A conversation with Reshma Khan, Chief Catalyst and Founder at K’enso Consulting
“Listening in the silence, observing, seeing what’s not being said in that silence, that tells a whole story as well.” – Reshma Khan
In this podcast episode, Douglas Ferguson interviews Reshma Aziz Khan, the CEO and Founder of Kenzo Consulting Limited. They discuss Reshma’s background in the nonprofit sector and her interest in facilitation. Reshma shares a story about her first experience working with a facilitator in Zimbabwe and how it sparked her curiosity and excitement about the power of facilitation. They also discuss Reshma’s approach to facilitating workshops and building connections among participants, including the use of Whole Brain Dominance and unconventional seating arrangements. Reshma shares her experience transitioning to becoming a facilitator and the importance of networking. They also talk about the concept of holding silence and the impact of building confidence through practice and continuous learning. The episode concludes with Douglas inviting listeners to leave a review and subscribe to the podcast.
Show Highlights
[00:02:23] First Encounter with a Facilitator
[00:09:20] Understanding Each Other’s Stories
[00:13:44] Using the Whole Brain Dominance Instrument
[00:23:18] The Impact of Certification
[00:29:32] The Power of Holding Silence
[00:38:39] Building Confidence and Practice
Links | Resources
Reshma on Instagram
Reshma on Twitter
About the Guest
Reshma Aziz Khan is Kenyan and grew up in Nairobi, the Green City in the Sun. Reshma received her undergraduate degree from Calgary, Canada, and over the past 15 years, has worked in development and humanitarian aid in communications, leadership, strategy, and culture. Diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging. She also led global leadership and strategy workshops for senior leaders, both in person and virtually. Reshma founded K’enso Consulting in 2020 to support social impact leaders in their conscious leadership through her leadership coaching, team effectiveness, and Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Dialogue facilitation work. Reshma lives her low-waste life in Nairobi with her husband and three dogs – she makes all her own body products and grows much of her own food in her commitment to doing better for the earth.
About Voltage Control
Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change. Navigating this uncertainty requires a systemic facilitative approach to gain clarity and chart pathways forward. We prepare today’s leaders for now and what’s next.
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Full Transcript
Douglas Ferguson:
Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast where I speak with vultures control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitationlab. And if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com.
Today I’m with Reshma Aziz Khan, CEO and founder of K’enso Consulting Limited, a company she set up so that she could be full-time leadership coach and global facilitator. Welcome to the show, Reshma.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Thank you very, very much, Douglas. I’m really, really excited and happy to be here.
Douglas Ferguson:
I’m excited as well. And this is the first of one of our alumni stories that’s now moving to the podcast, which is a theme that we’ll start seeing across episodes. So it’s always great to have a first. So this is our inaugural voyage into alumni stories on the podcast and as usual on the podcast, I want to come to your beginnings and how you got your start in this work. How did you get interested in this amazing work you’re doing at K’enso?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Thank you very much, Douglas. So it’s a bit of an interesting story. I actually have a background in the nonprofit sector. I trained as a political scientist, have not used any of that, although some people claim that whatever you learn, the skills are usable in whatever way, shape, or form. But I worked with a large international nonprofit for many years. In 2015, I moved from a country office to the Kenya country office that was running poverty alleviating programs to the regional office, which was still based in Nairobi. And in my first month I was told that one of my duties would be to work alongside a facilitator to run a workshop for the most senior leaders in the region in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Now, I had never been to Zimbabwe and I didn’t even know what a facilitator meant, so I had some trepidation, I was a little nervous and I got talking with this facilitator and still didn’t quite understand what she actually did. And then we went to Harare later in 2015 and there were over a hundred people in this room. And I saw the way she showed herself and basically her role was to just guide people through the week while they were having the discussions. While they were making the decisions, she was holding space and creating space for effective dialogue.
And I remember a particular incident where there were two very, very heated opposing groups that could not agree on a critical decision for organizational continuity. And she was able to get them to stop, step back and still have that conversation of divergence conversation where they didn’t necessarily agree but eventually come to a point where they could converge and compromise and see what the other was saying. And so that blew me away because in my mind, I thought, gosh, to be able to have a skill to bring over a hundred people in a room that are not all agreeing, that are very different personalities, very different parts of the world, very different cultures, to be able to all come together, share their viewpoints and ultimately still end up with a similar goal and a shared goal was incredible. And that’s the first time I saw a live facilitator in action and I honestly was so taken away. It was like watching magic happen.
Douglas Ferguson:
Do you remember the feeling that maybe came up for you as you were watching this magic happen?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Absolutely. I think it was a feeling of awe, complete awe, but also a feeling of excitement because the energy of the room, despite the fact that people were not necessarily agreeing with each other, there was an energy, there was a buzz in the room that humans were getting to their most generative thinking, that they were getting to the space where they were going beyond what they thought they knew about the organization. And that was so exciting and I felt like I was a little part of this potential future journey that could be so incredible for the organization. So I was awestruck. I would say I was very excited but also very curious and almost felt like a groupie after this facilitator. It’s just that sense of my gosh, if you can bring humans together in a space like this to move towards a specific direction, this is incredible. This is what is the core and the meat of business and organization and future and innovation and everything else.
Douglas Ferguson:
Wow. It sounds like that moment was pretty pivotal for the organization because they were able to start to see themselves and the institution as different or from different perspectives.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that they were able to see also each other. They were also able to better understand the other human in the room, the other human across from them. So it wasn’t just about them coming with their roles, they’re coming with their challenges and their budget issues, but actually seeing the other person, the other human and taking the time to understand that behind all these challenges, there was a person who really wanted to make a difference in the world like they did. And getting to that bare minimum of understanding we are all here to make a difference. That’s what really shifted the conversation.
And actually till today, I still have the picture of this facilitator in the room at the front of the room at the very beginning. It’s just stored as one of my historical drive photos. And I looked at it a few weeks ago and thought, gosh, that’s when all of this started for me.
Douglas Ferguson:
Wow. You talked about this ability for people to see other people in the group and understand them and put aside maybe the tactical logistical pieces of the work and just see each other as humans. And some groups find that more difficult than other groups. And so I was just curious, what did you notice about this group, their ability to step into that space? Was that hard for them? What made it easier? What do you remember about that?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
So it was a very diverse group of people. It was people who were working in Africa, but coming from around the world. So there was someone from Bangladesh, someone from the US, someone from Vietnam, someone from South Africa, people coming in with different viewpoints, different worldviews, different cultures, even different cultural ways of making decisions. So you could imagine that’s quite complex. But I think what did make it easier is that I had come in at a time when they were at a point at which they could have those conversations where they could openly speak up because this facilitator had worked with them over time. I think they were also in a space where they all understood they were in this space for the better good. And so even someone who didn’t necessarily agree with the cultural decision-making ways of, for example, a Pakistani who’s running a Sudan country context country was still able to show their viewpoint, have a courageous conversation, have a brave conversation, but also respectfully listen to this other person.
So I think this in many senses was a much easier space because you had people who had so much experience working cross-culturally that they had a little bit of that cognizance of just respecting and listening to each other. I think there have been instances in the past couple of years where as a facilitator I’ve worked with people who haven’t necessarily had that much experience working with people of different cultures, and that takes so much more work. But at the core of that work is building trust between humans, and I’ve seen that as the ultimate, ultimate true keystone pillar for leading to at least effective dialogue.
Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. Those prior experiences can really shape and condition us to be more receptive to working in those ways. And certainly as a facilitator is a nice when the group is hungry for it, but maybe just had the space or haven’t had the invitation. And I’m curious, when you work with groups that haven’t been as primed to work in these ways, what are some of your favorite ways of encouraging people to step into this new way of thinking or just embracing the cultural differences?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
So I think the first thing I do as a standard, particularly when it’s groups that are very diverse, don’t really know each other that much or seem to have some challenge between them or conflict between them is I usually tend to start the first day of workshops, often people ask me to come in for two or three day workshops is to start the first chunk of the day before the tea break. Tea’s popular here in Kenya, a little bit more than coffee. To start with people’s stories, their life stories. And often I’ll use a template like draw yourself, draw your life story, draw your best self.
In January of this year, I did this with a particular group of people who really were struggling connecting with each other and I got them to draw themselves but draw themselves in the last year, what has Reshma in the last year looked like? And then share those stories with each other.
And I find taking that approach, really getting people to understand each other as humans, understand their life stories. Some of the other things I do is do three rounds of my life story. So in each round, you’ll talk to someone different, but you can never share what you shared in the first round. So at the end of it, you can really get to know the whole person and people take the opportunity to share back what they heard from this person. So when it’s a small enough group, we put the person in the center and we hear from the rest of the group.
So sharing human stories, sharing my story, sharing the story of me in the last year I find is really effective because it gets people to a place where they understand the human behind this persona and that the human might have very similar challenges to them. And often in my experience, I find that when I am able to start with that, even though they might have very conflicting views, going forward, they do it much more respectfully and they actually take the time to listen to each other because even in our world today, we’re always jumping from one Zoom call, one Teams call, one Google Meets call to another. People are not checking in on each other even as a regular workweek meeting. So I find if I’m able to give them that space, it changes the dynamic a fair bit.
Douglas Ferguson:
I love that. And there’s a little move you did within that that I think is a powerful approach that can be used in so many moments, which is how you made it forbidden to share the same thing you had shared in a previous round. And I think that is a really powerful generative technique to say, okay, we came up with some ideas, now we can’t rely on any of those ideas and we had to come up with new ones. Or from your perspective, there’s information about yourself, you’ve already shared some. Now, you had to start over and think of others.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Yeah, absolutely. And often people say at the end of the first round, because we don’t tell them at the end of the first round that, look, you’re going to do this two more times. I often tell them, share your entire life story, whatever is important. At the end of it, often I’ll get groans, people will actually groan or complain or say, oh my gosh, I have nothing else to share. But at the end of the second round and even more the third round, they realize, oh my gosh, I have so much more to me than even I realized. And that’s really phenomenal to see that the whole of me has so many layers. It really helps people get to the rest of that and to be able to share that. And it allows for some level of vulnerability into the room as well that again, further builds the trust between the participants.
Douglas Ferguson:
And the other thing I think that’s beautiful there is this observation that quite often we’re not taking the time to reflect and look that deeply at ourselves, much less other people. So there’s so much more to know and learn and respect and care about others and ourselves.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think when we create space to really reflect deeply for ourselves and with others, I think we unlock really the transformational and the catalytic thinking for us. So apart from being a facilitator, I’m also a leadership coach. So I was certified as a leadership coach in 2020. And as a leadership coach, I often work with individuals and teams to get to that space of self-reflection, of reflecting on those different layers of what’s going on with me, what skills, what strengths do I have that I may not be aware of. So doing that both with individuals and with teams really helps us get to the edge of our best thinking.
Douglas Ferguson:
And your coaching practice is based off of HBDI, is that correct?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
So, a little bit. So I am officially trained as an executive coach by the Academy of Executive Coaching. I don’t like to use the word executive coach because for me that limits a lot of people who might not see themselves as executives. The HBDI, the whole Brain Dominance Instrument is one of the tools I use. I was trained and certified in it in 2018 when I was still with the organization I was working with. And in my opinion, it’s such a fantastic tool because it looks at the four quadrants of our brain. So all of us have a whole brain unless we’ve had a severe injury. But because of nature, because of nurture, because of the experiences we’ve had, because of maybe our education systems, we perceive information and therefore think in different ways from each other.
So for example, I tend to think about the bigger picture first. Someone else might look at the data and hard facts first or the details. I want to know the details, what’s the policy and procedure first? And so this looks at how an individual prefers to think and therefore how they show up, how they communicate. And I find this particularly helpful when I facilitate with teams towards team effectiveness because we get people to better understand how each other thinks, how each other communicates, how each other perceives information, and therefore how each other is either currently effective or not. And I have a really great example.
So when I first got certified in this, when I was still with the company I was working with, I was part of this regional senior management team for the entire Africa region, the East Africa region for the nonprofit I was working with. And I got people to sit on a big round table, but we actually cut off one piece. It was actually more of a U, I would say, a U-shaped table. And I didn’t tell them I was getting them to sit in a particular order of their preferences from those who are more blue quadrant, which is the data-driven first towards those who are bigger picture. I got them to sit in that order.
So what happened is at the two opposing ends of this table, you had people who had very, very different thinking preferences. When we did the exploration of individual preferences of the profiling, I actually had two people in the room who had not seen eye to eye on anything for as long as I’d been in the organization. The one who was data-driven, she literally got up in the middle of this and said, “Oh my Lord.” Those were her exact words. She pointed to the guy across the room and said, “I thought you just really hated me and that’s why you didn’t respond to my emails. Turns out you think so much bigger picture that getting down to work on the details and writing the emails is not something that’s necessarily your preference. And now I get it. You don’t hate me, it’s just that you think differently and work differently from me.”
So that’s the whole brain dominance instrument I use.
Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, I love this technique too, I’m dissecting some of these little pieces too, because I love the larger construct of using the brain dominance pieces. Also, just this idea of how we place people in the room so that there’s a physical and a visual corollary to whatever construct we’re trying to share. And in this case, you’re trying to show these opposing perspectives or viewpoints, but there’s so many other ways that we might benefit from assembling folks in a room in a certain order so that they can see themselves juxtaposed in certain ways. So I love that. Such a powerful thing to do.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think in many other spaces it’s about using round tables with five people, but five people with, again, opposing viewpoints, but often not telling them that’s why I’m putting them on a table together. So they figure it out for themselves. And I find that that generates so much more interaction than the typical layouts you’d often see in very traditional conferences and workshops.
Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, it’s also fun when if you don’t tell people ahead of time and then in the debrief you expose it.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Yes. Yep.
Douglas Ferguson:
So then in that rich conversation that’s happening after they’ve made some hunches or epiphanies on their own, then we all talk about, Hey, what was this like and what did that make possible for you?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Absolutely, absolutely. And the ahas, right? That’s when a lot of people see their ahas and in a few experiences that’s when people have said, I never thought would be able to sit on the table, me, the finance person, the comms person, this person who’s doing programming and agree on something. But this has actually made us realize that we probably need to be doing this even more, even when we go back to our offices because we can collaborate together.
Douglas Ferguson:
So you transitioned from an event project manager to starting your own practice, K’enso Consulting, and I’m really curious if there’s any challenges or advice you might have for others that you want to share about this transition?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Yeah, absolutely. So I transitioned in 2020. Officially, I think my first day at my company was October of 2020. I left my job just a week before that. And I have to say most people around the world thought I was absolutely nuts to leave a job in the middle of a global pandemic.
But, and this goes to the question you asked around what advice would I have for people, one of the biggest pieces of advice would be don’t box yourself in with what you think are your limits. I very quickly realized that I had two options. I could either choose to be a facilitator and coach only in Kenya in the middle of the pandemic, but then realized that I had been using Zoom since 2016. I was very comfortable in the virtual space. I had been working in the virtual space for a really long time, why not look to working as a global facilitator, as a facilitator with anyone in the world? Because we were at a point in the world where we didn’t need to all be in a physical room.
And I started putting out feelers. I spoke to my former employers, former colleagues, and that networking really helped. And actually is probably one of the biggest strengths for me, the ability to facilitate virtually. So I would say if you’re looking to facilitate, don’t stick to what you think you should be, your limits. For me, my limits as to who I can facilitate with, there are none. So I’m very clear. I prefer to facilitate in the social impact space because that’s the expertise area that I come from, but also from an ethical point of view, I want to be able to try and create lasting impact in the world. And I think I can do that through working in social impact, whether that’s international nonprofit or social enterprise or social venture or civil movements, but not limiting myself to just my own geographical country.
And then the second is networking. I started networking and telling people I’m thinking about doing this from the moment I had the idea in May of 2020 to say, look, I’m going to become a facilitator, just so you know, I’m putting the feelers out there. Please let me know if anything comes through. So I think really setting the ground for yourself, networking, talking to people from across the board, depending on the industry you want to work with, but also not limiting yourself to just a very specific area, a geographical area, because as a facilitator, you don’t have to be the technical expert for the specific stuff that people are talking about in the room. There are instances where it’s very helpful to know what they’re talking about, but you don’t have to be the technical expert. Just like as a coach, you don’t have to be an expert in the subject matter to be a good coach.
Douglas Ferguson:
Another thing I was noticing in there was this focus that you had, and I think that’s worth calling out for listeners because you didn’t say that you’re a event project manager who also facilitates. You said, I’m becoming a facilitator. So that was a distinction, a really clear distinction that folks could easily remember that, okay, Reshma is becoming a facilitator, so I need to now program in my brain that that’s where she’s headed and that’s what she is. That is powerful, right? Because that distinction, when people are starting to think about how they might make intros or how they might be able to help you out, it becomes clear for them. It’s easier for them to be of assistance.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And those networks, those allies. The other thing was, till today, there’s a few colleagues who I still facilitate with and they see the old me, right? The event manager, me and I also have to set my boundaries really clearly that I’m not event managing your event, I’m now the facilitator. So sometimes, I’m in a very interesting situation, but it was so helpful to have that distinction to say, I am becoming a facilitator. I am a facilitator, and in fact, to show you my skill, I’m also offering a few free one hour sessions on, for example, team effectiveness, getting people to have time to think, sharing each other’s stories, offering that to some people so they could see my expertise before even taking me on or contracting me so they could also validate the skills that I had and they could then become my champions and my marketers.
Douglas Ferguson:
So let’s talk a little bit about the certification. I’m curious about how it affected your approach to facilitation and what were some of the valuable lessons that you learned during the program?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Well, first I want to say to you, Douglas and Eric and everyone, thank you so much for even just the opportunity to be in the program. I came across Voltage Control completely by chance last year when I was looking at a few tools to be able to facilitate a couple of workshops. And I came across Voltage Control and applied for the program and got into the program and it completely changed how I saw myself as a facilitator. So I imagine it like an iceberg. I was literally at the tip of the iceberg. I thought I was a good facilitator and I was just at the tip of the iceberg. What the certification program did for me was really get me deep into the iceberg. So now I feel so much more confident and I feel quite able to go to any potential client and say, I am a certified facilitator and I have the right tools and skills to be able to support you.
So that’s the first thing. It’s definitely built my confidence. I have a multiplicity of tools that I’m able to use. Particularly, there’s a couple of things I’d like to mention. So the first is, first of all, I want to also be very grateful for the ability to get books, the actual physical books sent to Kenya, which was great. It was so nice to be able to actually hold up those books and read them. And they’re sitting right next to my desk. They’re my everyday facilitator Bible. Literally just today I picked one up and said, oh, I have something coming up in a few weeks. What can I use?
And the first book that came through, because they came in batches, was the Art of Gathering. And that book, I remember being in the facilitator course and thinking, I feel uncomfortable with this because the Art of Gathering was so helpful and talked about how we just gather people, but it also talked about kindly excluding people, excluding people who might not necessarily be the most impactful in the meeting.
And I remember being uncomfortable with that because I’ve never been able to do that. And there was an aha moment for me when I realized in the past of all the things I had facilitated, part of where we had the sort of lull in the conversations or where we couldn’t come out with really clear final decisions was because there were people in the room who didn’t necessarily need to be there or had no contribution or impact to that meeting. So that was the first. So now what happens is even when I talk to my clients, I often talk about their participants, who they’re thinking about in the room, who really needs to be there, who it’s nice to have, and who doesn’t necessarily need to be there, but they just invited for the sake of. So that was super, super helpful. And actually one client referred me to another department for that reason.
The second book that I absolutely live by is the Rituals, the Rituals for Remote Meetings and Virtual Connection. I think particularly in today’s world, most of what I do is virtual. Last year I started to travel the world and facilitate in person again, but a lot of the work I do is virtual, and I had been struggling with how to get humans connected. So when you talk about sharing stories, when you can have a talk about building rituals for people to connect, how do you build that in a virtual space? And I think now I feel like I’m at a much better place to even advise others. So just this week on Monday, an international nonprofit asked me to talk about how to get people to virtually connect in meetings as part of the coaching program I was running for them. So I feel like I have a little bit more legitimacy to talk about some of this.
It’s really given me the tools, the legitimacy, and also this very clear thought process. I think in the past I was a little bit more ad hoc in my thinking around how I was going to run workshops. So of course I had a run of show, I had an agenda, but I really wasn’t thinking through the process. And so when working on the portfolio, that really got me thinking through the process of organizing events, the process of planning for facilitation and post facilitation and what that looks like.
One of the other tools that I absolutely love that I was introduced to because of the program is Session Lab, which I use, again, all the time now for all my workshops. So there were so many great tools, but ultimately it really got me to a space of confidence and reassured me that I’m exactly where I need to be. As a facilitator, I’m exactly in the space that I need to be in this world.
Douglas Ferguson:
I love that. And I am a huge fan of Session Lab. They’re a great partner. And when I see folks using spreadsheets and trying to add up dates and times inside of spreadsheets, I’m like, oh, no, no, no. There’s a better way to do this.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Yeah. I was a spreadsheet user before because I didn’t know better. And then someone changes one time here, and then you have to go back and manually change everything. And now this is so easy. You can add stuff. I absolutely love it. It’s such a great tool.
Douglas Ferguson:
So I want to come back to there’s this concept we’ve talked about before, and I think you mentioned around just holding silence during conflicting conversations or conflict heavy environments and how that can create equity and maybe more voice so that you can bring perspectives into play. So I was just curious to hear your take on holding silence.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
It’s a space that in the past I have been extremely uncomfortable with. In the past, about four or five years ago, if you’d asked me, would you be able to not just hold a space of silence, be in a space of silence, I would tell you I feel extremely uncomfortable and anxious because I feel like I don’t know what’s going on. I feel like people are not speaking. I feel like there’s a lot of discomfort in the room because in my mind, I believed that silence was a bad thing, that silence meant people disagreed. But over the years and more so even with the certification and with the experience that’s come with it, I’ve come to realize that more often than not, silence is most likely people probably reflecting for themselves, probably thinking through for themselves what this means for them.
And so holding silence and not saying anything and not feeling like I have to jump in as a facilitator if no one’s saying anything for a few moments is liberating. Because for me, I now know people are most likely reflecting thinking through what they might think about the situation, thinking through how they might respond, and I’m okay with that. It’s definitely shifted this perspective from, oh my gosh, they’re silent because they can see I don’t know what I’m doing as a facilitator, or they all have these really negative thoughts. You sort of tend to spiral. So I think that it’s a space that I’m much more comfortable with. I also think that as a facilitator, it’s a great space to be able to hold when your group is going through a lot of reflection, self-reflection, team reflection.
And then you speak about this idea of equity. I think also holding that space allows the diverse voices in the room to also have their say ultimately, because you’re not pushing the voice, you’re not the most powerful voice. That they’re actually able to all then step in when they need to. And linked to that is I organically somehow became a diversity, equity, inclusion dialogue supporter, facilitator. And I found that holding silence can also mean holding a space such that all voices in the room get their equal turn to speak. Even those who may not necessarily speak up otherwise, either due to being an introvert or being from another culture or not having English as their first language or feeling an inferiority complex.
By using tools such as something I use called the time to think. Everyone has an equal amount of time to speak and everyone else stays silent. So everyone holds silence. And when it’s your turn, the rest of the team will hold silence for you. I think that has been so powerful because it also validates people. It helps people find that no one is judging me, or even if they’re judging me, they’re suspending their judgment and I can speak freely without anyone criticizing me.
So I think that holding silence for a room to allow everyone to reflect is quite helpful. But also helping participants hold silence for each other really creates an inclusive space for dialogue.
Douglas Ferguson:
The thing I try to come back to is when you talk about the spiraling and the inner thoughts that might be rolling through our heads of what people are thinking is I always think about how when I’ve been in an audience and speakers, because facilitation is not really performative. So I like to go in an example that’s performative, whether that’s a band that’s playing. A great example is like a jazz improvisationalist. They’re improving and things get a little off, or maybe they drop their instrument or something really goes really bad, but then they somehow recover and you don’t dwell on the fact that they messed up. You rejoice the fact that they actually recovered in a really cool way, right? No one’s sitting there hoping you fail. People want you to be successful. They’re there in the shared interest to be successful.
And I think that is why focusing on purpose matters so much because if we get really clear on that purpose and everyone’s really rooting for us to do good in that purpose, then all the little micro moments don’t really matter. They’re going to be interested in how do we get to that purpose and they’re not going to be judging little moves that we make.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Absolutely. 100%. I think you’re so right. I think when you really focus on purpose, your purpose and the purpose for you supporting this specific group of people, what you’re hoping for, the outcome, what I find is it helps me listen more keenly, listen more deeply. And when I’m truly listening, listening not just with my ears, but listening and observing what’s going around, I find that even though there may be moments of silence, I don’t have that anxiety because I feel like I am in a space where I am supporting them through this process, and I’m keeping my eye on the goal and keeping my eye on the purpose that we have set together. And it definitely takes away from the voices in the head.
Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. And do you ever feel like that when you’re really intensely listening, you can actually find that you can listen in the silence as well?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
110%. 110%. And listening in the silence, observing, seeing what’s not being said in that silence, that tells a whole story as well. I tried this actually in March of 2022, so last year I came to Atlanta to run a workshop with some very senior leaders at the organization I worked with. Some of these were peers, some of these were my supervisors in the past. But doing exactly that, listening to the silence, I was able to observe what was not being said and was able to put it into the room because now I’m no longer an employee. I’m an independent facilitator who’s just sharing my observations. So I have a little bit of a different power now. Changed the conversation and opened up a very courageous, very brave, and also for some people in the room, very uncomfortable conversation that needed to be had. It was the elephant in the room that no one was talking about.
But it came from just really listening to what was not being said, seeing facial reactions, seeing the way people looked at each other, seeing the way people looked down, and recognizing that there was something that was going on here, that there was some communication going on here, but no one was saying anything.
Douglas Ferguson:
Yes. So as we shift to our close, I’m really curious to hear about your future plans for K’enso Consulting. How do you see your facilitation practice evolving in the next few years?
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Well, hopefully it grows, grows and grows. More global work. I am keen to continue to work globally with the social impact sector. I’m hoping to be able to work with even more global teams, more global virtual teams, and in person. I do have a travel bug. I’m hoping to travel a fair bit again. But also to infuse elements that I find unique to the way I facilitate. So for example, I find that a lot more I’m also supporting facilitation around wellbeing and infusing wellbeing and leadership resilience into facilitation. So I’m hoping that I can build on that as well, build a few more skills to really focus on what is my niche, what is my unique selling point. But yeah, K’enso goes global is the ultimate goal. And to continue to work with really great people. I’m so grateful to have made so many great networks through Voltage Control, through the certification, through the different clients I’ve worked with, that it’s made my world so much richer. And for that, I’m very grateful. And I just want more of that, and I want more of that for the company as well.
Douglas Ferguson:
I love that. It’s all about connecting with the people, and it goes with your global theme as well.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Yeah, absolutely.
Douglas Ferguson:
So as a final question, let’s leave our listeners with some advice that you might have for someone who wants to pursue a career in facilitation, or someone who maybe just wants to add facilitation capabilities and competencies to how they show up at work.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
I would say go for it. I would say test it out. You don’t have to wait till even getting a certification. You can start to facilitate, facilitating gathering, people holding space for conversation. Just go for it. If facilitation is something you see as a potential career path or as something you would like to add as a skill in addition to your work, just test it out. Try it out. That’s what I did and found, actually, I really love it. And that’s the decision I made to be a full-time facilitator is because I loved it. So I would say test it out, try it out. I think there’s a lot of opportunities. Facilitation doesn’t just have to be workshops and conferences. Yes, that’s the really glamorous part of it, but it’s also about gathering people, gathering community even so even in your local communities, if you’re doing something to gather people towards a common goal can be facilitation and really stepping back as that independent person holding space and creating space, creating tools, creating experiences for humans to connect. I think anyone can do that if they put their mind to it in the best way that they know how, in their most authentic way.
Douglas Ferguson:
I love that. And it comes back to that piece you said earlier about building confidence and how much the confidence has impacted your practice. And we have a saying here at Voltage Control, which is practice makes practice. So the more that we find opportunities to put stuff to use, the more comfortable we get it, the more confidence we build, and the epiphanies, the connections we start to create inside of our brain and inside of our being around how these tools can impact the workplace. Just the clarity that emerges is just really powerful.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And practice makes practice. I love that phrase. And you keep learning. You keep learning about your abilities and keep learning about how best to do the work you do.
Douglas Ferguson:
Well, Rashma, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you today, and I want to thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
Reshma Aziz Khan:
Thank you very much, Douglas. It’s been such a pleasure. Conversations like this give me even more energy and even more excitement to go out and continue to facilitate. So thank you very much.
Douglas Ferguson:
Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe and receive updates when new episodes are released. We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics and collaboration: voltagecontrol.com.
