a really nice area and they added an outside area. They tried to make it as pleasant as possible, even though they knew there was going to be pushback. So just being honest. And then also give them something, like, we know this is bad, but we’re going to try to make the space really engaging and comfortable to make it a little bit easier.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Yeah, absolutely. And we kind of talked about it in the beginning around be direct, don’t dance around what you’re trying to tell me, even if it’s something I don’t want to hear. And that’s the beauty of the story, is you have that full context. Even if you don’t like where the journey ends, you at least understand how you got there. And a lot of the times in these difficult situations, people just want to be heard. Acknowledge that you understand why I am hesitant to adopt this change. And sometimes that’s enough to get them over the hurdle.

Katie:
I’m going to say something. Hi, I’m Katie. We just went through a really big change at our company and people were upset, very upset. I won’t get into it, but what they could have done, if you guys are doing any change management, is they could have said, “We are sorry for how this change has made you feel,” without saying, you know, “We know this is the right direction, but we are sorry for what this is causing you to go through.” And I think just speaking humanly to your people is really important. Okay, who’s next? Unless-

Alyssa Coughlin:
Could not agree more, by the way.

Speaker 25:
Hello. Something that I saw, which was just inspiring, was everyone’s different ways of communicating and telling a story. I mean, we all show up to the problem with different experiences. And everything we just saw on stage through 13 groups, it differed greatly. And whenever you are surrounding yourself with people who are tackling problems like this, you can gain inspiration from how they approach a problem. So yeah, keep your eyes open and watch how other people tackle similar challenges. And there’s a lot to learn.

Alyssa Coughlin:
I love that because we all were working with the same formula, but we all interpreted it and presented it differently, and it is so important to learn from others and to gain from their experience.

Speaker 26:
One of the things you’ve been talking about, what’s in it for me? Sometimes that what’s in it for me is, and I heard some of the stories, reframing it. So you’re reframing this situation for the folks so that they’re looking at it from a different lens.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s important to establish the lens you’re looking through when you make a change and when you make a decision. Because they might have a completely different perspective, and without the journey, without the story, they’re not going to understand why you’re making their life miserable, or not all change is awful, but you have to acknowledge they might have a different perspective. And so frame it for them. This is what I’m looking at. This is why.

Speaker 27:
Yeah, I mean I think, I know all of us probably liked show and tell when we were younger, and I think we sometimes forget to do that as facilitators, is to, if we’re not the presenters, to have our presenters do some show and tell. I launch new tech at my company, so I always try to have my storytellers or the people that are presenting with me to show the change.
And I think some of you that, I think one of you did the mobile app, I think sometimes you take things out of the conceptual and show it as a prototype if you can do it. I think that really helps. And I heard a story a while back, some of you may have heard of it. When Disney went to create Animal Kingdom, when they first pitched the concept to Disney executives, they were like, “We’re not a zoo, why would we want to have animals?” Because they were trying to pitch this idea of the majestic nature of some of these animals. So the next time they went into the pitch meeting, they put a lion literally on the top of the conference room table and brought the decision makers into the room.

And it was tame. But the point was they saw the powerful nature of the lion in the space. And now you can all go to Animal Kingdom and see some of these things. So I think it’s just the point that some of you showed, was see if you can do a little bit of show and tell. And I really enjoyed that today with everyone.

Speaker 28:
Just quickly picking up on the show piece, the visual aspect of this activity and the visual aspect of storytelling seems really critically important to not just align on what you’re talking about, but it is generative. Once you start making marks, it creates new ideas.

Alyssa Coughlin:
And I would echo that it is especially important in the virtual and hybrid world that we live in today because you don’t have as many human connections. And so it’s really important that you do share the why and that you do frame things as a story and as a narrative and journey when you don’t have the benefit of connecting in person as often. Oh, we had red glasses.

Speaker 29:
First of all, I am so moved by how we all leaned in. There was an experience, right? I’m still loving the dog with the hair and all the things. But I think that there’s an opportunity as facilitators, especially because we’re typically navigating a problem. So put that context into it, like say the big elephant in the room and then let’s figure it out. Bring people along.
We saw it multiple times. There was the pattern of the multisensory experience, there was the laughter, that was movement. There was I think some singing, dancing. We saw things. But the five senses, oftentimes when we’re trying to help people to transform because of a problem, if we just get back to the basics and engage those senses, close your eyes, get grounded, put your hands up, listen, sometimes that’s an easy way to help folks to experience it. And I just want to thank you all for being a part of it.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Yes, the engagement is so important and thank you all for it. When you have that engagement is when people actually start coming with you on the journey instead of staying behind and letting you go by yourself.

Speaker 30:
The question about humor made me think of something. If I was facilitating the team trying to figure out how to roll out the change, so this is sort of like the working group, I can’t remember the name of the practice technique, but it’s basically tell me all the ways this will fail. And if you did that and you allowed them to say maybe add one that’s really silly or something, you kind of allow them to go beyond the bounds, it might really trigger brainstorming because it can be really easy, especially if you’re in a high

stress, we’re worried about the change moment, that you don’t think about all the peripheral things that can happen.
And I think to the question of humor, if it’s the right group that might bring up ideas. Like who would have thought an app for toilet paper could be the next best thing? But we didn’t do that unless it was humorous and we had the bounds taken away. So just a thought on how that might help a certain kind of group.

Alyssa Coughlin:
Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, thank you. So we have two minutes left and I want to close with a reflection. And I want to start with when you are sharing a story, when you are going through the change management process, people don’t have to agree with you to commit. They don’t have to like the answer, they just have to understand why that is the answer. We have a saying at Autodesk, you can disagree and commit, as long as it is safe to try.

So my challenge to you as we close out is to reflect. Think about a change that you’ve experienced in the past that was not managed well. What was missing from that change? What piece of the story would you have liked to have had, to have been brought along on the journey? And also reflect on maybe a change you have coming up. It could be real or hypothetical, and just how you would like to show up and how you would like to tell your story and bring others along on the journey.

The post Storytelling and Change Management appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit, Dr. Karyn Edwards led an engaging and thought-provoking session that bridged the gap between coaching and facilitation. With her vast experience in both fields, Karyn helped participants explore how coaching techniques can elevate facilitation practices, encouraging a shift in mindset and perspective. Her session was not only educational but highly interactive, inviting attendees to reflect on their personal experiences and challenges.

The Power of Non-Directive Coaching

Karyn’s session began with an energetic icebreaker, setting the stage for the day’s exploration of non-directive coaching. By playing Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” and Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know?” Karyn invited attendees to consider which song aligned more with coaching frameworks. This fun activity underscored the importance of empowering clients to discover their own answers, rather than providing prescriptive solutions. As Karyn explained, non-directive coaching encourages a space where individuals can reflect, think critically, and ultimately find solutions that resonate with their experiences.

Interactive Activities: From Worst Facilitator to Best Solutions

Karyn used practical exercises to help participants identify common challenges faced by facilitators. Attendees were asked to brainstorm and share sticky notes about the worst facilitation experiences they’ve encountered or witnessed. This activity was followed by group discussions on how these challenges could be resolved. The collective wisdom of the group sparked deep conversations about the importance of self-awareness, energy, and how facilitators can create environments that foster growth and transformation.

Key Insights: The Role of Facilitators and Coaches

One of the central themes of the session was the role of the facilitator in creating an environment conducive to learning and growth. As Karyn put it, the facilitator is responsible for setting the container, but it is up to the participants to do the work. This shift in perspective was eye-opening for many attendees, as it emphasized the importance of trust, openness, and collaboration. Karyn also stressed the idea of “letting go” of the desire to control the outcome, allowing participants the freedom to explore and contribute to the discussion without fear of judgment.

The Intersection of Coaching and Facilitation

Throughout the session, Karyn highlighted the overlap between coaching and facilitation. Both practices require a deep understanding of human dynamics, the ability to listen actively, and a willingness to adapt to the needs of the group. The session also addressed the balance between structure and flexibility, noting that while facilitators must prepare and plan, they must also be open to adjusting the course based on the group’s needs and the conversation at hand.

Karyn’s facilitation philosophy aligns with the principles of non-directive coaching, where the coach or facilitator serves as a guide rather than an expert. Her emphasis on inquiry, listening, and creating space for reflection was a powerful reminder of how these skills can be leveraged to empower others in both coaching and facilitation contexts.

Key Takeaways from Dr. Karyn Edwards’ Session:

Flexibility and Adaptability: Understanding when to stick to the agenda and when to let go, allowing the group to steer the direction of the conversation.

Empowerment through Inquiry: The importance of asking open-ended questions that evoke insight and encourage participants to explore their own solutions.

Energy and Self-Awareness: How reading and managing group energy is essential for creating a productive facilitation environment.

Non-Directive Coaching: Facilitators should adopt coaching techniques that help participants take ownership of their learning process.

Creating Safe Spaces: How facilitators and coaches must ensure a safe, supportive environment where participants feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Karyn’s Session:

Speaker 1 (00:04):
All right. Well, it’s great to be here and thank you all for coming back and for being here today. I am really excited to share what I’ve learned about the similarities between coaching and facilitation. And I had some people ask me some really great questions this morning about how I’m going to do that. So I’m not going to give all that away, but this will be a highly interactive session for all of you. So my first question to all of you, when you think about coaching, what is it? Right? I’ve talked to some people, say I’m a coach, and I think to myself, I wonder if we were talking the same language. So I’m going to do this through a song. We’re first going to hear Lizzo, which is my favorite song of hers, which is good as hell. What I want you to be listening for in the lyrics is what she’s describing to you. Coaching. There we go. And dancing. By the way, get up. I’m not dancing by myself. Come on. Okay. That was weak dancing you all. Come on. Okay. All right. So now we’re going to listen to the Queen, Ms. Whitney Houston and her song. How will I Know? Okay, everybody up. It’s time to dance. Okay. You cannot listen to Whitney Houston and Not Dance. Okay, here we go.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
What is this? Come on.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Okay. Alright. So think about that. Have a seat. Good job. Nice job. All of you. That really put some moves out there. I appreciate that. Okay, you can scan the QR code up there. This is Slido. Which artist song is more aligned with a coaching framework? Annette. Neck and Neck. Really? Okay. So for those of you that voted for Whitney Houston, how will I know, tell me why did you select that song as more aligned to a coaching framework? Yes. Listen,

Speaker 3 (02:46):
I feel like when she says how will I know she’s putting the onus back on the other person and kind of making them think and reflect about what would achievement or success look like.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
I love it. So you’re looking at it from a perspective that she’s the coach, which I hadn’t even thought about. So that’s a new perspective. Excellent, thank you. Oh, right here. Or I’ll let the Katie decide who’s going to go next.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
Exactly the same reason. And Whitney Houston as coach in this case, because that’s a classic coaching question I’m going to do. How will I know?

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, love

Speaker 4 (03:16):
It. It’s the follow up, the accountability.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Great, thank you. Are some other questions? Why did you pick which song you picked? I saw a few other hands who picked Lizzo? Maybe give us, what was it about Lizzo song that you decided was a coaching framework?

Speaker 5 (03:31):
I definitely did not pick Lizzo because I agree with them. Lizzo seems prescriptive, like she’s forcing her definition of what good is on the person or us. Also, Whitney’s just better and Lizzo is getting sued by a bunch of her dancers. So I don’t really trust her as an authority.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I didn’t know that. So new information, yes,

Speaker 6 (03:53):
Counterpoint. I picked Lizzo because I think if I took it from the person who was being coached. So that’s the point of view. And it’s like if I’m feeling good as hell about myself and my day and what I’ve got ahead of me, I’m like on wings. I’m feeling really good about that. Nice. So confidence maybe could have been the one word answer.

Speaker 7 (04:17):
Great,

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 7 (04:18):
One more. So I chose Lizzo again from the perspective of someone being coached and it’s how do I show up?

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Nice. Okay, great. Interesting perspective. Let’s take one more and then we’ll talk about, is there a right answer here?

Speaker 8 (04:33):
Sure. I also chose Lizzo good as hell because as a coachee, I am the one that’s running the agenda and the discussion points with my coach of how I’m feeling, what I want to do, what I want to see where my path is going and my coach is there to help walk me side by side on how I see that path.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Nice. Thank you. Thank you all. I appreciate you adding your perspectives. So my perspective was that as a coach, Whitney is asking how well I know, right? And so as a coach, my question back to her would be, how will you know if he really loves you? And by the way, is there’s some emotional suppression in that song. I just want to point out, don’t trust your feelings. No, trust your feelings. Lizzo on the other hand is being what we would call in coaching a cheerleader. And so while that can be effective in what we sometimes think of as traditional coaching, an executive coach would consider that advice giving, right? If he doesn’t love you anymore, you walk your fine ass out the door, right? That’s advice. And so non-directive coaching is working to not give advice even though it feels good. That’s a feel good song.

(05:47):
I love that song. It’s a my go me collection of playlists. And so I just wanted to describe in a way that could bring it to life for you what the differences are and sometimes how we think about what a coach does. So today in our session, and I’m hoping my slides are going to cooperate with me, we’re going to talk about how do you apply this then to facilitation. So yesterday we had some great presenters and I did not get to see the last presenter, so I didn’t get to include the information there. But you notice that Eric started us off talking about listening, that we’re connecting, we’re building bridges. And Sky talked about listening without judgment. She talked about vulnerability is cool, and she talked about metaphors, analogies and reflection. And Alyssa talked about that change happens through story that we have to state the problem and that we get to play a little bit with the problem that we’re trying to solve. And then Kathy talked about the backpack essentials of curiosity, engaging, embracing detours, and making it real. And then I noticed the session in the afternoon had some things about breaking things down into smaller steps. All of those are fundamentals of executive coaching. All of them you could see even just through the facilitation that you’ve already been through, there’s a direct connection between the skillset sets of a coach and a facilitator.

(07:14):
So I appreciate them teeing me up so well. Yesterday Sky mentioned tris and actually I’ve used this several times. And before I started working with Voltage Control, I didn’t know what I was doing, I just knew I was doing things. And so it was really nice to put a label to some of the things that I was actually already doing. So I looked it up because I was like, what does that actually mean? It’s kind of an interesting word. And so you can see there, it’s a Russian word and a loose translation is the theory of inventive problem solving. And so what we’re going to do next is we’re going to talk about how do you look at counterproductive behaviors and figure out then how can you fix those. And again, we do this a lot in coaching as well. So you’re going to have an activity.

(07:57):
By the way, anytime you see red on the screen today, there’s something for you to do in your table group. So you’re wondering what are we doing? Or you step out for a second that’s going to be your clue to come back. So individually, I want you to take two minutes and I want you to get some sticky notes in front of you. And I want you to brainstorm. Consider elements that have been present when you have either seen the worst facilitator that you’ve ever seen, or you’ve been the worst facilitator that you’ve ever experienced. And I want you to write down, and I want you to be creative. I want you to not hold back what are the things that you see in the worst facilitation? If we could get some music while we’re doing this activity, one idea or one element per sticky note and just pile ’em up there.

(08:43):
And on your flip chart in the middle of your table, so by the fact that you’re still writing, I think we’ve all seen some pretty tough sessions. Okay, so you’re going to take your flip chart and I’d love for somebody to just draw a line down the middle on the vertical. And on one side I just want you to put all of your stickies that you observed where things did go so well. Okay, on the next step on the screen is I want your team to take a look at and examine and do affinity clustering of what themes do you see? So the ones that are similar are like put ’em on top of each other, put ’em together in some kind of cluster. Okay?

(09:45):
If you haven’t already, when you have your clusters together, give them a label of some sort and then move on to question two, which is what makes these hard as a facilitator to overcome. Have a discussion at your table, grip around that. And then the third step is you need to decide what’s your top challenge and elect someone to be your Slido entrant person who’s going to do that? And I’ll share the Slido in just a minute. Okay, so head on back to your work. All right, so there are 13 tables in here. There should be 13 items entered into what is the worst case scenario that your group selected. So just one representative from your table needs to scan the QR code and enter what is the worst case scenario that your group entered. So question for you all. When you look at that list, what comes up for you? And do we have our mics? Yep. Okay, we’re right here. Oh

Speaker 9 (10:54):
Gosh, thank you. I think all of those are tied to lack of self-awareness. So our table chose energy and from my experience with energy is that we as human beings exchange energy whether or not we know it. And so as good facilitators, one of the first things that you learn, or maybe it’s what draws us into this industry, is that we can read energy and some are better than others, and that’s tied to listening and willingness to learn, be vulnerable. And so I think that all of that negative is tied to not leaning into your authenticity and knowing who you are and how to change for the better and be a better energy space for other people.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, thank you. That was a good answer. Nice. Appreciate you for sharing that. Yeah, so as facilitators, we’re responsible to create the environment in which the learning takes place. The participants actually create the outcome. So if you learn nothing else from me today, if you remember nothing else, you job as a facilitator is to create the environment. You create the container. It’s the same thing that coaches do. We create the environment, the participant or the client does the work. Rule number one of coaching is the client does the work. Rule number one of facilitation is the audience does the work. You as a facilitator, that should make you less nervous and take a lot of weight off of your shoulders because they’re responsible for the outcome. You’re responsible to structure it and create a framework for them to work within.

(12:42):
Alright, we’re going to do part two, flip them back and forth here. By the way, I really appreciate all the work that you’re all doing. Give yourself a round of applause. Okay. Alright. So we did that. Did that. Okay, so now we have to design the fix. So from the one that you selected, I want you to ask this very specific question to your table group. What would it be like if this challenge was resolved? What would it be like in the sessions that you go to, if this challenge that you came up with was resolved, and I want you to do the sticky note activity again. Put them on the other side of your flip chart. Okay?

(13:30):
I’m going to read the rest of the instructions just so I don’t have to interrupt you as you’re working after you do step one, then I want you to, again, what’s your best rank? Those ideas that you have from best to next best, they’re all going to be great. And then I want you to vote on two solutions that you’re coming up with that you would submit into Slido. Alright, coming on back. Coming on back. So if you are the representative, Slido entrant for your team, you can enter the two solutions that your team came up with. There should be when we get done 13 line items in here. No instructions. All right, so as you look through these, and I’ll scroll a bit as we’re finishing up getting the last one or two in here, I’d love to hear what stands out to you. And again, this is what would it be like if we were able to design a fix for some of the most difficult things that happen as facilitators? Yes.

Speaker 6 (14:41):
So if in Dom’s session yesterday you heard him say one of the most important takeaways from the behavior design system is help people feel successful. And in his book, BJ names that emotion and he calls it shine. So it’s a feeling of success that both wires in the habit that you want and propels you to future action because if you’re feeling successful, you’re leaving that session and saying, oh my gosh, what else does Dr. Karen have for us? And let me tell you about the session I went to last week. So it’s the way that you feel shine, and we did have positive outcomes, but we just felt like shine and candor were the differentiators from our group. So that’s why we put it up there.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Love it. I’m just going to make a quick tie to coaching because when people leave a coaching engagement or even a coaching session many times, that’s the energy that’s actually creating the transformation and the energy that we create as facilitators is what creates the transformation. So there’s direct links almost. You can make a direct connection to me. Thank you for your comment. I appreciate it. One more, yes, over here.

Speaker 10 (15:58):
So I really love how you’re relating the coaching work with the facilitation work, and I’d like to hear what you think the differences are and just sort of building on what you just said because it sparked a thing with me. You get to the end of the last day of a workshop and everybody’s just all jazzed up. They’re pumped up on the thing and then they leave and then that’s when the work actually begins. I assume in a coaching engagement, you’ve got a longer term, you know what the next steps every step is going to be more or less. You’ve got a plan, I guess as a coach and you should as a facilitators, we should always have a plan after the workshop, but a lot of times you get engaged to do the workshop and create some outputs of the workshop and that’s where a lot of value gets lost. So I’m curious as to what you said

Speaker 1 (16:53):
About that. Yeah, I do think there’s a difference there in terms of the kind of once and done of what can be facilitation woes, I guess I’ll say, and the impact that you have when you do small incremental meetings over time with people because there’s an accountability loop that’s built into that. The plan, I just want to go back to that the plan comes from the client, right? Again, and that might be a slight difference in facilitation because you generally maybe have some ideas of things that you’re going to be speaking about. So there’s not a full, the group gets to decide what we’re talking about today. There’s some nuances and differences in that, but there’s many more connections than there are differences. I think that that accountability loop for facilitation is actually something that we all need to make sure we’re solving for and the work that we do as well.

(17:41):
Thank you for the question. Great question. All right. Okay. I’m going to move us forward to a little bit of part two here. So this is a great book. I’m a big book slash resource person, and Claire Norman has written a book called The Transformational Coach. I also like Marsha, I can’t think of her last name, coach the person, not the problem. Marsha Reynolds. So both of these books are great. This one in particular is really emphasizing non-directive coaching. So what is non-directive coaching? Non-directive coaching is really what the ICF, the International Coaching Federation espouses, which is that the coach is not a consultant. The coach is not going to be telling you what to do. The coach is going to be creating an environment and setting up these kind of foundations in coaching sessions. So one is really important that people are whole and capable and competent and resourceful and that they have within them everything that they need and that our job as facilitators and as coaches is to help clear the cobwebs and get through the mental hurdles that we sometimes set up for ourselves.

(19:02):
We build our own prison walls, I like to say. And so our job is to help people see things from a different perspective, give them an opportunity to sit down and work and do the work in a structured, sometimes unstructured environment. So that’s number one. You have to believe that if you don’t believe as a facilitator that your group is whole and capable and competent and resourceful, you really need to check and see. Are you actually then just training because you’re not facilitating If you’re telling them how to do what they need to do, you’re either consulting, which there’s nothing wrong with that, but you just need to be clear about what it is that you’re there to do.

(19:43):
The second is that it’s an exploratory approach and it empowers the participant and the client in this case to discover their own solutions. The fact of the matter is we can never really walk in someone else’s shoes no matter how similar you are, no matter how much your life experience. I have an identical twin, so I know I blew the bingo card, so I’m the facilitator that has the identical twin. And even though my sister and I literally shared a womb, right, we are very different. And even though we grew up in the same house, I cannot necessarily know what it’s like to live in her shoes every single day. So even people that are that close. And so when we put our ideas and solutions onto a group or an individual, I like to say we’re actually stealing a little bit of their power. There’s also a bias that we can work towards with us, which is that people love their own ideas. I mean, how many of you like to be told what to do? Raise your hand. Hi. Hi. Oh yeah, we all love it. And so if we come up with our own ideas, we are much more likely to implement those ideas and take them forward and break them down into small steps and do the work.

Speaker 11 (20:58):
Do you discern a difference between the athletic coach in English, the word coach in athletics has a kind of connotation? Is there a difference between that kind of coach as you see it and the coach in this setting?

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, so the question is, is there a difference between an athletic coach and a, what I’ll call a executive coach or a workplace coach? In my opinion, yes, because coaching in sports you’re teaching, you’re putting together a structure, they’re running drills, there’s certain plays. I’m not really that into sports, so I don’t pretend like I know what I’m talking about. I sound all like woo. So there’s definitely a difference, whereas a non-directive coaching, I’m going into sessions with asking the client, what is it you want to coach on? Today I’m going into facilitation session saying the thing that we’re going to be talking about is leadership traits. This conversation can go in a million different directions and it’s going to be up to you to decide which of those directions is most important and most impactful. So while I have a framework when I’m facilitating, I’m going to go where the group goes, and it’s part of that being adaptable and letting go of having to control the outcome, which is probably the hardest part in coaching and in facilitation that we are somehow in control of what’s going to happen. I have no idea what you’re all going to do with the next activity that we do, and I hope it goes well, but it’s up to you. So it’s letting go is a big part of this. I already talked about the client does the work, and then again, we’re responsible to create the environment. Yes.

Speaker 12 (22:31):
Good morning everyone. Just to point on that letting go piece, I think one of the things, and we were talking about this at the table, is if you understand to your point coming in asking, Hey, what do you want to get out of today? Sometimes it’s important to have data in advance, especially if you’re facilitating a session. If you know, all are seeing here are are your focuses for 2025, here were the problems, here are the gaps. What do we want to focus on today related to what you said you wanted to do? That’s very critical and important and it can empower you when you get to the end and do a survey. I love yesterday there was a session where the facilitator asked, give me feedback because we’re always improving ourselves as well. So just some points there. This has been great, doctor. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Oh, you’re so welcome. I love what you said. So the idea that I, I’m not just going in free styling, so I’m doing my homework, I’m doing my prep work. One of the things about data is I’m just going to tweak that just a little bit. It depends. Yesterday I was talking to a group about my doctor title and there’s some times where that works for me and sometimes where that doesn’t work for me because it can be intimidating to the group where they think, oh, great, this will be an academic boring blah, blah, blah, right? Kind of thing. No offense, Eric, but that can be a perception that it comes along with that title. And so knowing that I could go in and tell you, I could tell you all the neuroscience of why coaching works, and I could come in with loads of data and research and some of you would be like, yes, let’s talk about that. That’s exciting. And others would be like, oh, right. So we started off with Lizzo and Whitney Houston instead because we’re trying to engage in a way and teach in the debrief. That’s what I espouse is teach in the debrief, have people experience something and then tell ’em what they just experienced as opposed to telling ’em what they’re going to precisely how to do things. Again, just a difference. But thank you for the question. Great question.

(24:39):
Nope, that was right. Okay, so today we’ve been following a participative agenda and we’ve been doing things like the focus has been on the conversation that we’re having within a framework. So I had ideas of what you’re going to do, right? I’m using facilitative techniques, we use tris, we’re doing some engagement activities. The role of the facilitator again is to create the environment, but I’m not walking around going, oh, that’s that idea. No, don’t put that up there. That’s not exactly what we’re doing. I’m asking you questions and you’re asking me questions and we’re the experience that you’re having and it’s a partnership. We’re in a partnership together. I’m not in coaching, it’s also a partnership just because I went and got a coaching credential and I have all this stuff. I am on equal footing with my clients, which is different. When you go to a doctor, doctor, like a doctor that can help you, you’re going to probably take their advice, excuse me, or you’re going to seek maybe a second opinion, but you’re probably going to take the medicine they prescribe or you’re probably going to think about what they wanted you to do or you’re just going to go do it.

(25:47):
That is a hierarchical relationship. The coach and the facilitator, we are an equal footing. I don’t know more than you, I don’t have your experience, I don’t have your background, but we are sharing an environment together. So what I’d like you to do is stand up and I want you to find a partner, someone that you haven’t met, and I want you to decide how have we been demonstrating a participative agenda so far today in this session? Okay. Find somebody you haven’t met. Okay. I’d love just a few shares maybe from a table in the back that hasn’t shared yet today. What were some of the things that you came up with?

Speaker 13 (26:36):
So me and Harry were together and we were talking about that you set the stage from the beginning, you set the environment because I asked Harry, well, how do you create an environment? And then we talked about it and it was apparent you set the stage from the first of the training today that we were going to do the word, you aren’t going to do it. You’re not going to give us your list. And then we come up with our own list. That’s boring as heck, but you’re going to leave us alone and you’re going to turn us loose and we’re going to go save the world. And it was fun. Good. Anyway,

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Couple comments over here.

Speaker 14 (27:15):
So a meta question came up for me because we were talking about the dissonance between the two questions. What is the outcome versus what are the solutions? And then I saw you come over and it was like figure it out kind of thing. And so we were talking about creating this environment and does the environment look like a pool or rails? And I wonder if there’s matching the situation to the creation of that environment. Do you go into a coaching session where it’s like, okay, well declare your outcome and let’s see if we can get there versus wow, let’s just open up the floor and let it spill out. I dunno.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
That’s a good question. Yeah, it’s in coaching us a little bit of both. So there is a framework. So you’re asking the client what do they want to coach on? You’re asking them what they want to walk away with at the end of the time together that they don’t currently have. And you’re asking them, how will we know when we’ve gotten there? So those are just three very common questions at the beginning of a coaching session. And those are similar questions I ask myself when I’m facilitating, what’s the topic, what’s the intended outcome? Where does the customer, because we all, even though we don’t have a boss, we do have a boss. All the customers we work with are bosses and how are we going to know when we got there? And then the flexibility is if in a session something has drastically changed. We started off today talking about the differences on what’s working and what’s not working in facilitation, but I’ve noticed a shift and now we’re starting to talk more about coaching and how do we apply this practice and you just throw it out there and you give it back to the group.

(29:03):
So I’ve noticed a shift. We want to still continue on this topic that we originally were slated for. Do we want to shift over and really spend a little bit more time on this? What’s most important to all of you today? That’s how you hand it. You just adapt and flex in the moment. And you do have a structure and a framework that you’re working within and a way in which you’re setting up for people to feel safe that we can do that. We can adjust if we need to. And as a facilitator, that’s part of your role. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 14 (29:30):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Maybe not.

Speaker 14 (29:33):
I’m not sure if I had an answer.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Okay, well good. Yeah. But how much direction you give to when people doing activities, that’s a choice. Some people are very linear and they want to know they’re doing it right as opposed to there really isn’t a right way to do things. We’re trying to learn and have an experience. So you want to give them that freedom.

Speaker 15 (29:54):
So in our conversation, we got a little tripped up on the word agenda because we’re like, well, she kind of mapped out an arc that we’re following. So from that perspective, the road was laid and we’re building the content of the road perhaps. So that was one conclusion, which is, well actually we didn’t really wrote on the road, but the road was already there. But then we also saw, well, maybe the question is really have we demonstrated techniques of how we could build a Jenna that’s not fully fleshed out? So we sort of saw two different questions, two different potential meanings in the question.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, because in my mind, I have a certain timing that I’m sticking to and there’s certain things I want to get through. But my first slide, the agenda of everything we’re going to do and how it’s all timed out and mapped out, it’s not that specific. Again, it depends on what your goal is, what you’re trying to accomplish. Back here

Speaker 16 (30:57):
A little bit following up on the outcomes that maybe you were talking about earlier, Jacqueline and I had a conversation around you saying letting go of the outcomes and kind of a little bit of a debate. Do you mean letting go of outcomes or letting go of the outcome that you had in mind? In my world, I have to drive outcomes through co-creation participation as a product manager in software, I can’t just facilitate yay. And then nothing actually happens. The outcomes out of facilitation, whether that’s a roadmap, whether that’s a solution that’s technical, whether that is a new idea. So I’m kind of curious, did we read that right? Can you a little bit explore more on the outcomes and exactly what you meant?

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, so I would argue that there’s different types of facilitation. So most of the facilitation that I do is leadership. So if you’re in technology or doing scrum or those kinds of things, and there’s certain, and it’s not like I get to walk into a company and go, oh, that was fun, but there’s really nothing that got accomplished, right? There has to be something. Same thing with coaching. There has to be a change. There has to be a shift. The letting go of it is the feeling that you are responsible for it. The group is responsible for what actually gets created. That’s the outcome that I’m talking about. I can’t control what you experienced today. I can’t control what you walk away with. All I can do is set up the environment and have a structure of things that we’re going to be doing. But if it shifts, I also have to be adaptable and flexible to move with that. So I know that in organizations, especially if you work within organizations, I do too, but you have to somehow prove your ROI of the work that you’re doing then taking all these people away and you’re spending all this time. And I think that that’s important. But I guess I would say it’s letting go of the fact that you have to walk out with something concrete that everybody is going to go do next. That’s not necessarily the outcome that is in every session, but it could be in some, right? It could be in some,

Speaker 4 (33:13):
I love that you gave the name non-directive coaching because that’s my coaching background and it’s people who have more directive coaching styles. It’s just like how does that, so could we give a name to different kinds of facilitation, more directive and more, yeah, I mean rather than trying to figure out which one is right or

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah, I, so I think that, like I said to me, there’s different types. There’s different flavors for what you’re trying to accomplish. And similarly, when I’m a coach, I don’t always do peer non-directive coaching. There’s sometimes when people haven’t heard of something or they just don’t know or about a resource or something, and I will offer it to them and say, something’s coming up for me that might be interesting to you. Would it be all right if I shared it? So I’m asking permission before I’m giving advice or resources or what have you. Most of the time people say yes because polite and they’re not going to say no, but I think it is using those things like salt and pepper, right? Not if you over season things with too much of your ideas, it doesn’t go well. And people then start depending on you as a facilitator or a coach to fix everything as opposed to, again, rule number one is, oh, you forgot rule number one. Yeah, you do the work, the group does the work. Your question,

Speaker 17 (34:44):
Just want to say one quick note. Thank you for one of the lines you said was teach in the debrief, and I thought that was particularly helpful, so thank you for letting us steal that from you. But the other thing that I’d maybe offer to the group is the concept that I think I also use this as a norm when I’m facilitating, but I say the phrase, the smartest person in the room is the room. And I think that helps continue to create a space for, I didn’t create that by the way, so you can steal that, but the smartest person in the room is the room and kind of explaining like we are collaborating together. We are co-creating together. And so I love what you said, teaching the debrief and using that same methodology, and I think that’s what you helped us participate in this morning and we’ve been doing it all day yesterday, is this idea that we’re co-creating together. So thank you.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yeah, I’m going to steal that back in return. Absolutely. I think she had a question over here too, if we can get her a mic. Yeah, go ahead Kathy.

Speaker 7 (35:38):
I didn’t have a question more than a comment, but when I was talking to Walter over there, we appreciated the non-directive coaching and whoever said smartest person in the room is the room. We felt that in our working with our tables so appreciated. You kind of gave that framework, but we were able to work together to determine what direction it was really going to go. And so how I’m thinking about how would I bring that back into my world also in the delivery space is making sure that space is such that yes, we have an outcome we’re driving to, but the answer sits with the team that’s working on it. So making sure they have that space to kind of do what we did today, kind of set the direction.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, I love that the facilitator isn’t the expert. They don’t have all the answers. I want to make sure we get to this woman in purple here.

Speaker 18 (36:26):
Thanks. Yeah. Building off of some of the other comments, I think it’s useful to think of these things as different tools, different approaches that exist on a spectrum. And when we understand the different ways that they can be used, we can then align those distinctions to the purpose. Kind of thinking back to one of the early comments about, well, what if I am responsible for the outcome or a conversation we were having? Well, what if you’re the team lead and the facilitator? So understanding is this a coaching moment, is it a mentorship moment, is it a management moment? I’m actually just communicating, telling the story about the thing that’s already been decided so that we can be intentional about how we’re approaching whatever that interaction that we’re having, again in the facilitation, this a purpose and a moment where full participatory agenda makes sense and works for everyone. Or being able to use that dial as a spectrum. How much do I need to direct? How much to leave it open? But just having the full range of those possibilities available to us.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah. Isn’t it nice to have options, right? Yeah. Thank you for adding that. Oh, up here. Yeah.

Speaker 19 (37:35):
I have a question. So I’m watching, I’m participating, but I’m watching the pattern of why we did this session and that’s what happens when you present to facilitators, right? We’re going to be watching the technique as much as we are a part of it. I’ve heard some comments that there’s different levels of experience in the room as facilitators. So some people might say, well, I already know what a facilitator role is. I already know that the audience or the group, the room is doing the work. Is that something just because all human beings and we’re not perfect, is that something like gravity that we have to watch out for because facilitators are going to get a lot of attention that we’re naturally going to keep leaning in towards we have the knowledge because experienced or blah, blah, blah. How do you answer the people that have been like, Hey, I’ve been a facilitator for a long time. I’m fascinated by that perspective. Is this something we have to watch out for?

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah, I think our own ego, for lack of a better word, is definitely something we always need to watch out for. And our propensity, if you’ve always been the expert or if you know a lot about the group or the room that you’re in, it’s challenging to not consult. What I would say is that if you learn the skills of non-directive coaching, you can turn that on when it makes sense and you can turn it off when it doesn’t make sense. But I think the experience of the facilitator and experience of the coach for that matter, I think you always have to put yourself in the learner’s mindset to say, I don’t have it all figured out. I don’t stand up here telling you I know every single thing about coaching and facilitation. This is just the experience I want to share with you. So I think that’s my answer to that is always be watching for that and always keep the learners’ mindset.

Speaker 20 (39:29):
If I could say something about that. The mic runner for us, we explicitly tell our participants, you guys are the subject matter experts. We work for a healthcare company. None of us are in healthcare. You guys are the subject matter experts on laundry spend. We are the subject matter experts in facilitation. And we tell them, you guys are the superheroes, we are the guys in the chair, and we run through action items with them at the end of the meeting. But once that happens, goodbye, they’ve asked us for 30 day follow-up meetings for them. But at least for our facilitation, once we end this session, it’s up to them. I hope that’s helpful.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Very helpful. Oh, one more and then two more and then I’m going to move us forward.

Speaker 21 (40:14):
Thank you for this experience. I’m going to verbally drift towards the question. There’s one here, I’ll get to it. I promise. You talked a lot about coaching, coaching and facilitation, and I think there’s also some nuance between facilitation and consulting as we’ve started to allude to. I think oftentimes in my experience, people, my clients hire a facilitator, but they expect a consultant, if that makes sense. So even though we bring that process neutrality, there’s always questions that are veering into that subject matter expertise. I personally am comfortable having that neutrality. However, one of the things we talked about at our table was that as facilitators, we often arrive in a spirit of service to other people in the room. And I think this is a room where you say empathy and compassion in humans, we’re humans and we nod because we respond to people in that sort of way. So double clicking way into the room, not the client conversation, but you’re in the room and you have those participants who want you to be the expert. They want you to tell them how to do something even though you believe they’ve got it in them. I’m just curious what tips or tools you would offer in terms of how do you help empower people in the room to believe it in themselves if they don’t have that already?

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, I love that question. I love the drifting to the question too. I’m going to steal that as well. My mind just immediately clicked into coaching because I have coaching clients too that will tell me what to do. I don’t want to think about it. Just tell me what to do. And so the way that I approach that is I say, well, there are ideas that I’ve come up with. We are all smart people. We all have had different experiences and been exposed to things. And I’ll just say, I have a few things I’ve come up for me. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to share those with you. And then I’ll serve ’em up on a platter, like three things. One thing that’s come up for me is this. The next thing that’s come up for me is that, and this final idea, you don’t have to do anything with any of them, but that’s the way I handle it, is I just put ’em out there is, yeah, I have ideas and things like that. That doesn’t mean they’ll work here, because what happens is what the trap is, is you, especially if I don’t work in the company, I put my thoughts out there, well, that won’t work here because you don’t know anything about manufacturing corn syrup, right? Well, no, I don’t. And so if you serve it up in such a way that people can say, okay, she’s giving us her ideas, that doesn’t, I may have to tweak it or I may not like it at all. That’s the way I approach that situation. Oh, okay. Go ahead.

Speaker 22 (42:56):
I would add to that too, in the facilitation setting, when someone asks me a question as if I’m the expert, I always say I might want to take a pass at that in a moment, but first I would like to put it out there to the group and let’s hear from

Speaker 1 (43:11):
The

Speaker 22 (43:11):
Wisdom and the brilliance and the expertise from the group first.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah, I love that too. Yeah, throwing it out to the group, the collective, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
This is more of an answer than a question, but it’s a useful metaphor that one of my coaches used in certification, which was, I’m going to take my coaching hat off and put my consulting hat on right now and tell you what I might know about this, and then I’m going to take my consulting hat off and put my coaching hat back on. It just helps to keep it clear. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Absolutely. And

Speaker 4 (43:41):
It could be true, the directive coach too. I’m going to be a directive coach here. I’m going to be a nondirective.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
I like that too. I forgot what I was going to say. I’ll come back. Alright, maybe one more and then we’re going to wrap us up here.

Speaker 7 (43:55):
I was going to say, I loved how you offered out your ideas. I borrowed something, I borrowed something from a coach I have, and sometimes when I’m talking to her, I’m like, I’m really kind of stuck. Not sure where to go with this. Let’s go on a shopping trip. So I’m going to show you what the store has. You have to tell me what direction you want to go, what’s going to work for you, your or your situation.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
But

Speaker 7 (44:15):
Oftentimes we find ourselves on a shopping trip.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah. Another couple quick questions I can tell you back for facilitating and when somebody asks me for my opinion, I’ll say things like, well, what’s most meaningful or important to you? What would it be like if you were able to solve that? So I think throwing it back, trying to throw it back as much as you can to the room versus what you alluded to, and I didn’t get your name but is now I’m the expert, right? And you want to just watch how many times you put yourself in that position if you’re truly trying to embody the structure that we’ve talked about today. Well, my timer is timing down on me here. So a couple superpowers. Okay, superpowers that I know you all have. And that coaching really espouses, which is first one is listening. We listen on three levels as a coach, we listen for the facts, we listen for the emotions, and we listen for what’s not being said.

(45:18):
So when Whitney Houston was Kooning to us this morning, how will I know what were the emotions that are part of that song? If you had to just shout a couple out. Vulnerable, angst, vulnerability, despair. Despair, uncertainty, uncertainty, right? So there’s emotions behind the words that people share. There’s also connecting the dots. If someone is sharing something with you and it’s becoming a theme, you say, there’s a couple of dots I’m trying to connect here. Let me just ask you if this resonates and correct me with whatever doesn’t. So a lot of it’s in how you position when you are going to make a statement as a coach and then always follow up with or facilitator it. Did I understand that correctly or what’s your reaction to that as I share that with you? So these are just techniques and things that we use when we’re trying to understand and listen. The other thing is to create space and silence. Silence is underused in our world today, and I’m always amazed when I just pause and let people think that more and more comes out. And you notice that today people ping pong off each other and ideas get grown from that. My advice to any leader, including myself, is talk less and talk less. If I ever write a book, that’s probably going to be the title. So nobody gets to steal it.

(46:50):
So the more you talk, the less other. You create less space for other people to be with their own ideas. So short statements, short questions brief, and then mirror neurons. Who’s heard of a mirror neuron? What’s a mirror neuron?

Speaker 20 (47:10):
It’s when Well, oh gosh, now,

Speaker 1 (47:12):
Oh, on the spot Could help,

Speaker 20 (47:14):
Isn’t it? When it fires in both people at the same time, or is that totally off?

Speaker 1 (47:20):
That’s close. Mirror neurons. Stick to

Speaker 20 (47:24):
Mic running.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
It’s okay.

Speaker 18 (47:29):
I think it’s when the same neurons fire in your brain when you see someone else doing it as if you were doing it yourself. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (47:36):
That’s close as well. Yep. You are very scientific. Alright, so it’s the idea that when we, so I want you to, whoever you’re sitting across from, mirror their body language real quick. Pick somebody and just do the exact same thing.

(48:02):
Okay? What that does is it instantly creates comfort. It instantly creates comfort. So when you sit down next to someone, if you want to create a comfortable environment, mirror them. If you’re talking to someone with their language, if somebody says to me, gosh, I’m really frustrated with this situation. I don’t say, oh, it sounds like you’re super annoyed with that. I say, tell me more about what you’re frustrated about. I use the exact language because it’s comfortable. It’s their language. Annoyance and frustration could mean two different things to someone. So mirror language, use people’s words when they share with you. And our second superpower is inquiry. So the process of asking questions, questions that evoke insight, short, brief questions, they usually start with what or how. And then I’ll give you the magical question too, which is, if you woke up tomorrow and this situation was all resolved, what would be different? How would that have happened? What steps would you have taken? Because it forces us into future thinking versus our challenges right here, right now, which we can get kind of mired down in. And then always, where we talked about this extensively is avoid leading questions, which it sounds like, wouldn’t it be great if you just tried to do this? That’s a leading question. Versus what might you try?

(49:31):
So starting questions with what or how. There’s all kinds of books out there on questions that you can use. But those are two superpowers. So I, I’m going to end with, we’re not unfortunately going to run out of time for this part, but I want to ask you, what were your key insights from today? In coaching, we always ask, what did you learn about yourself? What are you taking away with you? And what type of support might you need? So as you end your sessions in facilitation, I invite you to try on some of these questions. What small experiments might you make? And the last question that I always ask is, what else do you need from our time together today to feel complete? What else do you need from our time together today to feel complete? So in my last question to all of you is, this is a reflective question, what will you use from our session today immediately? So take a few minutes and jot that down. And I thank you so much for your time and attention today.

Dr. Karyn Edwards’ session was a powerful reminder of the synergies between coaching and facilitation. By blending non-directive coaching with facilitation techniques, she empowered participants to embrace a more reflective, adaptable approach to their work. Her dynamic, engaging session left everyone inspired to incorporate new insights into their own facilitation practices.

The post Coaching and Facilitation appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit, JJ Rogers presented an exciting session titled Radical Acts of Delight, where he shared innovative ways to bring joy and surprise into every facilitated session. As a product designer and UX expert, JJ’s approach blends design thinking with facilitation, encouraging facilitators to create delightful moments that not only engage but also inspire participants.

JJ’s journey into delight began in the world of user experience (UX) design. In UX, designers aim to delight users by exceeding expectations and reducing friction in digital products. But JJ’s understanding of delight took a deeper turn when he learned from his UX research colleagues that delight isn’t just about ease—it’s about two key emotions: joy and surprise. As JJ explained, delight is a blend of these emotions, each creating a memorable and impactful experience.

Beyond product design, JJ found this concept of delight in the field of facilitation. Drawing inspiration from the book Play by Stuart Brown, he discovered that delight could be defined as the anticipation of surprise, leading to a joyful discovery. The key, according to JJ, is to build that feeling of anticipation, creating the perfect environment for surprise to unfold. This surprise, in turn, leads to joy—the ultimate form of delight.

During his session, JJ introduced three Radical Acts of Delight that facilitators can easily apply to their own sessions to create engaging, enjoyable experiences for participants. These acts are not just energizers or icebreakers—they are methods that can be integrated into the core of any facilitated session to spark creativity and foster deeper engagement. JJ’s acts are designed to help facilitators overcome resistance to activities that may seem too lighthearted or “fluffy” for professional settings.

Here are the three Radical Acts of Delight that JJ shared:

Metaphor Cards: Metaphor cards were used to help participants look at their facilitation challenges through a new lens. JJ provided a deck of random metaphor cards, each one representing a different concept, and participants were asked to relate their facilitation challenge to a metaphor. For example, how could a beehive or a sandcastle relate to the challenge they were working through? This creative thinking exercise forced participants to make lateral connections, uncovering insights they may not have thought of otherwise. The drawing element came back here, as participants were encouraged to sketch their metaphor-driven ideas.

Drawing to Communicate: In many sessions, facilitators ask participants for written or verbal input. JJ’s first act of delight encourages using drawing as a tool to get participants to think creatively and express ideas differently. Participants were asked to use a phone app to draw prompts such as a pig, a highlight from the previous day, or a facilitation challenge they were facing. The goal wasn’t to create art but to engage the creative side of the brain and communicate ideas in new ways. This exercise not only activated joy and surprise, but it also deepened the level of conversation and enriched the ideas shared.

The Twist: This act builds on the element of surprise. JJ encouraged participants to design the “world’s worst meeting” by coming up with ridiculous or counterproductive ideas. This inverted thinking exercise prompted participants to step out of their usual patterns and think about a facilitation challenge in an entirely different way. This unexpected approach—combined with the fun of imagining the worst—helped participants unlock fresh insights and ideas.

Through these radical acts, JJ demonstrated how delight, joy, and surprise could not only engage participants but also create a more impactful and memorable facilitation experience. By blending creativity and humor with facilitation techniques, JJ’s methods encourage facilitators to step outside their comfort zones and embrace new ways of thinking.

JJ’s session was a refreshing reminder that facilitation doesn’t have to be all serious and structured. Sometimes, the most powerful moments of connection come from adding a little delight into the mix. By incorporating joy and surprise into your sessions, you can transform the way participants engage, collaborate, and create.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of JJ’s Session:

Speaker 1:
Radical acts of delight. Working title was The Random Acts. Changed it a little bit.
For the past 10 years, I’ve been on a mission to bring more delight to my facilitated sessions, and today I’m excited to share some of those methods with you. So, that you can learn a little bit about it too.

So, as Erik mentioned, I started as a product designer. Well, I’m still a product designer. I work in user experience design, or UX for short, where we’re designing products and services, and mainly digital user interfaces.

And within the field of user experience, we have this notion, this concept. It’s everywhere. I cannot escape it. It’s been with me for years. It’s all about delighting the user.

It follows me everywhere, and if you asked me a few years ago how I would define this, I might make up some answer like, “It’s about understanding the user’s needs and trying to exceed their expectations,” or maybe, “It’s about removing the friction. So, it’s a really easy experience.”

But I’ve since learned a much cooler definition for delight. And I got this definition from working with some of my colleagues in user experience. So, within user experience design, we have … Some companies, if they have the budget and the technology, they have specialists that work in research. These user experience researchers focus on understanding the humans, understanding their needs, their wants, their fears, frustrations, and what’s really cool is they can study their emotions, and try and learn what’s going on in their heads, and using technology to read their emotional state as they’re using our products and services. It’s pretty cool.

There we go. What is delight? Now if you asked one of my colleagues, my user experience research specialists how they would define delight, here’s what they might say, “Delight is not a singular emotion. Delight is two emotions. Delight is joy coupled with surprise.”

Surprise and joy, that is what makes delight. And I love this definition. I love this definition, because maybe as a product designer, or someone who is always trying to solve challenges, this feels actionable. Joy on its own, sure, we can have fun, but surprise me with it? That feels like a challenge.

I recently ran into this definition of delight outside of the world of product design, and I was really excited, because it was in an area that’s more closely related to facilitation, what we do.

I was reading the book … Well, I was skimming the book, I read a portion of this book, I don’t know if anyone’s heard of this book Play by Stuart Brown. Okay. I’m seeing some nods.

So, in this book Stuart Brown talks about the stages that humans go through in the state of play. So, when we’re in a state of play, we go through these specific stages. And I was really interested in the final stage, the final stage in our brains is the pleasure state. So, that’s where the joy comes from.

Cool. But then right before the state of joy, right before that pleasure state, there is a key moment, and that key moment that he talks about is anticipation.

Anticipation. And I actually have the definition. He describes it as waiting with expectation, wondering what will happen, a little anxiety, slight uncertainty. Now that, there’s a limit. Right? That cannot be so great.

But that is what leads to surprise, that unexpected discovery, or idea, the shifted perspective, and then the joy that we find in delight. So, that anticipation leading to the surprise, leading to the joy. There it is, the definition right here within the state of play.

So, let’s play all the time. Right? No. We have work to do. We’ve got to solve that problem, work with that person. How many of you have been told you have to innovate?

When I think about the state of play, especially, in the workplace, in a professional environment, it takes me back to one of my earliest core facilitator trauma memories.

I was working for a design agency in Austin. We were fun and funky. And we always insisted on having our product, or our client kickoffs in person. We always wanted to do these discovery workshops in person. Either we’d fly to the client, or the client would fly to us. It was a really exciting time.

Most of the project would be done remotely, or distributed, but those first few days together is where we would lay those bricks of trust early. And in this particular instance, the client was flying in from California. It happened to be a Saturday, which is very strange. We never worked on weekends, but that was the only time we could really make it happen.
So, we’re all there ready for this day and a half, two day work of discovery and learning together, and planning out this project. We were gathered around a conference table like this. And the project manager stands up, “All right. We’re going to do the icebreaker.” Without missing a beat, the client stands up, “I didn’t fly halfway across the country on a weekend to sit here and play games.” Tension.

Well, I look over and some people are slowly looking down, but peeking through curious, “What’s going to happen? How is this going to be resolved?” I would love to tell you that we leaned into that moment. We folded. “Oh, yeah. We don’t need to do that icebreaker. No. No. We’re fine. We’ll just move on with the agenda.”
Not only that, on the first break, I get with my colleagues, and we start going through the agenda, “Take out that. That’s a little too fluffy. Ah, that’s extra. Team building? No. Connections-focused, joy-inducing fun?” Crossing it all off. It was a sad day.

Silver lining, we did not have a long-term relationship with that client. But I tell that story not because it’s … Well, it is … I’m over it, clearly. I tell that story … It’s a very violent reaction to an icebreaker. It sticks with you.
But because the resistance is still there. I still run into that resistance. Maybe not in the same form. It just comes in slightly different language. Like, maybe, “How do we be more efficient? How do we be more on task?” And maybe you’ve run into some of this too, “How do you move faster?”

And so, that is why I’ve designed my radical acts of delight to be used with any facilitated session. So, these are not simply designed to be relegated to a warmup, or an energizer, which are fun. Don’t get me wrong.
These are things that you can infuse into your core purpose, into whatever your go-to method is. When I started developing this idea, I had a list of 10, or 12. And I called them my hacks for delight. Right? Like, “Oh, yeah. This little hack here. You can just apply that in there. It’ll be great.”

What we’re going to do, because we’re going to practice today, is I’m going to show you three. And we’ll practice those three acts of delight that you can adapt to any of your sessions. Are you ready for the first of three acts?
Okay. All right. Our first act is going to be drawing. So, Sarah can participate too over there. She’s already doing that hard work.

Okay. So many of our days are filled with meetings and maybe Slack messages, or I think Microsoft Teams some people use, and while even your sessions, I’m sure the number of times you ask participants to provide input, it’s either written, or it’s verbal.

So, what we’re going to do today is practice drawing. We don’t just draw to create art. It’s about communicating differently, waking up your brain, using a different part of your brain for the creative thinking side.

And so, that is what we’ll practice. All right. So, I would like everyone to take out your phones. Did you know you’re going to draw not by using pens and Post-Its, but your phones?

Now I will say, if for some reason, we do run into technical difficulties, or this app is slow to load … And I did test it out, it does take a little time to load, by the way, so, give it some time. If you don’t have your phone with you today, you can still participate in this session. You can simply use the Post-Its and the markers at your tables in front of you, and you will still get all of the delight of drawing.

Is it loading? Okay. Fantastic. I see many of you have scanned it already.

So, you’ll see the prompt. It opens in the browser. Your first prompt is to draw a pig, and you will have about a one and a half minute to do that. I’ll get my timer going.

Okay. You’re putting the finishing touches on your pig. And we’re going to move onto prompt number two. So, you can simply hit done in your apps. You’re going to draw your top highlight from yesterday. Ooh. This one’s a little more abstract. How are you going to represent that?

All right. We are going to do one more drawing prompt, and then we’ll talk about it. You thought the last one was hard? You have 90 seconds, draw a facilitation challenge that you are looking to overcome.

All right. Wrap up those drawings. Time is up. Time is up. Let’s look through some of these.
So, this prompt is … We’re not going to really go into that. We’re going to explore it later. But I wanted to prime your brains to start thinking about it. That’s the only reason it’s in there.

So, I’m looking at some of your drawings. Wow. I see a lot of detail, some people. Look at this. We’ve got a champion. Someone’s celebrating themselves. Oh. I think I see a safety net.

We’ve got a cluster of Post-Its, but look at the detail and the color, and the lines. They’re used.

Oh, what else? Someone went to happy hour without us all. Okay. Let’s look at the piggies, because that’s really what I’m focused on here. You know my grandfather owned the pig farm. It gave me special powers. I can interpret the meaning of your pig. The way in which you drew your pig tells me how others see you, and how you see yourself.

So, let’s see, if the pig is drawn towards the top of the screen … That one is in the middle. If the pig is drawn towards the top of the screen … If it’s drawn towards the top of the screen, you are perceived as a positive and optimistic person by others.
Now if it’s drawn towards the middle like this, you have good space on the top and the bottom, you are perceived as a realist.
If it’s drawn towards the bottom of the screen, you may have a tendency to behave negatively under pressure. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Okay. Now the direction of your pig is very important as well. If your pig is facing left, you believe in tradition, are friendly, and remember dates and birthdays.

If it’s facing to the right, you are innovative and active, but you have a poor memory for dates and birthdays. And, of course, if it’s just facing towards the center, well, you are a direct person, and enjoy stirring the pot. How am I doing so far?
Legs are very important as well. If you have shown four legs, as quite a few of you have actually, you are secure. You stick to your beliefs, and you’ve been told, at least, once in life that you are stubborn. And that would be me.

And if you haven’t shown all four legs, so, anything less than four legs, you are living through a period of major change.
The ears are also very important. The larger the ears, the better listener you are.

And last but not least, the length of the pig’s tail correlates to the quality of your personal relationships. Like I said, it’s a family trait. Hope I got all of you.

Okay. Let’s see if I can do this. All right. We’re back in action. Can you take that? Thank you.

The reason I chose this app, and I met with the founder of this app too, is because they’ve done their homework on what drawing brings to the table. This app is designed for conference settings. So, that everyone can contribute. And they’ve done … Remember our UX researcher friends, those that run their quantitative studies and are trying to understand the emotions of people, they’ve used that same technology and they’ve found that using this app, or drawing, or doodling just happens to raise two emotions, your joy and your surprise.

So, right there is the delight. This is a screenshot I took directly from their website. I didn’t doctor it. But when I saw it, I was like, “Yes. That is why I’m going to use drawing as my first radical act of delight.”
Now I will give you a pro tip as well. So, how can you incorporate drawing into your everyday facilitated session? And, especially, for folks that are very uncomfortable, they’re new to drawing, it feels like a very professional workplace setting, how can you make that happen?

A pro tip is to combine what they’re more comfortable with, the short words or phrases, with the little drawing. So, have them contribute both, the short word, or phrase, and the drawing to just elaborate more on whatever they’re contributing to the conversation.

Now as a designer, yes, we do drawing all the time. My team draws prototypes, storyboarding, very purposeful drawing to visualize something, but this is them just contributing ideas to the meeting, just contributing to the conversation in a different way using Post-Its and drawing rather than just verbalizing.

Now depending on the contributor, you get all kinds, but at the top right there where you’re seeing the white finger there, she’s describing breaking up work into smaller pieces, and how she would like that work to flow, and be categorized in different ways.

So, you can see that there’s a lot more rich detail that now we can hone in on, ask questions about, and bring into the conversation.

Or my other colleague here with the pink Post-Its here contributed, “Remove logistical red tape.” What does that mean? So, he’s drawn, “Oh, these are specific tools that are impeding me, and there’s actually specific people that are blocking me,” that he considers logistical red tape.

So, there’s more richness to the conversation. And sometimes when you do compare an idea that’s communicated verbally, especially, in workplaces where the jargon flows, some ideas can just fall flat and contributing by drawing just gives it that much more richness and detail to go on.

All right. Without further ado, we are going to move onto our radical act two. This one’s perfect for anticipation, or building anticipation, and then a little surprise.

Now I trust most everyone is here, or most everyone here is familiar with The Wizard of Oz. If you’re not, it’s the sequel to Wicked. But in this movie, in case anyone just isn’t familiar, there’s a character of Scarecrow, and the scarecrow is pointing in a very particular direction.

Dorothy comes in on the yellow brick road, sees the scarecrow pointing that way, something happens, or some distraction, I don’t know, probably with her dog, looks back up, “Well, that’s funny. Wasn’t he pointing the other way?”
And that’s exactly what we’re going to do with our teams. We’re going to set them up towards our goal, towards our purpose, point everything in this direction, and then go this way.

So, I got this idea when I found myself using certain methods often, and I was really leaning in on these methods, leaning on them to do a lot of work, and I … “Why do I keep gravitating towards these particular methods?”

So, I don’t know how familiar you are with these. If you’re not, Tris, which we practice today, pre-mortem, or crapstorm. What all of these have in common is this idea of inverted thinking. So, you’re going towards the opposite.

I actually changed the activity a little bit today, because it was very similar to Karen’s. But, hopefully, that adaptation is even better. So, yeah. If you’re not familiar with this, Tris is a liberating structure. You’re trying to come up with the worst possible outcome. A pre-mortem, I think it comes from Gamestorming. I used it a lot at my design agency. You’re trying to imagine something died, something failed, why did it fail. So, you’re really exploring that failure before you explore success.
And crapstorm is just, “Let’s get all the bad ideas out on the table. Get the bad ideas out,” and it brings in a little bit of silliness. And I think that’s why I was gravitating towards it, because the lightness that it brings in in the beginning, hopefully, carries over when you do go into the direction you want everyone to go into.

It also forces your participants out of their typical cognitive patterns, and if you have participants where there is a strong fear of criticism, or rejection of their ideas, this is a great one to start with. It’s a safer exercise to get started.

All right. So, we’re going to start, and we’re going to do a little twist. We’re a group of facilitators. What is something we can design? Oh, I know. We can design the world’s best meeting. We’re all here. We have so much experience. Let’s do that together.

Let’s design the world’s best meeting. Let’s design the world’s worst meeting. And we’ll go the other way.
This prompt is a little broad. It’s pretty broad, and as experienced facilitators, I think you can hone in on very specific aspects of, “What makes a meeting poor? What makes facilitation poor?” As we already did in the last session.
So, I’ve pulled out some of the nuggets that maybe I’ve heard in the last activity that we did with Karen, and we’re going to explore those in a solo activity to start with.

Okay. So, everyone get your Post-Its and markers ready. I’m going to do the first one with you. I’m going to show you a series of pre-written prompts like what you see above me. And you’re going to answer them. These are inspired by Karen’s session.

Now I already did the twist part. So, you don’t have to twist these. You’re simply going to answer the prompts. Using markers and Post-Its as a solo activity, I’d like you to generate ideas, as many ideas as possible for each prompt, writing one idea per Post-It.

Now, like I said, I’ll do this first one with you. How might we provide unclear communication, and really create that confusion among our participants?

We could whisper the instructions like the Telephone Game, and go around the table until everyone has the clear instructions. We could get really silly, and give directions using whale noises.

All right. So, you get the idea. We’re going to move fast, we’re going to go through four prompts. You’re going to have two minutes per prompt. Again, one idea per sticky.

Are you ready? And away we go.

All right. Moving onto prompt two, ah, oops. How might you avoid conflict, and difficult conversations altogether?
All right. Onto number three. How might you create a space that encourages silence and non-participation? How can you ensure there is no participation?

Okay. Let’s move onto the last one. Cutting this one a little short. How might you ensure your personal opinions influence the group’s decisions?

Okay. What we’re going to do is some table sharing. So, for your table sharing, I want you to look through your pile of ideas. You have so many stickies in front of you. That is a mountain.

And I want you to pick two. Now I want you to pick two of the most twisted ideas, the Cher-worthy ideas, the most audacious that you feel like contributing to your table.

So, once you have your two Post-Its selected, hold them up in your hands, and that signals to your table that you’re ready to share. When everyone at your table has their two up, then you can go ahead and start sharing. We’re going to have about 10 minutes to share at your tables.

Speaker 2:
Across all four questions, or two-

Speaker 1:
You can pick two across all four questions. Great clarity.

Now we’ll probably have time to share more. Just being honest. But I want, at least, two per person. So, everyone has an opportunity to contribute. And when your table is ready, begin.

All right. How was that? It didn’t take long for the laughter. The indicators of delight were there.
Okay. I’m going to twist the cap on this radical act. I want to ensure you’ve been given the opportunity to practice the actual twisting part of taking something, and then what is the opposite prompt?

And so, what we’re going to do to practice that is do you remember the third drawing prompt that I gave you? The challenge, what facilitation challenge are you looking to overcome in 2025?

So, I would like you to take two Post-Its, just two, lay them side-by-side, and we’re going to write our facilitation challenge for 2025.

So, here’s some examples. It could be really simple. Maybe your meetings aren’t starting on time. You want your Zoom participants more engaged. Or something loftier, creating a safe space for experimentation and learning.

Now to twist it, you can twist it any way you want to, but you’re really trying to find what is the opposite of that goal? So, here is the opposite. You can just usually change one word.

Or you can be a little more specific, if there’s a specific maybe aspect you want to change. So, create a safe space for experimentation becomes demonstrate it’s not okay to make mistakes.

This is your goal. You can do as you wish to twist it, but really trying to find what is the opposite of that?

So, I’ll give you not a lot of time, just two minutes, and I want you to write down your goal, and create a twisted version of your goal.

All right. We’re going to move on from the twist. Thank you for playing that. Actually, before we move on, I do want to say the reason that I love the twist is because, and I think I said this earlier, ultimately, when you do move the group towards the direction you want them to go, we went this way, and this created some lightness, it got a little silly, but, well, one, the conversations are more richer, because you can draw on what they learned when they went that way, but also all that lightness, all that trust that you built among the tables carries over into the next exercise.

All right. Let’s move on to creative connections. Now the two Post-Its you have at your table, the twisted opposite version, I don’t care about that anymore, you can throw that away, crumple it up, move it somewhere else, I want you to focus on your facilitation challenge for 2025 for this next activity.

So, creative connections. I first learned about this, or experienced this, in art school. Or maybe from Bob Ross. I don’t know what came first, but the idea of happy accidents. “Oops. I splattered the paint here,” and, “Oh, it’s really cool.”
Like, you can look at something more objectively, and go, “Oh, yeah. I actually want that now.” Or, in my case, I was more graphic. So, I’d be accidentally aligning graphics, and I’d realize I created something way cooler than I ever planned.
And so, that’s what we’re going to practice today, creative connections. It comes from this concept of lateral thinking. I Googled lateral thinking, I read a lot of descriptions of lateral thinking. It’s a hard concept to understand.

The easiest way that I found explaining this to my team was explaining a person digging. So, if you imagine … And, again, it’s the difference between … So, lateral thinking versus logical thinking is if you imagine someone digging a hole, they’re using their logical brain, and they’re connecting ideas that are very closely connected in their brain. It’s taking the shortest neuropathway. They’re things that already go together and make sense. And they’re digging that hole deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

Now lateral thinking is choosing not to dig deeper. Choosing to dig over here, and see what comes up, and then choosing to dig over here, and see what comes up.

Our brain doesn’t like to do that. It’s illogical. They’re not as closely connected in our brain. So, we have to coax it to do that, to make these connections that don’t typically go together.

And so, one of the ways we’re going to do that is … Oh, let me tell you an example I did with my team. This was fun. We used Tarot connections.

Speaker 3:
Yes.

Speaker 1:
Picking Tarot cards, and, again, this wasn’t just for ideation. This was just a team conversation around team dynamics, and issues that came up. But we used Tarot. There’s a GPT Tarot AI reader.

And you can even input the subject matter you’re talking about, and you get a pretty good reading on the Tarot card you drew, and the subject matter. And we use that as inspiration. It started different conversations. We thought about different areas we maybe never would have taken the conversation down before.

We are going to practice this today. Not with Tarot. Sorry to disappoint. Not with Tarot, or not using GPT AI. Instead, we’re going to use metaphor cards. And I have these at your tables in envelopes. These metaphor cards vary. Some are nouns, are some, like, professional roles, some are actions, all sorts of random metaphors.

And we’re going to help, we’re going to use these metaphors to help solve our challenge, your facilitation challenge that you have in front of you today.

So, you all have your personal facilitation challenge. What you’re going to do is take that challenge, and try and relate it to one of the metaphors, these random metaphors that you’re going to select. And you’re going to allow that.
Each metaphor card does have a little bit of a description. So, if you aren’t familiar with that thing, you can use that to help guide you in understanding what that metaphor card is, or you don’t even have to use it. Maybe you have your own ideas about what taking care of plants means to you.

Not only will we write our idea, we’re going to draw our idea too. We’re going back to drawing. Now the first time I saw this, the first time I was truly stunned actually by using metaphor cards, I was working with a nonprofit, and the CEO, or founder of the nonprofit, she was having trouble with her training program, just a heavy subject matter, post-partum depression, and wanted to just rebuild her training program, knew there was a problem there. So, that was her challenge.
And she drew a metaphor card, and got taking care of plants. And it was really amazing to watch her work, and explain this, but she pulled the metaphor card, and she came up with an idea.

She drew three potted plants, one little potted plant with a sprout, a medium potted plant that just needed some watering, and some maintenance, and then a bigger potted plant that needed pruning, or something.
And her idea was these levels of training. “Oh, well, we’re going to start with this really simple foundation training just like when you’re potting a plant, and you need to add the soil, and prepare the groundwork to get it to grow.” And then you know what? “We need a regular maintenance training. So, that we can bring in all the new information that we’ve learned recently, and really reinforce these ideas.”

And so, that’s, like, just watering a plant weekly. But then every so often, about once a year, we need a big reset. Things change within the organization, so, just like repotting a plant, we’re going to have that big reset training.
And just like that, she just rattled off her new training program inspired by this metaphor. And I was just like, “Who are you? Did you have this idea before?” “No. I just thought of it from this metaphor card.”

So, it’s pretty fascinating. Now not every idea is going to be a winner, and that is the point. So, we’re going to go through some rounds where you’re going to be able to choose different metaphors to help inspire your idea.
All right. Are you ready? So, we’re going to set it up like this. You have your challenge next to you. Now I’d like you to take your metaphor cards, and spread them out into the middle of the table. Like, a goldfish pond. Cards face-down. So, everybody can just choose one. Like, a goldfish pond.

All right. Everyone, choose your first metaphor.
All right. Now with your first metaphor, you’re going to use it to come up with an idea to solve your facilitation challenge. You will write your idea on a Post-It, but you will also draw it.

All right. We’re going to go pretty fast here. You’re going to get two minutes for a prompt. Your first two minutes starts now.
All right, everyone. Pass your card to the left. Pass it to the left.

And your two minutes on this new metaphor starts now.
Okay. Two minutes is up on that idea. For your next one, pass your card to the left.

Okay. Wrapping up this round, we’re going to do one more round of this. For this one, throw your cards back in that fishpond, and go fish. Pick any card you want, any card you want, and this will be your last round.

Okay. Pencils down, drawings down. Let’s debrief a little bit. I’m so interested to learn a little bit about your ideas, and, well, your facilitation challenge first of all, and then how these metaphor cards inspired a creative idea.

Were any of these ideas unexpected? Hopefully. Anybody have any click moments, or ahas?

Speaker 4:
Over here.

Speaker 1:
Yes. If you are compelled to share one idea, raise your hand.

Speaker 5:
First of all, I’d like to say, “Thanks, Skye, I appreciate that.” Putting me on blast over here. I did exclaim in the middle of this, I was like, “Oh, shit.”

I’m a notorious hater of cards. I think they’re weak and lazy. And so, I was coming into this with like, “Man, what is this nonsense?” To be fair, you’ve been the best of the whole thing, by the way, but this exercise. And your stupid-ass cards gave me, like, four ideas that I did not think I could generate.

And also I thought my problem was similar to others, which is facilitation I think is undervalued. It’s, like, where the magic is, but you get paid more for strategy, and reports, and all this. And I saw other people say that.
And so, I was like, “There’s no way this is going to work for that challenge.” And it seemed to have generated some things I didn’t think I could do. So, thank you very much.

Speaker 1:
Awesome. Very cool. Thank you.

Speaker 6:
So, my challenge was … Is this on? Oh, my challenge was pretty generic, full sessions of engaged people. And the different cards helped me break out of the container that I thought sessions needed to be in to think differently about what is the user looking for? Because the cards were all about giving the user more agency over how they interacted with a thing.
And it was a real good flip for me in thinking about just what does a session mean even?

Speaker 1:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Right behind you.

Speaker 7:
The Duolingo app helped me think about actually gamifying my client’s pathway through what I’m offering them. I’m really resistant to structure, and I want to play and be in the creative divergent space. And so, actually gamifying it, like, having a Candy Land-like thing that they move through is something that I’m going to do.

And then I want to mention the alarm clock. Convergence excellence, like, excellence in convergence thinking is something I want to embody this year. And I’m just going to set an alarm halfway through the session as my convergence alarm-

Speaker 1:
[inaudible 00:42:35].

Speaker 7:
… and it’s like, “Hey. It’s time to start whittling down. We need to get out of idea land, and put some stuff on paper.”

Speaker 1:
Great. Awesome.

Speaker 7:
There you go.

Speaker 8:
I love this, because I’ve done creative problem solving force connections, which is a group … Or it can be a group, or individual activity, but there are not all these prompts.

And what I really appreciated about the three different prompts is I didn’t take it at face value and go in a convergent kind of thinking. This created divergent thinking for me to get me into a different frame of mind rather than simply a, like, “Let’s play.” It was, “Let’s play and …”

Speaker 1:
Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 9:
I really like this too, because sometimes you need something sticky to get people excited. So, that they remember, and so forth. By using this metaphor, you can frame it at the beginning of the workshop, and they can visually see like, “We’re going to start with a lot of little baby ideas, and then get bigger, and then weed, and then really come up with these big ideas.”

It’s just something to visualize. Like, the different sections of a workshop potentially.

Speaker 1:
Thank you for sharing.

Speaker 10:
I’m stuck in the messy middle. Over here on your right.

Speaker 1:
Messy middle? Okay.

Speaker 10:
My problem is making more clearer lasting decisions in an executive leadership forum. And my anti-pattern is just talk and don’t make decisions, and we’re stuck there right now.

What was interesting with the cards was I was trying to map … Like, I had a beehive, and I had a sandcastle, and a couple of others, and it was interesting to try to figure out, “Well, what is what?” Between the metaphor and my problem space. Like, in the sandcastle case, I was like, “Well, okay. Maybe the decision is the sandcastle,” which was a natural conclusion.
But then I’m like, “Oh, but then destruction.” So, the ocean taking it away is actually the communication, and the rollout, and all that. So, that was an interesting decomposition.

For beehive, I’m like, “I’m not sure.” I happen to be a beekeeper. So, I’m way biased on this one. I’m like, “Who are the drones and who are the queen …” But it was just interesting to try to use the idea spaces and the metaphor to map them to the problem space, because that brought in a whole bunch of other things I didn’t think about in the problem space. So, helpful.

Speaker 1:
Great. Thank you. And I use this as a solo activity. Primarily, because this is your challenge, and you’ve very familiar with it already. This is much more successful, if you can really understand the problem space. At least, in my experience.
And so, if I had you all just do one problem you weren’t as bought in on, or had the background knowledge, the ideas would have been a little flatter.
I think we had … Right there.

Speaker 11:
The metaphor helped me, I guess, because, visually, I was able to come up with specific behaviors related to that metaphor. And I’ll give you an example.

Speaker 1:
Okay.

Speaker 11:
Like, one of my cards was Uber ride-sharing app. And something on the card prompted me to write, “Request on demand.” And it was like, “Hello. I need a website.” Like, “How would people even ask me to facilitate something if they don’t know where to reach me?”

So, it was, like, that’s a very specific behavior, and then it might even lead to more behaviors I could do to get closer to that. So, I like the metaphor. It’s, like, it took the onus off me being the creative thinker, and just letting me think through the lens of Uber, “What are they doing that is replicable?”

Speaker 1:
I like that perspective. A couple more or … Whoever.

Speaker 12:
I got one over here. I, specifically, really liked drawing the pieces, because it shifts your mindset. I think if I were to do it again, I would almost draw it first, and then start putting words to it, because I think that takes your brain to a different space.

And, yeah. It helped me get to some solutions here, specifically, with the beehive, and the different compartments that are within it.

Speaker 1:
Awesome. Yeah. I agree with you there about the drawing. Yes.

Speaker 13:
They should have pushed-

Speaker 14:
I guess my question is how do you create these-

Speaker 1:
Yeah.

Speaker 14:
… prompts?

Speaker 1:
Yeah.

Speaker 14:
Because they’re very valuable clearly.

Speaker 1:
Well, I stole some of them. Yeah. I don’t know. Through participating in, I don’t know, Design-A-Thons, and things like that, there’s a couple of them I remembered, and then I just took the themes like, “Oh, this is an app. What are some other apps people are familiar with that are unique?”

So, then I created more, or, “This is a role or a job.” I also sometimes use ChatGPT. “Come up with prompts.” Usually, they’re very generic, and I have to edit a lot but …
Yes. In the back.

Speaker 15:
So, I’m going to try and connect three talks together. So, bear with me as I try and land this triple axel. So, I started off with a fear from Skye’s talk, which is my goal, what I want to tackle in 2025 is confidently leading a session without my more senior team members there. I can lead a session within there, fine, but I get nervous if I’m the most senior person in the room.

And so, linking it to the museum habit, or the museum card, I was thinking about the only way that I’ve been able to establish a habit for working out is by taking a picture every time I do it, and that’s, like, the museum.
And so, I’m thinking with this, “What if I had this area of all of the places where I’ve gotten nice feedback on my facilitation?” So, that, number one, I can show that to clients, and, number two, I can show myself evidence that I am actually a competent facilitator.

And just because the senior people aren’t there doesn’t mean they’re gone.

Speaker 1:
Love that. Love that. Thank you. All right. We are going to wrap up there. Thank you, everybody.
So, in closing, and as you practice these delight-ers, I started with something easy, drawing, and then moved it into some more advanced ones like the twist, or the metaphors.

But I want you to think about how these can be applied to any of your facilitated sessions. It doesn’t have to just be even for idea generation.

Now I want to leave you with this, thank you for showing up to delight your participants, especially, when it feels like there’s a lot of separation and conflict. What you’re doing to bring people together, lift them up, that is truly a radical act.

Thank you.

JJ’s Radical Acts of Delight offered powerful tools for facilitators to make their sessions more engaging and memorable. Whether you’re designing a workshop, meeting, or retreat, his approach to creating delight will help you foster a more dynamic and participatory experience for all.

The post Radical Acts of Delight appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit, Skye Idehen-Osunde led an empowering session titled Building Trust and Credibility: Creating Psychological Safety in Facilitation. Known for her dynamic approach and expertise in fostering inclusive spaces, Skye’s session captivated attendees and offered practical insights into facilitating with authority and authenticity.

Skye began by energizing the room with a fun icebreaker, inviting everyone to stand up and move to the beat of a song. The lighthearted activity set a positive tone for the session and got participants engaged right from the start. Once the group was warmed up, Skye introduced the session’s main theme: how facilitators can build psychological safety and credibility within any group they lead.

With a focus on practical techniques, Skye guided participants through strategies to create spaces where everyone feels seen, heard, and respected. She emphasized the importance of being vulnerable and authentic as a facilitator—acknowledging when you don’t have all the answers and ensuring the room feels safe for all perspectives.

Skye’s session was rooted in the idea that credibility and psychological safety go hand in hand. She shared her personal experiences with pop-up rules, ground rules established at the beginning of a session to foster openness and trust. These simple agreements, she explained, create a foundation for vulnerability, inclusion, and active participation.

Throughout the session, Skye led participants in several interactive activities that demonstrated these principles. One of the most engaging activities, Likes and Dislikes, asked attendees to find someone from a different table, share something personal, and connect over their mutual interests. This low-stakes interaction not only helped people break the ice but also established the kind of environment where vulnerability and connection could thrive.

Skye also stressed the need for facilitators to be mindful of the group’s energy and to adjust their approach when necessary. Whether working with internal or external groups, facilitators must understand the dynamics at play and ensure that everyone feels empowered to speak up, especially when difficult or sensitive topics arise.

A powerful moment of the session involved an exercise where participants reflected on their own fears and insecurities as facilitators. Skye encouraged the group to write down their fears and then symbolically “toss” them away. This activity not only allowed individuals to acknowledge their concerns but also served as a reminder that facilitators must continually work to release these fears in order to show up as their best selves.

The session concluded with a Safety Net Pledge, where participants made a collective commitment to uphold psychological safety and credibility in their own work. Skye reinforced the idea that building safety is an ongoing process that requires reflection, adaptation, and a willingness to grow.

Skye’s session offered invaluable tools and insights for facilitators at any level. Her dynamic energy, combined with practical strategies for building trust and safety, left attendees with a deep understanding of how to create environments where everyone can thrive.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Skye’s Session:

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Thank you all. So I need everybody to stand up. Because it’s day one, I need you to do a little dance. Raise the roof. Do what you got to do. Let’s go. Y’all know this song, right? I feel like I need more energy. What’s your name? Danny? Danny. Come here, Danny. Danny… Danny… There you go. Oh. Oh, you out dancing me, Danny? I love it. All right. Thank you all for humoring me. Thank you, Steven. Give a round of applause to the DJ. Thank you all so much.

Again, my name is Skye Idehen-Osunde. I’ll be on stage, I’ll be down here, I’ll be walking throughout the crowd. But I’m so excited to be here tonight really talking about the safety net, what it means to build psychological safety and credibility as a facilitator. Anyone need that? A lot of us are internal facilitators. Some of us are external facilitators and consultants. And so there needs to be an air of what it means to walk in this space with authority and own it. Okay? So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

One of the things I want to be able to do is just give you an opportunity to get to know folks at your table and in the space. And so we’ll be doing a lot of interactive activities. And so I would want us to kick off with an opener, which I like to call likes and dislikes. And what I would love for you to do is I want you to get up and find someone at a different table, because you’re going to be at your table a lot. All day, right? So I want you to be able to interact and get to know someone else in this space. It might also help with your bingo card, like take notes, [inaudible 00:01:49]. But I want you to just introduce yourself, your name, your current role, what you’re doing, what brought you here, and what you’re hoping to get out of the session. And one thing I want you to share is with one like and one dislike. So an example, which I’ll share in the next slide when we come back is one of my likes, I really love anime.

Lily:
Hey.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Sailor Moon is my jam. Okay? Inuyasha? Come on, we’ll talk about it. So I love anime. That’s one of the things I love that you would just not assume to me. I’ve been to Comic Con, like I just love anime, okay? And one of my dislikes is, has anyone heard of trypophobia? What’s your name?

Lily:
Lily.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Lily. What is that?

Lily:
[inaudible 00:02:38].

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Trypophobia. That’s a fear of holes, clusters. Anyone look at like an ant pile or honeycomb or speckle on the ceiling and you get goosebumps and immediately you have stop looking at it? Yeah, that’s me. That’s me. So that’s one thing I just don’t like, a lot of clusters of things. It’s just not my thing. So what I want you to do is I want you to go ahead and stand up and find someone in a different part of the room and go ahead and follow the prompts. You’ll have five minutes.

I’d love to hear one or two pairs. What’s one thing you learned about the person you just met? Who would like to share?

EJ  Peterschick:
EJ  Peterschick from the Seattle area. I got the joy of talking to Tamara from the county area, Arizona. We were talking about, as Eric alluded to, the need for this skill set in the world more than ever, and by many names. And so we were actually talking about ways that you can bring your acumen and room facilitation to the political space and maybe being a trusted advisor, consultant to people in that sphere. You don’t necessarily have to do everything, but we have the skill. So I’m pretty excited to see where Tamara is going to go with it.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Alright. [inaudible 00:04:15] Tamara’s way. [inaudible 00:04:15] Yeah, clap it up. Clap it up. Thank you for sharing. Do we have another pair? Yes. Galen, right?

Galen:
Galen.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Galen. Heywood?

Galen:
Heygood.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Heygood. Hey, good.

Galen:
So we got Annie Love there. So Annie’s loves with Annie Love. And I thought it was an interesting contrast. The thing that she loves to do is climb mountains and go to great heights. And you know those kind of people are ultra aggressive. No losing, not on my watch, but yet the things she came to this conference for was to become a better listener, so I think that’s [inaudible 00:04:52].

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing. All right, so again, we want to continue building connections, getting to know each other, utilizing the bingo cards to use that as a breaker to engage in conversation. And so we’re asking for you to be open to that through our time together today. A little bit about me. My name is Skye. I do facilitation in my business that I’ve had for four years. I love what I do. I tend to work around creating psychologically safe spaces and ensuring that everyone that I interact with feel heard, valued, and celebrated. I’ve worked with a lot of great companies, lots of corporate, lots of non-profit. And so, one of the things I love about facilitation is that I don’t necessarily need to be the expert at the company or the work, but I need to be an expert at what it needs to bring teams together to make sure that people feel safe and heard and valued in interactions with me coming in as an external facilitator.

Some of the things again that I like, dislike, and get to be a part of the conversation is I love food, obviously. I love to travel. So if anyone’s looking for wish fairy, like the cheapest way to travel anywhere, come find me to work for a travel startup. I love community and my faith is really the foundation of everything I do. Dislikes, I don’t like anything from the sea. Okay? Don’t ask me if I like shrimp. Don’t ask me if I eat sushi. No, none of the above. Okay? Again, honeycombs, butterflies, birds, anything that flutters, we need a separate place. Just don’t let it be around me. Okay? You’re going to see me doing a little dip and a dive if I see birds or anything coming towards me. Okay?

So on today’s journey, we’re going to go ahead and talk about what it means to really create a safe space. So we’re going to talk about the importance and the purpose of pop-up rules. We’re going to talk about what it means to define psychological safety. We’re going to talk about what the safety net is and how credibility intertwines in all of that. And then we’re all going to end with a safety net pledge. Sound good?

All right, so pop-up rules are really an opportunity to create a safe space in a short, intentional way. And so I can create a pop-up for this particular session. You can have pop-up or ground rules or agreements for the day. And so for this particular session, I really want us to be in alignment and on the same page of being fully present. I know we’re using phones, all of that, but you need take a call, step out, no checking in on baby boy in the middle of the session. So really trying to be as present as possible, respecting all the voices and all perspectives. Really this idea, I don’t know if folks are on social media, this idea of listen and we don’t judge, right? So this is a no-judgment zone. So again, being open to hearing all those perspectives and when you’re hearing different perspectives and different voices, making sure that we’re not judging.
Vulnerability is the new cool. I love it. I love when people are able to be their most authentic selves. Going into, leaning authentically into this session and our time together. If you don’t know something, say you don’t know it. I’m a facilitator. If you ask me something I don’t know, I’m going to be like, “That’s a great question. I don’t have the answer for that, but I will follow up with you.” And so sometimes it’s really important for us to really be vulnerable and be transparent and lean into that fully. And then SpongeBob “facilitator” Pants. Okay? So just be sponge, just soak it in. Okay? I wish I had a SpongeBob outfit. I would’ve really put it on for this presentation, but I didn’t think it was appropriate. So that’s why I wore yellow. See what I did there?

All right. So are there any other pop-up rules that you feel like could be included or that you would utilize in spaces where you’re facilitating? Is it Lily?

Lily:
Lily?

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Lily. Go for it.

Lily:
I’d like to add to the we listen and we don’t judge self-editing. So don’t judge yourself, like come authentic, come vulnerable. Don’t edit what you’re going to say if you perceive you’ll be judges.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Yeah, that’s good. Can we snap to that? Because I think sometimes as facilitators, we are so much in our heads that maybe in the middle of a session we might’ve said the wrong thing or that phrase didn’t come out correctly or your slides messed up and you’re like in your head trying to be present and you’re like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I made that mistake.” And you’re hearing that talk throughout your time. And so we want to make sure that we’re releasing that and that we’re leaning into it is okay to make mistakes. It is okay to show humanity and humility in the way you show up as a presenter. That’s how you connect. That aids in how you are building credibility.

All right, so as we look at this really blurry picture, what do you see here? What do you see here? Look really close. If you squint your eyes, you could see it. What do you see here? Just shout it out. Frustration.

Audience member:
Chaos.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Chaos. Conflict.

Audience member:
Out of focus.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Out of focus. Look, you see what I did there? I didn’t do that on purpose, but I see how you came and saved me there. Thank you.

Speaker 6:
Angst.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Angst. Tell me about angst.

Speaker 6:
I’m looking at that guy in the back there. He looks miserable. Just not having a good time, not enjoying the time with this group.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Just angst. If you look at it really closely, it kind of looks like Eric. I did that on purpose too. I saw the picture, I said, “That’s the one.” What else are we seeing?

Audience member:
Laptop. Stand still.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Laptop. Stand still. Unengaged.

Audience member:
Unused sticky notes.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Unused sticky notes. Overuse of sticky notes, right? What’d I hear?

Audience member:
No facilitator.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
No facilitator.

Audience member:
No eye contact.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
No eye contact.

Galen:
This is what it looked like after we traded Luca Dungeon.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
I love it. So there’s a lot that we’re seeing in this, right? So as facilitators, in order for us to really come into a space and be credible and to create a safe space, we need to be able to really understand and curate what that space and energy feels like. We need to come in with our toolkit, which we’ll do a few activities today to prepare you for what that looks like so we never get to a space like this. Because how deflating is it as a facilitator to look at a group and they’re completely unengaged or they’re not really paying attention or they’re feeling the chaos in the space?

It’s not a good feeling. And then it goes back to that negative talk in life, the self-defeating feeling of like, I’m not meeting the expectations and I’m not getting closer to the outcome that I came here for. And so we want to move to a space, again, think of this as being blurry of, again, there’s engagement, there’s joy. Going what Eric said, we want joy in this space. What are some other things you see in this?

Audience member:
Shared ideas.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Sticky notes.

Audience member:
Shared ideas.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Shared ideas.

Audience member:
Feels effective. They’re listening to each other.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Effective. Effective listening. Listening to each other.

Audience member:
Smiling.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Say it again?

Audience member:
Smiling.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Smiling.

Audience member:
Eye contact.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Eye contact, right?

Audience member:
One conversation.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
One conversation. Collaboration. I heard that in the back. And so when we’re effective at creating this safe space, when we’re effective as coming in as the expert and being very credible and making sure that we’re connecting with people in the room, and we come in with a plan and a structure of what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and how we’re going to move the group towards their outcome, you get this. Right? And so we have to come in prepared. And so we’ll talk a little bit more about why it’s required to really understand what it means to bring in the safety net. So I want to bring up, I don’t know if anyone’s seen the session labs report of facilitation. Anyone’s seen that? It’s really good.

Since I was one of the thousand people who participated in it because I just love facilitation, and the research in that is really good. So if you have not seen the session last stated facilitation report, it just came out within the week. Feel free to look at that. So as Brene Brown says, “Who we are is how we lead.” Who we are is how we lead. And it says, “I would stretch it further to say who we are is how we facilitate.” So I don’t want to get in the weeds because I also do a lot of diversity, equity and inclusion, facilitation, but how we show up a hundred percent dictates on how the room moves. So what are we bringing in? What are the biases that we’re checking at the door? What is the knowledge that we’re bringing into this space? How are we holding folks accountable to harmful behavior? It really boils down to how we operate outside of that facilitative space.
And so we want to make sure that we’re doing everything in our power to be reflective, to be self-aware, to really understand our triggers as facilitators, what are those sticky topics that you’re just fearful of or you don’t feel as comfortable with?

Really being very in tune to what that is then gives you an opportunity to then prepare for that. So what are your kryptonites? And really understanding that gives you the opportunity to then turn them into superpowers. And so you need to really understand who you are as an individual. You shape the space. As an external facilitator, internal facilitator, they’re looking to you for direction. And so when we think about that, we have to really have an understanding of what psychological safety is. So psychological safety at its core is really a shared belief that we’re creating a safe space, that we’re making sure people feel seen, valued, and heard.

And we’re doing it without judgment. We’re creating space for risk-taking, take pictures, do all the things you need to do, but we’re doing it without this air of embarrassment or fair. People at its core, when we’re bringing groups together, it’s a really special opportunity. I’ve always said this. When you go home to your dinner tables, when you go home to family holidays, gatherings, you’re likely not having really diverse conversations. And so when you have an opportunity to be in workspaces or in opportunities like this where you’re voluntarily coming in, it gives you an opportunity to stretch, to practice, to understand and hear different perspectives. And so the more you’re able to place yourself in these spaces, the more you’re going to be able to pick up the tools necessary to then inherently create those psychologically safe spaces. But again, it starts with you. If you’re not a safe person, you’re not going to be able to create a safe space. Okay?

So here’s some information on why it’s impactful. So 26% of employees feel safe to take risk without fear. Only 26%. It’s like one in four. So I want you to put yourself in this in your spaces, maybe where you’ve worked before, organizations you’ve been a part of, right? There’s probably been some hesitancy. I mean, it’s 2025, let’s be real. Woo, right? So we’re probably in spaces right now where we’re not really fully comfortable speaking up or speaking out or saying anything. We’re just kind of in observation mode right now. But there’s some people that perpetually stay in that. And so how do we reach those individuals to make sure that they feel safe enough to take risks and to have conversations or to ask the questions that they want to ask without fear of judgment.

76% of organizations have higher psychological safety and they see an increase in engagement. So that’s really important. If I feel like I belong in my organization or my team, or I’m an external facilitator and I’m creating a safe space where people are excited to just walk into the room and they’re like, “Ooh, I like this energy. I’m putting myself down. I’m fully engaged in this person,” they’re likely going to be more engaged. And so the more we can lean into that psychological safety, the easier it’s going to be for us to then show up as credible and as the leader or the expert or the authority figure in that space in that setting. Anybody got $1.6 billion in their account? I wish I did. But fear of speaking up. When we’re thinking about bottom line, when you’re going to your organizations and where you’re going to your teams, if revenue is everything, right?
Businesses will not survive without people and without the product or the service. And so if there are moments where we’re not coming together in collaborative ways where we’re talking and dialing into the bottom line, nothing is going to change. We’re going to risk losing profit and this is, again, data that shows that. So where does credibility come into play? Where does credibility come into play? I have a question. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Yes. What came first? The chicken? You sure? You sure? Well, what if the egg came first, right? It is a question. We don’t really need an answer, but it’s really this idea that they’re interwoven. It doesn’t really matter what came first. It’s the fact that you need both, whether you’re internal or external.

And so what I would love for us to do is I want you to be able to talk at your table, amongst your table. I want you to be able to think about your role, right? Show of hands, how many people work in corporations, organizations? Just so I know. Okay. How many folks are consultants? Cool, cool. How many people are kind of like, “I’m trying to figure it out”? Okay. All right. Anybody just start consulting? Okay. Clap it up.

Okay, anybody get a promotion to do more facilitation at work? Okay, clap it up. We got to go both sides, right? But what I want you to do is I want you to have table talk, and I again, want you to have toolkits that you can utilize. And so a lot of these activities that I’m going to do, I’m going to give you alternatives. And so you’re able to maybe do a 1-2-4-All structure or a TRIZ, which is a liberating structure. I don’t know if folks who know that, but a 1-2-4-All is that you have solo time, paired time, and four people kind of go into a small group. And then you have group discussion, and that’s timed. And that allows for diverse perspectives. It gives you time to have some solo thoughts. So you’re going to the group prepared with some ideas. And TRIZ really talks about this idea of what’s the worst possible thing that you can do as a facilitator to hinder psychological safety?

So it’s like you could be talking to me and be like, “Hey, stop talking.” I’m like, oh my God, no one else is going to talk after that. That’s like the worst thing you can do as a facilitator. So those are some examples of things you can do. But for our time together right now, I’d love for you to take about a minute to really do some self-reflection of what are some small actions you can take to strengthen psychological safety while also building credibility in your work, in your role. What are some things that you can do that you want to do, you have a desire to do in your role? And while we do that, Steven’s going to play a little light music, and then we’re going to transition into table discussion for about four minutes. So I’ll let you know when we transition for that. Okay? So your minute starts now.

So I would love to hear from a few tables on maybe what’s one thing that came up in discussion? Who would like to share? I’d love to hear from one of the back tables. Or the front, depending on where you’re standing. Yeah?

Harry:
I’ll give one example that was pretty interesting.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
What’s your name?

Harry:
Oh, my name is Harry.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Harry. All right.

Harry:
One thing that was really interesting was the idea of, I think it was bringing metaphors into the play of describing things in ways that people can relate to really easily. So it was asking if we were to look at our challenge currently as a diamond and be able to flip our perspective, allowing someone to think about flipping their perspective and the idea of holding a diamond or moving around and seeing it from someone’s new lenses just kind of allows people to feel more comfortable with the idea of these more general terms that we may say, like wear a new hat or flip a perspective. It just allows people to kind of visualize. I think that was one takeaway that I had from the group.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
I love that. You have to speak in the language where people are going to be able to understand it. And so if someone’s a visual learner, I love metaphors. And so usually when someone’s explaining something in a metaphoric way, I’m like, “Oh my God, I could totally see you in the boat, dude.” Thank you for doing that. So it helps for depending on who you’re working with in explaining it that way. So thank you for sharing. Who else would like to share? Love someone from this table. Let’s hear from your table. What was something that came up in your group? Oh, Erin, that back table. Mm-hmm. Y’all got saved. They were like, “Crap. They came back here.”

Speaker 8:
One thing that was shared here was just making sure that everyone in the room from the beginning understands that it’s also their responsibility to hold up that safety net.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Come on. Wait, say that again. Say that again.

Speaker 8:
That everyone in the room is responsible for, what’d you say? We bring the net, but everyone in the room is responsible for holding it up.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Okay. Put that on a shirt. Thank you. Everybody is responsible for holding it up. Thank you for sharing. Again, this is just a really good activity to hear different perspectives because you just never know what angle someone is looking at something or how they’re processing or understanding or learning. And it’s also a really great way to understand what people want to improve in. So if we’re talking about one of the actions you want to take to strengthen, that means that it’s essentially a kryptonite or area of growth. And so it’s really good to understand that about your colleagues. So thank you all for doing that.

So again, just to highlight that psychological safety and credibility really are intertwined with each other. So credibility builds on psychological safety, psychological safety strengthens credibility. And without psychological safety, credibility erodes. So we really, as facilitators really need to understand the spaces that we’re going into, understanding who’s in the room, understanding the outcomes, understanding the purpose of the space before we even get there, and then how do we make sure that we’re showing up as the expert and as that credible, reliable individual.

And so I want us to really talk about what it is to have the safety net in action. And that really talks about how do we prepare. How do we prepare the net? And so when you’re thinking about preparing for the net, I mean there’s so many different ways to think about that, but it’s like all of the things you want to do before you go to the session and using partners and technology and people to really understand what you’re walking into. And so it’s good to learn about the group’s climate. So you can do that by doing surveys, one-on-one interviews, really understanding why even why am I here? Especially as an external facilitator, what are your pain points? Why did you reach out to me? What are you looking to do? What are you looking to change? So really understanding their pain points, the challenges that they’re currently going through as an organization, as a team, as a group, it’s so important because then you know what they’re challenged with. And then you can come in with the solution. Okay?

You want to establish ground rules that promote inclusivity and trust. Going back to those pop-up rules, a really great way that I’ve seen, it’s like if you already have established teams or established groups, you’re like, “Well, how do I do that? We’ve been meeting for a year already.” Right? It’s time to have a reset. “Hey, guys, I went to this really great opportunity and I learned a lot about facilitation, and I’d love for us to do a reset as a team.” And so, one of the things I’d like for us to do is reestablish our purpose while we’re meeting, while we’re getting together. And I’d also like to reestablish what it means to meet in a safe way. And so I’d like to reestablish collaboratively as a team, as a group, what are some ground rules that are going to ensure safety, that’s going to ensure we feel valued as a team, that’s going to ensure that we’re learning together and we’re not working in silos.

Whatever that pain point is, the more you know, the more you can then curate what those ground rules or those pop-up rules that it’s going to satisfy and serve the group that you’re working with. And so the more you know before, the better. And lastly, it’s designing activities that encourage both divergence, so like opening up the conversation and then moving into that zone where you’re just collecting as much information as possible, but then bringing the group together towards decisive action. There’s no way you’re going to move a group towards decisive action if you do not know what their pain points are and why they’re even meeting. And there’s sometimes you don’t even need to meet. That’s another conversation. But really understanding what that purpose is and knowing that information before you step into the room or before you go into that Zoom or Microsoft Teams or whatever that platform is, the more you know, the better.

Everybody with me? Awesome. Next is really how do we strengthen the net? So what does that look like during the interaction, during the session? Start with low stakes participation? So the likes and dislikes, those openers, the bingo. This is a great passive. I love passive programming. So this is passive programming. You don’t necessarily have to have any lifting of this. It’s on the group. So you create the ground rule that says, “Hey, I want you to be fully invested in this opportunity. There’s a program. Take advantage of the bingo card so you can meet however many boxes here are people.” And so that gives you an opportunity to have some passive programming. One activity that I love to do, which I’ve shared with a few in this room, is when I do full day workshops, during lunch, there’s always programming going on. I don’t just let them hang out and hibernate.

No, we’re not doing that. So I like to do intentional interactions. And so just a simple list of questions that are specific to the group I’m working with. But sometimes people are awkward, especially if the group doesn’t know each other. They want to not be programmed to the entire day. But there’s moments where you can have some interactive or passive programming like this or having a list of questions. Douglas gave us a box of cards yesterday of deeper talk, like cards that you can bring in. So there’s a lot of things you can do, again, to create that connection that allows for people to feel safe with one another. The more I feel connected, the more safe I feel with you. And as a facilitator coming in, whether I’m internal or external, I’m bringing these resources to you. And as the group starts to build that space, guess who they’re going to attribute that to? Because they probably weren’t doing it before.

And they’re going to look at you as a facilitator, like thank you so much for being the solve to what’s been happening with our team, which again, builds credibility. Next, you want to monitor. It comes easier for some folks, that intuitiveness of when the group shifts in energy. Or it’s like, “Ooh, somebody just said a crazy comment.” And then you saw all the faces kind of shift over here. And so sometimes you have to pause as a facilitator to call out, speak to, address in a very nice and inclusive way, what just happened in the space. So it might be, “That was a really, really complex question you just asked, and I felt like the group shifted. Are there other thoughts around that question?” Or, “Wow, I didn’t realize your company is going through layoffs right now and it feels heavy in the room now that we’re talking about goal setting. Tell me what’s going on for the group.”

And this is real life examples. I’ve done that. “Well, we don’t want to talk about goals. We don’t know if we’re going to be here next week.” And I’m like, “That’s valid. Let’s talk about it. Now, let’s figure out how we can make some goals for the organization, but also for you personally in the event that you are transitioning. How are you going to be ready?” And so the more you know about what’s going on in this space, the more comfortable you are in really pulling those things out, the easier it’s going to be for you throughout the session to continue to navigate and adapt to what’s happening in the space and in the room.

And lastly, I want you to be able to use nonverbal cues that goes back into that intuitiveness and verbal affirmations to really reinforce psychological safety. So shoutouts to Kat, who’s going to be doing a presentation. Kat, wave to the folks. She’s going to be doing a presentation tomorrow around nonverbal communication and listening. But it’s really important for us to really understand that and to strengthen that muscle and that skill set because a lot happens between the lines in sessions, the little looks that happen, or you have an executive that walks into the room and everyone sits up, right? Like, “Oh, the CEO walked in.” And no one now is being authentic and everyone’s being politically correct.
And so I’m the facilitator. I’m going to be like, “Hey, CEO, thank you so much for coming and supporting, but I need you to go because I need this room to move towards decisive decision-making without the power dynamic influence that just popped up.” And so sometimes we really need to understand what that looks like. And one of the things I also like to say too is as you’re presenting, be mindful of how you engage with the group. So someone might make a comment and you’re like, “Man, that was really great. Thank you so much for contributing that.” And then the next person makes a comment, it’s like, “Thanks.”

So you want to be even keel in how you, again, that contributes to the safety of the space because now that person might feel, “Well, I thought I had a really good contribution to the meeting and I just got a thanks, and we just kept it moving.” And so making sure that we’re acknowledging folks. There’s even keel in our responses. I’m very high energy all the time, if you haven’t noticed. But I also like to make sure that when I feel someone’s being vulnerable or I see them challenging themselves, I say that. I say, “Thank you for being vulnerable in this moment.” I say, “Thank you for sharing,” a lot. Probably said it like 30 times. I don’t know if anyone’s written that down, but that’s one of the things I like to do because it takes courage to speak up in a group setting. Especially, do y’all know each other?

Exactly, right? So it takes courage to be able to speak in a larger group. And so being able to honor those folks who are speaking up. But then there’s ways in which I want to make sure that everyone is contributing. So there’s people who don’t want to raise their hand and don’t want to speak. And so that’s why there’s intentionality of making sure that you’re paired up or you’re partnered up and that you’re at least meeting one or two new people in this space before you leave in a session. So there’s intentionality behind how you make sure people feel supported, seen, and valued in and during the session.
All right. So one of the things I want to do, we will talk about how we close the session, but I just want to pop in an activity that you can do during a session that really helps to build credibility and really helps to build that safety. And so I like to call it the net of support, and it’s kind of like the trust the line activity. Anyone ever do the trust the line activity? So what I’m going to do is I’m going to ask you a series of questions that refer to psychological safety and credibility. And I want you to take note of folks who are standing up in some of the questions that I’m going to ask. I want you to make eye contact. I want you to be really aware. This is where that somatic stuff comes in. That was a lot of layers to facilitation.

Like how is your body responding in some of the questions that I ask? Is there hesitancy in even standing up? Because that also alludes to that vulnerability piece. How are you challenging yourself to step out of your comfort zone? Okay? Again, we listen and we don’t judge. There’s no judgment here, okay? I’m not also going to ask really scary questions. I feel like that’s what I’m prompting. I promise you I’m not. We’re going to keep it very light here, but in your groups as you are building. So I’ve had to do lemon squeeze conversations and lemon squeeze moments, and anyone ever have a lemon squeeze with the team? No one knows what that is? Okay? This is a higher ed. I used to work in higher ed.
So it is when you have to, the lemon is just so bitter. Everybody is just salty, bitter. Everybody’s being mean and nasty. And so we got to squeeze the lemon and turn it into lemonade because we got to move on, right? Whew. I have stories for days. I used to work at Temple University as a resident director. I had 25 RAs, I had 5,600 first year students, and I was a complex director. And the first week somebody stole a cop car. I said, “What did I sign up for?”

And so with 25 students, first, second and third year students, people dating each other, there’s just drama. This has nothing to do with the work. Stop coming to my office and gossiping about each other. We need to have a lemon squeeze. And so in that lemon squeeze, part of that is to make sure that everyone just has an understanding of who you are. And so we had really deep questions where people are like boohoo crying, but we’re not going to do that. We’ll save that for part two, this facilitation subject. So I would love for everyone as I ask questions to be able to stand. And again, I want you to take note of your energy, take note of your emotions that might come up. I want you to jot down comments or thoughts that come across, because then we’re going to do kind of an activity after that. Okay? Everybody with me? Everybody with me?

Audience:
Yes.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
So much better. Thank you. All right. So I want you to stand up if you’ve ever hesitated to share an idea out of fear or judgment. All right? Can we play a little light music in the background? A little low. Little low. Okay. Everybody, you making eye contact? My friend would be like, “Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes.” Okay. Stand up if you’ve had to navigate… Oh, excuse me. Sit down. Sit down. Sorry. Don’t read it yet. Don’t read it. Don’t read it yet. Don’t read it. How do I go back? Let’s go back. Don’t read it. Don’t read it. Don’t read it. All right. Y’all didn’t see it, right? Okay, so we got that. Everybody saw each other? We made eye contact. We good?

Okay, so I want you to stand up if you’ve had to navigate internal politics while trying to create a safe space. Let me come stand up on the stage at this point, right? Hold on. Whew, child. Let me tell you, I got stories for days working at some of the companies I’ve had to work at, right? Yeah. Are we looking at each other? Making eye contact? I want you to look at people at the back of the room, the front of the room. Okay. All right. Take a seat. Take a seat. Oh, my lanta. All right, stand up if you’ve intentionally ignored conflict in a space as a facilitator. People are already standing up like, “Whew, that’s me.” And kept it going to keep the peace.

“Let’s just move on. Ooh, I don’t like drama. I don’t want to run to the fire. Let’s move on.” Okay, making eye contact. Again, I want you to think of what memories are popping up for you. What emotion is coming up for you? What time are you going back? Someone’s clutching their chest like, “Oh, Lord.” Okay. All right. Have a seat. Stand up. If you’ve been in a meeting where an idea was ignored only to be repeated by someone else and praised. How dare they? Are you kidding me? I just said that 32 seconds ago, right? Make eye contact. Yeah, you can’t keep looking at the same person, y’all. Can’t keep looking at the same person. All right, take a seat. Take a seat.

All right. Stand up if you felt like you needed to prove your expertise as a facilitator. Stand up if you’ve needed to prove your expertise as a facilitator. Just a quick plug to Voltage Control. Get your certification. So you just pull the paper out, right? “Let me tell you something. I got a certification.” All right? All right, everybody seated? All right. Stand up if you’ve seen someone hold back from participating because they weren’t sure their perspective would be valued. All right, we looking around. Are we looking around? All right, take a seat. I want you to stand up… Oh, we did that one. Stand up if you’ve ever questioned whether a group you were facilitating truly felt safe to share openly.
Yeah, I do a lot of racial equity work. And whoop, “No recording, no AI, nothing. Changing my name. Black the screens out.” That’s exactly how the conversations are going now. Yeah. All right, take a seat. All right. Stand up. If you’ve ever felt pressure to balance inclusion with authority in facilitation. Oh, a lot of y’all took some deep sighs on this one. Okay. Write down how you’re feeling. Write down whatever just popped up for you. All right, take a seat. Stand up if you facilitated a group where people were skeptical of your role or expertise. It’s like, what is a facilitator?
I need to stand up because my mom was this morning like, “So what are you talking about? What is a facilitator?” I’m like, “Ma, I’ve been doing this for four years.”

Audience member:
I got a certification.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
Yeah, I got a certification from Voltage Control. All right, have a seat. Stand up if you’ve had to win over a tough group to gain their trust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, we got a lot of laughs. Anybody else want to stand up? Any last? All right. Oh, we got one more. All right, have a seat. All right. Stand up if you’ve ever been challenged in a session and had to quickly adapt your approach. Ooh. Ooh, yeah. Are we looking around at everyone else who’s been challenged in the middle of a session? Ooh, Casey got a story. Okay? It’s like, “Halfway through they was trying to tell me all the things that I already knew,” right? All right. Have a seat. Have a seat.

So these are the questions that I want us to kind of process and marinate on because it’s really important to understand how we show up in facilitation. The more we can understand about the ways in which we’re triggered, or we have fears, or we have habits that maybe no longer serve us, like I avoid conflict so when there’s conflict in a session, I’m like, “Yeah, so how’s the weather? All right, let’s move to the next slide. Are we good?” Right? Versus leaning into that because sometimes you get the best decisions and the best connection sometimes through dissent.
And so we can turn the music off, my friend, maybe. Okay, thank you. And so what I’d love for us to do is really thinking about, so on your tables you should have, I’m going to use your table. So you should have, I wanted to be on brand a little bit. So we got a little basketball hoop, and then we have a soccer goal, and you should have a ton of pom-poms. Think of them as soccer balls and basketballs, and I want us to take… It is pouring. I want us to take an opportunity. So I want us to do about two minutes, and I want you to write down all of your fears, all of the things that have hindered you to being the best version of a facilitator that you could be. So maybe it’s negative self-talk, or maybe some of your fears is I run from conflict.

Or maybe it’s like, “Man, when they talk about politics, I tune out. I don’t want anything to do with it.” So whatever those fears are, this is for you and your table, but I want you to just list out all of the fears that you have when it comes to facilitation. Maybe it’s, “Man, I’m scared that my technology is going to crash on me as I facilitate. Man, I’m scared that I’m not going to have a Sarah,” because she’s doing a fabulous job. Can we give her a round of applause? I don’t have to take notes. So one of my fears, I’m going to be transparent, honest, and vulnerable, is sometimes I spell things wrong. And so I don’t need my credibility

to be knocked because I spelled because wrong, or I don’t know, a simple word that you should know how to spell.
And so I want you to really think about what are some of those fears that you’ve encountered through facilitation and through the work that you’ve done, and maybe current fears that you have and that you’re really maybe stuck in it and you don’t know how to navigate that. Okay? So I’m going to give you about two minutes to do that. We’re going to play some light music or maybe just listen to the beautiful sounds of rain. But you have two minutes that starts now listing all of your fears. All of your fears as a facilitator. I’d love for you to move throughout the space, and I want you to find two other partners. So we’re going to be triads as much as possible.
Take your list with you. All right. So what I’d love for you to do in your pods right now, in your triads, is I want you to lean into the vulnerability, right? This is a no judgment zone. I want you to be fully present. I want you to be listening to each other, and I want you to create safe spaces for each other and really sharing what are your fears. Okay? What are those fears? What are those hinders? What are those blocks that have been holding you back from being the best version of yourself as a facilitator? And then I want you, after that, what I want you to do is at each of the tables, there should be a few of these beautiful cups that my lovely friends put together for me this morning. And I want you to then throw away your fears or toss your fears.

Kobe Bryant, rest in peace. I want you to, someone to be the hoop or the goalie, and I want you to toss in your fears. Because at the end of the day, you’re not going to be able to show up as the best version of yourself. You’re not, again, going back to this idea of you bring the energy in. And so if you’re coming in blocked, if you’re coming in with this negativity, if you’re coming in with these fears, there’s no way you’re going to show up as the excellent facilitator that I know you’re destined to be. And so I want you to be able to toss away those fears. I want you to express them. I want you to let them go because there’s power in tongue, and there’s power in saying the things that are holding you back, but there’s also power symbolically throwing it away. Okay?

So we’re going to take about 10 minutes collectively to do this activity, and then we will move towards our close. Any questions? Y’all ready to share your deep, dark secrets? All right, your 10 minutes starts now. Thanks everyone. All right. If you haven’t already, start to toss your fears.

All right, everyone, has everybody tossed away their fears? Anyone feel lighter? Anyone feel like they’re going to the NBA or to play professional soccer? Anybody? Thank you all so much for doing that. I walked around and I heard some really great conversations. Thank you for leaning into that vulnerability and really trusting those that you were interacting with today. So with that, just give a round of applause, literally round of applause. Thank you for doing that. And so what I want us to do is I want you to spend, because we did the activity, but I’m always the facilitator to make sure we’re doing some self-reflection. And so I want you to take the next minute, first thing that comes to mind. What is the one thing you are going to be doing that’s going to enhance safety in the work that you do, and your credibility? What’s that one thing? I want you to write that down. That is just for you. First thing that pops to mind. What’s the one thing you’re going to do?
Something you’re going to do different. A new practice? Because fears will always be there, right? It’s mind over matter. Are you going to wake up today and say, “I’m going to choose fear,” or, “I’m going to choose faith,” right? Am I going to stay stuck in these maybe poor habits? Am I going to let myself fall into these previous patterns? Because you know better, you’re going to do better. And so we’re going to practice at least one new habit. And because we’re human, fears are always going to come back up. And so everyone should have a handy dandy stress ball.

In those moments where you’re feeling stressed or the fear is starting to creep back up, I want you to squeeze it and be like, “Mo more fear.” Just say it with me. Do it. Be silly. “No more. Ooh, go away fear.” Right?

Audience member:
No more fear.

Skye Idehen-Osunde:
No more, right? And I want you to do a little toss up, and that’s what I want you to walk into your meeting, your session with a new mind frame, a new mindset, knowing that you can do it, knowing that you could be successful, knowing that you have all the tools necessary to show up to be the best version of yourself as a facilitator. And one of the things that I want us to do, because that’s an activity that we can do during, but what does it look like when we’re closing the session? And part of it is sometimes you need to, I have Landy who’s in our facilitation program, and her name is Landy.
So I was like, how do we land the plane? So how do we land and close the session? Meaning, how are we going to make sure that people are reflecting on what they’ve learned? We’re not coming together for 90 minutes or a full day and you’re not leaving with anything. So we need to take moment of self-reflection and workshop time to really walk away with what’s something you’re going to do different? What’s something that inspired you? What’s something you learned from someone that you interacted with in this session? And so it’s really important as a facilitator that we’re always moving towards close. We’re always moving towards what are the next steps? What are the decisions that were made? And then we’re using tools to capture that.

Because we all know what happens when we leave a meeting, if it’s not on the calendar, if there’s not a follow-up, people just forget and there’s no action. So we always want to make sure that that happens, and that follows up with the following up. So as a facilitator, as the leader of the meeting, as the convener, we want to make sure that there is some sort of follow-up, whether it’s a thank you email or a thank you note for coming, shaking hands, making sure that you speak to everyone and have authentic relationship and conversation. It’s my desire in session to kind of listen to as many conversations as possible to be as present even throughout your experience. But we want to make sure that we’re closing that still maintaining those relationships, and one way is really just to send a thank you note for being a part of this.
And then again, it’s lastly ending with commitments. And so we already have the one thing that we’re going to do. And so when you’re closing out a session, making sure that there’s some sort of commitment, commitment to action that people are taking, or a call to action that people are taking once leaving that session. So with that, I want us to close with the safety net pledge. Not going to do a Pledge of Allegiance. There’s no flag. It’s 2025. We’re not doing all that. But what I would love for you to do is I’d love for you to stand up with energy as we come to a close with our session. And I want us in unison to read this pledge and to have this commitment moving forward from our time together today.
So with that, I’ll lead the way, but I’d love to hear all voices confidently and proudly because we’re all proud facilitators, whether we’re just starting out or we’re seasoned, everyone still needs to make a commitment to showing up as the best version of themselves. So with that, as a facilitator and a member of this community, I commit to fostering psychological safety in every space I lead. I will build credibility and trust with everyone I encounter. I will actively listen and model honesty and openness. I will empower voices and encourage engagement. I will use inclusive practices and tools that invite full participation. I will empower participants to transform insights into action, applying their learning to real-world challenges.

I will create an environment of continuous improvement. I will commit to continuous improvement by seeking feedback, reflecting on my facilitation, and adapting to evolving needs. I understand that creating safety is an ongoing journey, and I am committed to improving my approach to meet the evolving needs of those I facilitate.
And with that, I want you to remain committed. My favorite quote is, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” by the beautiful Maya Angelou. And so remember, as facilitators, we’re coming to the space. We are the change makers. We are the problem solvers. We are there to create solutions and also have fun, right? So with that, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you.

Audience member:
Great job.

Skye’s session at the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit was a powerful reminder of how authenticity and psychological safety are essential to effective facilitation. Her session provided attendees with actionable strategies to create trust and engage with participants in meaningful ways, reinforcing the importance of credibility in any facilitative role.

The post Building Trust and Credibility appeared first on Voltage Control.

Facilitation Lab Summit 2024 was an extraordinary event filled with insightful sessions and meaningful connections. On February 6th and 7th, we hosted our annual facilitator summit, featuring a diverse range of speakers who shared their expertise and experiences. The theme for this year’s summit was COMMUNITY, emphasizing the importance of community in learning and growth.

The summit provided an invaluable opportunity for facilitators to learn, connect, and grow. We were privileged to hear from a diverse group of speakers who shared their experiences, insights, and strategies for facilitating impactful meetings and events.

Overall, the Facilitation Lab Summit 2024 was a remarkable and enriching experience for all participants. We eagerly look forward to next year’s summit and the chance to further hone our facilitation skills and strengthen our community. Read on for a summary of each of the workshops delivered by our facilitators.

Liya James

Relational Attunement: From Breakdown to Breakthrough

In Liya’s session “Mastering Inner Dialogues,” she explored the significance of our internal narratives in shaping our facilitation effectiveness. She provided practical tools for identifying and managing these inner conversations to improve self-awareness and decision-making.

Through techniques like mapping dialogues and practicing mindful reflection, facilitators can achieve greater clarity and presence. This session emphasizes the power of internal dialogue in influencing external interactions and offers strategies to harness this for more impactful facilitation.

Durell Coleman

Building Consensus Amongst Multiple Stakeholders: Current State/End State

During “Building Consensus Amongst Multiple Stakeholders,” Durell Coleman shares strategies for navigating the complexities of achieving consensus in groups with diverse interests. He emphasized the importance of understanding each stakeholder’s perspective and aligning on common goals.

Durell introduced practical techniques such as active listening, open communication, and structured decision-making processes to foster collaboration. He also highlighted the role of a facilitator in guiding discussions, managing conflicts, and ensuring that every voice is heard. By applying these methods, facilitators can help groups reach mutually beneficial agreements and drive successful outcomes.

Ozay Moore

What’s in the Soil?

In “What’s in the Soil?” Ozay Moore explored the metaphor of soil to illustrate the foundational elements necessary for effective facilitation. He likens healthy soil to a fertile environment where ideas can grow and flourish. Ozay emphasized the importance of creating a supportive and nurturing atmosphere for participants, drawing parallels between the nutrients in soil and the essential components of a successful facilitation process.

He discussed the need for facilitators to cultivate trust, encourage open communication, and provide the right mix of structure and flexibility. By understanding and enriching the ‘soil’ of their facilitation environments, practitioners can foster more productive and engaging sessions.

Dirk Van Onsem & Erik Skogsberg

Facilitating Change by Mapping Systems

During “Facilitating Change by Mapping Systems,” Erik and Dirk dove into the power of system mapping to drive organizational change. They explained how visualizing complex systems helps identify key leverage points for effective interventions. They highlighted the benefits of using system maps to understand relationships and dynamics within an organization, enabling facilitators to guide strategic planning and decision-making more effectively.

By mapping out these systems, facilitators can reveal hidden patterns, foster collaboration, and create actionable insights that lead to sustainable change. This approach empowers teams to see the bigger picture and align their efforts toward common goals.

Solomon Masala

Using Art and Conversation for Convergence

“Using Art and Conversation for Convergence,” found Solomon emphasizing the synergy between art and dialogue in facilitation. He explored how incorporating artistic elements into conversations can break down barriers and foster deeper connections among participants. Solomon highlighted techniques such as visual thinking and creative exercises to enhance engagement and idea generation.

By blending art with structured conversation, facilitators can create a more inclusive and dynamic environment, encouraging participants to express themselves more freely and collaboratively. This approach not only stimulates creativity but also drives convergence, helping groups reach consensus and achieve collective goals more effectively.

Lily Chong

A Design Thinking Deep Dive on Rapid Ideation

In Lily’s workshop “A Design Thinking Deep Dive on Rapid Ideation” she focused on harnessing the power of teams for innovation, and participants delved into a variety of hands-on activities and practical exercises. The workshop effectively demonstrated valuable techniques for facilitating ideation sessions, enabling attendees to unlock the creative potential within their groups.

Through this engaging experience, participants learned how to generate a wide array of innovative solutions to challenging problems. The session equipped everyone with the necessary skills and mindset to drive impactful change through rapid ideation, fostering a collaborative and creative atmosphere.

Erin Warner

Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action

In “Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action,” Erin Warner discussed the importance of engaging in courageous conversations to refine ideas and take decisive action. She emphasized the need for creating a safe space where participants feel comfortable sharing honest and bold perspectives. Erin introduced techniques for facilitating these dialogues, such as active listening, open-ended questioning, and fostering an atmosphere of trust.

By encouraging daring dialogues, facilitators can help teams move beyond surface-level discussions, uncover deeper insights, and embrace bold actions that drive meaningful progress. This approach not only enhances idea generation but also strengthens team cohesion and innovation.

Susan Wilson-Golab

Developing Narratives that Bring Voice to Targeted Audience

In “Developing Narratives that Bring Voice to Targeted Audiences,” Susan emphasized the power of storytelling in facilitation. She explained how crafting compelling narratives can amplify the voices of specific audiences, ensuring their perspectives are heard and valued. Susan introduced practical techniques for creating these narratives, such as understanding the audience’s needs, weaving in emotional elements, and maintaining authenticity.

By focusing on these aspects, facilitators can enhance engagement and connection, making their sessions more impactful. The session highlighted the transformative potential of storytelling in creating meaningful dialogues and fostering a deeper sense of inclusion and understanding among participants.

The Facilitation Lab Summit 2024 was a testament to the power of community. Each session offered valuable insights and practical tools that facilitators can apply in their work. We are excited to see how these learnings will shape our community in the coming year and look forward to the next summit with great anticipation. Thank you to all the facilitators and participants who made this event a success.

The post Facilitation Lab Summit 2024 appeared first on Voltage Control.

At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Erik Skogsberg and Dirk Van Onsem delivered a thought-provoking workshop titled “Facilitating Change Through Systems Mapping.” The session was designed to help participants understand and leverage the power of systems thinking to drive change within their organizations.

The workshop began with Erik and Dirk highlighting the significance of seeking truth rather than being right, emphasizing a systems-based perspective. They explained that true understanding comes from recognizing the interrelationships among various elements within any context, challenge, or opportunity. This approach is crucial for effective facilitation and leadership.

The session was structured around five key elements essential for creating a compelling change story:

1. Future Vision: Participants were encouraged to articulate a clear and compelling vision for the future. This vision serves as a foundation for others to buy into and support the change.
2. Personal Connection: Erik and Dirk stressed the importance of understanding and communicating personal motivations for caring about the change. This personal connection helps build trust and emotional resonance with others.
3. Current State: Through systems mapping, attendees explored the current state of play, identifying the relationships and patterns that define the present situation. This step is crucial for grounding the change story in reality.
4. Stakeholder Engagement: Participants learned to map and understand the motivations and interests of key stakeholders. This step is essential for building a coalition of support for the change effort.
5. High-Leverage Interventions: By combining systems and stakeholder mapping, participants identified high-leverage interventions that could drive meaningful change.

Participants engaged in mapping exercises to visualize system relationships and dynamics. Dirk shared a real-world example from the sporting goods industry, demonstrating the practical application of systems mapping. In group activities, participants integrated their maps and shared insights, emphasizing understanding over perfection.

Erik and Dirk’s workshop showcased the value of systems thinking in facilitation. Participants left with tools to navigate and influence complex systems effectively.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Erik:

So I’ll give you just a moment if you haven’t already soaked this in a little bit. This willingness to seek the truth rather than seek to be right. And a core part of seeking that truth in many ways is taking a systems-based perspective, really understanding the relationships amongst all the things, all the people at play in any one context or challenge or opportunity.

Dirk:

Yes. And so just for anyone who hadn’t noticed, we knew we were coming right after Jose, who is an MC and who was an amazing DJ. So Erik and I were brainstorming what do we do to go after such a performance, so the only thing we could figure out was let’s make sure we match up.

Erik:

You see this system here?

Dirk:

I know we were subliminal, but we just wanted to point that out. It’s all in the detail, all in the detail. So just as a brief sort of connect between facilitating change as a workshop and what we’re going to do today is this belief that facilitation is a very core leadership skill, which I’m sure all of you agree as you are facilitators, but also a very, very important way in our view to really drive change. Facilitation of change is actually a core leadership skill and we do believe that actually a big part of that is having a story that other people can buy into. So the workshop that we’ve designed is actually a workshop that helps tell your change story in a way that brings others along. And the five elements that are part of that are on the screen.

The first is what’s my future vision, very much connected to what we’ve heard just now, the future state. Can you articulate in a compelling way the vision that you would like people to buy into? So that’s a core element of that.

The second is who am I and why do I care. The soil exercise we’ve just done is a way of doing that, obviously. But there’s multiple ways to try to understand who am I and why do I specifically care about creating this future. Why is that important? Because when you can touch others in a chord that touches their heart, very often it’s because you share vulnerably why you care. So the notion of digging in personal mastery and understanding this is why I care about this is actually a way to connect to others.

The third element is where are we today, which is bringing the state of play or the current state as we’ve just again today referred to. And this is the area that we’ll dive into today with the systems mapping. Then why should you care? We heard a lot about stakeholder mapping, convincing stakeholders. So why should you care is part of your change story, is identifying those important stakeholders and understanding deeply why do they care and how can I connect to them.

So then lastly, if you have mapped both the system and the stakeholders, you can identify high leverage interventions and make suggestions of what should be done. And if you would narrate those five topics in one go, you actually have your change story by which you can in a more confident way convince others to drive the change with you. So that’s sort of a little sort of setting on how we came up with facilitating change as a concept. And then within that, again, where are we today, the systems mapping is what we will dive into.

And systems, we hear a lot of people say it’s a systemic problem, it’s a system. But sometimes the word system or systems thinking can be a bit confusing or intimidating. And again, most, I assume many of you are familiar with it, but just to ground us in one of the definitions, and there’s multiple ones, but Peter Senge is obviously the person that started the academy for systems change where both Erik and I went and met each other actually the first time. This is his definition. It’s a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things. Seeing patterns rather than seeing static snapshots. And it’s actually very much looking at the space in between two things and the interrelation and the correlation between that.

And so the problem statement or the problem that we’re going to address today and tomorrow, we actually are going to have our first exercise today on trying to see the interrelationships, really trying to see the patterns rather than only the statements of what maybe is happening.

Erik:

So a couple further ways to provide some context and why behind seeing things systemically are so important. And as Dirk mentioned here, we’re oftentimes paying attention to the in-between, what’s happening in connections amongst different relational pieces. Because oftentimes when we’re working with complex problems, which a lot of us are, in fact most everything we talked about today is systemic, multi-layered here. And when we’re talking about systems, there’s oftentimes a delay, sometimes a pretty long delay between cause and effect.

So anytime you may have gone to, say, quickly try to solve a problem that’s actually systemic and find that actually your solution came back to you with something that’s actually making the problem even worse, that’s where understanding things systemically is really important because there’s this delay and a complex relationship between cause and effect.

Give you a couple of quick examples here that hopefully are recognizable or familiar enough. So a couple of basics here. And we’ll tell you this multiple times because we see it a lot when we first introduce systems mapping to folks, the point of today is not creating a perfect systems map. All right? So we can geek out on this stuff and it’s interesting to dig into. Take what is helpful for you. The most important thing is that we are starting to better understand the relationships amongst a bunch of different things.

So I’ll give you an example here of a really common loop that oftentimes comes up when we’re talking about systems. So feedback loops here can either be reinforcing or balancing. So an example of a reinforcing loop here would be like interest in your bank account. All right? So you have money in, interest is being accrued, and that continues to add money to that account.

A balancing loop here would be an example of a thermostat. So you have something set, a desired temperature, and ultimately there’s a gap between the desired and the current temperature. And that then responds to balance things back out, to bring things back into a balance to what you have ultimately set here. And this plays out in a lot of different systems, whether things are reinforcing and continuing to grow or ultimately trying to bring things back to some form of balance.

In systems work, we talk a lot about system archetypes, because there’s some pretty common ones that come up in complex systems, and one of those here being fixes that fail. So a good example here of where you ultimately try to implement a solution to fix a problem and that solution ultimately makes things worse. All right? So an example here of the problem, maybe there’s high interest on a credit card for example, and an initial fix being to balance that out. We’re going to take out an extra credit card to start paying on that. Uh-oh, we’ve got more interest coming. That creates more debt, more debt, more debt, and we ultimately don’t fix the problem. And again, these play out in a lot of different ways across the systems in the different challenges and opportunities in our lives.

Dirk’s going to take this a step further here with some examples from Nike.

Dirk:

Yes, exactly. So about three years ago in the job I’m in now, when I started that job, which was being responsible for sporting goods for EMEA. And the sporting goods industry, so basically Dick’s Sporting Goods is I assume a retailer that many of you know. So you could think of the equivalent of Dick’s Sporting Goods, but then in EMEA. And so I was handed over that team and that responsibility. It was the time that we were in this course, so I used that new job to try to understand how can system mapping help. And I want to talk you through that one example just to make it a bit more tangible and practical rather than maybe the theory about archetypes.

So what I found, and this is what we’re going to ask all of you to do as well later, you just start to write down things that you notice, not necessarily thinking about links between them, but what are the things that you notice. You know when you start a new job or a new assignment, you just ask questions. You interview people and you just start to, “Hey, that gets repeated. I’m going to note that down.”

And so basically I ended up having things like, okay, there’s low profitability. All those retailers have a tough time making money. That was one of the elements. For the sake of the time, we’ve put it straight away in a map today. So you will see how things are interlinked straight away. But another thing that I noticed actually was there was a lack of investment capacity. Someone else was telling me they just don’t invest in their stores, these retailers. They don’t invest. But obviously there’s a clear link between if you have no profitability, you have very little to reinvest in your business.

On top of that, they have very low digital capabilities. Again, linked to these lack of investment capacities. But the comment of low digital capabilities was a comment I got again from someone else. But if you map them, you can then see, well, if you have low digital capabilities today, consumers shop first on their smartphone. So if your websites aren’t great, and if you’re not really investing in digital capabilities, guess what? You don’t attract the consumer. If you don’t attract the consumer, you need to drive promotions to get people to your store to bring them in. Now you can imagine if you need to drive promotions, you have low profitability. So this is a typical reinforcing loop.

Now then as a company, we thought we were really, really smart, which happens very often if you’re inside of a company. So what do you do? Actually we say, “Wow, we need these retailers so we’re going to give them more discounts.” Because if we give them more discount, they’re going to be more profitable. It seems quite logical. They buy from you, you give them a higher discount so they can create more money. The thing that happened is actually as a result, many of the retailers that should have gone out of business because they were actually not doing a proper job in serving consumers, they actually stayed in business. What’s the result of that? Way too many competition. So what do they do? They need to promote to attract the consumer.

So this is how you see, even if you have actually think you’re doing something that makes sense. The moment I started to see, and this is only one very small section of the map that I created with my team, but just for sake of example, we realized we were doing this to ourselves. Or we had a very big role that we played in keeping this system turning in a way that wasn’t helping the overall consumer experience. So it’s by mapping and all of these points that are on here came from different interviews, and then we did the exercise of mapping it. How is this linked? Because now it seems very logical when I tell this story in this way, but it wasn’t when I started the role. So that’s just an example on how that works.

So obviously our role or what we want to do with you today is actually show how this process of mapping and again linking it to the facilitation summit, how as facilitators we can have ways to map complex systems with a large group actually and get to insights that we maybe didn’t have before doing this exercise. So obviously the core question, “How might we raise national awareness and adoption of the ACC Digital Fluency micro-credentials and certificates for military spouses?” That was the task or the prompt that we were given by the organization we’re working with. And so what we’re going to do today is map. What do we know of that system as a collective?

Any question before I hand over? We’re going to give a prompt in a second, but any questions on that intro first before we move to the next part? No? So I think we’re first going to give the prompt, right?

Erik:

Yep.

Dirk:

So the starting point is we’re going to replay the video. It was called out this morning. We are very sure all of you watched the video. We are a hundred percent sure. But just in case or just for your memory, we’re going to-

Erik:

Just a refresher.

Dirk:

A refresher.

Erik:

A refresher.

Dirk:

We’re going to replay the video that was sent out. That is also at the same time your solo time. So we were going to give you anyway solo time to reflect, so we’re going to play the video at the same time. If you’ve seen it, feel free to jot things down. What’s important is based on what you’re hearing or what you know about the situation or based on the workshops we’ve done already this morning that gave you additional insights, write down things that you notice that you think are part of the system of the issue. Important is to do one per sticky, so don’t list them on ones. We need one idea or one prompt or one thing you think is part of the system per sticky. At the moment, don’t try to find links in between. Just what you hear, note down what you think is important and relevant. And from there, we will go further.

Erik:

Yeah, cool.

One thing I’d say here is you’re diving in because for many of you, this is a new process. So I’ll just tell you, if you’re doing it right now, you’re doing it right. Don’t worry about creating a perfect map. Okay? The point here is that we’re starting to think more systemically. All right? And that gives us an opportunity to then have a conversation together. Back to Donella’s words, this allows us to build a collective truth together. Because then when that’s out in front of us, we can make better decisions together. So just start. All right? And I’ll keep coming back to that as a reminder.

So I’m going to pop up a video here in a moment, actually from some of the research that has been done with these military spouses about their needs and the challenges that are coming up in their lives and accessing some of these resources. And you can just note as you’re listening.

Speaker 4:

We were researching kind of how users currently find different resources on installations and what pain points that they may have been seeing. So we interviewed a lot of different people and surveyed several hundred more. And what we found was that people would just get stuff by word of mouth or via social media and it wasn’t always completely accurate information. We also talked to services and we use that to inform the features that we decided to put in our MVP launch for My Army Post.

So I think the biggest thing that we learned was that there’s not enough childcare providers on the installation to effectively provide childcare for every Army family. A military installation is ran by any of the military service, whether it’s Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, and it’s where all of the buildings are that are the federal government property and that’s where all the services lie for families to access.

And that was where a lot of the issues come in because it is cheaper on the installation for military families because it’s a little bit subsidized. So if there’s not a space for them on the installation, they have to go off-installation, which is a little bit more costly. And that’s where there’s not a little bit of a gap, a large gap that makes it difficult for them to find careers as the family member.

Something that is hard is finding those careers that can transfer to different places wherever we get stationed. And then building the community is hard. It’s the longer you’re in, kind of the harder it gets I feel like. I think some of the things that we saw in our research and that I’ve seen is that we are pretty good at getting training for spouses or for service members that are getting out of the military, but most jobs now require experience. And where can they get experience if no one is willing to hire anybody without experience?

Actually, you facilitated a little exercise at our kind of fair. I thought that that was an awesome program and I thought that it could benefit a ton of people. And the main person that came to my mind was my mother who is in her sixties and has a job that uses digital tools like Excel and Outlook and I’m just her tech support and she just calls me to get that information. But if she was able to get some sort of micro-credential that could help her understand it, whether it was actually getting that micro-credential or just the knowledge, I think that that could be very helpful and I can see how that would be helpful to military families as they’re moving throughout the states.

Speaker 5:

I also enjoyed it. I thought it was really, really cool because I was like, “Well, maybe I could do some of these things.” Because some of those skill sets transfer to a wide variety of disciplines. You can use it for a lot of different things.

Speaker 4:

I think the biggest thing that we saw as a huge pain point was advertising. The Army doesn’t necessarily have a large advertising budget to be able to market these different things. And so if ACC could take advantage of a way to market these better, I think that that would reach a lot more people.

Speaker 5:

For example, I was telling Celeste, I was like, “Hey, did you know there is a virtual internship for the federal government?” I did it for my master’s program. And she’s like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah, you really just have to be a student and you apply at the US gov jobs, but then you get experience with the low-threat internship at the federal government working for almost every agency known to man.” But if you can scaffold on that and actually then, well, I worked for the VA virtually and then I’m going to apply for this job to build your resume up and say, “Hey, but I learned these skill sets along the way because I knew I was weak in some of these areas. ” I wasn’t really good at spreadsheet management per se or Excel, but through my internship and a program through ACC with building my digital literacy, I had another skillset.

When I actually applied, I had somebody who would vouch for me as a reference who already works in the industry and I have the skill to back it up. And I’m using veteran preference because a lot of jobs have that for spousal preferential positioning. And to leverage all those things into one to apply for some of these jobs I think could be super useful. And I think people underestimate how valuable those small state or federal organizations actually have impact. There’s a lot of job offers that come there. They say, hey, we need a public health person.

The job fairs are so important. Even if you are not actively looking for an actual job, you’d be surprised what you can land on and what you can find that can kind of fit the things you want to do by just asking people and just talking to them. I just think the whole scaffolding thing is the most important thing. So even if after they do their micro-certification, if there’s a way for them to connect with companies even for maybe just a week trial or two weeks and to say, “Hey, just let me walk around and just intern and see what I can learn from just being here on ground.” It’s low threat to the company because you’re an intern and they don’t have to pay you. But it also gives people experiences and to build that bridge and of course targeting people who are actively looking for people.

Erik:

Nice to hear the voices of folks closer to this challenge and opportunity. And I’m going to add a few more details here from another person very close to this challenge who unfortunately we were going to be doing an interview but unfortunately unable to be with us today, but I wanted to share her answers here with you. So just asked what they noticed is going on right now in this problem and opportunity space in and amongst this challenge. And she said, “Unemployment has remained the top concern for military spouses, especially since military families relocate every one to three years. And there’s been a real shift in the working world post-COVID. Employers have moved a lot more toward remote work.” And so that presents both opportunities but also challenges if you didn’t already have some of those digital skillsets, right?

I asked, “Why do you think things are working or not working at this point?” And she said, “This is a great opportunity for military spouses, especially for those that are looking for remote work. This allows them to focus on becoming more proficient in the digital skills they need in order to succeed in remote work environments.”

And finally, “What elements of this prominent opportunity space do you hope we, all of us here, most focus on?” And she said, “Since unemployment is a top concern nationwide for military spouses, how can we get national military organizations to subscribe to the micro credential digital skills program here at the college.”

Speaker 6:

I was also at the military families center ribbon cutting. And there’s one thing I noticed that I thought might be helpful to share which was a military spouse that had been invited to speak about her experience and she said something that was quite, it made sense in retrospect, but never hearing it before. I was never exposed to it. But the fact that as she moved around with her husband on different deployments into different installations, there would commonly be a really vibrant and strong and tight-knit military community that would be very supportive. So then they were to move somewhere, they would instantly have a lot of resources around them and they could lean on that and learn to depend on it. But not all installations are created the same.

And something that really was surprising for her when they came to Austin because her husband is actually attending the software factory, which is the software bootcamp for the Army. So these are active duty Army, they’re learning how to be software developers and UX designers. And so he’s attending that. They come here, Austin’s very widespread. There’s not a centralized base here. So everyone, while there is a vibrant community, it’s very spread out and it’s hard to tap into those things. And that’s one of the things the Military Family Center is striving to provide is that hub, that central spot. But she also spoke of, she first experienced it here, but there are other installations around that are more distributed so that centralized nature doesn’t exist. So that really spoke to me when I heard it, so I wanted to share that just in case it’s stoked any thoughts for y’all.

Erik:

All right, thanks.

Dirk:

Yes. So we’ll give you one more minute solo just after absorbing all of that and then we’ll go to the next section of that. So just one more minute to maybe finalize some of your thoughts, some of the things you noticed.

So we would like to move to the next part, which is pairs. So at your table, we’ll make it easy to start with, just look at your neighbor and together share the stickies, the things that stood out for you. And you start to create, if you see connections between some of the things you do, you start to create a very small map in between the two of you on the table. So that’s why we also asked to try to clean the table. So if there’s still a lot on the table, just try to move that a little bit. We’re using the resources that we have and if you see connections, if you see connections, you can also use a sticky in between the two points to draw an arrow. So we’re going to be creative here. So if you see a connection between two things, use a sticky to make the connection. So you get 15 minutes together to create one map with the two of you.

Erik:

Okay, move yourself to a pausing point. And then please direct your attention back up here. If you’re right in the middle of a sentence or in the middle of a question that you’re still wrestling with, that’s a great sign. That’s the kind of conversation we are hoping that you’re having. And if you’re coming in to have figured this all out in the next 90 minutes, you’re going to be disappointed. But hopefully you have some new understandings and some better questions and we have a better sense of those truths out there that we can operate with.

So in a moment, we’re going to shift to creating a group of four. So pair will join a pair right next to you and you’re going to then be integrating both the maps that you’ve created. And it’s going to feel a little messy. That’s the work. All right? Now if, and hold on one moment before … I know as soon as I said four, it’s, “All right, let’s get going. Let’s get a jumpstart. We can get the answer key down. This is going to be great.”

So as you move into your fours, you’re obviously going to have to integrate pieces. There’s probably going to be some duplication. So it’s like, “Yep, we’ve got this piece here.” You can bring those together. This is similar. Do we want to bring those together or keep those separate? Also too, this is the point, and I see some great examples here. We even have people tearing stickies to create arrows. It’s fantastic. No, it’s fantastic. So if you haven’t already started to think about the nature of those relationships, start to draw those arrows, which ones are particularly connected? Which one do you see may be acting on another? Are there potential loops here? And again, it’s not about perfectly identifying them, it’s starting to surface the nature of those relationships.

I’m going to share one thing that I always find really helpful when especially first engaging in this process here. So have a great colleague of ours in this space who has spent years doing systems work and systems maps. And so oftentimes, and we’ve asked what’s the step and are we doing this right? And she always returns us to, Darcy Winslow is her name, co-founder of the Academy for Systems Change, and oftentimes returns us to this quote from Alice in Wonderland in terms of the instructions for this. So as you’re doing this, begin at the beginning, and go until you come to the end, and then stop. That’s how to do it. So give yourself that grace. All right?

Now move to your group of four. We’re going to take the next 10 minutes in your group of four to start integrating those maps and thinking about the nature of those relationships.

Okay. Our final or almost final turn here. And again, the point is not to have these things absolutely complete, but as I’m listening across groups, it’s fantastic to see the nature of the conversation or witness the nature of the conversation. Each of you posing questions of one another. Well, here’s how I see this. How do you see this relating to this piece over here? Or is this really like this or should it be over here? Again, co-constructing a truth and an initial map that then we can gather around and further merge together.

Lilly, did you have-

Lilly:

I have a question.

Erik:

Yeah.

Lilly:

So really quickly, our group, I felt like at times as we were trying to create our map, we were also thinking of solutions. And I was curious, should solutioning come into this first pass of mapping?

Erik:

We’re not solving. We’re trying to understand. Okay? So it’s not that those solutions may not bubble up, but set them to the side for now because we’re not even necessarily clear on what the nature of the map is and the potential problem and opportunity space. So again, as is a hallmark of design thinking and in a lot of the systems work, let’s make sure we’re solving the right problem before solving a problem. Because that can then … If we were talking earlier about again, those solutions or fixes that fail, you could end up doing something that then ultimately makes your problem worse. And we’ve seen that in a lot of complex systems-based challenges out there.

Jimmy also asked in the back there about should we be mapping just the things that aren’t working or the things that aren’t working and the things that are working. Both. And in fact, I was mentioning back there, systems are working in the way that they were oftentimes designed. They’re working. They just may not be working to do the things that we want them to do. And so that’s where having the full picture, like these things are working, they’re working the way that we want, but that leads to these things over here not working. So let’s get the full picture.

Our final turn. I’m going to throw down the gauntlet here. It’s 10 minutes. Now, you’re going to have a facilitator at your table. And here’s how we’re going to side that. So whomever at your table has a birthday closest to today is going to be the facilitator for this final turn. Now, before you go to figure that out, here’s what I suggest. All right? Quickly have each group of four share briefly the story that’s there, and then you can be starting to combine things. We have that, let’s get that in the center. And again, clear the table. I see so many drinks out here. I don’t know, you’re going to have things spilled. All right? So make sure you have space in the next 10 minutes. Facilitators, help your group come up with a collective table map. Go.

Okay, move yourself to that pausing point and I’ll ask you to direct your attention back up to the stage here. Have a chance to hear from groups. I know it’s at the end of the day, and it’s so great to see people standing up around table … You’re leaning in, right? No, this should go, no, I think this is actually the nature of this. And this is for some of you a challenge that hits close to home. I know we have some military spouses in the room, people from military families. But also some of you, this is a problem that’s not even that closely necessarily connected to you and you’re leaning in, you’re building a sense of truth and surfacing something that people can work around, that starting point.

Key thing that we didn’t mention earlier, this process helps to surface what in systems mapping is called mental models. It’s kind of an internal ways that we view and order the world that until we oftentimes can externalize them in a way like this with our colleagues, it’s a filter that we’re not aware of, our colleagues aren’t aware of. And so this gives us an opportunity to surface, “Well, here’s how I’m seeing this. Okay, I’m seeing it this way. Let’s bring that together so that we can collectively act.”

So I’d love to hear from a group or two, hopefully from everybody. And facilitators, you’re particularly on the spot here. Would love to hear, I know you just did so much work on this. What did you notice as you facilitated this process? So there’s a couple of different ways into this prompt. Either you could talk about the process itself, here’s what it was like to facilitate that integration of ideas, and here’s what I noticed. And or wow, this new breakthrough surface, we didn’t realize this one piece and here’s what we’re thinking could be really important for us to think about tomorrow as we start moving to solutioning. So a couple of different either process or content or breakthrough.

Speaker 9:

I’ll be happy to go first. This is an awesome table because it’s humbling to facilitate masterful facilitators because you all facilitate yourselves. And as somebody that’s trying to step back and allow the dance to happen, what was really interesting is just understanding for ourselves what really is the place to start. Where’s the beginning? And I think we have this really interesting dichotomy or juxtaposition from what really is the beginning of this system between awareness, advertising, lack of budget. Is that the place to start? Or is it really the underemployment as the place to start? So it was very fascinating to see the differences and a little bit of the dance, but also some arm wrestling of where is it really going to go. And I think even though we didn’t fully combine what we wanted to do, I think just stepping back, observing and helping to facilitate that, I think we got a better awareness of, ah, I hadn’t thought of that perspective or hadn’t thought of it this way. Or ooh, there’s some commonalities, how do we bring this back together?

Speaker 10:

With the data we had, I found that there’s just more questions or hypothesis to prove out. We started creating assumptions. It was like, “Is that real or is that just what we think?”

Erik:

Yeah, which is a great outcome of an exercise like this. And obviously, people spend multiple months on these and in these kinds of conversations. Ultimately get to, Dirk’s map as a starting point, if he were to share other iterations, I mean multiple months there, but then that’s a powerful way for a group to move forward. And it does. That’s a really powerful outcome there. Wow, we don’t know about that. We need to know more. Okay, let’s go out and talk with some more folks that, again, surfaces that gap in a way that until that was out there wouldn’t have been apparent.

Dirk:

Absolutely. It starts the inquiry. It gives direction on where to inquire further and not just, again, to those mental models think that now you’ve mapped the truth because it hasn’t. So if you identify additional questions, that’s amazing. And to the point of where does it start? One of the core things of a system map is it doesn’t really matter where it starts. It actually doesn’t matter. When it’s mapped and you see the correlation, wherever, it’s all interconnected anyway. So just as an extra add-on.

Speaker 11:

Something that really surprised me was I started to get really wedded to the model that I was working on. And then when we had to join most recently, the whole table, I was like, “No, don’t cave, Phil. That’s the right one.” And I was like, I thought I was kind of an evolved human being, but it kind of surprised me and it took me back to the quote that you had about it’s more important to find the truth than to be right. And I’m still struggling with that right now because it really blew me away that I experienced this. I am just curious if other people had that too.

Erik:

It is bringing us full circle. Thank you for sharing. It’s bringing us full circle to our work with Leah this morning in a lot of ways as to what truths, how tightly we hold onto them, what does that mean about the different systems within us. Right? Other teams, would love … Yeah, Leah.

Leah:

Well, just on that point, it was a growing of the system in the group. So it started out with two, and then going back to what Ann said, you had maybe your attachment of the pair, and then the four, and then to the whole table. And yeah, it’s an interesting exercise of looking at the system and then being a part of a system trying to solve or trying to notice the differences and the differences of perspectives and not holding on too tightly.

Erik:

Which whether we have or recognize it or not, we’re kind of doing that every day in our companies and our organizations. We just are doing it with oftentimes a pretty blunt tools and hurting a lot of people in the process. So this just surfaces it in a way that can be more constructive. Others?

Speaker 9:

I was going to add on that. When we were merging the four of us, we said, “Well, we still have a gap.” But it was when we brought the eight together, we were like, “Ah, you filled the gap.”

Erik:

Cool, cool. There was here from a-

Speaker 12:

Okay, so I had the challenge to facilitate our table. Good reframe.

Erik:

So we had the cool table. That was the challenging table. We got the-

Speaker 12:

So what I noticed is that we, in terms of the elements in the system, we were almost identical, the two different groups. So I thought, okay, that’s a good starting place. Then though the relationship that the two groups of four had identified were … Well, we didn’t have a lot of time to actually process how similar or dissimilar the relationships were, but they definitely weren’t as similar as the elements were. And then to Ann’s point about wanting to be right or wanting to find the truth, I think our group was a little quick to gloss over the differences and just say, “Oh, it’s pretty much the same.” Which I think wasn’t like a deep commitment to finding the truth of the system.

Erik:

Was that a little shade there? That sounded like a little shade.

Speaker 12:

I wrote that as a facilitator because that was what I was hearing them say. I’m not necessarily endorsing that though.

Speaker 13:

Or we said because they’re so similar, just pick one because they’re both right. So we’ll just pick which one we were going to present as our map.

Erik:

Which I think is another good reminder here of not losing sight of the verb for the noun. Because in that example, you choose one, you’re going to follow that verb through, and if you’re truly seeking at the end of the day, the truth you’ll bring back in those other pieces. So again, don’t confuse the verb for the noun there. Yeah?

Speaker 14:

Yeah, I will probably just echo some of the comments you’ve heard. I’ve heard some labels for tables, and I do have a label over here as well. We have a lot of enthusiasm, and the great thing about being with a lot of design thinkers is the willingness to share ideas. So I’m going to call us the fun table.

Erik:

Perfect.

Speaker 14:

You want to come over here for some fun in building some systems. And really I think what we had in really seeing the connections evolve, and I think I kind of heard that throughout. But it’s really seeing the different connections between the different pieces and hearing the different perspectives and seeing how connections that you may have missed or didn’t know were there suddenly come up. So the system ended up changing and combining in a way that we think overall improved and gave a good overview of what we were looking at.

Erik:

Cool. I’m looking at our time here, and we’re just a minute over, just a minute or two over. So a couple of things.

This isn’t the end, obviously, in 90 minutes to have completely figured it out. I always tell folks in my sessions this is a launch. If you come thinking that this is the end, you’re going to be disappointed. So let’s get real about what we’re able to do if we’re actually going to tackle things in the ways that we need to. Hopefully you’re starting to see some ways to build some truth into the complex systems that you are a part of each day, and that you can take a lot of what emerged in this space into further building to the truths and solutions into our work for tomorrow. So thank you for your willingness to dive in and to seek that truth with each other, to develop this very scarce but important resource. Thank you.

The post Facilitating Change by Mapping Systems appeared first on Voltage Control.

At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Erin Warner led a captivating workshop titled “Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action.” Erin, known for her unique blend of movement and facilitation techniques, encouraged participants to engage physically and mentally throughout the session.

The workshop began with a lively introduction, where Erin emphasized the importance of community, movement, and holistic well-being. She shared her journey of integrating diverse experiences into her facilitation practice, highlighting the power of books like “The Art of Gathering” by Priya Parker and “The Joy of Movement.”

Erin’s session was structured around two core elements: trust and emergence. She introduced participants to the concept of embodied decision-making, explaining how our bodies can provide valuable insights into our levels of trust and enthusiasm.

Participants were invited to stand in a circle and make eye contact, gauging their trust levels with each other. This exercise was both meditative and revealing, helping attendees understand the importance of trust in group dynamics.

Erin then guided the group through interactive decision-making activities. One such activity involved physically moving to different areas of the room to express preferences for various ideas. This embodied voting method highlighted the significance of commitment and authenticity in decision-making processes.

Throughout the session, Erin encouraged participants to reflect on their experiences and share insights. The workshop concluded with a discussion on how to maintain a safe and productive environment in facilitated sessions, emphasizing the continuous nurturing of trust and openness.

Erin’s workshop was a powerful demonstration of how movement and embodied practices can enhance facilitation. Her approach left attendees inspired to incorporate these dynamic methods into their own sessions, fostering deeper connections and more effective collaboration.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Erin Warner:

Hello, everybody. Great to see you. Hope you had a good lunch. Very excited to share, yeah, those diverse things that I bring to facilitation with you all today. Thank you, those of you who danced with me yesterday, hope you had fun. I’m going to bring a little bit of movement into this session as well. Is anyone afraid that I’m going to ask you to dance? Is there anyone who’d be excited if I said, hey, we’re going to get up and dance? Okay, cool, well, we’re not going to do that, but we are going to move a little bit.

So just a few words about me. Where I am now really is the result of taking all these very disparate strands that seem unrelated and experiences and then weaving them into something coherent. So community is something very, very important to me. I absolutely treasure it, and this picture right here is actually the summit two years ago, and those are people that I went through the certification with. Of course, it was all online and that was the first time we met each other in person, so it was a really special way to deepen the community that we have with each other. These are the people that I danced with at the gym, and I always say it’s more than just a fitness class. We are really building emotional wellness and social strength through coming together and doing our physical fitness.

Some of my favorite books, of course, The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. I was talking to someone last night who hasn’t read it, and if you haven’t read it, I highly suggest it. It’s just a really beautiful book and very applicable to what we do. The Joy of Movement, it’s about, again, the three-dimensional benefits of movement, both on your physical well-being, but your cognition as well, your creativity, your sense of resilience, your sense of belonging, so it’s very holistic. I also facilitate a racial healing and racial justice book club. I feel just as an American, that’s part of our responsibility to educate ourselves and engage with those issues. So those are some of the books that we read together.

Yes, I used to be a lawyer and I’m going to talk to you all today about decision-making processes, and as a former lawyer, that’s just something I’ve thought about a lot. I think it’s really important and it’s the practical side of me. I have the fun dancing, all this, but also I really like results. I really like driving things forward, so I’m going to try to provide that today.

And lastly, this picture of colorful vegetables. I am really passionate about produce, fruits and vegetables, for so many reasons, but I’m just going to leave that there. If anybody’s curious about that or if you’re passionate about fruits and vegetables too, let’s talk. But I won’t go into that quirky side of myself, but I’ll just leave that there for anyone who’s intrigued.

The title I gave to my session is Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action, and those are nice things to aspire to, but it can be daunting or scary. So we’re going to look at some things that support being able to actually follow through on that. And I wanted to give you an overview of what we’re going to look at today, and I called it Our Flow because I am very inspired by nature. And we may not get there in the way that I think, we’re going to go co-create this, but the water might go around that hill, it might come around it the other way. There’s even a little waterfall trickling over the top. But one way or the other, we’re going to explore these things. We’re going to flow through.

First, what I consider secret ingredients for successful group decisions because as we know, group decisions are very differently made than individual decisions that we just make on our own, and there’s different dynamics you have to take into account. We’re going to look at how we can bring our bodies into what they can tell us, how we can bring that into the picture. We’ll do some interactive demos of two exercises and we’ll reflect and share. I hope you all are on board for that.

So food is one of my love languages, so I like using the metaphor of secret ingredients. I like being able to share yummy things with you, like star anise or vanilla or cinnamon. This is what I consider two essential ingredients for successful group decision making. Well, actually, sorry, first of all, I wanted to define what I think is successful, because there’s the outward looking and then the inward looking. So it’s successful if it’s moving the organization towards its goals, right? Simple as that. But also when we feel strongly about something, we’ll engage in debate, but there could also be hurt feelings or I feel like I wasn’t heard, I wasn’t respected, they didn’t understand what I was saying. And then there can be, and I’ve seen and experienced this when I facilitated, there can be grudges, wounds. They’re not really surface, they’re just held. And so I think a successful decision making process protects the cohesion and the rapport within the group so that it can then continue towards its mission. So those are the two vectors of success that we’re going to be trying to work towards today.

We’ve been putting ourselves in the shoes of the user, and I want us now to shift to the point of view of the ACC decision makers, because they’re the ones eventually who are going to have to say, how are we going to promote this program? And there’s a lot of ways that we already know about how decisions are made. So I wanted to first just surface some of them. What are some standard ways that groups make a decision that we already know about? Just popcorn style. Sorry?

Speaker 2:

Voting.

Erin Warner:

Voting, yes, and then there’s so many kinds of voting.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible 00:06:43].

Erin Warner:

There’s majority rules, right, 50%, 51%? Thank you.

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:06:50].

Erin Warner:

Yes, stacked ranked voting. Yes. What else?

Speaker 4:

[inaudible 00:06:56].

Erin Warner:

Yeah, decider, decider. That’s nice and simple. Cool. Anything else? Yes.

Speaker 5:

Consensus.

Erin Warner:

Consensus, yeah. That’s always the holy grail if you can … Has anyone ever seen it. Jimmy? Consent, yes. Can you explain the difference? And Nellie’s bringing you a mic.

Jimmy:

Decisions by consent are like, I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I can consent to this.

Erin Warner:

I’m not going to veto it or block it. Thank you. Thank you. Monica?

Monica:

Not deciding anything.

Erin Warner:

Who’s seen that and experienced that? Man, that’s frustrating. Cool, thank you. So the next thing is, so we know these because we see them and we experience them, right? So does anyone want to make a case for which one is the best one?

Speaker 8:

[inaudible 00:08:00]

Erin Warner:

Yeah, and if you don’t want to make a case, would anyone like to talk about why you don’t want to say this one’s the best one? Over here.

Speaker 9:

I can make a case for having a single decision maker such as a boss or a manager, assuming that they have heard all of the feedback from everyone else in the group and they’ve taken that into consideration and answered questions, but generally having that single person helps present churn. And then of course you can be iterative, so if it turns out to not be the right decision, you can revisit it with the group later and pivot.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Thank you, and then I think your neighbor over here had an idea.

Speaker 10:

I don’t think there really is a single best one. It depends on the circumstances and the whole group dynamic. In some situations you might need to get a consensus, you might need to get the majority of people to agree on it. Or if you just need quick action, you might need just one person to say, we’re doing this, go. Even if it’s wrong, we have to go and do it, so it really depends.

Erin Warner:

Yeah, thank you for that. It depends, I think is where I come down on it and that’s why I want to give you these next two tools that no matter which decision-making process you’re going to use, there’s two secret ingredients to get back to that that will support the success of that decision-making process and one is trust and the other one is releasing that inner narrator. There’s always at least one perfectionist in a group usually, or maybe it’s in all of us, and allowing space for emergence. So if you have those two factors in place, then it really frees you up to do those things I started the talk with, which is bold actions and giving yourself space to refine your ideas.

And the reason why those two matter is even if you do disagree with the ultimate decision, if you trust the intention with which it was made, then it’s a lot easier to consent to disagree and commit to get on board if you trust the intention. And also if you trust and you know that it’s part of an emergent strategy, it’s going to be revised, it’s going to be checked, then again, because the thing is if we knew the right answer, it would be easy. And so all of us admitting that we need space to discover for a right answer to emerge will take a lot of pressure off. How are we going to decide?

So we’re going to look at those topics in two activities that will get us up out of our seats and into our bodies, but we hear that word embodiment a lot. I just wanted to see in the room what that word, what you think it means. So again, a little popcorn style, when you hear embodiment, anyone want to speak into that? Over here?

Speaker 11:

Mind and body connection.

Erin Warner:

Beautiful. Can you say more?

Speaker 11:

I think of embodied as an experience that you’re feeling inside of your body and then understanding it more from a mental capacity.

Erin Warner:

Beautiful. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Right now I’m feeling like energy in my body, everyone’s looking at me. I can feel like the blood coursing. Maybe you’re feeling something else because you just had lunch, but how is that affecting your experience? [inaudible 00:11:34] She’s bringing the mic.

Speaker 12:

The word that comes to mind when I hear embodied is becoming or to become.

Erin Warner:

Interesting. Can you say more about that? Because I’m curious.

Speaker 12:

Yeah, I think to embody something or a concept even in our earlier practice where we were to become or to embody the solution we had in mind with making the shape with our bodies of what this concept was, I think it provides a different layer or experience or a way of thinking about something when you internalize it that way and think about different aspects of the piece and how it translates to your physical body, so yeah.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Yeah, it definitely is another layer that we’re recently becoming more conscious of and trying to receive whatever wisdom or information it has for us. Yeah. Does anybody else want to talk about embodiment?

Speaker 13:

You could also think about not only do they say they’re willing to lean in and do it, but do they actually do it? So it’s actually attaching the willingness, but also the action, so you can actually see it. I’m not just saying it, I’m going to show you that I’m bought in and I’m going to be supported.

Erin Warner:

Absolutely. Yeah, I’m going to come back to that and underline that. Thank you.

Speaker 14:

When I’m thinking about embodiment, I’m thinking about giving form and shape to something that otherwise would be abstract.

Erin Warner:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. So this very much aligns with the way I’ve summed it up, so thank you very much. You guys are really tuned in. So when I use the word today, embodied, I am really looking for congruence between what the mind is thinking and what the body is either feeling, experiencing or expressing. So it is taking the abstract of just what’s going on in your head and making it more concrete. I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name back here, who you said about … Yeah.

Speaker 15:

Diana.

Erin Warner:

Sorry?

Speaker 15:

Diana.

Erin Warner:

Diana, about actually enacting what you say you think or feel. So that’s how I’m using the word today, and that takes me to our first activity. So I’ve seen and experienced this being very powerful and it has to do with the secret ingredient of trust. And we’ve been doing a lot of, I think, activities in day one with the different facilitators building trust among us as a group. And I just want to invite you to look at trust now with fresh eyes as not just a team building thing or thing that has to do with morale, but that’s actually integral to decision-making that it actually frees up a group to be able to make a decision.

So I want you all to imagine that we are the ACC decision-makers, okay? So we work together on this project over time. We’re not going to just see each other today and tomorrow and never see each other again. We are a team. So imagine that, we have relationships, we have a history, and we also have a goal that we need to do together, right? So to embody or to examine the level of trust that we have, what I’m going to ask is actually for everyone to stand up and we’re going to make roughly a circle. It’s going to be similar to what Solomon had us do earlier in terms of a line, but it’s going to be a circle shoulder-to-shoulder. The key is that it’s an uninterrupted shape, whether it’s squiggly, awesome, where hopefully you can pretty much see everybody eye to eye if you were to look around the room. Beautiful, beautiful.

Okay, so imagine that we’re all in this team together and you’re about to make a decision together, and the invitation is to slowly look around the circle and look at people in the eye and feel into what’s true for you. Either you look at that person and you feel, I trust that person, and you believe it, you feel it. And if you don’t feel that, then I invite you to feel, I want to trust that person? Either it’s a question or it’s a statement. I want to trust that person. Those are the two options.

And if you feel I want to trust that person, then ask yourself, what would make that possible? Is there a rupture that needs to be healed? Is there just something you need to get off your chest or is it like I just don’t really know that person. We haven’t connected, so I don’t know. I want to, but I don’t yet. So this can be really powerful in a smaller group where you literally can look every person in the eye. This group is a little bit bigger, but I’m just going to give you the time to literally do that and listen to your body and what it’s telling you. It might be uncomfortable. That’s okay. Take a deep breath, shake it off.

Okay, now go ahead and go back to your tables. Thank you very much for trusting me to do that. Now I recognize that trust is something that’s built. Some of us know each other, but not so well as a whole group. But imagine doing that with your team, a group of people who you know maybe as well as dear family in some ways. I know yesterday I was asking some people to dance and I was like, they don’t have any reason to trust. They don’t know me very well. They don’t trust me well enough to do that. And then maybe they would again in the future if I asked them again. But having done this very simple activity that I’ve witnessed and experienced to be very, very impactful for groups, I’d like you to just, solo, take down your reflections on how that felt for you, good, bad, and ugly, and then we’ll share. So how did it feel to evaluate trust from an embodied perspective? What did your body tell you? Does anybody want to share how that felt for them? They could imagine using it if they had resistance to it.

Speaker 16:

I think I’m more willing to do it here, looking at people who are here for a shared purpose, with people I know less well than I would be back with people outside my team at the place I work for. Within my team, whom I know very well, I’d be okay, but with other people at my company who I know a little bit, I think I would feel more uncomfortable. I was more comfortable here among people I know less well. I don’t know why. There’s an inner narrator in there, I am sure.

Erin Warner:

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 17:

I trust very naturally. That’s just my general inclination is to trust, but I also recognize it can get derailed when I start to judge. I’m like, that dude seems pretty opinionated or something like that. So that’s where it gets sometimes in the way, and I need to go back to my defaults and start with trust.

Speaker 18:

I mean, in going around the room, I think for me it was a big difference of people who I’ve had a chance to engage with and people who I haven’t. And so primarily it was like I trust this person, I don’t know this person.

Erin Warner:

Yeah.

Speaker 18:

And it sounds funny, but there were a number of faces around the room that also felt like it was the first time I was looking at them because we are all at our own tables and they’re just like, oh, I didn’t know that person was here, and so that was very interesting for a group who doesn’t really know each other here. But something that it brings up for me is in an organization that I was recently a part of where a lot of trust had been broken and going through really difficult leadership transitions, if we were to do that activity, it would be a very high risk activity, and so I’m wondering how you move that. That is a very engaging moment that can have a lot of vulnerability in it. How do you actually move it to a place of trust when it is clear that there is so much distrust in that space?

Erin Warner:

Thank you for surfacing that because I think actually fully intended to share the context, at least where I’ve seen this be really powerful, because it was a similar situation where there was a lack of trust based on some experiences that had happened. So we used this after doing a really vulnerable unpacking where everyone got to say their peace and not be responded to, just be heard and received. And that was quite emotional, but also it surfaced the reason why there was emotions because everybody cared so much, right? So I think it surfaced that unity of purpose, disagreement about methods and not always communicating with the care, and then after that facilitated conversation, having the trust reflection.

And again, you’re not sharing it with anyone else and you’re asking yourself if I can’t honestly say I trust this person, the option I gave you is not, I don’t trust this person. I mean, you’re autonomous humans, you can make that choice, but the option I invited you to was I want to trust this person and what would make that possible? And again, you’re not sharing it with anyone, but now you have that knowledge. They’re like, I’m not so sure about her. Why, and what can I do about that? Taking responsibility also for trying to meet them. Yeah. Thank you. Anybody else? Julie.

Julie:

I want to tell on myself a little bit here. I found it awkward, but I also found it meditative and I was very sad when the exercise ended that I hadn’t been able to catch everybody’s eye. And something that hit me personally was if you had asked me to do this exercise 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it would’ve felt extremely dangerous to be in a room of so many people I don’t know, and make eye contact and set out that good intention. So I guess I just want to reflect that this practice of facilitation as a human being I think has changed that for me in a really powerful way.

Erin Warner:

Wow. Thank you. Thanks, Julie. Anybody else? Yeah, I definitely understand and expect that it can be awkward and some people might really love it and be touched by it. Some people might be like, there’s no way I would ever do that. I’m okay with that. It’s like the dancing, I did a little poll at the beginning of this session. Some people would totally cringe like, no, that’s not happening. And then other people are like, yeah, that’s for me. So I think that is as expected. Yeah, Leah?

Leah:

Thank you. I’m curious to learn more about when you do this exercise, because I saw you define trust with unity of purpose, and so what I noticed about this is first and foremost, to trust others, you have to trust yourself and so just how that shows up, because in the embodiment piece, it’s how do you trust your own body and trust your own thoughts? So I’d just be curious to learn more about if that comes in to these kinds of experiences.

Erin Warner:

So first about the unity of purpose. You can define trust in many different ways, and that’s the one that I think is crucial to being able to make decisions, and again, that disagree and commit. If you trust that their intention with which the decision is made, it’s easier to get on board. And then yeah, I think the embodiment comes into play because your body will tell you if you trust someone or not because probably, well, possibly you might think, well, I should. That’s your mind. And then I wanted to bring up the unconscious biases that we have too. We all have them. Again, we try to override them cognitively when we’re aware of them. So maybe actually you “should trust a person.” But some unconscious bias is coming up that maybe by sitting quietly, looking in their eye, you can notice that and say, oh, actually I have some work to do to not let that dictate my relationship with that person.

So the next secret ingredient is making space for emergence, and I’m very much inspired by Adrienne Maree Brown, who wrote the wonderful book Emergent Strategy. I mean it’s a concept that I think it’s expressed in many, many different ways, but what I found really resonated with me in her book and her perspective is two things in particular. One, she’s very, very inspired by nature and very clear on the fact that we are nature. So we’re not separate from it. Whatever we can learn and observe in what we say is nature is generally true on some level or in some way about us as well, and she’s also very inspired by science fiction in a very optimistic way that I love.

So basically if we can imagine and dream an alternate reality that we would like to see become reality, then we can work towards it, but it is an act of creativity, right? It doesn’t exist, so we have to dream it first. That’s the first step, so I love that about her. And just some axioms from her book that I think applied to the decision-making is moving at the speed of trust, again, to keep the health of the members of the organization, the rapport. Never a failure, always a lesson, we all know that one, small is good, small is all. The large is a reflection of the small, so it’s not insignificant, the small steps. It’s like the fractals and the microcosm. What you pay attention to grows, so we’re going to come back to that in terms of enthusiasm, and then change is constant, be like water, always be flowing, always be looking for a different path, and there’s multiple ways to get to your destination.

And another way of saying it that, I am very grateful to the certification process because I came up with this working on my portfolio and the certification process, is that small is better than not at all, direction is more important than the finish line and enthusiasm is the fuel. So we’re going to move into actually evaluating the ideas that you all generated in the previous session using this lens, this framework, especially, we’re going to focus on enthusiasm.

So I had to collect from you all high level the ideas that you all generated in the past session, and there were nine tables, but it seemed like there were basically five big ideas and I wrote them on the pieces of paper. So if you have the block paper on your table, could you just stand up, one person from each table, and say what your big idea was, very high level, what pain point you were solving for and what your idea was? And listen for these because I’m going to ask you to express your preference and your enthusiasm in a minute here, so it’ll be a form of voting.

Speaker 22:

So the pain point was geographic and cultural diversity, and what we came up with were gatherings, convenings, community gatherings at installments because, well, the spouses know where their spouses work and they go there every day. And how about creating community there as a way to share about these things in the way the military shows up and offers convening and gatherings and luncheons as a recruiting method?

Erin Warner:

Thank you.

Speaker 23:

So we focused on building a personal connection and what we landed on was partner with universities for belonging and prestige, so universities that carry a lot of clout in the business world, the Stanfords, Harvards, those kinds of universities. Not only could that help bring attention to resumes, but you also would start to feel a belonging with that university, like I’m part of Stanford or I’m part of Harvard, and so it helps build a community that’s global and really easy to plug into.

Erin Warner:

Thank you.

Speaker 24:

We focused on lack of trust and we thought that could be ameliorated by storytelling of the individuals who were in the program. So I started out with the same problem you had in terms of feeling lonely, not having childcare, and through this program I was successful. Also, on the employer side, I’m an employer. I hired these people and they were super successful in my organization, and so that kind of storytelling would help build trust if it was success stories.

Speaker 25:

So we started out with competing messages. As we started building this out, we’ve realized it might’ve touched on another. We were focusing on that one as our pain point, but we thought we would partner with a national corporate sponsor, for example, a big IT like an Oracle or a Google because they could help us with communication, outreach. They have the name notoriety, they have the bandwidth within their own company. They know how to do this well in terms of communications and branding and that kind of thing. And they also could help with funding with scholarships for the spouses, providing internships and potential job opportunities as they complete the program.

Erin Warner:

Thank you.

Speaker 26:

So we were focused on lack of trust and one of the ideas that we came up with was to create listening circles between the military spouses. So hosting some sort of event where it’s like a family night or something like that where people can all come together and share their pain points and what has been their process so far with their job search or whatever pain points that they might be going through.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Fantastic, and so I consolidated it to five because I heard a few similar ideas about partnerships and that kind of thing. So hopefully I captured most of the genius in the room. So again, we’re going to have to use our imaginations onto accounts. One, we’re going to imagine that we are the ACC decision makers and we’re going to do something to promote this program and it’s going to be one of these ideas, and we also are going to imagine that we’ve had time to really engage with these five ideas. So we’re really fast-forwarding to, after all that debate, conversation, exploration has been had. But I would like for you all to take about one or two minutes to reflect on these five ideas and which one you think is the coolest.

We’re just going to use enthusiasm along these three vectors if you think there’s potential here represented by that bud, that flower bud, or if you think it’s moving the organization towards its mission or if you just think it’s cool, you’re enthusiastic about it. So I’m going to go back to the five here because in a minute we’re going to get up. We’re going to move around the room and express our preferences by physically locating our bodies. Reflect on these five ideas and where your enthusiasm is and why.

So wait, wait, wait. So we have community gatherings and installments and listening circles. Is everybody who’s standing here saying I’m on board with both of those or should we keep them separate? I think let’s keep them separate for now. I’m going to ask you to choose, so Jenny [inaudible 00:34:05] further away.

Speaker 27:

Jenny, I’m over here.

Erin Warner:

Jenny, stand over here. Spoiler alert, you might get a chance to combine ideas, but work with me. Okay, thank you. So I would just like to hear what you all are noticing so far both in terms of what information you have from just being able to see how the people are distributed. And also I saw some people walking like, I guess I’ll go over here. So what is your body telling you about your true level of enthusiasm or what is it telling you? Does anyone want to respond to either of those questions?

Speaker 28:

My body brought me here even though this was our idea, over here because I remembered that we said we were supposed to be thinking about her, so immediate, something that’s immediate and personal, and I have personally benefited from these kinds of what it would be as a support group.

Erin Warner:

Nice. Thank you.

Speaker 29:

To be honest, I was thinking about it when you asked why I came over here and I think that I still feel somewhat disconnected from the purpose, and so I’m hoping that storytelling will help me feel more connected to it. And yeah, I mean I was thinking that even yesterday when we were doing the system mapping, more information, and so I enjoy hearing a story to learn more about why it should matter.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Okay, so we have five ideas and I’m now going to give the people who voted for the smallest group to now vote for one of the top three. Now I would like to invite the people who just cast their second vote, one person who did that to say why. So someone who’s at storytelling who was not there initially, would one of you please share why you decided to give your second vote to them?

Speaker 30:

You had me at purpose.

Erin Warner:

Is there anything from your original vote, any element of that that’s important to you that you would like to propose to fold in and add to this one? Margaret has her hand up.

Margaret:

So the two things are, one, we wanted it to be national, so it had to be something that could be broadcast and storytelling can do that via different media. The other one was, we can start this tomorrow. Our media students here at ACC can take these stories and film them or gather them. We can make an experience for the students too. So it’s immediate and national, which were two of the original goals.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Actually, could someone scribe that add to what Dan’s holding, just the immediate and national so that we’re capturing the new hybrid idea? Thank you. So someone who initially did not vote for corporate sponsor partnership but now has gone there, could you please share why?

Speaker 32:

As they say, follow the money.

Erin Warner:

Very good. You guys are both very concise in why you changed your vote. And was there anything from your original camp that you felt was important or special that you’d like to embed into your new camp?

Speaker 33:

I think the only other thing I’d want to bring is when we highlighted prestige, what I was thinking is if these people don’t have a lot of experience, they’re probably lacking confidence, and so just a name brand with some teeth that can make them feel more confident going into those job interviews and make them feel like they can really get this job.

Erin Warner:

Thank you, and then someone who was not initially at community gatherings, but who was there, what brought you over there?

Speaker 34:

Yeah, so I was just saying, yeah, with the community gatherings it is something that is low touch, high impact, whereas some of the other things like building out a partnership with the university or sponsors can be high touch, high impact, but it’s going to take more time. So yeah, this is grassroots, similar, you can get it started-

Erin Warner:

Similar to what we heard over there.

Speaker 34:

You can get it started immediately.

Erin Warner:

And someone who wasn’t initially in this camp, could you say where you were initially and something, an element of that you’d like to fold in?

Speaker 35:

In partnership with over there, it’s immediate and regional, but has the same spirit going, so regional and national has a nice partnership. Let’s get together. [inaudible 00:38:38].

Erin Warner:

Exactly. Exactly. Beautiful. Thank you. So you see how we could do this again until we got down to two or one, but we’re down to three, which I think is great. And you see how the process works, how you are able to build a hybrid proposal, bring in the elements that were appreciated and the ones that didn’t rise to the top and how you can build consensus. You can’t always achieve it completely, but you can build it a little bit and let everyone feel like their voices are heard. So I would suggest that we have come up with three really great ideas that could be a provisional, advisory opinion that we could provide to ACC for them to evaluate.

So that was really beautifully done. I’m actually really moved with the fact that we have … The lawyer in me is very gratified by the concreteness of what we just did, that we had ideas, we collaborated. They can of course be fleshed out. You all used your imagination and trusted me to go through this process that was a little bit sped up. And so the outcomes that we have is not two but three ideas that I want to hear your feedback, but the intention is that they’re selected inclusively, transparently and with consensus building. So is that landing? Do you think that’s what you just experienced or how did your experience differ?

Speaker 36:

Excited, to be honest. At first I thought maybe we missed the mark on the messaging and I was thinking through in my head, should I have elaborated more in some areas? But I think there was enough overlap with the idea we ultimately merged with that it made sense and it broadened the scope and the reach of what we originally wanted to do.

Speaker 37:

They were all generally really good ideas and we were able to let go of our ego.

Erin Warner:

Yeah, I think that’s right. There wasn’t too much attachment, but the idea of the process is that when there is attachment, that whole part of getting to say what you want to keep alive though from your initial idea can help go to assuaging any feelings of disappointment, loss. Exactly. So we did an embodied process of allowing ideas to emerge and co-creating ideas that weren’t there in the room initially, and I wanted to ask you to just reflect on how that felt. Again, we’re not super attached to this, but would it feel vulnerable to go and actually walk across the room when it’s more controversial, and I’m here? If it does feel vulnerable, is that a good thing in some ways and a bad thing in other ways? Just what does it mean to express yourself with your whole body?

And how did it feel if your idea didn’t become one of the top two? Did you feel included? I said inclusive, but that’s my aspiration. Does it feel that way to you? And yeah, how do you think trust is implicated in this experience? So if you all would take just a minute or two to gather your thoughts, because again, I want this to be useful for you. You won’t do it exactly the same way, but what here can you take and use? So our final share out debrief, and again, I would love to invite anyone who hasn’t shared to the whole group, we value your voice here. So we’d love to hear from anyone who hasn’t yet taken that plunge what you want to share. Go ahead.

Speaker 38:

When you were talking about when there is significant weight to the decision being made, there can be loyalties along team lines, and so it all goes back to that trust. If you didn’t have it in the first place, it doesn’t help to not have it toward the end, because you’re not going to vote authentically or really speak the truth if you know eyes are watching and you’re going to have to pay for it at some point, and it really reinforces for me the key critical importance of trust here.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Thank you for that, and that goes back to there’s no one best way to make decisions. So you obviously wouldn’t use this in every situation and that’s why there’s such thing as secret ballots. I mean that is very important to have secret ballots or to go in reverse hierarchical order when you express your opinion. So yeah, thank you for that. Hi.

Speaker 39:

As somebody who gets really sleepy after lunch, I really appreciated that we got to stand up and move around. And I think just in general in facilitating classes and that kind of thing, I’m always looking for that, an activity to do after lunch to get people up and moving around, so this was a great way. I mean, sure we could have done it still seated, but it was great that we were up and moving around.

Erin Warner:

Fun. Thank you so much. I’m glad that helps you. Go ahead, Mimi.

Mimi:

So something that I felt very challenged by in this on a personal level was just this desire to come to the true right answer and a desire to want to debate the merits of one idea versus another idea and go from five to three to one. Really, I wanted to stand for my idea and why it’s superior to all the other ones, which is probably also inner narrator stuff, but I think that thinking about using this strategy when you have to make a decision and you have to make a decision where you take it from there or where you sit with ambiguity, sit with a continued space of variation and iteration and when you have to get to the closing point or it seems like the push and pull there.

Erin Warner:

100%, and I think, yeah, this was a very truncated version. You could expand on this quite a bit, and one thing you could do is when people are doing their second or third vote and maybe they’re reluctant at that point, they’re like, no, I don’t really love this idea, and you can invite them to bring in something that’s important to them, it can be a time box on it or something that makes it iterative, something like, let’s try this for so much time, or let’s only invest this much money in it, that kind of thing to help them get on board to make them feel more comfortable or safer with it. Yeah, there’s a lot of ways you could go with this.

Speaker 41:

Erin, what struck me about this versus other voting mechanisms, and we’ve encountered people who were like, can I split my vote? Can I tear my sticky? Or I guess I’ll raise my hand for that, is that there’s a whole self-commitment. You cannot separate yourself from your body. So when you go to a place, you are there and it’s visceral, and I think someone mentioned the word authentic, which I also wrote down.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Phil:

On a quick yes hand on John’s commitment for our projects, when we get to those decision moments, we’ll talk a lot about, we want commitment over consensus. So I like you’re merging with this group and people know you’re coming in from the outside and you’re bringing something with you, but it’s like what makes you willing to commit to trying this? And if it doesn’t work, we’ll go back and we’ll try something else. But that diffuses, am I fully agreeing with this or am I just willing to do an experiment?

Erin Warner:

Yeah, thanks, Phil.

Speaker 43:

To add on the things that have been said, I also like the prompts of checking back in with your body because I tended to realize when you didn’t give that prompt to stick in my head and then start to argument why I would go left and right versus truly feeling, how does it feel to now stand here or leaving the idea you had at first and go there? So it’s one thing to use going somewhere to vote, but then to also maybe even suggest people to close their eyes and say, how does it feel? So I think there’s maybe even room to play with the embodiment.

Erin Warner:

Definitely. Yeah, add another layer.

Speaker 44:

Having people move was helpful because you get to watch people’s bodies as they move and you can see the manner in which they are voting because you’re asking them to check in with their body. You’re like, oh, that person is just moving along. But that’s helpful data for the facilitator to see, oh, there’s a lot of bodies that either they don’t give a shit right now or they’re really about this vote and they really committed. It’s interesting to be able to watch the story of voting happen as opposed to just, here’s the outcome.

Erin Warner:

Absolutely. Thank you for that. Yeah, and you can inquire into it. I literally noticed someone … I think they were undecided between two and their body literally was … They were going like this and like this, so that’s something I could have inquired into. It seemed like you were torn about which direction to go and it really … Yeah, there’s a lot of information there for the facilitator. Yeah. Thank you.

So thank you very much for trusting me and going there and knowing something a little different. Just to recap where we’ve been, and I don’t know exactly how we got there, but I introduced what I consider the secret ingredients for successful group decision-making, trust and emergence. We talked about when embodiment is, and then we experienced it. We did some interactive demos with the trust circle and expressing your preference with your body and we reflected and shared, so thank you all very much. I just want to remind you that I’m Erin and I would love to keep in touch. Community is such an important thing to me and that’s actually what I love so much about Voltage Control. I feel such a part of this community and now I’m so glad to be in community with you all. So please keep in touch. Thank you.

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