How Can Facilitators Foster Bold Participation and Collaboration in Nonprofit Organizations?

A conversation with Tammy Shubat, Director of Partnerships and Public Affairs at Ophea and Robin Cory, Partner at Colbeck Strategic Advisors

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson speaks with facilitation experts Tammy Shubat and Robin Cory, both Voltage Control certification alumni. Tammy shares her journey from leadership to facilitation, focusing on relationship-building and creating safe spaces for bold participation. Robin discusses her facilitation approach, inspired by Tammy, and emphasizes thoughtful session design to foster engagement and creativity. Together, they explore the challenges and opportunities in the nonprofit sector, highlighting the importance of collaboration, purposeful gatherings, and centering relationships to drive meaningful change within mission-driven organizations.

Show Highlights

[00:01:33] First Sparks of Facilitation
[00:06:42] Tools, Techniques, and Intuition
[00:10:30] “Wreck and Rebuild” and Improv Activities
[00:13:54] Designing for Bold Thinking
[00:21:14] Honoring People and Setting the Stage
[00:25:44] Warming Up for Bold Participation
[00:28:38] Head vs. Heart: Actions and Connections
[00:34:09] Future Challenges: Collaboration and Collective Impact

Links | Resources

Tammy on Linkedin

Robin on Linkedin

About the Guest

Tammy has worked in health promotion and education for more than 22 years, and specifically for the last 17 years with Ophea, advancing health and well-being in Ontario schools. Currently in the Director of Partnerships and Public Affairs role, Tammy aligns provincial and national partners, business development opportunities, and strategic objectives for Ophea, and for the sector at large. With a practice in grounded in social justice and anti-oppressive approaches in education, Tammy is a proud member of the 2SLGBTQ community, an advocate, and a mum.

Robin Cory is a strategist, facilitator, and coach dedicated to turning bold ideas into meaningful action. With over 20 years of experience, Robin has worked alongside non-profits, foundations, and collaboratives across Canada to sharpen their strategies and deepen their impact.  

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:

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 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 Tammy Shubat and Robin Cory. Tammy is at Ophea where she facilitates and enables partnerships and public affairs for the organization and for the education sector more broadly to advance the health and well-being of kids in schools across the province of Ontario. Robin leads a strategy and facilitation practice that helps mission-driven organizations at pivotal moments gain strategic clarity, make powerful decisions, and take bold action. Welcome to the show.

Robin:

It’s such a treat to be here. Thanks, Douglas.

Tammy:

So happy to be here with you both.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s a treat for me too because I usually don’t have two people on at the same time. So I get two alumni in the room with me today. I’m so excited to dive in with both of you, to hear both your stories and it’s an intertwined story because you work so closely together. You do a lot together, so it’ll be inspiring to hear how you collaborate. So let’s start at the beginning. Could you each share the moment of facilitation that first caught your attention?

Robin:

My mother was really a born facilitator. As a child, I got to witness her in lots of community settings, whether it was advocating for a new school in our neighborhood or leading community meetings or door-to-door fundraising. So I really saw her in action and left me really inspired. And as I went through school, high school in particular, I gravitated towards roles where I got to lead groups and influence people and work in teams and it really gave me a buzz. And I’ve since then continued through university and through jobs to be leaning into that passion.

Tammy:

I love that, Robin. I feel like I would’ve probably in my earlier life self-identified as a leader, but maybe not as a facilitator. And I think probably my spark was probably seeing you facilitate for the first time when you came to Ophea about 10 years ago to sort lead that initial strategy exercise. I remember just being so taken by your approaches and how you engaged people and how far you sort of pushed the questions that you were sort of asking us. And so I would say you were my spark to the practice of facilitation as something that I wanted to maybe embed in my own practice in some way.

Robin:

And our kind of journey together has been such a fun one. And it’s so interesting to hear you reflect on that because really today we operate as peers and spend so much time co-facilitating that it’s hard to even imagine that you are inspired by me, because I’m so very inspired by you in many, many ways.

Douglas:

Tammy, in your alumni story, you mentioned previously identifying more as a leader versus a facilitator. Oftentimes, I’ve seen that come down to how language and vocabulary influence how we self-identify. When you reflect back to those days of just having that lens of leadership, how much of what you were already doing was rooted in some of these beliefs and philosophies that we now hold dearly in facilitation?

Tammy:

It’s a great question, Douglas, and I wish I could be kinder to myself because I’ll be honest and say I think my, I really loved in my earlier days, having the room and having the space and I always thought I had something so great to say. And I remember even thinking to myself, “I can’t wait for this person to stop talking so I can say what I have to say because it’s so much better than what that person has to say.” So I think it’s actually taken a fair bit of growth in my own learning trajectory to see my role differently, which is perhaps less as the contributor or the most powerful voice in the room, but rather as the person who has the ability to perhaps tease out a variety of perspectives that can enrich the conversation in a more full way. So I would say my early days were not exemplary. They were perhaps great ground for learning though. And I’m sure a few people put me in my place, which is wonderful and has gotten me to maybe where I am now.

Robin:

Admittedly, I can relate to that feeling certainly. And I also think, Tammy, when I think about you in a room, what I think is actually such a powerful part of the way that you facilitate is that you hold the space and you invite people’s contribution in such a sort of warm and welcoming and inclusive way, but at the same time, you actually aren’t afraid to assert a point of view. And I think sometimes in facilitation it’s this dance between really creating space for others but also offering perspectives and questions and ideas that are going to move the conversation forward. And I feel like you do that selectively and intentionally and it really does indeed, I think move the conversation forward.

Tammy:

Thank you for that. And I love that point in the sense that I think the idea of a neutral facilitator is false. None of us are. And actually in fact, even if we’re pretending to really just facilitate the voices in the room, we’ve designed the facilitation, you obviously have a desired outcome. So I think I appreciate that and I think I appreciate that perspective around the dance that that is. And so how do you strike that sort of balance in the spaces that you create versus where you may be contributing more pointedly?

Douglas:

That makes me curious, do you have tools and techniques that you rely on or is it intuition that enables that? What’s helping you determine when to step back or when to step forward? When is my opinion valuable to the group? When is it disruptive?

Tammy:

I love that question. So there’s a lot of intuition in how I would operate for sure, but I think I’m always watching for cues and I think for those, for what you’ve just articulated, I tend to prefer in-person facilitation because it allows me to read the room in a really different way than in a virtual facilitation. So in an in-person facilitation, I’m always watching body language, where people are sitting, where they’re looking, if they’re having sidebar conversations, those are all cues to me around somebody in this room has something to say or there’s this underlying feeling of dis-ease.

And so how might I pose a question that allows folks to bubble up what it is might be going on under the surface? I think I struggle a bit more with that with virtual facilitation because I think people use so many tools differently, like the mute function or they’ll go off-screen or I think the strategies for engagement I haven’t fully maybe figured out, but I’m trying to. But yeah, but there’s a fair bit of intuition there in terms of when I might inject my perspective. I don’t know, Robin, how you feel that.

Robin:

Yeah, something I’ve seen you do and I think I try to do as well is potentially frame up a hypothesis. “So based on everything that I’m hearing, it feels like where you are leaning is this.” Or, “Based on everything I understand and know about your organization and your context or your team, it strikes me that Y would be a really healthy and effective path forward.” Let’s say. And then it at least creates that opening for them to say, “Actually, no.” So it’s a hypothesis they can react to or get the feeling of, “Absolutely, yes.” And then that sometimes helps to just move the conversation to the next level. We actually don’t have anything that we need to discuss anymore, we’re actually aligned and clear.

Tammy:

I love when you do that session-effective approach.

Douglas:

Do you recall a time when that happened recently?

Robin:

It’s funny, as Tammy was talking, I was thinking about a session I had yesterday, and actually I don’t think it was the best version of this, but it was an attempt to do this and I think it yielded the results I wanted, but I sometimes think the risk is, so what happened yesterday in this conversation I was leading was that I felt like there was a point of alignment where I was trying to distinguish between in my work what an organization might think of as their ultimate impact, which is kind of that big lofty goal they’re driving towards, but they’re not likely to be able to hold themselves accountable for it, and hunger and homelessness, that kind of thing. Versus the intended impact, so what are the things that they can directly contribute to and hold themselves accountable to or for?

And in this moment yesterday I kind of declared, like I said, “I think we can all agree that your organization is not likely to drive or be able to hold yourself accountable to this particular ultimate impact, so let’s talk about what you can hold yourself accountable to.” And they pushed back actually and said, “That’s actually not our operating assumption. We do believe that we can contribute meaningfully to that ultimate goal as big and lofty as it might be.” And that was really helpful for me to hear. It wasn’t a point at which I was going to agree or disagree with that, but it actually really was an important thing for me to know about how that organization relates to that particular goal.

Douglas:

That reminds me of a powerful technique, posing the wrong answer or a prototype for folks to respond to. Oftentimes, if I have a thought, I like to couch it in, “This is probably wrong, but what do you think about it?” Because it makes it safe for them to tear it apart or let them go, “Actually, yeah, that does make sense.”

Tammy:

Totally.

Robin:

Yeah, yeah. Or, “This is here for you to wreck and rebuild.” My partner, Margot loves to say that and I adopt that as well. And that really gives people freedom. Usually they’re like, “No, no, no, we don’t need to fully wreck and rebuild.” But then you can kind of dial back and say, “But we could tweak or change these few things.” And giving people permission to do that I think does create an opening.

Douglas:

Wow, that wrecking and rebuilding is making me think about. Fortunately, an activity that was used as a closer for a recent facilitation lab facilitated by Lori Wilson, also known as fortunately, unfortunately. Unfortunately We is an improv game where participants take turns creating the story together, alternating between positive and negative developments. The first person starts by describing a fortunate event, beginning with the word fortunately, we, the next person follows up with something unfortunately, kind of tearing down the previous thing, starting with unfortunately, then it goes back to fortunately and so on. It’s quick, playful, and challenges everyone to think creatively and stay present.

Robin:

Yeah.

Tammy:

That’s cool.

Robin:

That’s a good one. I really like that. It reminds me a little bit of the pre-mortem where you start with all the things that could go wrong at the beginning of a process as opposed to waiting for the post-mortem at the end of a process. And I think it reveals similar things of how do we preempt or potentially avoid certain things from happening? How do we lay the track or put the conditions in place for this to really be successful?

Tammy:

I think, and even just in both of those examples, sorry, it opens up space for, it is precisely what you folks said around giving people permission to participate in that way where we’re not going to tiptoe around the issues. We will give ourselves permission to actually boldly engage with what we’re going to talk about today or participate and be able to take that risk. So I love that.

Douglas:

Let’s further explore this idea of taking bold risks. What are some of your other favorite ways of doing that?

Tammy:

We talked a little bit about this morning, Robin. It makes me think about maybe just style. I think maybe we set the stage differently, but I think sometimes for me it’s about relationship building with people in the room first to allow for that. So if I’m, for example, facilitating in a space that might have folks with different levels of power within an organization, or the board is there with the staff, and so we’re trying to create something collaborative off the top where they’re able to work together.

So in a recent facilitation that Robin and I did together, we did something arts-based at the beginning. That seemed like a little bit fluffy, but for a lot of the more junior staff who were in the room, they really valued that as a beginning point. It allowed them to become more comfortable in the space and to open up on something that was, I’m going to say maybe lower risk in the moment, but allowed them to take more risks later on during the day. So I think that’s one of the ways. I think Robin, you do a really good job often, perhaps maybe less so with an activity, but more around what are the conditions for participation today. But go ahead.

Robin:

Yeah, no, I agree. I think doing that early work to set the table so that people feel like it is a space where you can be bold and sometimes the boldness comes out of the messiness and the friction, and so how do you make sure that there’s freedom to imagine and to dream. And we used, actually it was in terms of the cascade in that particular session’s design, Tammy did a beautiful job actually in the morning with this particular exercise. It was called Pionki, and it was this really cool thing that they built that looked like a spider. It kind of looked like a mobile if you picture hanging from a crib. And it’s, I think you said a Polish word, and it’s all about harmony and good fortune and interconnecting this with people. And so everybody kind of built their strand of this Pionki as a group and then they had to assemble it. So it actually hung together and worked.

And I thought that was really powerful, because it did let people see where they were coming from and they actually had to discuss something related to the strategy and related to something that they were connected to around Ophea’s work and Ophea’s strategy. As the day followed, we spent some time talking about the context and some of the conditions that might be standing in the way of some of the kinds of outcomes that Ophea is driving toward. And then we actually ended the day, so back to your question, Douglas, about bold, how do you set the stage for people to think boldly? We actually used the deflection point exercise that I learned as a part of the Voltage Control program that allowed people to first start talking about with Ophea’s plans as they’ve been laid, what would be the status quo outcomes? What do they think they could achieve if they continued on the path that they’re on?

Then we talked about what does the bold path look like? So what if you were to times 10 your impact? What if you were to take audacious and transformative steps towards even greater impact? What would that look like? And then we talked about the rockets and the anchors. So what are those things, the rockets that are going to kind of propel you towards the bold path and what are the anchors that have the risk of pulling you down to status quo? And we’re really at the early stages of a strategic planning process with Ophea. So I thought it gave us some really good fodder for what boldness could look like and help us kind of calibrate where people’s thinking are right now. And in some cases we’re going to need to push them further, and in some cases we’re going to be able to, I think, lean into some of the things that people surfaced. Is that fair, Tammy?

Tammy:

Totally. And I think I want give you your flowers for how thoughtfully you designed that particular activity because I think that could be a quick sort of somewhat mechanical activity. But I think Robin put a lot of thought into the design and the questions that would support people in really identifying what truly were some of those bolder opportunities and what actually might hold people back. And I think and really played it, we played it out a fair bit before actually moving into the facilitation. Like, how might people answer this question and how will this sort of play out in the broader facilitation? And I think we were able to sort of stick with that activity for quite a long time and I feel like it really unlocked some of the bigger opportunities and maybe some of the bigger barriers that we’ll face in trying to get there. So it was really powerful.

Douglas:

Robin, hearing her talk about how you just didn’t throw the structure at them has reminded me of your alumni story and how you shared your intention of transitioning from relying on structure to navigating complex dynamics with more ease. I’m hearing that you thought about the people, the questions, and the prompts you need to get the desired reaction. It seems like you’re actually leaning into those dynamics a little more rather than just throwing the structure out there.

Robin:

Yeah, yeah. And that’s part of, I think one of the things that is so helpful about having a co-facilitator, even though Tammy in this case was the client and sort of hired me to do this work, we’ve done so much co-facilitation in the past I think, and Tammy brings that skillset that usually when I’m doing things with her organization, we are co-facilitating it. And so I think that sometimes if I don’t have a Tammy, I do have to kind of just go in on faith and trust that the exercise is going to work well. But what’s nice is the thought partnership of being able to sort of, as Tammy said, sort of test what could this look like with your crowd? How do we think people might answer this? What are some of the things that might come up that I wouldn’t expect? And going into rooms, I do like to have that preview wherever possible of what could happen and how I might be able to get ahead of that.

Tammy:

I think that’s one of your greatest strengths as a facilitator, Robin. I think it’s what you bring to the facilitation process. As someone who’s worked with you for a really long time, I would say there are a lot of folks who have tools and who can just throw a tool out there and facilitate. But I think the thought that Robin puts into the design in advance really is one of her greatest strengths as a facilitator. Because I think I’ve worked with many facilitators who will just sort of throw tools or throw canned exercises into a room based on what they think might be a standard process or a standard outcome that groups are trying to achieve.

But I think the way in which Robin tries to understand context and how a particular question might land with a group of people really brings that extra added value, because when she plays that out and then we actually bring it to the space and it does land in a particular way, it can be really transformational for a group of people versus just what folks might just mechanically go through an exercise. It’s a tremendous value that she brings to that process for sure. I often joke with my colleagues, it’s never easy to work with Robin. It feels like… No, I mean that in a loving way. I’m not looking for easy. It’s like she pushes you and pushes you and asks that next question and, “What if we think about it this way? And what if we think about it that way?” And twists the whole thing up to then move us through what will be a better experience? It’s absolutely worth it, but it’s not easy and that’s a good thing.

Robin:

I still remember when we were planning for last week’s session, we were at a cafe, actually, Douglas, when we were planning it, and Tammy looked at me and she said, “I’m done.”

Douglas:

Tapping out.

Robin:

“I think we got it. I think we got it.”

Douglas:

That’s so good.

Robin:

I do kind of really get into it. Yeah, but I tend to work with partners and clients that are kind of up for it and Tammy most certainly is.

Douglas:

Great point, Tammy. You’re throwing accolades at Robin for bringing this attention and care to what might surface in the room. It’s also important to acknowledge the fact that you value it and you’re embracing and encouraging it and you’re able to articulate insights on the team. There’s a lot of leaders that facilitators might go to and ask the same questions, try to get the same stuff, and either they don’t value it or they don’t have the right observational tendencies or abilities to be able to reflect the important stuff back. And it’s a real gift to have to collaborate with partners like this that can help point out some of the things so that we don’t have to just guess or totally just tune our radar into the moment without any prior knowledge.

Robin:

Yeah, totally. I want to give an example actually, because I think hopefully for listeners, some of the facilitation examples are instructive, but in this particular session just because it was so recent, it’s top of mind. When we talk about the way we set the stage for being able to have people feel connected, in addition to doing that exercise, the art exercise, the other thing that Tammy actually built into the session was that there were two staff members that were hitting their 15 year anniversaries with the organization. And it was a strategy conversation, it was a board staff retreat, but she felt like it was a good moment to actually honor these two staff members.

And so I’ve been to lots of anniversary celebrations of people that hit milestones in workplaces, and this was very unique. What they had actually done was they had, for each of the people had put up on the wall, what’s their catchphrase? What was their core values? What were their favorite places? What were their favorite foods? What were their favorite expressions? And that was all up there as Tammy and other people were kind of saying, acknowledging things right down to if this person were a mascot for the organization, what animal would they be? And what about the fox or what about the raccoon represents them? And admittedly, I was listening, I’m like, “This is long.”

And Tammy knows that I’m all about, “We got 10 minutes. We got 10 minutes.” But I sort of obviously pulled myself back and I thought, “My God, how beautiful is this moment? And how honored do these people feel? And how rare is it to really deeply acknowledge people who have contributed so many years and so much to an organization and have them be seen and appreciated in front of all the people they probably care most about?” This was the board of the organization, this was the full staff of the organization. So really hats off to you, Tammy, because those are the things that I know we didn’t even talk about it in the debrief, but that I think really made for the kind of environment that then enabled us to get to where we got to.

Tammy:

Thank you. I appreciate that so much. I think, and we’ve talked a little bit about this, one of my biggest drivers, or maybe one of my core values is how people feel. How people feel, and also to have people feel something as a result of something that we go through together. And I think whenever there’s a moment, and even if it’s a longer moment, to embed that, I actually think it goes a long way in the rest of the day. So I’m happy to spend the time there. But yeah, thank you. I’ll find your mascot animal, Robin, next time I’ll identify your mascot animal for you.

Robin:

I was hoping, I was hoping.

Tammy:

It’s coming.

Douglas:

Tammy, in your alumni story, you mentioned letting go of control and learning to be present. I’m curious, how’s that journey going and how did it impact how you showed up at this recent session?

Tammy:

That’s a great question. I think I will say that’s a lifelong journey for someone like me, Douglas.

Douglas:

Of course.

Tammy:

I’m an A type personality who enjoys a tremendous amount of control, and I think that’s why I like being front of room, because I’m not at the mercy of how other people are going to run a show. I feel like Robin’s probably the only person I trusted to run a room with. But I think in recent years I’ve had a lot of positive experiences in, I would say more collaborative approaches that leave a little bit to chance because I think there’s always a way to sort of steer it from the sides rather than the center, if that makes sense. So I think in this particular example of this day and that arts-based activity, I didn’t realize how worried I was about how that was going to go or not go.

I spent a stupid amount of time getting materials ready, thinking about how people were going to thread their stories together, thinking about all these little elements for what was really just an introductory activity. I probably spent more time there than I should have, but I think it was because I was leaving so much up to chance in that moment, in that particular activity in the room. And it could have flopped, they could have not been able to pull it off. They could have not wanted to engage, but it didn’t. And I think there’s perhaps a whole bunch of reasons for that. And also we just have a good bunch of people who are willing to take a risk. But to some degree, maybe some of those conversations and the staff accolades and stuff at the beginning maybe set the tone for a space of low enough risk that it was a space of care that we were in.

Robin:

Yeah.

Douglas:

You talked earlier about using art and getting people comfortable and preparing them to be bold. That got me to thinking about how singers will warm up their voices. If they just start to show up and then just start seeing immediately, they might damage their voice or they might just not be ready or capable of doing the things they might demand of their vocal cords. And it’s these transformations and change that takes time and care. And so asking people to be bold and innovative or just behave in ways that aren’t asked to day in, day out is hard without a transformation or a transition.

Robin:

Yeah, it’s funny, I was thinking of a quote that I actually wrote down that Eric, I think it was Eric who said during the Voltage Control training, and he drew it from psychological safety, it sounds like sort of pedagogy. And the quote was, “You need to decrease social friction to increase intellectual friction.” And I think there’s something there about the way in which Tammy’s oriented to forming connections that, and we’ve joked before about Tammy maybe being more the heart and me being more the head. Although I don’t think, I think there’s a strong overlap in our Venn diagrams on that. But I do really try to channel that in designing sessions so that you’re really having people feel connected socially and connected to each other so that we can have sometimes really tough conversations intellectually. And I don’t know if that directly answers your question, but that’s what was sort of sparked for me when you were asking it.

Tammy:

And if I were to maybe amplify that, I would say I think we’re, even if I think about facilitating five or six years ago or in a pre-pandemic context, I think that the world is a bit of a different place now, and I think this desire or need for connectivity is greater maybe than it was before. I think people are increasingly disconnected. People work in their remote work environments, they’re largely connecting online. Sometimes we’re bringing them together in a room and we expect this muscle that they used to have to be ready to go, and it’s not actually.

And so I actually do think it is worthwhile taking a little bit more time in the upfront to set the conditions for everyone to be able to be present and be in the room and contribute in the way that we’re hoping that they will. And I think they crave it, but I don’t think they know how quite, I think. And I notice that there are some generational differences in that as well, there are identity-based differences in how people are able to show up. But I do think now more than ever, there’s a need for us as facilitators to sort of zoom in on that maybe as part of our practice.

Robin:

Yeah. And we didn’t actually say the heart and the head. We talked about people feeling a focus on you, sort of focusing more on connections and me focusing more on actions and decisions. And I think that there is, just apropos to what you just said about the lack of people being physically together, is that I’m finding there’s a lot more work you got to do to get people to the point of making decisions and taking action because they’re not, to your point, doing that, engaging with each other in the same ways with the same regularity and sometimes not about tougher things. So because you’re a box on a screen, you’re just not going to put the energy often into disagreeing.

It’s like, I’ll just be okay with that, or I’ll go off-screen and deal with it elsewhere. Versus when you’re in spaces live, there’s just more friction that happens, like healthy friction and you work that muscle of working through it. So I think as facilitators, it puts more of an onus on investing the time and energy in doing some of that. And I have to hold back my desire to quickly get to decisions and actions and do more of that, making sure the ground is fertile for that.

Tammy:

If I were to give a nod to one, I’m going to say approach that really helped me during the cert was the e-learning course on a narrative futures design. And so I think that’s an approach that has served me as a facilitator, I think, in thinking about this moment and the disconnection that folks are experiencing. And it really opens up the space to dream in a way that perhaps other approaches haven’t. And so I’ve really enjoyed utilizing that, especially if we’re doing sort of forward-thinking work and as opposed to designing to solve a problem. Let’s imagine the desired state, not with all of the obstacles or barriers sort of discourse that we would typically use when we facilitate. So I think that is one particular approach that supports dreaming and connection and these sort of approaches that I think really serve having people show up in a space in a particular way.

Robin:

And Tammy, you said, I remember after because that was one of the electives in our Voltage Control course, and I remember afterwards you were saying that you’ve been finding it particularly effective with young people.

Tammy:

Yeah, yeah, because I think if we think about generational impacts of the pandemic or even just sort of where we’re at in the world, I think there’s certain generations of young people that you speak to that maybe don’t dream or that possibility of dreaming has sort of gone away. The perception of the future is not so great, but if you ask them to, they’re very capable, but I think no one’s asking them to. They’re always caught in these conversations about these really dire social issues or these moments that we’re in as opposed to how might we dream or imagine the world that we want to be in and contributing to.

Robin:

Yeah, and one of the things I know that has resonated both with Tammy and me that came out of our Voltage Control conversations and training is this idea of the spaces we create being these temporary worlds, I think is how you all talk about it. And so to that point about dreaming, we have the privilege as facilitators to be able to create this world, this space where people can do things that they don’t do outside of the room. And if we do it well, that creates an opening for people to connect in different ways, to think together in different ways, to potentially lead to different kinds of results than they can have. And the practice of operating in this temporary space potentially in new ways, maybe more creative, maybe more silly, maybe more vulnerable ways can then carry over if we do it well into other environments.

And I think that what I’m finding in this moment, particularly working in the nonprofit sector where the virtual work has remained, I think more so than in corporate settings where people are going back to work more days of the week, I’m finding that the moments where I get the opportunity to lead staff sessions or bring teams together around strategy conversations are some of the rarest in-person moments they have. They’re just precious moments. And so I feel like there’s a privilege, but there’s also responsibility in making sure with these rare moments where people are together in the same room, that we’re not just checking the box around, have we come up with the right strategic priorities? But we’re really maximizing that time to, usually organizations have lots of different goals that they’re packing in to what they want to achieve in a single day or a single retreat.

Tammy:

What I tend to try to do with that one, Robin, just around this idea of this temporary world that we’ve created is if I’ve intentionally sort of done that at the beginning, I always try to end with what of this world would you like to take forward with you in your day to day? Because I think although these moments are rare, I would like for that way of being or existing or engaging to be less rare for folks. So what is it of what we created in that moment that they would like to embed in their practice or in their regular meetings or in their day-to-day? Because I think that is the culture shifting stuff that an individual touch point can sort of have in the future.

Robin:

What a great prompt. I love that.

Douglas:

Let’s point our attention toward the future and hear about the challenges and opportunities you’re most energized to take on.

Robin:

I think that the challenge that I am probably, as Tammy knows, spending the most time thinking about, is really about how to more intentionally, maybe more creatively, maybe more effectively be able to bring multiple stakeholders, organizations, groups together that can align around shared goals and need to really chart a course towards achieving them. And I think in this moment there, we kind of had a heyday of collective impact a decade ago where I think people really were drawing from and leaning on that pedagogy. And I feel like there’s still collaborative work, there’s still collective work, but I feel like there isn’t as much as is needed to address the complex issues that we face.

And I’m really clear we’re not going to solve some of the big intractable things that we’re, or seemingly intractable things that we’re faced with on any dimension, homelessness, climate, food insecurity, all the things that organizations I work with deal with one organizational strategy at a time. It’s just not going to happen. And so the interplay between different players is what gets me really excited. And how do you create those spaces for innovative thinking and dialogue and alignment around them? So I’m looking for opportunities to do more of that and organizations that want to sort of be together in a sandbox to try on some different ways of working together.

Tammy:

And I think if I were to piggyback off of that, Robin, because we’ve chatted about this a fair bit, and I think we’ve tried through some of our facilitations to do some of that broader sector work, but it’s hard. It’s difficult in this current climate and context. I don’t know if this is true in the US, but in Canada, charities and nonprofits are really struggling. There’s a number of smaller ones that are shutting their doors. There’s a real, I would say, survivability mindset as opposed to a more collaborative mindset or a mindset of abundance where we might all sort of benefit from working more together.

So I think as someone who works within an organization who is pleased to collaborate, it’s been really difficult to even convince funders to put money into a pot for a number of organizations to work together. So I think that continues to maybe be the challenge of the future, but it is certainly the only way to solve the problems that we’re seeking to solve. So I think continuing to, in the absence of really direct pathways to achieving that, what are some of the creative ways that we can pull that off is I think a bit where we’re at in a future state, but it’s definitely, it is a driver. There is no one individual charity or organization that will change the world on the issue that they’re trying to change the world on. It’s not possible.

Robin:

Yeah, and you see this up close with the kind of system level work you do as an organization. So it’s kind of in your DNA to work this way.

Douglas:

Amazing. You’re doing important work, and I’m glad you’re focused on it. I hope you catch the next wave of collaboration and collective work.

Tammy:

Yeah, totally.

Robin:

Yeah. Thanks, Douglas.

Tammy:

Yeah, I hope so.

Douglas:

As we come to a close, I’d like to invite you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Tammy:

My final thought for listeners would be to reflect on the importance and the value of relationships in the work that we do. And so at the end of the day, we are all in relationships with each other. Some of them are good, some of them are strained, and we’re seeking to enhance those. And without centering our practice on those relationships, I think we will inevitably leave people behind.

Robin:

That resonates for sure. I am a huge Priya Parker fan. The Art of Gathering I know was one of the books we read as a part of this, and my, I guess final thought would be around, for anyone out there that’s gathering people or facilitating conversations or leading meetings, there’s a really simple truth at the heart of her book, which is that you need to start with purpose. And while it seems obvious, so many meetings happen without actually crystallizing why we are coming together. And so starting your with that question of why and what will be different and working backward from that outcome, so you were designing with that why in mind is something I go back to often from her work.

Tammy:

You definitely walk that talk, Robin, because-

Robin:

Thank you.

Tammy:

You definitely asked me that question probably three times in the last three weeks.

Robin:

Thank you for the validation.

Douglas:

Well, it was my pleasure having you on today. It was so great chatting. Hope to see you again soon.

Tammy:

Likewise. Thank you for your time, Douglas and Robin. It’s always a delight to share ideas with you, so thank you.

Robin:

Yeah, same, Tammy. And thanks Douglas, and thanks for the gift that keeps giving of this program.

Douglas:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast. If you enjoy the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe to 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 or I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics, and collaboration. voltagecontrol.com.