A conversation with Neallie Kani, UX Specialist at Hogan Assessments
“Change is inevitable; it’s how you adapt to it. It’s the tools that you look for, the how do you want to grow so that you can adapt better to these changes that come your way.”- Neallie Kani
In this podcast episode, Douglas Ferguson hosts Neallie Kani, a UX Specialist from Hogan Assessments, who shares her facilitation journey and the impact of leadership classes on her career. She discusses the importance of creating a comfortable environment for teams, inspired by Erik Skogsberg’s calming facilitation approach. Neallie applies techniques like icebreakers and working agreements to enhance her meetings, emphasizing trial and error and monthly check-ins for continuous improvement. She uses visual aids like PowerPoint to align her team and stresses the significance of consistent reminders of team values. The conversation also touches on the importance of feedback, individual connections, and the transformative power of facilitation certification. Neallie encourages embracing learning and networking for professional growth.
Show Highlights
[00:01:16] Exposure to Facilitation
[00:05:34] Creating a Safe Environment
[00:09:08] Applying Inspiration to Work
[00:15:10] Building Lasting Commitments
[00:23:42] Leadership and Value Creation
[00:26:48] Effective Workshop Methods
[00:36:30] Future of Facilitation
Links | Resources
Neallie on Linkedin
About the Guest
Neallie leads design thinking workshops and oversees user experience enhancements for Hogan products and services.
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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Transcript
Douglas Ferguson:
Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast, where I speak with Voltage 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/facilitation-lab. 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 Neallie Kani, a UX specialist at Hogan Assessments. Neallie leads design thinking workshops and oversees user experience enhancements for Hogan’s products and services. Welcome to the show, Neallie.
Neallie Kani:
Thank you for having me.
Douglas Ferguson:
Oh, it’s so great to be with you today and always fun to talk to one of our alumni and hear about the great work they’re doing and just learn more about everyone’s experiences. As usual, I’d like to get started just hearing a little bit about how you first got exposed to facilitation. Maybe you saw someone that was really good at it or you started practicing the methods yourself. What was it that drew you in to the power of facilitation?
Neallie Kani:
Funny enough, I think way back when, when I was in high school, and even a little bit in middle school, there were leadership types of classes that had drawn my attention. In high school, I was in two years of Leadership, that’s actually what the class was called, it was just called Leadership. Basically, a lot of student council students were in that class as well. I wasn’t student council myself, but just leadership just called me, not in a competitive way, but in a way to better myself. Like, I want to be my own leader. I’m not asking to lead others, but it drew my intention on how to lead myself better. That’s where I started with these things, before I even truly knew what facilitation was, I did gravitate into making myself a better leader. Then afterwards, years down the road, I found myself always drawn into leader roles just naturally.
I found it fascinating, I thought it was really a great way to learn how to communicate with others. On top of that, I just thought that looking back at how management positions or leadership positions where I wanted to be the type of leader that wasn’t a micromanager, wasn’t somebody who was condescending, was somebody inviting and motivational for peers around her or him. That was the start, and then once I got myself into the UX world, I got to meet a lot of instructors and mentors, I was able to end up with a lot of volunteer opportunities. What ended up happening from there is I got to start learning how to provide valuable experiences for anybody that I’m working with, really.
If I’m in a small team, how to be somebody that leads themselves, but also is able to provide motivation and boost morale within the team that I would be working with. Getting into these volunteer opportunities, I was able to realize that even though I had gotten to learn a lot about leadership in my youth, there’s just so much more that I needed to still learn. There was so much more that I was still unaware of in how to be a great facilitator and how to be a great leader. That’s really what began my journey into looking more into UX in a leader role versus UX as somebody that’s not a facilitator in UX, somebody that’s not a lead in UX, I started transitioning out of that and looking more into the leadership roles.
Douglas Ferguson:
It’s interesting to me that when I asked about formative moments for facilitation you went to, leadership courses that were available to you at a young age, high school. There must be a correlation for you between facilitation and leadership, so be curious to hear more about how you relate those two things.
Neallie Kani:
I think the way that I relate them is even though there are differences between being a leader and a facilitator, I think to be a good leader, you should also be a great facilitator.
Douglas Ferguson:
Why do you think that is? What do you think it is about facilitation that makes people a great leader?
Neallie Kani:
When I think about all the experiences I’ve had in facilitation or the opportunities I’ve had to be in front of great facilitators, I have always felt safe. I have always felt comfortable, I have always felt energy, and sometimes leaders don’t provide that.
Douglas Ferguson:
I think that’s really important and that feeling of safe. Oftentimes, we talk about creating safe places and whatnot in the world of facilitation. Can you recall a time when you witnessed that safe feeling and what was happening, what the facilitator was doing to make that come about?
Neallie Kani:
I have numerous, numerous moments that really stand out to me, but the most recent one was actually when I went to the facilitation certification alumni session, I want to say back in February. It was a small group, but the way that the facilitator led that session, it was just relaxing. Nobody was speaking loudly, nobody was talking over one another. Everybody just had a serene smile on their face, and that is how it started. It just kind of like you come together, you’re just breaking the ice, and that sets the energy. That sets the tone for the entire experience, the body language, how everyone is sitting in a circle around one another. We’re open, we’re ready to listen, and that really set a great environment for the three-day session and really stood out to me. I felt comfortable with sharing things that I didn’t think I was even going to share.
Douglas Ferguson:
Who was facilitating that?
Neallie Kani:
Erik was facilitating that.
Douglas Ferguson:
The one and only, Erik Skogsberg. It’s great. You said setting the tone was super important. What did you witness that really spoke to you as far as how the tone got set?
Neallie Kani:
What I thought was absolutely genius is sometimes I have gone into these conferences where the moment the mic is picked up, it is just energy, energy, energy. What Erik did that was just eye-opening to me is we came into this quiet room and he spoke in a, because it was a smaller group, we were all sitting closer, so of course, there’s no mic, there’s no need to. There’s not a hundred people in the room that we’re trying to energize. What he did is he adapted. He adapted to the size of the group and he started the conversation in such a soft tone.
It’s almost like I was in yoga, but speaking, instead of actually doing movements. He had this soft tone and it just brought us out and helped us relax. I believe he also had us close our eyes for a moment, and that just set everything together. It did build to energy later on once we got into the activities, but what was nice is he centered us before we began. He helped us breathe out all of the tension in our body and start with a new look on everything, start with new energy because we were relaxed.
Douglas Ferguson:
That’s so great to hear. That’s making me wonder that maybe this is now showing up in some of your work. Have you been able to take that inspiration and channel it, whether it’s the soft opening or taking folks on a journey where the energy level shifts throughout the experience or really anything, were you able to take anything from that and apply it?
Neallie Kani:
Absolutely. I am continuously growing in my field, in facilitation, and being a facilitator. One of the things that I took away from this is, I’ll use one of our, we do UX meetings in my organization and I facilitate and lead those. One thing that I took from that is when we first get into the session, when everybody starts dropping in, it is virtual. As everybody starts popping into the meeting, before just hitting the ground running, we have a moment where we have a little bit of an icebreaker. How is everybody’s weekend? What have you done? How is your day going? Because sometimes people just pop into a meeting and they’re just silent.
Especially, in the virtual world. It is not as comfortable as being in person. What’s nice of having that few minutes of just checking in, how’s your day going, is you’re connecting with those people. You’re letting those people know I see you, though we are in maybe different states, though we might not have all of our cameras on, I’m still acknowledging your presence and I am just checking in with you. That’s something that I’ve taken to my meetings. Then on top of that, providing an agenda, having a moment where we discuss working agreements, how we’re going to work with one another, and what is the goal of this session and how can we hold one another accountable to create that safe space.
Douglas Ferguson:
You also talked about the importance of the pre-agenda and how that’s helped people opt in the meetings. I really appreciated the point around the development team understanding when it might be appropriate or helpful for them to attend. It’s created this cross-departmental collaboration, but without them feeling like they have to attend. They’re educated and they can understand when they’re going to get value and when not. I thought that was really cool. Anything else that you’ve noticed there around that piece?
Neallie Kani:
Just the transparency. When I first began my journey with my current organization, we had a lack of transparency between scrum teams. It is a very small UX team, very, very tiny. Unfortunately, we’re not in a place where there could be a UX designer on every single scrum team. Due to that, we had this lack of transparency between what was going on in research versus what the developers were working on. Because of that, we started having these sessions where it’s important to have developer feedback. It’s not just handing a design off to developers and being like, “Hey, implement this.” Their input and feedback is valuable as well. At the start of the journey, we just had the developers sit in without agendas, and what ended up happening is it became a waste of their time and it became something that, “Hey, I have a whole load of work that I got to get done, but I’m sitting in this hour meeting and this wasn’t valuable for me.”
And after the facilitation certification, after being able to learn more, I adapted that into our meetings and I started bringing out these agendas that would even connect to product backlog items that the developers are, it’s coming up on an upcoming sprint for them. Being able to see that visibility, had that communication become transparent. No longer were the developers guessing, “What’s going on in these meetings because I feel like I need to sit in.” They’re able to view what the conversation is going to be about and make that choice of, “I’m going to attend because I need to attend this.” Versus, “I don’t need to attend this. It’s also recorded and I could come back to it if needed.”
Douglas Ferguson:
That’s super interesting. It’s like just giving people that ability to opt out, so powerful, given that folks often talk about just being inundated with meetings. That alone is an amazing facilitation trick.
Neallie Kani:
It could’ve been an email.
Douglas Ferguson:
The fact is, for some people it could have been an email, but for others, they really need to be there and dig through this research and understand these new customer perspectives that have been unearthed. It’s just funny how this could’ve been in emails all over the place, but yet the meetings still persists because some people find value in it. I think where we’re misguided is thinking that the need is the same for everyone.
Neallie Kani:
That’s a great point. Especially, because a lot of these sessions can be brainstorming sessions. You get to work with people that are outside of the UX team as well. You can have stakeholders on this call, developers, product owners, and so it is very valuable. It depends on what the agenda topic is, but there are going to be people a part of that meeting that they’ll be like, “Oh, I need to attend this because we need to have a discussion.” Versus others are like, “I don’t think I can provide anything to this discussion.” Giving them that option, I’ll say it has made a lot of people happy, and so things are going better.
Douglas Ferguson:
Also, I’m wondering too, there’s a difference between learning stuff and trying it out and seeing it work versus actually committing to change and building habits that stick. I’m curious what you found most effective for introducing and maintaining the changes in the meeting management and team communication and in these other facilitation pieces. What made it stick for you?
Neallie Kani:
I am definitely somebody who likes to try out things. There were some variations until we landed on what worked best, so it did grow. In the beginning, it was just an agenda that was dropped into the chat. Then it became, let’s add a working agreement, and it just grew from there. It was trial and error and there was adjustments. Another thing we had added so that we could capture what is working and what isn’t working is we started doing monthly UX retro check-ins, where we invited the developers and product owners and we’re basically like, “Hey, what’s going great? What should we continue doing? What is really bringing the party down? What should we stop doing and maybe find some opportunities of how we could do it differently?” Due to those check-ins, we were able to adjust how we want to facilitate these UX meetings/design thinking workshops. Anything really the UX team is going to be the facilitator on.
Douglas Ferguson:
That’s a great point. You mentioned agreements a few times now, and I want to come back to that because I think it’s so critical. Do you have any agreements that the team’s developed that you can share, or even I think it’d be cool to hear a story of how that agreement even came about, why it’s helpful.
Neallie Kani:
Well, I can’t take the credit for how the agreement came about. Within scrum teams, they definitely work with creating working agreements. That’s something we got inspired from the scrum team.
Douglas Ferguson:
Oh, wow, cool.
Neallie Kani:
It’s something that the developers found natural for them. That’s something that they’re used to. It’s like, “Okay, we’re going to take a page out of your book so that we can still make this a safe space for you.” It won’t feel foreign. It’s something that you’re used to within your own team. We brought that out and we started talking about what do we want to hold one another accountable for within these sessions. I would say the biggest one is, and this is just natural. People derail, people get into the weeds when we’re getting into discussions.
The biggest thing is identifying when we’ve gotten lost in the sauce, when do we need to pull back and realign ourselves on what the goal for the meeting was. The first thing in our working agreement was being able to start calling out, “Hey, this is going off track. We need to pull away from this. Maybe put this in a parking lot.” A term that we use is ELMO, which is enough, let’s move on, is what it stands for. That is something that’s in our working agreement, and when we feel that we’re not aligned or we’re derailing, somebody will be like, “ELMO this.”
Douglas Ferguson:
ELMO is an old classic, I love that. I’m curious, how are you documenting and sharing these agreements and these tools like ELMO so that either newcomers are aware that that’s something the team does, and just reminding folks that, “Hey, we’re going to stick to these behaviors.”
Neallie Kani:
The tools that we use for sharing the agenda is a PowerPoint. We use PowerPoint. What we do in PowerPoint, it’s only about three or four slides, the first slide is really listing out the agenda, the goal. The second slide is the outcome, what do we want the outcome from this meeting to be. Then finally, we have the working agreement slide, and that would show the bullet points. Basically, everything that we as a team have identified to put into our working agreement, that’s where we pause. Before we jump into the actual agenda, we’ll pause on the working agreement and we’ll let everybody review it. Even though everyone has seen it, you just never know, “Hey, I want to call out that we haven’t been meeting this bullet point in our working agreement.” Or, “I feel we need to adjust this because this isn’t working out for us anymore.”
We have a little bit of a presentation, a very tiny one at the start of our sessions where they’re able to review the working agreement. Then on top of that, once we’re done sharing, we copy that working agreement and we drop it into chat on Teams, so that they can still refer back to that. People aren’t going to remember 15 bullet points or 10 bullet points. Having that dropped into chat for them to use as a resource. If they feel that the meeting is getting off track or something else is not being met, they can look into that chat and say, “Hey, we’re not following our working agreement, it seems like.”
Douglas Ferguson:
I love this idea of putting the working agreements, the agenda, having these consistent three slides at the beginning of every meeting. Very powerful. We talked a little bit earlier about how do you build lasting commitments or ensure that change sticks. Putting things inside of your slide decks and your email signatures, what are these touch points that people constantly see and have to get in front of. Those are great ways, just memory devices. We’re constantly reminded, we’re constantly seeing this thing that we committed to doing. I love also this reflection moment where we can get honest with ourselves about are we living these team agreements? You could even do this with values. If you adopt team values or company values, those aren’t things that just plaster on the walls.
You should constantly come back to them. Rather than using slides, we have a Miro board that I use with the executive team. We meet every week and all of our conversations are centered around this board and anyone can pose a topic and there’s a number of things, like a dashboard with data and whatnot that we bring in so everything is there and we can move it around and it’s a little malleable. The values as well as our agreements are on that board, just center us around that. I love that y’all are doing that, and I think it’s a really smart approach, any place that you can put those things in front of people. I’m curious, has there ever been a time when you are inviting folks to reflect on those behaviors? Was there a story there around, “Hey, maybe either this behavior is not really accurately capturing us or we need to shift a little bit to live up to what we’re aspiring to be?”
Neallie Kani:
I would say the biggest place that those types of topics come up is during our UX retros, because that’s where it opens the space, especially for these people who aren’t a part of that UX team. They could be like, “Hey, I think maybe some changes around this needs to happen.” Or, “This isn’t turning out the way we had hoped.” That’s where we’re able to capture those. Originally, we were only doing those monthly, but this past week, we decided we should have more check-ins. We’re actually shifting our UX retros to become bi-weekly so that we can adjust anything faster. It’s not months or a full month before we’re talking because people could forget things. Something could have happened earlier on in the month and you’ve just forgotten about it. You’ve slept on it, you’re over it, and you just put it in the back burner. We don’t want that feedback loop to stop.
Douglas Ferguson:
Shorter feedback cycles are always more valuable. In fact, that’s the reason why so many companies are shifting from annual reviews or quarterly reviews to regular weekly one-on-ones. Because if you can address issues quickly, if you can praise people quickly, the results are so much better. You don’t want to tell someone nine months later that, “Yeah, we really didn’t like your performance.” It’s like, no, we need to address those issues now. We also need to applaud people much faster versus waiting and telling them later. Because when people feel underappreciated, it’s not a good scenario.
Neallie Kani:
The morale definitely goes down if they feel underappreciated. I even look back at when I was in high school and I was in those leadership roles, and it’s important for me to lead by example. It’s important for me to create a safe space but also provide value because you never know how many leaders or potential leaders are in the room that could be learning and being like, “You know what? I really love this idea and I’m going to carry this over to how I lead my sessions, my meetings that are outside of UX.”
Douglas Ferguson:
In addition to the regular UX meetings, you also talked about workshops that you’re doing, and these could be about product discovery or evolving an existing product. Really curious to hear what sorts of techniques that you’re finding to be the most valuable when you’re going into a space of exploration and discovery on the new product versus evolving existing products. Do they look similar? Are they different? What kinds of things are you exploring there?
Neallie Kani:
The starting point could be different. If it’s an existing product, there’s already a look and feel to it most of the time, and it’s really identifying the new pain points or the new problems that we’re facing. When it’s something from scratch, I will say it’s very fun when it’s from scratch because you have no idea how the end results of this could be. Before we get into design thinking workshops, we identify that need of, do we need a workshop during our UX sessions? That’s where product owners will be like, “Hey, we have, let’s say this product is done for this year, but we still need to start doing research for all of this other set of stuff that our users are looking for.”
When it comes to setting up that design thinking workshop, we’ve identified within our UX meetings what the need is for that workshop, and then we give ourselves at least a month or two to start creating it out. Time boxing, what are the things that we want to go over in these workshops? Where are we starting? Are we starting in empathy? Are we more looking at prioritization of ideas that we have created before? Are we validating with users? We give ourselves a good amount of time to really identify everything that we want to go through in this workshop and give ourselves that amount of time to also reach out to those attendees and make sure that their availability aligns with what we are wanting, but the topics vary.
Douglas Ferguson:
When you’re thinking about the contents of the workshop where folks are actually getting into decision-making and ideation around possible ways that they might go or understanding research better, what are some of your go-to methods or activities that really have been effective for you?
Neallie Kani:
I would say the most effective that I’ve had is definitely journey mapping. Because a lot of times, especially within my organization, there are products that exist, and our users have been dealing with those products for years and maybe it hasn’t been updated in a while. Maybe there are new products out in the market that just have way more features than the current ones they’re using. Journey mapping is really important for us to understand the current state. What we usually do is we have a pre-work session where we get with those users and we start identifying those phases and activities within each phase for the journey map. Then we start coming up with a future state as well. During the design thinking workshop, we have everybody come in to do the exercise in that future state or a hybrid, which is a mix of the current and the future state. I would say that journey mapping is something that I find myself using probably in 90% of the design thinking workshops I’ve led.
Douglas Ferguson:
Mapping is really powerful, and especially when it’s done in a team setting. That can often be difficult and time-consuming. The thing you mentioned around having some upfront conversations and doing a little bit of rough drafting, if you will, can really help the team be a little more efficient when we’re together. Because we’re already walking in with a little bit of shared understanding, we’ve got something that we can critique together and move forward together and massage versus if everyone’s staring at that blank whiteboard or that blank canvas, it can be a little challenging.
Neallie Kani:
Especially, for those who are not as used to Miro. What’s funny is I had to adapt to learn this because my first design thinking workshop, not as smooth as I wanted it to be. The journey mapping was done together, it wasn’t done as pre-work. What we learned is, “Hey, let’s have these people come in earlier so we could identify these stages, these activities, so that when we get into the workshop, there’s not that confusion of what journey are we looking at.” Then people could start getting together about the pain points, about the opportunities, and then about big ideas that are generated from those.
Douglas Ferguson:
Similar to reaching out to people beforehand to work on a rough draft of a map or get to shared understanding around something before getting into the big group. You mentioned in your blog post about how effective reaching out for one-on-one sessions with some members of the team and how particularly impactful that was for you. I’m just curious, how have these deeper individual connections transformed the way that you facilitate and lead?
Neallie Kani:
Well, I would say the biggest way that it’s helped me is knowing how to address these individuals as well. It’s to understand, for instance, some of these one-on-ones happened with those that maybe don’t feel comfortable in a big setting to give their input, to give their feedback, they just sit there silently. Especially, in the virtual world, they don’t want to speak out. They don’t want everybody’s eyes on them. These one-on-ones are really nice because it gives them that time to open up and actually give their feedback where they don’t feel like they’re being judged or looked at.
What that helps with is I’m still getting that feedback loop from them, but when we get into the session where there’s a lot of people there, I’m not too worried if they’re being quiet or if they’re not giving their feedback as much because I’m still able to gather that from them outside of the session. I won’t make them uncomfortable because I understand, okay, this is not something they’re comfortable with and I’m not going to push them or call them out in the middle of the session and be like, “What do you think?”
Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, for sure. Have you found other strategies for getting their ideas in the room?
Neallie Kani:
Yes. I will say activities usually help, like using Miro where it’s just sticky notes. They could be anonymous. They feel a lot safer than that, or they feel a lot safer doing that, is my assumption, because they’re not unmuting themselves and talking. They’re able to be more anonymous when using Miro.
Douglas Ferguson:
Any kind of quiet activity, whether it’s Miro or even if you’re in person writing down sticky notes versus having to vocalize them, giving people time to collect their thoughts, even time to reflect, like prepare a thought. Before anyone starts talking, let’s all quietly prepare our thoughts. Then even talking in groups of two, sometimes people feel safer, braver when they’re just talking to one other person. Then unless you’ve got two quiet types talking to each other, usually their partner will speak up on behalf so they’ll become their spokesperson. They’ll share their great ideas with the rest of the team.
Neallie Kani:
Definitely.
Douglas Ferguson:
Amazing. We’re starting to pivot a bit toward the end here. I wanted to come back to your decision-making process. Because I remember you talking about how pivotal J and Lizzie were in your decision. I was just curious if there was a specific conversation with J in particular that maybe shed some light on the world of facilitation or our certification. Did he have anything to share that really spoke to you?
Neallie Kani:
Funny enough, even though I was in those classes that I took in high school, I never really thought I was going to end up as a facilitator. I am not a very competitive person. If I like something, I’m going to do it because it brings me joy. When I was in SMU for the UX certification, J was one of my mentors and he was an instructor for the corset. I just love the way he facilitated. I love the way that he captured all the students’ attentions, how he would stay afterwards. He was very attentive. Due to being one of the students that stayed after to get the J Schuh knowledge, I got to learn about Voltage. After I had graduated, I asked J, “What else can I learn? Is there anywhere I could volunteer? Really, just wanting to know more about knowledge, sharing and to better myself in my UX role.”
J introduced me to Voltage, and then from there, I was also introduced to Lizzie outside of Voltage, but it was around the same time. I believe Lizzie was volunteering with Voltage, and she told me, “Hey, there’s a facilitation certification that Voltage is doing and I’m going to be volunteering for that.” It just drew my attention because at this point when she brought this up, I was working at my current organization and though I had not expected it, I had found myself in a leadership role. I was facilitating meetings, but I didn’t feel confident in myself. I didn’t feel I was bringing the value. Lo and behold, I took the bull by the horns and got into the facilitation certification course and great changes have come from it.
Douglas Ferguson:
That’s so great to hear, and I’m thrilled to see the growth and how your career is flourishing. I certainly take great pride in following our alumni and watching the great work they’re doing, so it’s super thrilling to me. I’d be curious, when you reflect on your journey, what advice do you offer professionals, especially UX and similar fields about the importance of facilitation skills and enhancing team collaboration?
Neallie Kani:
Change is inevitable. It’s how you adapt to it. It is the tools that you look for. How do you want to grow so that you can adapt better to these changes that come your way? It is okay to try multiple ways until you find your path.
Douglas Ferguson:
I love that nod to experimentation. That’s really the spirit behind why we created Facilitation Lab to create opportunities for folks to practice and explore and learn and build that confidence because there’s really not a lot of opportunities to do that. Oftentimes, people are in high stakes moments. They’re going from one session to the next. They don’t have a built-in time for reflection. Facilitation Lab is about the low-stakes opportunity where there’s going to be plenty of reflection with peers and learning. We really wanted to do that for free so that anyone had access to that ability because it’s important and so needed, and not everyone can afford certification. Anyway, I love that you bring that up. I would like to just end, thinking about the future, as you look out across the horizon of your career, where do you imagine, Neallie, five, 10 years out, and how’s facilitation involving with you and alongside you and what’s changing with you? What’s changing with the landscape? Where do you see things going?
Neallie Kani:
In five years, I think there will be a lot of changes. I may adjust how I lead these sessions. I may have more leaders working with me, more facilitators that I get to work with, and maybe I’m inspired from them and vice versa. In five years, I definitely see myself growing tenfold. From who I am now, I think I’m going to be even stronger in five years. I think I will have a bigger community because one of the things that this certification also brought me was I got to network and meet more people and build that community that I didn’t have before. Three years ago, I was like, “I’m alone and I’m just going to go with the flow.” Now, I know people that I can connect with and say, “Hey, how would you go about this?” In five years, I don’t know, Douglas, I could be doing complete, different methods, but I know that whatever I choose is because I was able to grow and network and learn more from others.
Douglas Ferguson:
I love this focus on learning from others and community. I can say it won’t be five years because it’s going to be not long after the recording of this podcast, so some folks listening, it will already be in the past. I’m actually launching Facilitation Lab Dallas, so I’m headed that way and we’ve already got it scheduled, and hopefully, I can hand the baton off to a regional lead. Because it is quite a drive from Austin to Dallas, but I’m happy to do it because one of our good, awesome community members is going to be in town, Alison Coward. She’s been on the podcast and wrote an amazing book on facilitation that just came out. We’re happy to host her and she’s going to do a book giveaway. I hope you can make it because the spirit and love of community that you’re talking about is the whole reason that we do Lab and why I’ll be in Dallas. Hopefully, I’ll see you there.
Neallie Kani:
Hopefully, and I love anything that Voltage does because you guys bring that community together. You guys bring inspiration and that safety, and it’s just something like, why would I not want to attend that? Why would I not want to be around that?
Douglas Ferguson:
Amazing. Well, we certainly love having you and others. I want to just end really quickly with an opportunity for you to leave our listeners with a final thought.
Neallie Kani:
Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know because you can always learn, and don’t feel like you’re alone because there is always somebody else with the same struggles. When you could connect with that person, you may inspire one another and adapt to the problems or struggles that you’re facing and overcome them.
Douglas Ferguson:
Wow, so good. I hope everyone can take that advice and roll with what is unfolding, so Neallie-
Neallie Kani:
Roll with the punches.
Douglas Ferguson:
That’s right. Neallie, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with me today and chat about the good work you’re doing and your amazing experiences. I hope we can see each other again soon.
Neallie Kani:
Definitely. Thank you for having me, and I hope you have a great day.
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.
