Stamp Out Boring Workshops A Facilitator's Mission

A conversation with Leanne Hughes. Author of The 2-Hour Workshop Blueprint

“It’s to stamp out boring workshops around the world forever because i think if you do have the opportunity to bring teams together or people together that’s kind of sacred time so how do you get and this isn’t about getting the biggest roi but how do you make it more meaningful and a once in a lifetime opportunity for them? – Leanne Hughes

In this episode of the Control Room podcast, Leanne Hughes, author of “The Two-Hour Workshop Blueprint,” shares her secrets to designing and delivering workshops that are efficient and effective. Leanne emphasizes the importance of being purposeful and grounded as a facilitator, and discusses the concept of co-creating to achieve real collaboration. She also shares her process for post-workshop reflection and follow-up, and encourages facilitators to let go of control and find balance. Listen in to learn how to create meaningful experiences that leave a lasting impact.

Show Highlights

[00:01:33] Love for Workshops
[00:04:07] Importance of Being Grounded
[00:08:18]  Working in Public
[00:09:36] Writing a book with feedback 
[00:12:25] Working in public or co-creating

Links | Resources

About the Guest

Leanne Hughes is a consultant, keynote speaker and facilitator, maximizing team potential by creating influential, contagious work experiences that scale across teams, functions and regions. As a workshop designer and facilitator, she combines her experience in Marketing with her education (and obsession) with Group Dynamics and Psychology to help leaders create engaging experiences. Whether launching a change initiative, enabling shifts in performance, or building a culture to achieve next-level success, Leanne’s workshops impact both business and lives. Especially skilled with virtual events, Leanne has distilled her knowledge and experience into her podcast, The First Time Facilitator, and now, a book ‘The 2-Hour Workshop Blueprint’.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Full Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Welcome to the Control The Room podcast. A series devoted to the exploration of facilitation and transformative leadership. Some leaders exert tight control and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly transformative experience. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us live for a session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab. It’s a free event to meet facilitators and explore new techniques so you can apply the things you learn in the podcast in real time with other facilitators. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab. You can also learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program at voltagecontrol.com.

Today I’m with Leanne Hughes at leannehughes.com. Where she helps everyday people design fast and deliver strong without stress. She’s also the author of the 2-Hour Workshop Blueprint. Welcome to the show, Leanne.

Leanne Hughes:

Douglas, it’s always great to chat. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. I’ve been really looking forward to this today. So as usual, I’d love to start with how you got your start in the world of facilitation and workshop blueprints and helping people deliver strong without stress. How does someone get into this work?

Leanne Hughes:

Well, it’s just mean scratching my own itch, really. I mean, I’m one of those chronic people that just will design and iterate and design and even the five minutes leading up to a workshop do that. But in terms of the start of stepping up in front of a workshop room, I guess I’m probably the participant in a workshop that you’d always want to have in your group. Just super eager, on time, asking questions, nodding when things make sense. I just love being in workshops and I think it stems from, as a kid, I used to play a sport in Australia called netball. I don’t know if many of your listeners have heard of that. It’s like a combination of basketball and European handball, but it dominated my life. And actually so much so that I’m in my mid-20s and I’m still playing and I’m like, I’ve gone past the peak of being the athlete I was. And the only reason that kept me in the team was the group dynamics and the teamwork and the friendships and the ability to play with the team and be high performance. So I’ve always been sort of interested in that.

But fast-forward a few years, I was living in a remote town in Australia, 2000 kilometers away from the nearest capital city. So we were basically just locked off from the rest of Australia. And there are opportunities, we don’t have any facilitators in town and often we’d have to fly facilitators up from different capital cities to run sessions. And we had our local shire actually ask for a session on time management. I was working in a marketing role back then and I thought, you know what? I think, I mean I read a lot on this. I love talking and being in these groups. Maybe it’s a chance to get up there and present. So that was the first opportunity. And Douglas, the run sheet that I had for that session, it was, 901, show this slide. 903, ask this question. I’m so glad I don’t have that run sheet, but it’s probably a good example of how far I’ve come in terms of running workshops.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s so interesting when things get so over programmed and it’s quite often the mark of someone fresh and new and excited and wants to get it all right, but it actually can be a disservice.

Leanne Hughes:

Absolutely. So back to the title of your podcast, Control The Room, that’s what I had to, I was so uncertain that I had to monetize the agenda. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. And it’s interesting you came back to the title because there’s different kinds of control. And there’s some kinds of control where letting go actually gives us the real control. We’re really in control at that point. Everything’s going to happen the way it needs to happen, whereas if we try to exert too much control, then things get out of control.

Leanne Hughes:

It’s so true. When you talk about that first example of control, when I felt like I’ve relinquished, its interesting because even my body feels like it’s actually really grounded. I’m really there. I just feel that presence. Whereas at times where I’m off my game, I feel like I’m floating above my head. I don’t know. Have you felt that? Or is it just me being a bit weird here?

Douglas Ferguson:

No, it’s something that comes up quite often and that we talk about in our certification, which is this idea of being grounded in purpose and identifying purpose can be really helpful there. But also there’s lots of things that might knock you off that grounding, whether it’s like an unruly participant or maybe the food didn’t show up on time or whatever. And so I think it’s very human to respond in those kinds of ways. And we had to learn how to move through those spaces in ways that allow us to return to that grounding because it’s no such thing as being permanently just glued. That’s not being human. But how do we stay in balance? When we get knocked off, how do we flow back in?

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah, I really love that. And there’s certain times that I don’t know, and there’s also what people see of you projecting versus what you’re feeling yourself. There was an example a few years ago, I thought the day was going great and I sort of checked in with a few people at lunch and they’re like, “Leanne, we’re not talking about what we really need to talk about.” I was like, okay, what do I do after this break? So I mean that definitely asked the group the question. We got into circles, but inside I was like that duck just splashing around under underwater. I think the perception was I had this under control, if people were to look at me. And people have remarked on in terms of my facilitation style, they’ll say, “Oh, you look so calm and measured.” Honestly, Douglass on the inside, it’s anything. So it’s interesting, the contrast, between the inner and the outer game.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, absolutely. And that duck metaphor comes up quite often. It’s like, how do we keep everything calm and placid even if we’re doing a lot of moves underneath the hood?

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah. And it’s funny, when you are under stress, you can’t really think broadly in terms of all the opportunities or options that you have for that moment. You narrow in on like, okay, what about this act? My mind is, it’s almost like it’s going through this [inaudible 00:06:23] of all the things I could possibly do, all the processes I could bring up. If I’m under stress. And so this is why I like having that outer game slowing down the breathing. That helps me then relax and think more broadly in terms of what’s most useful for this group and what questions can I ask to help us continue here and get their thoughts on next steps.

Douglas Ferguson:

The other thing that I’ve found too is having the awareness and acknowledgement that as the facilitator, I don’t have to have all the answers, nor should I. And being in that space and holding that role allows me to invite conversation that might need to happen. And one thing that can be done when things seem to be going off to rails is to label it, name it.

Leanne Hughes:

Yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

What I’m noticing here is, and what do you think we might do about that? And that can be a powerful thing. And let the group decide. Let them weigh in. And I think my experience is that they respect you for it.

Leanne Hughes:

I agree. Because you actually are naming it. And I think when we’re talking about past Leanne, yeah, I never would’ve been brave enough to even ask that question. And I thought you had to be the capable professional person up there and ego was attached to that. It is really interesting the fact that as you graduate from being a facilitator or move on through your journey, you’re actually, the control, if we’re mapping the control, it would go the other way.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. So want to talk about, it’s a topic that we were discussing in the pre-show chat and it’s very related to this idea of being able to name it, label it. And you were talking about this idea of working in public or co-creating. And so if we’re naming things and just being transparent and vulnerable in that space, that’s what creates, it opens the door for folks. And I think to your point, working in public in any way, that transparency, that door opening is what invites real collaboration.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah. I mean, I’ve heard the name, I think I had first heard Pat Flynn talk about working in public. And I was reflecting on an experience when I was working internally for a big corporate mining company. I was in a learning and development role and we had a parent company. And often we’d do things like we thought we’d taking initiative, we’d design the leadership program, then we would have it finalized and shoot it up to the parent company say, “Hey, here’s what we created. This is great. We should roll it out across all businesses.” And they were really taken aback by that. So rather than being overjoyed that we’d done all the work for them, what we had done was working in private where we just did everything we thought it was the right thing, had it perfect before presenting it, and we didn’t get buy-in from them at all. In fact, they were pissed off that we did that.

So then I thought, all right, okay, so screwing away working in secret is not a good thing. In certain context it is. But in the context that I work in, which is all about, and you Douglass, co-creation group collaboration, now I’m just trying to get more comfortable in sharing early editions and versions of things as I work on them with a group to get feedback. And I just find it the most amazing way to do things. It’s how I wrote my book. It’s hard to do though because you are sharing something that’s half-baked and that’s really uncomfortable.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes. So tell me about how you approached your book using this mentality.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah, well I got the idea from Rob Fitzpatrick who wrote The Workshop Survival Guide. And he also wrote a book called Write Useful books.

So I was speaking at a conference in California on February 25th this year, on the 1st of January I thought, I can’t go to California, I can’t fly all the way to California from Australia and not have a book. So within 52 days I got version one done. Basically, I mean, similar to you, I had 200 interviews on my first time facilitator podcast and just accumulated all this knowledge. So I thought to get this done, that was easy. But then I threw it out for feedback. So the version one of the book I handed out at the conference with a very big disclaimer and a QR code, click here to give feedback. You’re part of an early edition. And it was great.

So for two things, one, it validated the idea. I actually had someone come up to me and say, “Oh my gosh, I’m actually writing a 2-Hour Workshop in two weeks.” Okay, actually, this is the book, I’m solving a problem. But also the feedback was so interesting and fantastic. But before even jumping onto the platform to review it, I really had to put myself in a state where I’m like, “Okay, Leanne, whatever you’re reading here is, it’s not feedback on you. It’s feedback on this idea and the concept. So take that.”

Douglas Ferguson:

So I’m sure with all the feedback you’ve got that some of that feedback was surprising to you. So when you think about all the surprising feedback that you got, what comes to mind?

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah, I think one of the core elements of the book originally was creating a… It was when you run a workshop, create a framework around your content. And I’d feedback that that’s the next level. It’s too hard for that level. So it was good because it reminded me of who the reader was. Another bit of feedback was, “Leanne, you used way too many metaphors. There’s too many mixed metaphors in this book.” And I thought metaphors were a good thing. I intentionally put lots of metaphors in there. The third thing was I thought I was writing in a really short, punchy way. It’s a short book. But it wasn’t punchy enough. And I think in one of the chapters someone said, I think chapter five, it took them maybe three pages in to get to the core message. And it was brutal that you don’t need all this, but thank goodness that’s been washed out before it goes into the final version.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that. I love this process. And interestingly enough, it’s how I wrote my book Beyond The Prototype. We didn’t use that process with magical meetings because I had a publisher who was giving me plenty of feedback, but it was really fun to write in that way. And I think you’re expressing getting over a bit of fear, uncertainty around it. And I think I personally was lucky that I came up through this world of software development where we were constantly doing reviews and talking about things and trying things out and seeing if they would work. And so I was very used to working in that way.

Leanne Hughes:

It’s interesting. You pull that up. I definitely see that software tech. I mean we can see ChatGPT now one on its fourth or fifth iteration, just putting it out to the world as an early edition, getting feedback to improve the model. But in a lot of organizations, this is a really new concept. They don’t even think about sharing what’s going on behind the scenes or what they’re working on. It’s all hidden behind closed doors and there’s a real fear of being judged, I feel.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. And also, another thing I see, even companies that are used to doing it, they’re used to doing it in certain contexts in certain departments. And so you look at a company that does a lot of prototyping on their design team, they might not be doing prototyping in their meetings where it’s like we could come and build a thing together and experiment with it. There’s a lot of opportunity there.

Leanne Hughes:

I mean, how many companies have innovation in their corporate values yet it’s like, “Oh, we only innovate on product or service. We don’t innovate in how we work.” You know what I mean? It’s like it’s not really a core value, it’s just only for a certain amount of people or departments. But if it’s a core value, how are you living that through the business?

Douglas Ferguson:

Every way, where’s your innovative parking or where’s your innovative ride-sharing to work or whatever it is, right?

Leanne Hughes:

Love that. Yeah, that’s a cool idea.

Douglas Ferguson:

So often when we’re talking with facilitators that are working as full-time facilitators or contractors or freelancers or maybe they have a small professional services agency, they think about that client relationship. But that’s another lens that similar to the prototypes that we don’t necessarily see with everyone who’s facilitating inside of companies. It’s something that you and I were talking about this thinking about the peer to peer relationship that really needs to exist for the best work to be done in the facilitation context. Really any collaboration context. How have you seen that show up in this facilitator client relationship when it comes to in-house, like in-house facilitators?

Leanne Hughes:

Well, I think there’s mean one thing, there’s a brand about L&D. It really been dismissed. I don’t think maybe some people have worked on their brand, but it’s really around L&D just being the order takers. So the operational leaders but will just say, “This is what we need. We need more of a focus on safety.” Then they’ll go to L&D and go, “Create a safety program, we need it.” And they’ll give them the detail of it. So just say it needs to be 90 days and we need to make it virtual. So that is a parent child. You’re just throwing them the instructions and please create this. Whereas the peer to peer would be safety program, let’s work shoulder to shoulder and really figure out, do some interviews, what is actually required, what are the observed behaviors we need to change? And things like that.

I’m not too sure if it’s set up in the structure as well. It’s really quite funny, Douglas, when we’re talking about the business of facilitation, I had Alan Weiss on my podcast who I now got as a business coach because he just basically every two seconds was just a value drop. Something that he said, I can’t believe I’m sharing it here, but it relates to this theme of the brand of learning and development. He said to me, “Leanne, do you know what HR stands for?” Have you heard this Douglas, what he thinks it stands for?

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-mm.

Leanne Hughes:

He said, “Hardly relevant.” And I was like, “What? What do you mean by that?” And he goes, “They have no budget, they have no decision power.” And so this is what’s going on. And you do mention HR, they’ve tried to rebrand to different people and capability, talent and development, but it’s still the legacy of that continues. And it’s sad because I’ve come from that world. And even in my own marketing externally, I’ve really had to shift the perception of not being just a facilitator, we can talk about that world a bit later on, or in learning and development, more about being a strategic advisor. I think the language we use around the description of the service needs to change. But also, the way of thinking around the best way to approach something also needs to change because everything that we thought you was working, that there’s so much in terms of value and new things that we can be bringing out and being more responsive to what the organization actually needs.

Douglas Ferguson:

It really matters. And I think what he is hitting on is this notion that HR is a cost center. They’re not a value generating in entity in the organization. And that I think that perception of HR is unfortunately one that permeates a lot of organizations. So they don’t tend to get the investment that sales gets for instance, or even product development because they look at product as well, if we invest in product organization, they’re going to create more innovation which will create more value and we can sell more of that value. That’s ultimately what they’re looking at in a capitalist equation.

Leanne Hughes:

And I think it’s a good consideration. And so in terms of, for L&D departments wanting to build their brand and it’s like, okay, what’s that dotted line between what you did and the return on investment and the performance? And I think the measures aren’t that good. Definitely suggest a link to Kevin Yates’ work. He calls himself the L&D detective.

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice.

Leanne Hughes:

I don’t know. Yeah. So he talks about measurement. I think that’s crucial. If you’re looking at building a peer to peer relationship, whether it’s internal or external, how are you communicating the value in terms of business results and performance? Not just, oh we improved the engagement scores. No one cares around about that.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, to what end?

Leanne Hughes:

And business leader cares… Yeah. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

And you know, look at companies that are adopting OKRs or other kinds of strategy rollout mechanisms. And anytime that work can be aligned with that, it can be a really powerful way to ensure that the measurement is aligning with the objectives that have been set forth that are most important.

Leanne Hughes:

That’s it. Yeah. It’s just getting that alignment and making sure that you can demonstrate that value.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. You know what? Another thing I was thinking about was how often there’s no rubric or success criteria defined for a lot of this work. And so it’s not only measuring, you can’t really measure what you haven’t decided how you’re going to measure. Right?

Leanne Hughes:

That’s right. Yeah. So try to write a proposal, when you’re an external. I wish I had external consulting experience before I moved internal as well. I mean they’re both just very parallel skills. If in terms of how do you measure the difference between your intervention, your series of workshops, the coaching work that you’re doing, what’s the measurable objective out of that? But then the good thing about that is then you got to ask, well will a workshop help get you there? Maybe a leader needs to change roles. A workshop is part of the solution. I think where L&D can fail and where I failed in my first few years is that because I workshop facilitator, my prescription was a workshop. I wasn’t thinking more broadly. So that’s really shifted for me in terms of present Leanne, is actually thinking, okay, the workshop might be part of the solution, but it’s not everything that this client requires to get the result they’re after.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s an important distinction and I think that really interesting to hear this journey. What do you think was the moment that clicked for you that not everything’s a workshop and I need to think more holistically?

Leanne Hughes:

It was honestly working with Alan Weiss. So he basically disrupted the podcast. Everyone was went nuts over this interview. It was a watershed moment for me. The whole time I’d got on my own solo, I was marketing myself as a facilitator, as a person that run workshops. When people contacted me, they got a workshop. Then I sent Alan a few of my proposals for clients and he just basically knocked them down, was very brutal and said, “Yeah, what are you doing?” So I got my head checked. In a gloriously kind way to get violent feedback. It was good.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Amazing.

Leanne Hughes:

So we need put people in our lives that do that for us. And I’ve had wonderful coaches. I think my first coach was very kind and lovely, but more of a cheerleader and there wasn’t much growth. But with him it’s been brutal. It’s been hard. I’ve had to really think about things and decide what to take on or not. But one of the biggest influences in my career, I would say.

Douglas Ferguson:

Amazing. Yeah. A solid coach can make a big difference.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

So you also mentioned something else in the pre-show chat around this idea of how being a podcast host can be really informative and how you facilitate and the style that you bring into facilitation. I’m curious to hear a little bit more about that because it resonated with me. But before I start to share my thoughts, I want to hear a little bit more about what that surfaces for you.

Leanne Hughes:

Well I mean the fact that we’re talking I think is fantastic. And if you are listening to this, I’m sure we can hear the rhythm, cadence and difference between Douglass and I. And you can imagine a different type of workshop experience. Douglass, you are way more thoughtful and intentional, I think, with what you say. I’m just will just run off my mouth talks before I connect it to my brain. So would have very different workshop experiences and that’s why I was just keen to riff with you on that.

But I did start my podcast when I was a first time facilitator working internally. My boss sent me to Canada. I had no idea how to run these workshops. And so I was looking for podcast back then and couldn’t find anything. So I started this podcast when I was working in a business. But probably the best unintended side effect was as a result of hosting the show and having all these conversations where you’re listening in, you’re having to segue and transition, which for the first 50 episodes I was terrible at. Again, I had a script of questions. Was that my growth as a facilitator it just exploded as a result of being a podcast host. What have you discovered?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s fascinating to me the listening skills that it requires. Just the intent listening. Especially to your point early on I showed up with a list of questions and I quickly realized how difficult it was to have a good podcast with just a list of questions. So I wanted to shift it to be more conversational. And as soon as you do that, you have to really listen. And there’s some guests like you, for example, where the conversation’s natural. There’s some guess where the conversation is not natural and you really have to work hard and listen really hard. I’ve thought as a facilitator, I’m pretty good listener, really good at rapid synthesis. But once you’re trying to capture a moment with someone and really get a good recording and really make the conversation live, it’s facilitating one person. You can’t just jump to someone else in the room and have the beauty of the room intelligence erupt. It’s like, no, you got to really pull it out of that person. And so that intent listening and also synthesizing and thinking about where am I going to nudge this so I get them talking.

Leanne Hughes:

I love the way that you put that, facilitating one person. You’re right. And I’ve had definitely had those situations where it’s been disjointed and we haven’t really built up a drum beat or a rhythm. And the other point that you mentioned in terms of, oh wow, this person said five different things, we could go in five different directions here, which one do I take? Actually people have written to me saying, oh, how did you know I was going to ask that question? And it basically is just going into, I think, and again, like I said, if the first time I had that script, I wouldn’t have gone to that question. But when I relinquish control, I just put myself in the scenes. Yeah, like you said to Douglas before the show, if we were just having a coffee, what would I actually naturally just ask that person and I go with that one. As opposed to having to be performative.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t really like to interview or talk to my guests ahead of time unless I am not sure if it’s going to be a good episode. If I want to get a good read on, oh who is this person is there going to be like, but if I have an understanding or an intuition that it’s going to be good, I just go with it because it’s going to be so much better to have it be organic.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah. There’s nothing worse when you’ve heard the story a second time

Douglas Ferguson:

And it had a thin interest, right? It’s like in the birthday present nobody wants.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah, it’s it.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I wanted to talk a little bit about the book, because that’s exciting. We talked about the process by which you wrote the book. I think it’d be neat to talk about Spark for a little bit here and especially keep because that’s the big innovation for you. But I think for listeners it’d be helpful to hear what Spark is and then maybe we can dive into that keep piece that’s particularly special.

Leanne Hughes:

And I guess it depends on who. I think people will pick up different elements. So Spark is the framework that underpins the whole book. Basically it’s talking through how to set up your workshop, how to power it up and get people engaged immediately. How to structure your agenda with activities, the reflection piece to close off your workshop. So we all know this format, we all know it. This is the book that I would’ve loved six years ago. And then keep is the part… First of all I’m like, oh, keep. Do I keep this K in? I’m actually, this is really important. I think this is probably the geeky stuff that people don’t talk about because it’s not glamorous at all. It’s like what happens after the workshop. And so, one of my values is working with clients is responsiveness and speed is more important than content sometimes in the world that we’re living in.

And often what I was really bad at was I’d finish a workshop, I’d probably be tired, I might be traveling. And so when I got the resources that I promised in the workshop to them it would be a week later, which is not good enough. So what I do ahead of time is, I tend to know what resources I recommend. There’s like a top 10 list. My favorite leadership books. I’ve got a Spotify playlist of my favorite leadership podcast episodes that I’ve curated on particular themes. So if we’re talking about psychological safety, I’ve got a podcast playlist for that. And then I’ve got this notion template set up with all my resources. So post-workshop I just duplicate it, edit things around, throw in some photos or quotes from the day and get that out to the client very quickly, within six hours of the workshop being done.

They don’t have that cognitive overload and the weight of having to do that as well. The workshop is over. The other part of Keep, which I’ll just quickly share, is what do we do with our… Or do we ever reflect on our workshops, how activities worked, what could have been tweaked, the variations of that? So I’ll actually schedule time in my calendar post workshop. I print out my run sheets. I know that’s very old school. I’ve tried to use the iPad, but I actually having paper there that I can quickly jot notes down on. And I’ve actually just got a display folder here with every single run sheet I’ve run for workshops. And I’ll annotate over the top very quickly. So when I go to design again, I can just flick through my previous run sheets and pick those things out That worked. So I mean, yeah, just my process of doing things faster but also not losing the learnings that I’m getting from every session.

Douglas Ferguson:

It reminds me of, it’s the operations of being a facilitator and really embracing the fact that how do we make this efficient, repeatable, make it easier.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah. Because I think there’s a tendency that even if you’re running the same session, we all have this tendency to just do well, I need to change it up because even if it’s a completely new group, they’ve never seen it before, to keep it fresh for ourselves. One thing I also remind myself of is that every workshop is a once in a lifetime experience. It’s never going to be the same. So that helps get me through. Do you have a process?

Douglas Ferguson:

Oh, absolutely. I’m a CTO for many years and software developer. So I’m a procedural thinker and I have tons of process including lots and Zapier if you know what that is.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

And in fact, whenever we define a repeatable type of workshop that we like to run, we will create a configuration file for that workshop that’ll include a mural or [inaudible 00:28:27], and a slide deck and it’ll point to the master versions for that particular type. So when I say I want to do that again, it just duplicates it all and puts it all in the right places. And then I’m off to the races. And then if it’s anything custom, we just choose the custom option, which also is a set of all those things, but it’s more of a blank slate or it has all the building blocks that we need. Because then whatever we’re doing for that custom might turn into one that we do again sometime. And so the system’s set up to where we can just capture those things. So that’s like an example. We get pretty nerdy on it.

Leanne Hughes:

I love, oh great. I really love hearing how you actually do this. And how I’ve had even people just using Google Slides and having the master one there and then editing and I love hearing this stuff because it really does make a difference in terms of your… The ability to design fast is actually quite important. If you want to take on new work. In my first few years building this business, I was saying yes to every type of workshop. So I had to build rapidly, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do it. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. Well we’re coming up on time. I want to think about where do you see the future going? Everyone’s of course talking about AI these days, and it seems, especially when you’re talking about systems and designing fast, how much is AI showing up in your systems and fast designing these days?

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah. So even I talk about this in the book, something I think is important to get, I talk about getting people to your actual workshops, because often people sign up and they don’t come along. So one thing I love using AI, this is, I know ChatGPT isn’t all of AI, but even just getting so brainstorming prompts on what am I going to call this workshop? In the book, I talk about if you want to get a case study, imagine you’re a procurement manager, you are working for this company, you’ve got an issue with time, can you write me a case study and can you give me five or 10 different questions I could ask to reflect on that? And I don’t take them verbatim, but it’s a good, then I’ll work with the client and go, is this something relevant ?so we’re not working off a blank slate. I think that’s the power of it. There’s no more blank slates. There’s no more blank curses. Fill it up. This is a part of the work in public thing. Share it. How can you improve it? And then take it to the workshop.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. I often refer to thinking of it as another teammate.

Leanne Hughes:

Love that.

Douglas Ferguson:

And I think it’ll show up more and more like that the more sophisticated it gets. And so not only are we using the tools, but really we’re collaborating with them.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah, we’re facilitating with it.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah.

Leanne Hughes:

And honestly I’m back to, I think us facilitators are the best users of as in terms of prompt, we are maybe prompt engineers. Maybe we’ve been doing it our whole lives. We’re prompting groups, right? And so the questions that I’ve asked, I had someone actually ask me, they go, “How did you do that?” And I sent them my 50-page Google doc of the transcript. I’m like, “Wow, I wouldn’t have even thought of those questions.” And I think, oh, maybe facilitation is again, it’s just the most handiest skill to have.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, well certainly, you get good at asking questions for sure. It’s interesting, I made a comment earlier when you were talking about the systems and I was thinking to myself, I just said, how do we make it easier to facilitate? And then in that split second, I remember how facilitations Latin root is facili, which is to make easy. And so literally if Keep is about making it easy for us to facilitate, it means that’s us facilitating ourselves.

Leanne Hughes:

Oh, that’s very meta. It is. I often find that we don’t really invest that time and energy and effort into our own systems. We’ll give it everything away for the client and do whatever they want, back to that whole parent adult child thing. But after a workshop, we are usually tired. We haven’t really prepped enough. And I think the systems, I think you’re right, it’s a really good observation, Douglas, that we’re making it easy, easier for ourselves. I don’t want to start a new thread here, but because when I was asking and giving out fees and I’m thinking maybe this fee’s a bit too much, but they’ve accepted, I’ve got to make it hard for myself. That was a weird mindset thing I had that sometimes still crops up, but.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s interesting. Earlier we were talking about when folks are just getting started, one of the challenges is the fear of going off the rails. And so putting too much in there because there’s not going to be enough or detailing it so finely that it’s just gives you no freedom to move. Also, what you just described is another big Achilles’ heel I’ve seen folks suffer from, which is this strong drive for perfection where they over deliver. And I think it’s completely unnecessary and oftentimes can be a disservice to the recipient of the workshop, even if it’s not obvious. Because it’s like how much is really necessary.

Leanne Hughes:

And I had this constant need to, I talk about the importance of adding contrast in your workshops, but sometimes there’s too much contrast you can add. And basically you group just on a rollercoaster and you’re just trying to keep their attention the whole time at a really high level. That was one of the traps I fell into. Yeah. And I still have to be like, all right Leanne, let’s take it out. Let them have that space.

Douglas Ferguson:

And it’s not only too much content, sometimes it can be just too much depth. How deep and thoughtful and nuanced does the prompt need to be? Did you just spend two days crafting this thing that’s got so much intellectual depth to it that is lost on everyone? Then is there any value? And did someone get confused because of the nuance? Is the nuance confusing anyone? I think, that stuff’s worth, the calibrating is so important, I guess is the point I was trying to make.

Leanne Hughes:

I think calibration is the word I think because often when you’re thinking about the perfectionist trait that’s about you as you putting on the show versus in service of the group. And there’s the distinction.

Douglas Ferguson:

And it comes back to the metrics that we were talking about with, are we measuring ourselves? Do we even know how we were measuring ourselves? Not only ourselves, but the outcomes of the session. How’s the business benefiting? How’s the team benefiting? Ultimately, why are we doing this?

Leanne Hughes:

Why?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah.

Leanne Hughes:

Yeah, I like that you linked it back. Well done.

Douglas Ferguson:

So if we keep doing this work, when you think about the future and what all this creates for us in the world, what are the dreams that are made possible in your mind?

Leanne Hughes:

Look, the dreams are, I think what we’re doing is extremely important work given where we’re headed as a society in terms of the screen time and everything else. So I think what we’re crafting is just incredibly meaningful experiences. One of my missions, I should, put a number against this, but to stamp out boring workshops around the world forever. Because I think if you do have the opportunity to bring teams together or people together, that’s sacred time. And this isn’t about getting the biggest roi, but how do you make it more meaningful and a once in a life lifetime opportunity for them? So I think what’s interesting now, even in Australia where we had COVID in my state didn’t hit so hard, but there’s no hybrid, there’s no virtual. It’s back to all in-person sessions, which is quite interesting. It’s swung the other way. Even though we’ve had all this technology improvement and know that virtual workshops can work to a degree. So I think it’s just that we hold a really important place in society, I think it’s really important that we continue building the perception of what we can do and how it can benefit society and the world.

Douglas Ferguson:

I couldn’t have said that better. And as we come to a close, I want to leave you with an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Leanne Hughes:

I think that I would play on, in The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier talks about being a lazy leader. And I think as facilitators, why don’t we strive to be a bit lazier in the way that we design our workshops using systems like backing it up. Not saying doing a poorer job, doing a great job, but just stepping back a bit, letting the group fill that space. So I guess that’s my probably call links into everything we spoke about. The work in public stuff as well is be a bit lazy. I don’t have to have all the answers or a final solution.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes, the lazy facilitator. I’m a big fan. Excellent, Leanne. Great words. It was a pleasure chatting with you today and I look forward to another chat soon.

Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control The Room. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. 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.