Please join us for the Control the Room 2021, which will be held Feb. 2-4, 2020. You can find out more and buy tickets here.

This is part of the 2020 Control The Room speaker video series.

In February we hosted the second annual facilitator summit, Control The Room, at Austin’s Capital Factory. We launched the summit last year in partnership with MURAL to create a space for facilitators to gather, break down the silos, and learn from one another.

The three-day summit is a rare opportunity to bring together an otherwise unlikely group of highly experienced and skilled professionals across various industries and crafts—from strategy consultants and negotiators to Scrum Masters and design thinkers.

Anyone interested in deepening their knowledge on how to successfully facilitate meaningful meetings and connect with other practitioners is welcome. Together, we dive into diverse methodologies, expand upon perspectives, and learn new insights and strategies that enrich our expertise.

This year we had the pleasure of welcoming 24 speakers, all innovation professionals, who shared their insights and strategies of successful facilitation.

One of those speakers was Sunni Brown, the Chief Human Potentialist at Sunni Brown Ink, a creative consultancy and agent of social change.  Sunni’s presentation— “Seeing Past Your Me: How to Facilitate from a Place of Deeper Wisdom”—illustrated the impact of equanimity on effective facilitation.

Sunni explained the difference between facilitators that are “strong with force” versus “drunk with power.” Facilitators with force possess and practice: curiosity, deep listening, responsiveness rather than reaction, self-responsible, and are firm but not aggressive.

Conversely, facilitators focused on self-power are reactive rather than responsive, dominate/tightly control the room, and conspire with harmful behavior if it colludes with power.

Watch Sunni Brown’s talk “Seeing Past Your Me: How to Facilitate from a Place of Deeper Wisdom” :

Read the Transcript

Sunni Brown:

Thank you. Thank you so much. I didn’t know y’all were woo curious. What? Because I missed the memo, I didn’t get to come this morning. So how much woo happened? Did people do hallucinogens? What’s going on?

Speaker 2:

Can’t you tell?

Sunni Brown:

Right? We’re all like woo. So this is a talk about being like Yoda. Y’all can hear me okay, right? And the intention of it is to set you guys up for success. You guys are all facilitators, which means that… Or you have responsibility of getting groups to do things that they may or may not want to do. Right? So I refer to that as getting energy, moving in the direction that you want it to move. So the intention of this is to talk about it just for a little bit, then get you to practice something. And then we discuss that together. And just like Douglas, I’m super collaborative and open to learning at all times.

Sunni Brown:

So I’m not up here as an expert, but I am up here as a practitioner and a super passionate person. And I’m on mushrooms, so what’s up? I’m just joking. I’m just joking. Just joking. Lloyd, maybe later? So these are the methods. I am a facilitator, I have been for 13 years. Where’s Linda Baker? She was my early trainee. She trained me. She trained me, yes, when I was a young Jedi. And these are the four methods we use and I’m not going to unpack these today, but they are in Gamestorming, so thank you for the shout out. And they are also in the Doodle Revolution, which was the book I wrote after Gamestorming, emphasizing visual thinking.

Sunni Brown:

So this is a quality that I want to talk about today. Does anybody know what this quality, really it means, what it is? Do you love it? Do you love this quality? Do you have this quality? We all practice.

Speaker 3:

We all practice, yeah.

Sunni Brown:

Exactly. So when I was a… I’ve done a little over 200 facilitated events all over the world in different environments and I got to witness a variety of ways that people show up, including myself. And I started to appreciate one particular quality that I noticed was most effective in moving people toward a direction that you want them to move to. And it was this quality. And this is not a quality that we’re particularly skillful at in the West, because we’re very like faster, more, now, do the thing. But it is a very incredible supporting way of being. And this is the definition. So it sounds kind of hard, right? This is Yoda. This is how Yoda operates. He’s kind of unflappable. It doesn’t mean that he’s a pushover, but it does mean that he has a real sense of spaciousness and capacity.

Sunni Brown:

And when you’re a facilitator, you don’t know what’s going to come to you. You have no idea… Depending on how you work. So I’m external, so I go into environments and I don’t know necessarily what is going to show up. So for me, this practice is really critical to staying steady in the face of all kinds of unpredictable mayhem. Obviously you design a process to avoid that. But still, we’re humans and we’re really messy and miraculous. So I always tell people to use the force, not power. Right? And what I mean by that, is I mean that the force is non egoic. So I’m not up saying I know something you don’t know. I’m not competing with you. I’m totally and completely on your team and I have a sense of spaciousness around whatever you bring. And it’s like being a good shepherd.

Sunni Brown:

And so I’ve noticed that the most skillful facilitators, and it happens over time, mastery and facilitation is a long journey and it could take many lifetimes for all we know. But they’re the ones who occupy the force. Right? And so here’s some examples of what that might look like behaviorally when you’re in a group. Can you all read it? I just like to give people time to take in stuff on their own. But you can see some of the qualities, right? Curiosity, self responsibility. Yeah, for sure. So deep listening, responsiveness rather than reaction. So responsiveness means that you’re not charged, your system is not charged and you’re essentially receptive to and available for a skillful response. So you’re not reactive, you’re self responsible. So if something goes haywire, you don’t start pointing fingers, you own that and you say, what can I do to help?

Sunni Brown:

And that’s just an orientation that you always come back to. And you’re firm, but you’re not aggressive. And so this is not… These are difficult things to do, because we’re humans and we have defenses just like everyone else, right? But this is what I’ve noticed are the qualities that facilitators have when they’re really in the zone, when they’re strong in the force. So a facilitator drunk with power, we’ve all been that. I’ve been this, I will probably do this today. I’m going to marginalize somebody, you know what I mean? So not on purpose, it’s going to be an accident.

Sunni Brown:

But this happens all the time, right? So we’re reactive. When we get defensive or when we get startled or when we’re not sure suddenly what’s going to happen, or say somebody comes in who we perceive to be threatening, we can instantly move into power plays. Any facilitator can do that. And so some of that looks like presenting as an expert or dismissing someone or trying to sequester someone or talking over someone. I mean there’s a whole host of strategies that you can do when you’re drunken with power. What’s that dude on the Simpsons? The one who’s like, “He he.” That dude, that dude is wasted with power.

Sunni Brown:

So again, I want to emphasize using the force and it’s a practice. So I’m not trying to set it up like a binary, like, oh there’s facilitators that are strong in the force and there’s facilitators that are just terrible. What I mean is it’s a continuum and a spectrum and a practice and it’s an ongoing practice. And I know everybody celebrates failure, but I really do celebrate failure, right? It really is a thing, when you are available for missteps and mistakes, the instruction is so rich that… In Zen, I’m a Zen student, I have been for 13 years. We call it one continuous mistake. So you actually show up for that. You want that, because you get instruction from it. So I don’t mean you have to be in a rarefied state of mind. I just mean anytime you notice yourself doing a power play, notice it and try to move back into your Yoda state.

Sunni Brown:

So how the fork are you supposed to do that? And y’all are lucky because I curse all the time. Has anybody dropped the F bomb yet? So of course it’s going to be me. It’s always me. Here’s something that I perceive when I go into group environments. This is something that I hold to be true about the group when I’m meeting them, which is the modularity of the mind. So all of this stuff is evidence based. So it sounds woo, but it’s actually all data-driven and science-based. So the mind is modular and there’s general consensus among scientists around this. And basically what it means is that instead of being monolithic, so like Sunni is always this way, right? It means we’re kaleidoscopic. So if Sunni is this way right now, because I’m on a stage and there’s an expectation, but when Sunni goes to happy hour, very different person.

Sunni Brown:

So there’s always this shifting mind states that we have available to us at all times. And that’s adaptive and creative and you want that, right? So when there’s somebody in a meeting who you perceive to be a jerk, it may be true in that moment they are being jerk-like, but it doesn’t mean they are a jerk at all times, right? So I keep that always in mind, meaning that there are circumstances in which that behavior is coming online because there’s something in their system that is nervous or concerned. So I just hold spaciousness around that because it happens to me too, because I’m a human being, right? So here’s an example. If you were to personify these parts of yourself, they’re essentially neurological networks that have memory and strategy and experiences, but you can personify them and you can refer to them as parts.

Sunni Brown:

So right now there may be a part of you that is active, you have a state of mind that is active and it’s receptive. So say it looks like this, it’s just a student. How many of you feel receptive right now to what I’m saying? That’s awesome. And then how many of you feel like this lady? Suspicious, you might be unsure of what we’re going to do and that would be okay. Right? I’m making room for all of those facets of us that are here for some particular reason. So every time you are in a group with human beings, you’re not looking at one monolithic person, you’re looking at a constantly shifting state of ways of being that they need to have access to in order to get through that circumstance. So just knowing that is important.

Sunni Brown:

And also we’re so complicated, you can have multiple states of mind at the same time. Just to throw that in the mix. You can actually have like five. So here’s some of my states of mind. So I can personalize this for myself. On a good day, these are the things that I wake up doing. This is how I manage and conduct my life, generally speaking. And these are all likable. The world saver, she’s a little delusions of grandeur, you know what I mean? She’s like, “I can do the thing.” But most of the time these are fun and benevolent to occupy. But because I’m a human being, if I get exhausted, I also have these states of mind. The punk, the stress bucket and the disciplinarian. And those states can come on quickly and they can fade quickly, but they’re also part of me. Those are part of me.

Sunni Brown:

So if somebody comes in who I suddenly find intimidating, I can get real sassy, real fast. Right? I’m defending myself. I’m protecting myself from something, from a perceived threat and I need that strategy to do that. So I’m forgiving of myself when I move into those states because I know that it’s a healthy response to a perceived stress in the system. And that’s true for all of us. Okay? But some are easier to appreciate. A lot of times people who are with me, if I get in that salty state of mind where I’m pessimistic and the world is hopeless, like the punk, my husband does… Do you think he loves that lady?

Sunni Brown:

I mean, not really. Because I’m like, “I’m going to shave my head. Oh wait, I already did that.” I did do that. Oh, what was I saying? Oh yeah. So anyway, it’s easy to not like some and to like others, but the truth is they need to all have the Yoda perspective. We need to allow them anthropologically and recognize that they have a job to do and that they’re here for some reason and respect and honor the fact that these are adaptive conditions that we come to. Right?

Sunni Brown:

So here’s the other piece that I always hold dear and y’all are actually going to practice this, because it’s not conceptual. This is practical and tangible work that you can move into the force. Okay? So they all have positive intent and this one is always surprising to people. So they have a job to do and they have a concern that they’re preempting. And when I say they, I mean these neurological networks get activated. And you can refer to them, you can personify them and refer to them as parts, but they have a job to do. And they have a concern that they are preempting. Right? So what are the jobs of these parts of me? What would the visionary’s job be?

Speaker 4:

The art of possibility.

Sunni Brown:

Yeah. The art of possibility. Exactly. So she’s constantly scouting, what is my dream? What’s my vision? Which way do I want to go? What’s the job of the problem solver? I mean it’s in the titles, but still.

Speaker 5:

Solving obstacles.

Sunni Brown:

Yeah, constantly looking for ways to move past something. So that’s a job. That’s actually a task and a strategy for getting through life. And what about the punk? What’s the punk’s job? Y’all wouldn’t know, it’s a-

Speaker 6:

Overthrow the existing order.

Sunni Brown:

Right? Rebellion. Yes. So the punk, I’ve noticed that this state of mind comes on when I’m tired. And what I’ve discovered about this mentality for me, is that the punk’s job is to stop me from overworking, because she has a sense of hopelessness. So she’s like quit trying so hard and it’s really helpful. So when I notice the punk, instead of being mad about that state, I’m like, thank you. Thank you so much. Because I get that she’s up to something for me that has positive intent at all times.

Sunni Brown:

So if you’re in a facilitator meeting and there is a person who is a bullying type persona, even that has positive intent for the person. And that’s really hard for people to understand. But it means that there is a reason why that person is behaving in that way, because they’re concerned about something in the environment or in their minds or in their history or with the person sitting right next to them and they’re activating that to defend themselves. So that should summon compassion, when you understand that that’s the nature of humanity. This is the human condition. And we need to have these parts. This is how we survive, this is how biologically you’re still here.

Sunni Brown:

So this is the game and y’all can ask questions as I set it up. The game is, how would Yoda see? So if Yoda sees a benevolent anthropologist, right? And he does a lot of mushrooms and he’s 800 years old, so a lot. This is the game. So you have cards on your tables and you can just distribute them haphazardly. Everybody just get a few and there’s like 10 of you, right? There’s roughly… Let’s see. We’ll split you up. At your tables, split up into groups of four and three.

Sunni Brown:

And then, once you have your groups split up, three and three or three and four, yes. You’re looking at them. Okay. Okay I’m going to give you all ways to play, okay? So assign one, two, three, or four to yourself in your small groups. One, two, three, and four. Assign them to yourselves. Yeah. So you’re going to answer these four questions. Whoever goes first, I just want you to go down the list and answer these questions. And I can give you an example. Do y’all want an example? Okay.

Sunni Brown:

So say you draw a card. Just hand me a card. Yes, love this dude. Y’all can’t see it, but whoever has a card with the red armchair, the guy who’s blowing smoke out of his ears. Does anybody have that guy? Okay. So the way you play this is you go… Because you’re trying to summon compassionate equanimity for this dude. So it’s a practice. So I see this dude, he’s looking a little Al Bundy and he’s kind of pissed and he doesn’t take care of himself and he’s got a black cloud over his head. So that dude comes into your meeting, right? He’s everywhere. They’re everywhere. These cards are everywhere. So my practice is I go, oh, I call myself the grump. That’s what he’s calling himself. And his job involves, oh I get it. So he has a positive intent.

Sunni Brown:

So his job is like, make sure that you don’t get too excitable about all these product development ideas, because it’s just going to go haywire and then we’re not going to have the resources. So stay grumpy so that people don’t get too fanciful. So he has a job actually. So that’s what he’s concerned about. That’s number three. So his job involves shooting down ideas. That’s his job, right? That’s his job. He has taken on that job for whatever reason. And then the thing he’s concerned about is what I just said. Every time we get a bunch of ideas, we suddenly all get overtaxed. He’s not necessarily explicitly saying that, but that’s why he’s activated. Okay? And his positive intent is what? What would the grump’s positive intent be for the person?

Speaker 7:

He’s trying to keep everybody from wasting time.

Sunni Brown:

Right. He’s trying to keep them from wasting time. Is that what you were going to say?

Speaker 8:

Avoid being disappointed.

Sunni Brown:

Avoid being disappointed, totally. Legitimate reason.

Speaker 9:

I was just going to say not create false hope.

Sunni Brown:

Yeah. No false hope. I mean, so that makes him lovable all of a sudden, even though his presentation is not lovable. Right? Does that make sense? Yeah. And you will find that to be true for every single facet of a human being’s constellation, inner constellation. That is actually true for all of them, even the real crazy ones. It really is true. So that’s what I want you to do. I’m going to give you… My timer is not here, so I’m going to give you about 10 minutes and I want you to do as many cards as you can in your small groups and just go through the motions. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Okay? And use your imagination. You don’t have to get it right.

Sunni Brown:

I know that was super lively. Are y’all so excited and you love me now? I love all of you. So I wanted to give us time to debrief a little, because it is a challenge. It can be challenging to wrap your mind around that and to understand how to hold that and practice with it. So to practice with the force, using the force. So does anybody have questions? And just to motivate you, I have $45. I know. I’m going to pay you to talk to me. That’s what’s happening. Daniel.

Daniel:

Microphone. I found it confronting when there were multiple people in the picture to see who I identified with.

Sunni Brown:

When you say multiple… Oh in one card, yeah.

Daniel:

In one card, yeah.

Sunni Brown:

You’re right, yeah.

Daniel:

Because there’s a whole scenario.

Sunni Brown:

Totally.

Daniel:

Like the scolding mother and the lackadaisical son and then the happy family. And you’re like, who do I identify? Or is it about the pattern or the system?

Sunni Brown:

Uh-huh (affirmative) yeah. And you can identify with all of them or one of them or one of them in a certain way. So that’s why I like this game because it is very evocative and you don’t have to always identify with something in one moment. Sometimes I don’t identify with the punk rocker at all, but I can. We always have those, what we call seed potentiality, so we always have the option of identifying with something. Right? Does that make sense? Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 11:

Just how many of them were about care in some way.

Sunni Brown:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Speaker 11:

It was from maybe a different angle, but it was-

Sunni Brown:

You got a lot of care cards?

Speaker 11:

Care, yeah.

Sunni Brown:

Did you connect to that?

Speaker 11:

I did.

Sunni Brown:

Yeah, parts of you. So you might have a nurturing part. And what’s a good job that the nurturers do, right? Yeah.

Speaker 12:

I did. Before as you were talking, I started going through the cards and I just sort of picked four that I thought were like me.

Sunni Brown:

Relate to, yeah.

Speaker 12:

And then having to actually go through them and tell those stories about myself, was kind of interesting. But I had a question. I wonder if it’d be interesting in a scenario to actually show these cards before you start facilitating that and let people have the opportunity to self identify, pick them up and say-

Sunni Brown:

Totally. I don’t know if y’all could hear that, but he was talking about how valuable it might be to actually make them available to the participants in a meeting and help them self identify without shame, without guilt, without burden, without problem. Right? It’s huge. It’s a huge conversation starter. Yes.

Speaker 13:

Yeah I’m hearing… They were saying how there’s one way to execute this activity where you’re self identifying, but I immediately would think of people that I’ve worked with and try to channel that and practice that form of empathy. In my experience, I’ve seen the positive intent, but it’s only once you’ve worked with that person that you can see the full picture.

Sunni Brown:

Totally. And that’s why it’s a practice. It really is a practice. And the value of it and which is what y’all are speaking to is the recognition. What’s that word? Sonder, Douglas? He taught me this word yesterday called sonder, which was essentially the keen awareness that everyone around you has just as rich of an interior world as you do. Right? It’s a German word. Those Germans, you know, they always describe things that we don’t have words for. But that’s part of the beauty of that practice, is that you recognize, yes, the constellation in others. Then the constellation in yourself, and then you recognize there’s no distinction between any of us. It’s just what is happening in our world at that time, what’s our history and our experience. What parts do we have? What parts have we watered? I call it watering those seeds, but we’re all part of this gorgeous fabric of the force. Yeah.

Speaker 14:

Yeah. I actually did it the opposite way, where I blind believe. I was like, okay, which ones I going to do? Because I know for myself, you had mentioned when that person that walks into the room that you’re confronted with and you’re just kind of like, uh, at first. So I did that with the cards to practice getting… Finding the non-emotional place and identifying. But what’s so funny is even though I did that, as… Do I feel real echoey or is it just?

Sunni Brown:

No it’s just powerful.

Speaker 14:

Because I’m right next to the-

Sunni Brown:

You’re very powerful.

Speaker 14:

I’m with the force. Wow. Okay. But as I went through all my cards, I realized I was just defining myself as a facilitator.

Sunni Brown:

Like on purpose?

Speaker 14:

Oh no, not on purpose.

Sunni Brown:

That’s just what happened.

Speaker 14:

But we’re creating this, so it’s really who we are, even though we think we’re identifying some other creature.

Sunni Brown:

Exactly. Totally. And that’s the complexity of our internal systems. We have all of these aspects of ourselves. Linda.

Linda:

Question, Built on what was just said, I have a question. Whoever looked at this card may see something totally different.

Sunni Brown:

Completely.

Linda:

And the next thing-

Sunni Brown:

The interpretation.

Linda:

Next thing that occurred to me, and I’m wondering if this makes sense, is when people talked about, I could give these out at a group and lay them out on a table and say, “Which character do you identify with?”

Sunni Brown:

Exactly.

Linda:

Somebody picks up the card and then the question is, how do you think other people might see this person?

Sunni Brown:

Great question.

Linda:

And what’s another way that they might see this person? And I think I like that one because I think that sometimes… Not that I’m saying thinking about me, but sometimes people are perceived somebody differently and they don’t know how they’re being perceived by other people.

Sunni Brown:

Totally. And it’s a way to give feedback with a little bit of separation. And a reflection, it’s a way to give a reflection.

Linda:

I mean that would never be me, but somebody else.

Sunni Brown:

No, Linda, you’re flawless, lady.

Linda:

I’m transparent.

Sunni Brown:

Hello. She was my Yoda back in the… So I was going to say, one way to do this too with these cards is that you can actually just pick a specific topic, because what happens is people have different constellations arise relative to different topics. So say you’re going through a merger and acquisition, so that is a topic around which certain aspects of people suddenly become available. But if you’re going through a promotional conversation, totally different pieces of them arise, so you can make it topic specific. Yes. Thank you.

Speaker 16:

This feels like a really strong way to help find two people who don’t agree.

Sunni Brown:

Yeah.

Speaker 16:

To help them find the thing that they do agree upon, to resolve conflict or to drive change or whatever. Getting in the practice of doing this as a way to help facilitate getting people to agree.

Sunni Brown:

That’s right. Getting that energy gathered because you… We were talking last night at the speaker salon about telling a shared narrative so that everybody can see themselves in the vision toward whatever you’re trying to move them toward, but they can also recognize the pieces of the whole or what makes that possible and have respect for all the pieces of the whole. Yes.

Speaker 17:

So one way to add on that, I just thought of is last night in the speaker salon we were talking about powerful questions and one of them was, for what higher purpose? And it’s a way of getting to that shared intent. If all of the people surfaced the motivation behind that card and then you keep asking that question, to what higher purpose? Eventually you’ll get to a place where they start to actually connect and they realize that they have some kind of shared motivation.

Sunni Brown:

Exactly. That’s so beautiful. And I want to make sure that I’m mindful of people that are not as obvious. Have there been people in the… Go ahead.

Speaker 18:

So one of the things that occurred to me is that I think the way that the game was framed, it made it pretty easy for me to then find compassion, which I think you are doing. Which is like, okay, now I can see why this person is being a jerk. But I think there were still cards where I just felt dismissive of the value and it wasn’t out of… I could still be compassionate for someone, but I couldn’t necessarily find the idea.

Sunni Brown:

Yeah, totally. And that’s actually instruction, right? So when something is hard for us to empathize or be compassionate with, we call that a trailhead, which means that you can start to inquire, oh there’s parts of me that are judging that. What’s that about? And don’t judge the judge. So if there’s a part of you that’s active and has a perception around it… I mean I have parts of me that don’t like some of the cards, so then the question is, oh, what part of me has arisen? So then I can meet that part. Right? Does that make sense?

Speaker 18:

That does. And actually what she had said before I asked the question, kind of started to get an idea in my mind too, where it’s like, okay, that can at least be the start of a conversation where you can understand how this brings value.

Sunni Brown:

That’s right. Totally. Yeah, and actually I want to commend you for experiencing compassion, because that doesn’t happen for a lot of people a lot of the time when we run into these particularly challenging aspects. Because compassion is something that is summoned in the body and then it moves through the heart and into the mind, but not everybody can even access it. So good for you for experiencing it even one time. You know? Yes.

Speaker 19:

There’s a lot of vectors for diversity and inclusion. We talked about how important that is. And what it did for me, is I thought about a new vector for when you build participants in a workshop. I know last night we talked about the homework you can do ahead of a workshop, making sure that not only we’re checking in… What’d you call it? The homework?

Sunni Brown:

I call it pre-work. Or priming.

Speaker 19:

Yeah, priming.

Sunni Brown:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 19:

And making sure that what I saw in each card, I detached from the way the people looked in the scene. And by listening to each person’s interpretation, you became aware of what that person’s competency was.

Sunni Brown:

Interesting.

Speaker 19:

And so in terms of thinking about diversity and inclusion of participation in a workshop, as let’s make sure we have a diverse set of competencies because each one of us has a default one of these cards and that’s what you’re competent at.

Sunni Brown:

Totally. Right. And that’s right. And he’s identifying something that’s true of all these parts, is that they… Because they have strategies and they have jobs. So they’re actually quite skillful, often quite skillful at those jobs. So my problem solver, I’ve been working that thing since I was a baby. So I have a mean… I mean not a mean, like a mean ass, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like a bomb ass, something like that. Problem solver. Really good at problem solving. Right? Which can wear some people out. Right? Because it’s not always people looking for a solution. So for me to be aware, oh somebody just came to me with a story about grief and I’m trying to quote, solve their problem. Not really helpful.

Sunni Brown:

So it’s good for me to know, oh I have a very strong problem solver that can come on. I want to be mindful of that so that I can be present. Right? And that’s the Yoda move. Yeah. There’s so much excitement. Yes. I know I’m not ignoring you, but you already had a question.

Speaker 13:

I’m curious how this could be used for disagreements, because if I care about one thing and you care about another and we’re trying to make a decision, even just talking about those unspoken values and concerns. And that’s why I say yes, because I concern this and you say no because you’re concerned with that. How can this be used for disagreements?

Sunni Brown:

In that way. So you could say, something’s come up. I think Douglas mentioned what… I call that part to part, when there’s basically power meeting power. So not meeting power with the force, but power meeting power. So then it’s part to part. So then both people… That’s what self responsibility is about. That’s why good facilitators have self responsibility. So if you find yourself in an argument with another person, then the backwards step is to go, oh wow. So we’re both bringing sword to sword, right? So then I want to say what part of me just woke up and did some stuff, did some fancy stuff. And sometimes depending on how charged it is, you need space to do that. But you can go back and identify, oh the problem solver part of me got way overactive. The visionary came in and disrupted everybody’s engineering conversation, right?

Sunni Brown:

So you just start owning the constellation in you. And that encourages people to own the constellation in them. And it’s blameless, because ultimately these are functioning, healthy systems. These are creative, adaptive systems. We are incredible organisms, right? So there’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing, it’s just a matter of not being aware of them. Does that make sense? I have one minute. So I was going to say, I’m so grateful for your questions and I’ll be here after so we can talk again. But I want to quote Yoda, right?

Sunni Brown:

So when you are a facilitator and you find someone in your midst that is troubling or frustrating or irritating, my request to you is that you not try to go hand to hand, right? Do an aikido move where you try to figure out, oh, what is the compassionate place? What’s the place of equanimity? And with which I could view that person. Because ultimately, that’s going to get you in the space of moving them in the direction that they want to go. Right? And that’s our jobs. So thank you so much. May the force be with you.

The post How to Facilitate from a Place of Deeper Wisdom appeared first on Voltage Control.

This is part of the 2019 Control The Room speaker video series.

Control the Room 2019 was Austin’s 1st Annual Facilitator Summit with the goal of bringing together facilitators of all kinds to build rapport, learn, and grow together.

The conference opened with a talk by Priya Parker, author of “The Art of Gathering.” After that, we moved onto 15 quick-and-powerful presentations by facilitators of all kinds.

Within that group of amazing speakers, we were lucky enough to have Greg Galle. Greg Galle is an author, entrepreneur, and instigator. His book Think Wrong: How to Do Work That Matters has become a handbook for people who want to invent what’s next for their organizations, communities, and countries.

Greg talked about the predictable path and how most people default to thinking and designing with only this in mind. Using a Solutions vs. Challenges 2×2 matrix, he illustrated that if you are exploring solutions and challenges that are both certain or well-known, you are considering the predictable path. He encouraged us to explore the uncertain and welcome the unexpected.

Watch Greg Galle’s talk “Think Wrong to Solve Next”:

Read the Transcript

Greg Galle: Thank you. Anything I … Yeah. There we go. Forward and backward. Hi. Everybody doing all right?

Speaker 1: Yep.

Greg Galle: Still with us? All right. That was the title of the slide. So here we go. We’re going to talk about three different frameworks that you can use. This morning we started having a little bit of an introduction about dialogue and encouraging dialogue. And I want to introduce these frameworks as a way of engaging people in a meaningful conversation and dialogue about the nature of the work that you’re trying to accomplish with them, that you’re trying to help them achieve.

Greg Galle: So the first idea to have in your head is this notion of a predictable path. That is that we are walking on a predictable path. We had this expression of, “We’ve seen that movie and we know how it ends.” You’ve all kind of used some version of that. The predictable path is, if nothing changes, we can be pretty certain what the future’s going to be like. It’s going to look a lot like it did today. And today looks a lot like it did yesterday. So the predictable path. Now, many of you in the room actually try to lead organizations, and communities, and individuals on some departure from that predictable path.

Greg Galle: So how do we forge a bold path? How do we escape the sort of gravitational pull of the status quo, and lead and create change? Anybody in the room tried to create change? Yeah? Some of you? Help groups create change? Drive positive change in the world? Easy, right? Never run into any problems, right? Okay. So what’s going on there is that whenever we try to depart from the norm, whenever we try to depart from the predictable path, we start to experience some kind of resistance, some kind of friction. It gets expressed in many different ways, and in many different forms. I want to just do a little bit of an exercise with you. This is actually my draft slide deck. So we’re missing the exercise.

Speaker 2: It’s my fault.

Greg Galle: But I don’t need prompts for it. So here it goes. I’m was going to do a pop quiz before I showed this slide that reveals everything to you, right? And makes sense of everything. Here’s the pop quiz. I’m going to ask you for an answer to a question. As soon as you have the answer, I want you to stand up. Okay? As soon as it’s in your head, I want you to stand up. It’s a very complex question, so follow with me. What is one half of 13? What is one half of 13? When do you have the answer in your head, stand up. Okay. One half of 13. Some people are still working on it. I can see you’re sitting down. All right. If the answer that you have in your head is 6.5 or six and one half, sit down. All right.

Speaker 3: One.

Greg Galle: One.

Speaker 4: T-H-I-R.

Greg Galle: THIR. T-H-I-R.

Speaker 2: Three.

Greg Galle: Three.

Speaker 5: 13 halves.

Greg Galle: 13 halves. Okay. Very good. So and here we go.

Speaker 6: Seven.

Greg Galle: Seven. Okay. Interesting. Rounding up.

Speaker 6: No.

Greg Galle: No? Tell us how.

Speaker 6: If you write 13 in Roman numerals and then you cut it half, you actually get seven on the top half.

Greg Galle: You actually get seven on top half. And that in fact, if you count all three of the ones, you get eight. But I love it because you took the pattern in you and you bifurcated it. You split it.

Speaker 6: [inaudible 00:04:01].

Greg Galle: Your math skills in Roman are sort of suspect, right? That’s okay. So what happened is we stood … I asked you the question, I put some time pressure on you. And you stood up and you answered the question. The predictable answer to that question is 6.5, is six and one half. Why? Any thoughts on why we thought six and a half?

Speaker 7: It’s arithmetic [inaudible 00:04:26].

Greg Galle: Arithmetic. We assumed it was a math question. So we made an assumption that it was a math question. We have made a set of synaptic connections in our head because we’ve been taught math. That says, “Ping, ping, ping. I know how to solve math problems.” So I asked the question, but I didn’t give you any context. What if it was a philosophical question? 6.5 would be the least interesting answer to the philosophical question of what is one half of 13.

Greg Galle: You might’ve said, “Well, why 13?” Or, “What are numbers,” right? Would have been a more interesting thing. So I had somebody give me an answer, which it’s sort of, “What’s left after your hungry friend gets the donuts/” right? Baker’s dozen, 13. One half, six and a half doughnuts. So it’s sort of, what’s the context? What’s the thing that we’re trying to solve? What’s going on here on the predictable path is that as we learn things, we create synaptic connections, and a set of neuro pathways get established in our brain. Has anybody in the room ever had that experience of going from work to home, driving from work to home, pulling up in your driveway and thinking, “Huh, I don’t really remember driving home,” right? Yeah. “I became an autonomous vehicle because I was distracted.” What was going on when you did that? What was going on in your head?

Speaker 7: Listening to music.

Greg Galle: Listening to music, getting carried away. You didn’t really have to think about, “How do I get home?” Because again, the synaptic connections are made. So many synaptic connections that you have a neuro pathway in your head that can take you home without thinking about it. So that’s great. How many people in the room … We’ll just do this. We’ll do a stand, just because everybody needs a little more stretching. If you brushed your teeth this morning, stand up. All right. I didn’t get half of you to stand up. That’s good. I’m glad to know that only a 100% percent of your brushed your teeth. If you Googled, “How to brush my teeth,” this morning, just so you know how to do it, sit down. So nobody Googled how to do that.

Greg Galle: You didn’t have to. You may sit down. You didn’t have to do that. You learned how to brush your teeth. You do it without thinking. Every now and then you have one of those weird brain things happen where maybe you put shaving cream on your toothbrush. But generally, you can do it without thinking. Right? So that’s great that our brain works that way. We don’t have to relearn things. Is that a good thing when we’re trying to solve a problem in a new way? No. It gets in the way. So part of our job as facilitators, or as we say, instigators is to get people to break some of those synaptic connections and consider to start solving from a new place. How do I start solving from somewhere different, rather than where I usually begin? So that’s biology. When you’re meeting resistance as you’re trying to depart from the predictable path and get on the bold path, when you’re meeting friction and resistance, it’s easy for it to be … For us to think about that as an antagonistic relationship.

Greg Galle: “I’m the protagonist trying to lead change. There’s an antagonist trying to stop me from making that happen.” We have to step back and let go and say, “You know what? Part of it’s just biology.” It’s part of how our brains work. And people aren’t doing that to us on purpose. It’s how our brains function. We’re actually competing against a whole bunch of neuro-pathways that has started to track the way problems are solved. The next thing that gets in our way is this. I’m going to ask, what do you see when you see this picture? Shout it out.

Speaker 7: [inaudible 00:08:26].

Greg Galle: Kids.

Speaker 6: Peace sign.

Greg Galle: Peace sign.

Speaker 3: Friends.

Greg Galle: Friends.

Speaker 4: Innocence.

Greg Galle: Innocence. Give me some other adjectives.

Speaker 5: Cuteness.

Greg Galle: Cuteness. Happy.

Speaker 1: Chilly.

Greg Galle: Chilly?

Speaker 1: Cold.

Greg Galle: Cold. Oh, yeah. Because they’re wearing … Nice. Okay. So some people when they see this picture think terrorists. These are Syrian refugees, Syrian immigrants. So there’s a cultural response to these kids. An unknowing cultural response to … These are kids, Syrian refugees. So this morning when the immigrants were asked to stand up, I wanted to get up and clap as a celebration of what an immigrant means, and what an immigrant brings to us. But you understand that … Whoa. An issue like immigration can be polarizing in America. In the American context right now, we have camps, pro-immigration, anti-immigration. So that’s a cultural response. So again, when we’re trying to depart from the predictable path and forge a bold path, we’re not only dealing with an issue of how our brain functions. But we’re also dealing with the issue of how a whole bunch of brains that function that way together start to act.

Greg Galle: And the thing about culture is, most of what makes cultures operate is our assumptions and orthodoxies, and biases. They’re stories that we pass on. They’re lore that we pass on. They’re not fact bases, right? It’s a belief system that we pass on. So I said it’s great that our brain works the way it does. It does. We don’t have to relearn things. It’s also great that culture works the way that it does. So cultures that are healthy and productive, and working in our favor, they actually work to keep themselves safe. They protect themselves, they defend themselves from threat. The problem is, because culture works that way they can lock in things that are toxic. They can lock in things that are not in our best interest. They can perpetuate bad societal behavior and make it seem normal.

Greg Galle: I like to ask people when they’re looking at that predictable path and bold path line, you can think of different people. I used to use Elon Musk as an example, but he’s confusing the story with his Twitter account. So I’m going to use Malala instead. And I’m going to introduce this. And I want … I am going to ask you please to believe me that I’m trying not to introduce this idea with any prejudice, right? I’m just wanting to use it for illustrative purposes. Do you guys know who Malala is? Mostly. Okay. So Malala is a young woman in the Middle-East who stood up and said that young women, and women of all kinds have the right to be educated. All right? She did that within the context of her culture. And within the very specific context of her culture, that got her labeled a heretic. All right? So thinking about it. Predictable path, that’s the cultural norm. Malala, bold path, women should be educated. A natural cultural reaction to her was, “What she’s proclaiming is not okay. It’s outside of the norm for our culture.” Right? “It’s heretical.”

Greg Galle: So we know what happened to Malala. She’s shot in the head. Within the context of her culture, that was an acceptable act. Now there was another cultural response to her, which was not the culture she was born into. And that cultural response was, “She’s heroic. She’s brave. She’s courageous.” And she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because of her position. Two extreme examples of a cultural response to the same person. So when you think about culture and how it affects our ability to help, lead, facilitate, create change. It’s important to understand that we are dealing both with biological forces and cultural forces. People are not trying to sabotage you. We do it without thinking.

Greg Galle: It’s human behavior. It’s neurological, it’s social. It’s how we as creatures act. So it’s really important that you be able to have that conversation, that you’d be able to use that framework. So when somebody is engaging you, it’s okay to say, “Are we working on something that’s about improving the predictable path? Or are we working on something where we’re trying to actually create bold change? And are the conditions in the ways that we’re reacting coming from what’s required to sustain the predictable path? Or are they in fact conditions that are going to be conducive to creating that change?” Next framework, this space, a fairly simple space. Where we’re going from, “What’s the problem or the challenge that we’re working on? What’s the solution?” And we’re dealing with uncertainty. We start from a place of uncertainty, and we’re trying to move towards greater certainty.

Greg Galle: This is another important framework for having a dialogue with somebody, which is, “Where are we starting from Where’s the problem live that we’re dealing with?” Up here in this corner where we understand what the problem is and we understand what the solution is, there’s a set of what we call think right practices. There are language that you’re going to be very familiar with, which is people are going to talk about things like, “How do we drive costs out of this? How do we improve productivity? How do we increase our margins?” People start to worry about things like ROI.

Greg Galle: So all of that language is familiar to you, whether you’re in a corporation or a non-profit, or a foundation, or coming out of the defense space. This is the dominant language that’s used to frame how we’re going to think about and measure success. And that’s fine if you know what the problem is and you know what the solution is. I want predict … So the labels of predictable path and bold path sound a little pejorative. They’re not. The people who flew here, again raise your hands. Those who flew here. You wanted predictability. You wanted to get on a plane, have the plane fly. Take off, fly, land safely. Number one, predictable criteria for air travel is safety. What you didn’t want was the pilot coming on and saying, “I’ve got a great idea.”

Greg Galle: You’re with me? All right? “And you are with me. You’re in the plane. I’m going to try something today I’ve never tried.” You don’t want that. When it comes to the known problem and the known solution, I want you to optimize the heck out of that one. And for air travel, I want you to optimize the heck out of safety. The problem is that that set of language and that way of framing things doesn’t work when we’re in that arena of uncertainty. We’re uncertain about that. And we think we know what the problem is, but we’re open to the idea that we’re wrong. That we might do something that reveals in fact that, “Hey, our assumption about the problem was actually an observation of a symptom. And there’s something else deeper going on here.” And we’re going to learn that. “Our assumption about the solution was incorrect.” We did some work last October with NATO, a whole conference on AI. They knew what the solution was. It’s AI. I don’t care what the problem is. If you’re in the military right now, the answer is AI. I don’t know.

Greg Galle: Probably not. I mean, I’ve tried to use Siri and it gets me lost. It doesn’t recognize what I’m saying. It calls people I don’t mean to call. So I’m not really sure I’m willing to pin my hope of freedom in the future on AI just yet. It has a role. But what’s the problem we’re solving? Are we applying it appropriately? So again, this diagram is a way of entry into a conversation. What kind of problem are we working at? Where does that live? How certain are we about the problem, the nature of the challenge? How certain are we about the solution? And are we able to do something quickly that’s going to make us more confident? Not get to the answer, but get to a greater level of certainty. So part of our role, part of what we’re doing is saying we’ve got to try different practices.

Greg Galle: So here you see increase exploration, generate hypotheses, create option value, embrace experiments, pursue discovery, welcome the unexpected. And the measurement here instead of return on investment, which you’ve all been asked, “What’s the return on investment of having you come in and do blah, blah, blah?” If you’re dealing with the uncertain, if you’re in the nine squares of this … I mean, the eight squares of this diagram that aren’t up in that upper right-hand corner. The honest answer to, “What’s ROI,” is, “I have no idea. It’s too early. There’s too many assumptions. We can’t tell you.” LFI is our response to that. LFI is Learning From Investment. So rather than what’s the return on investment, what’s the learning from investment? “What do we now know because we did this thing that we didn’t know before? And what’s the value? How much certainty does that create?”

Greg Galle: So I’ve just introduced two frameworks, which means I’m not going to get to the third. But I’m going to go through it real fast here in the last 40 seconds. So in think wrong, we’ve looked at six practices of thinking wrong. The six practices actually correspond to a moment in the problem-solving journey where a certain thing, a certain action is going to produce the most value. Are our aspirations clear? Is our inspiration sound? Do we have new, fresh ideas? Have we actually started to model and prototype, and bring the idea to life? Are we making small bets to increase certainty rather than blowing our whole budget and putting all of our capital at risk? And finally, are we leaning into the people that we convened and brought in the room and their wisdom, and using that to accelerate our progress? So I can share that in more than 40 seconds if you want. That’s what I had. So, all right. Thanks, you guys.

Please join us for the Control the Room 2020, which will be held Feb. 5–7, 2020. You can find out more and buy tickets here.

The post Think Wrong to Solve Next appeared first on Voltage Control.

This is part of the 2019 Control The Room speaker video series. Please join us for the Control the Room 2020, Feb. 5–7, 2020. Find out more and buy tickets here.

Control the Room 2019 was Austin’s 1st Annual Facilitator Summit with the goal of bringing together facilitators of all kinds to build rapport, learn, and grow together.

The conference opened with a talk by Priya Parker, author of “The Art of Gathering.” After that, we moved onto 15 quick-and-powerful presentations by facilitators of all kinds.

Within that group of amazing speakers, we were lucky enough to have Tomasz Borek. Tomasz shared a framework for identifying, classifying, and dealing with difficult people. His framework categories difficult people into five types: The Leader, The Introvert, The Indecisive, The Know-It-All, and The Negativist.

The Leader seeks power, and as facilitators, we can use that information to work with them. The Introvert seeks instruction, and we can provide guidance. The Indecisive seeks safety, and we can provide reassurance. The Know-It-All desires knowledge, and we can leverage expertise to comfort them. The Negativist seeks resistance, and we can involve them to unleash them.

Watch Tomasz Borek’s talk “Facilitator Challengers and How to Handle Them”:

Read the Transcript

Tomasz: Hello.

Speaker 2: Hello.

Tomasz: How are you doing?

Speaker 2: Good.

Speaker 3: Great.

Tomasz: Yeah, I was about to open with, “The Germans are coming,” But I wasn’t sure how this will play with you, so I decided I’m just going to start talking without that part. I stood up as one of the immigrants this morning because I’m actually Polish, born and bred, moved to Germany at some point. And finished my studies there and started working there and somehow got stuck. I did my first facilitation at the age of 18, actually, in front of very tough crowd because there were 14 to 17 year olds that were going abroad for a year. And I was standing in front of them to tell them about my own experience and facilitate them in something with regards to communication and culture theory.

Tomasz: As you can imagine, talking to 14 year olds about communication theory might be a little bit difficult sometimes, but it worked out well. And many years later I’m standing in front of you, because at that very moment, I realized what I want to do is facilitate; stand in front of people, train them on things and teach them things, and help them to get from one point to another. And two years ago I started a company with [Thorsten 00:01:33], you see two names there, I’m not going by two names. Thorsten is the guy that got the first applause of the day, this morning. He’s right there. Thor is my partner in crime, if you want to talk to him you can do it in the breaks.

Tomasz: We started a company, NEON Sprints, and we started working with a method that many of you know. And it came up frequently today, and it’s called Design Sprints. And since then, on a regular basis, we get groups of people in front of us, every two or three weeks, where we create a specific world for them for a week and we try to get them from one point to another. The method stays pretty much the same. The people change that are in the room. And what happens is, and I’m pretty sure that you’ve experienced this as well, is that, well basically, most of the time we need to manage people, not necessarily the method or the approach. We need to manage the people in the room.

Tomasz: And this is what I would like to talk to you about. And I actually wanted to kick you off with something this morning and then [Priya 00:02:37] came up with her fantastic talk, thank you very much for that, and for all the input that we got from her. But she basically destroyed fully my story [inaudible 00:00:02:44], “So who came by plane?” And “How far were you traveling?” And everything. And I was like, “Shoot, that was my line actually.” So I need to come up with something else.

Tomasz: Then I thought, “I’m going to try what she taught us, to some extent.” And I would like to ask you now, since the chairs have been quiet for quite awhile, I would like to ask you in a moment to stand up if you have ever experienced a flawed, or maybe even a failed, facilitation, which didn’t go the way it was supposed to go at all and didn’t get, at the end of the day, the things out that you thought should come out of it. Who experience a flawed or failed facilitation? Get up.

Tomasz: Thank you very much. Beautiful chair music. Very good. Please keep standing if, in your opinion, this was due to the fact that the team was composed in a particular way, or the people in the room were the way they were. Keep standing if you have the feeling that it had something to do with the team. Okay, quite a few. Now think about this again and the ones of you, please keep standing if you have a particular individual in mind. Or someone who made it very difficult. A few people are still up. Great. Why great? I’m not going to ask you anything right now, but thank you very much. You can sit down.

Tomasz: These are the people that I would like to talk to you about in terms of managing them. We call them facilitator challengers. These are the people that make it harder to facilitate. And I would like to tell you how do we look at them. Both Thorsten and myself, in all of those years before Design Sprints, and since we work with Design Sprints, decided that we try to make our lives a little bit easier.

Tomasz: So even though this becomes a little bit of a simplified model that I want to talk to you about, we looked at the different types of people that we had in workshops, and realized that if we recognize the type early enough, then we can manage that particular person in a particular way, making our life as a facilitator easier. And with that, making sure that the group gets to the result or to the outcome that they actually were striving for.

Tomasz: So on a mental level, when talking about facilitator challengers, we think about people that have specific behavioral traits, that have explicit or sometimes implicit power of influencing the group in a particular direction. They bring personal agendas with them to a meeting or to a workshop that sometimes have unresolved issues from somewhere, but kind of find their way into that particular meeting. And some of them have need for attention. And a way of finding attention is basically to speak up in a meeting at the moment where the facilitator feels like, “I really would wish you wouldn’t say that right now.” And something like this happens from time to time.

Tomasz: I would like to introduce you to the archetypes that we came up with, to some extent, or developed based on our experiences and other input that we got in the past. And these archetypes are the people that make our life a little bit more, I would say colorful, maybe. Rather than saying challenging. Yeah? So there is the leader, you probably know the leaders. I’ll talk about them in more detail in a moment. Then there are the introverts. Then you have the indecisives. Then there are the know-it-alls. Anyone ever met a know-it-all in a meeting or in a workshop?

Tomasz: And then there are the ones that are closest to our hearts because we like them the most. The people we call the negativists. It’s a little bit difficult to pronounce sometimes, but this is the type of people that we love to deal with. So if we know who they are, and if we know how they work, we can handle them somehow. I would like to talk to you about this particular bit and I would like to talk to you about this from the perspective of understanding what drives them. Because if you understand what drives that particular person, then it becomes much easier to deal with them in that workshop.

Tomasz: Sometimes you only have two hours with the group of people. Sometimes you have a day. It doesn’t really matter. If you have someone who constantly, you have the feeling, constantly works against you or at least is not working with you, it makes it really difficult for you to get to a result. And at the end of the day sometimes, and most of the facilitators wouldn’t say it out loud, but maybe the thought crosses your mind really with, “What is your problem?” I’m not sure if you ever said it, Thorsten is a person who would actually ask it. He did that in the past. I not. I wouldn’t recommend it in every situation.

Tomasz: But, you know, sometimes it just happens. So if you understand the driver, then you can apply also particular hack. We call them hacks, or a particular way of working with that person. So let’s briefly talk about these five types of guys. The leader. The leader is a person, and maybe by show of hands in a moment you can tell me whether you’ve experienced a situation that I want to show or explain to you. Have you ever found yourself in a meeting or in a workshop facilitating, and you were standing in front, you just started explaining what it’s going to be about. You set the scene, the framework, talk about the ground rules, however you called them.

Tomasz: And there was someone who was already nodding from the very beginning. Happy to be there, maybe, even. And after a while, even though you were still basically in the beginning of it, they said, “So can I just add one thing?” And then they started saying something and while they were saying it, they kind of got up from the chair a little bit, like this. Right? And it’s like, there is one more thing. And then they started walking through the room, ended up standing next to you, and then maybe even said, “Can I have the clicker for a moment?”

Tomasz: And then you, finally, you were here, there was somebody else there. You weren’t the facilitator, you were like, “What’s happening?” Have you ever had that? Anyone in the room? Yeah there are some hands in the air. So these are the leaders, they want to lead, they are used to doing things like that. And they are not really jeopardizing your meeting on purpose. They just want to, you know, take their actual role. Now when we say, in our perspective, they thrive on power to some extent, or they used to having power.

Tomasz: Now if you have someone like this in the room, what would you do? What we suggest to make sure that once you identified them, that they feel that you know that they are important. Everybody else in the room is important. The whole team is important, but they need to feel that they are a little bit more important than everybody else. If they have that feeling, if you address it openly, maybe, and maybe even you give them a task, something important. It will be easier for them to stay in the chair.

Tomasz: An important task is, by the way, not asking them to, “Could you please keep track of the time? That will be fantastic,” because they will be like, you have people for that normally. They need to know that they will be able to do something important, and you can give them a task that feels like it … Is it me making the noises? [crosstalk 00:10:26] moving like that now. And with that, with addressing them in that particular manner, it might make your life a little bit more …

Douglas: Try this instead.

Tomasz: Thank you very much.

Douglas: Turn that one off.

Tomasz: Okay. Is something happening behind me right now? Somebody’s in my pants. Yeah. That’s okay. Yeah, no problem. Thank you Douglas. So make them feel important and then the chances that they will jump up and stand next to you are smaller. That’s one type of people that you might have. Then you have the introverts. How many of you met the introverts? The introverts are the people that wish they are not there, or they wouldn’t be there. They are the ones … If you allow people to look in a screen, or in a phone, they will be looking at the phone.

Tomasz: If they have paper in front of them, they would have, you know, the paper rises until it covers their eyes. They are trying to avoid eye contact with you, and they just sit there and they’re thinking, “Okay, it’s one more hour and 58 minutes and then it’s over,” this is what they exude somehow. They kind of feel, I don’t want to be in this part. I don’t want to be the center of attention. Now what do they need from you in order to get them to do something, in order for you to be able to work with them in the meeting? You need to make sure that you address something in that particular setting that is relevant for them.

Tomasz: They want very clear and specific instructions. This is what makes their life easier, if they know exactly what to do and how to do it, so try to do that. Try to do that and give them exact guidance, “Could you please all right now take out the post-its, take the Sharpie, write the three following words on the post-it and then bring them up to the front,” for instance. We just heard a moment ago also about another technique, how you can make these people involved, or get them involved.

Tomasz: But the point is, if you do that, they feel then guided by you, they feel safer and they are not feeling, for instance, with something [inaudible 00:12:38]. The lady in the back, in the blue shirt, could you please stand up and right now tell me how do you feel about this particular part of our meeting, or what is your insight into it? Because if she was hiding behind a piece of paper for the first 15 minutes, this will be the moment when she will try to escape the room.

Tomasz: So this is how we experienced that. Then if you’re running Design Sprints, you know that there is a role that is very important, at Design Sprint and it’s the role of the indecisive person. Or better said, the role of a decider. If the decider is an indecisive type of person, your life becomes very difficult. They are driven by safety. They don’t want to … Rather than making a wrong decision, they wouldn’t make a decision at all. So they are like, “Oh, I heard all the input. I heard everything that she had to say, and taking all of this into consideration I would have to say right now, but in order for me to make a decision, I think we should get some more experts involved.”

Tomasz: And then you think, “Okay, but we have another 45 minutes, there are no experts here so I need a decision from you.” What are you going to do? So make sure that they understand what their decisions entail. They need reassurance. They need to understand that they also are in a safe space, that they cannot make a wrong decision, ideally. And that it will definitely move things forward in some form or way.

Tomasz: Then the last two, my favorites. The know-it-all. This is a person who has a lot of knowledge about things. They might be sitting very silently in the beginning of the meeting, leaning back, looking at you, listening to everything that you have to say. They will be following the discussions intently and at some point they will do this, and they will say, “Well before we move on with anything else, I really do feel that we need to make a stop right here. Because it’s not entirely correct, the way it was just phrased, and I do believe that in order for us to be able to move on, we need to first look at the details of things.”

Tomasz: And then they start with their monologue and they get into the details of things, and then half an hour later people do something with their phones and look to the left and look to the right. And it’s like, okay, are we going to get to a point where we can actually use that for something? I’m being colorful myself right now because I understand it’s 3:00 in the afternoon, you’ve been listening to many people. So what we learned is to use this knowledge from the very beginning, in a very targeted way, and make them into an expert.

Tomasz: From the very beginning I’m going to say we have Steve in the room. Steve has been working on this for 20 years, and Steve is going to tell us later, during this meeting today, exactly what are the points that we need to consider in order to be able to move on to the next stage. Ideally, obviously, I’ve spoken to Steve before the meeting that I will ask him to do that so that he just doesn’t stop me somewhere midway through. So that’s an option.

Tomasz: And then, and then ladies and gentlemen, the people closest to our hearts, the people that basically are driven by resistance. In a meeting, this kind of person potentially already has a body language that will tell you, here’s a negativist. They will have their arms crossed. They will be looking at you without any facial expression, and they will be trying to make you feel a little bit insecure, maybe.

Tomasz: And then once they voice their opinion, it goes something along the lines of, “I’ve been here for 20 years and I’ve seen many projects with it. I’ve seen people come and go. I’ve seen consultants working on this. I’ve seen [inaudible 00:16:30] a lot of different approaches and I can tell you one thing, it is not going to work like that. It’s not going to work. And whatever we’re going to do here, it is not going to work.”

Tomasz: And in order for you to be able to deal with them, well we recommend to get them actively involved from the first or the second minute on. And you can make them into an expert too, by asking them directly, ideally, something along the lines of, “So from your perspective, with all the knowledge that you have, what was exactly the thing that did not work before?” That will be my getting into it with them. It’s not going to solve everything immediately, but it’s definitely going to involve them in a positive way.

Tomasz: If you ignore these types of people, all of them, your leader that you’re going to try to squash and put on the side, will become a negativist. Your introvert will follow the rounds that make them easier for them to leave the room faster. They might become negativists. The indecisive, the know-it-all, they all will potentially become the negativist. So make sure that you address them in the right way in order to make your own life easier. And I have one more thing that I would like to ask you to do. I would like to ask you to take a post-it in the break that is coming up right now, and I would like you to write on that post-it what was your most challenging situation in a workshop that is related to a participant.

Tomasz: Put this post-it on the wall behind the plant, over there, and then it’s going to be scanned, put into mural and we are, Thorsten and I, we’re going to try to match it with one of those archetypes. Maybe even with a short description of how do we understand that. Okay? And you can all access this afterwards, and if you want to talk to Thorsten or myself about this, or you want to get more input on that, you can find us here and we will be in the room afterwards. And I will run out of time like 17 seconds ago, hopefully? Not longer than that. Thank you very much.

The post Facilitator Challengers and How to Handle Them appeared first on Voltage Control.

This is part of the 2019 Control The Room speaker video series. Find out about Control the Room 2020 here.

Control the Room 2019 was Austin’s 1st Annual Facilitator Summit with the goal of bringing together facilitators of all kinds to build rapport, learn, and grow together.

The conference opened with a talk by Priya Parker, author of “The Art of Gathering.” After that, we moved onto 15 quick-and-powerful presentations by facilitators of all kinds.

Within that group of amazing speakers, we were lucky enough to have Brian Sullivan join us.

Brian is Director, Design Strategy at Sabre Corporation. In his talk, he reminded us that while facilitators have great tools to “Control the Room,” we must consider the “stuff” to bring into the room. One of these substances is empathy and often that has to be gathered “outside of the room.”

He shared his five go-to activities to cultivate this empathy.

1. Change Your Perspective
2. Limit Yourself
3. Do It Yourself
4. Similar Experience
5. Day-in-the-Life

Watch the Video:

Read the Transcript

Brian Sullivan: How’s everyone doing? Good. Awesome. So I’m going to talk about empathy immersion. And when I think of empathy, I’m always reminded of this quote from Maya Angelou, right? “People will forget what you said. They’ll forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” And I think as facilitators that’s extremely important. And we forget to do that. Let me tell you a story.

There’s a little boy and he’s walking down the street and he sees a sign and on the sign it says puppies for sale. And he gets excited beyond belief. He runs up to the gate and he knocks on it. “Mister, mister, mister I want a puppy. I have $10 in my pocket. I want to have a puppy.” This guy walks up and he goes, “Son, I’m a dog breeder and you need to understand my puppies are expensive, very, very expensive.” And he goes, “Mister, I have $10 in my pocket. Can I hold the puppy?”

He goes, “Sure.” And so he whistles and says, “Molly, Molly, come here. Come here, come here.” And you’ve seen the scene, right? The dog comes around the corner and all the little yip yappers are chasing after the mama kind of biting at her tail, and guess what? There’s one dog a little slower, right? Little bit behind. This guy, right? The runt of the litter and the little boy says, “Mister, that’s the dog I want. That’s the dog for me. I know what that dog feels like.” And the guy goes, “I’m a dog breeder. Nobody wants the runt. No one wants it. Do you know why, son? They’re a little slower. They’re a little sicker. You don’t want it. You have to take care of that dog.”

And the little boy goes, “Mister, you don’t understand.” And this is what happens. He pulls up his pants leg and he says, “I have an artificial leg. I know what that runt feels like.” And the man says, “Son, you can have that dog.” Right? And here’s what it is. It’s a simple story. We were just talking about stories, right? It’s about a boy, a man, and a dog. It’s not what people say. It’s not what people do, but it’s how they make you feel.

And that’s what I mean by empathy immersion. Now, I only have 20 minutes and I spent four minutes on this story because I wanted you to feel it. Okay? And I was challenged by Douglas because I have 60 slides to get through and we’re going to do it. So here we go. So what is empathy? And it’s important to know that because we’re talking empathy immersion.

It always reminds me of this quote from Scott Cook. He is the CEO of Intuit, right? And he says, “You can’t walk in another person’s shoes until you take your own shoes off.” Right? Amen. That is the whole purpose of empathy. And that old man did not understand what it was to be that little boy until the pants leg was rolled up. He didn’t get it.

When you look at the very definition of empathy, it literally is stepping into another person’s shoes, but I think way too often we wear our own shoes, right? And we’re trying to cram our own perspective into another person’s perspective and that’s wrong.

Now, I also think that we mistake empathy for sympathy and I’ve got this in black and white. Get out your phones to take a picture of this slide. This is extremely important and any one of these bullets would resonate to any person in the audience. And I think that Doug is going to go ahead and get a copy of this to everyone. But the ones that resonate to me really are the last two bullets with empathy. It’s searching for a deeper meaning and it’s acknowledging your feelings. And when we think about it from a learning experience, it’s not our brains that are learning tools with empathy. It is our other feelings. It is our other emotions.

Those become our learning tools, not our brains. With sympathy though, it’s surface-level meaning it’s playing in the shallow end and it’s suppressing our feelings. I can’t feel that way. I can’t feel that way. I can logically try to understand that emotional experience. Ladies and gentlemen, if you try to apply logic to an emotional person, good luck. Not going to happen, right? But I think people mistake empathy and sympathy.

Now there’s really 20 different types of empathy, but there are three that I believe are interconnected and they’re very important for us to understand. There’s emotional empathy. You make that connection at your heart level. Then you have to process it cognitively where the heart goes to the head. Something has just happened. I am fundamentally changed as a person. The little boy rolled up the legs. I get it. We’re not talking about money. We’re talking about feelings, right?

The heart goes into the head and then guess what? You feel so much compassion that you are compelled to do something, that is emotional, empathy, cognitive empathy, compassionate, empathy. Those are the three things. Let me go into a little bit more detail on each one of them and some of the tools that we use.

When it comes to emotional empathy, that’s really about kind of connecting at a visceral level with feelings with another person. We use emotional immersion. I’m going to give you five tools later on that you can use. We’re going to go through a quick experiment and guess what? We still have 13 minutes. That’s awesome.

A day in the life of ethnography. Those are different ways that you can connect. You walk in another person’s shoes, cognitive empathy. What are the tools that we use for that? Well, we’ve talked about empathy maps. We’ve talked about personas. Diary studies are another way to connect, right? But that’s cognitive empathy, so we’re trying to understand what we’ve learned. Compassionate empathy. It’s rapping. That’s okay. We’ll, we’ll deal with that. That’s where you’re compelled to act, right? You want to make a change.

We tend to use journey maps, service blueprints, prototyping, and testing, right? Some of this kind of follows the double diamond that we were talking about. They’re interconnected though. It looks like this. You have that emotional empathy, you have to process it, then you act on it, right? You see how they’re all interconnected?

Now there’s 17 other different types of empathy, but these are the ones that I see that are connected. Now, here’s the importance of empathy immersion. This is an exercise that I did with a design team at Sabre. They were actually struggling and you can see that they have these glasses on for different types of visual impairments.

This is a design team that actually has to do the visual standards at Sabre and they were not Section 508 compliant. Well, to create an award-winning accessibility program, I needed the designers to feel what it would be like to have a visual impairment. So I took them all to lunch and I had these glasses. That was there get into lunch free card, right? You’ll notice that I also had some of them in wheelchairs.

I also had some of them wrapped, right? So their hands were wrapped. So what it’s like to have a visual impairment, what it’s like to have a mobile impairment, right? And we’ll go through one of those in a moment. This was a really good healing exercise. Teddy Roosevelt once said this. “People don’t care what you know until they know you care.” That’s why I think emotional empathy is so important.

Now, we just talked a few minutes ago about there’s so many design thinking frameworks. They’re 95% the same. I don’t care what their shape is, they’re 95% the same and most of them begin with design empathy. Because you get to feel what the other person feels.

Now, a lot of people like this book and they teach masterclasses. I know Doug teaches a class here and I think some people like this because it time boxes, the activities, it’s pretty easy to just run through it. Here’s the framework. Does anyone see anything missing? Oh my God. Where’s the empathy? Correct and research.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do that before the workshop and indeed you should, and that’s really my point here. There’s nothing wrong with this framework. All we need to do is make sure that we do our homework ahead of the workshop because I believe that empathy leads to innovation.

Now, if we believe that this is true, emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, then compassionate empathy. If we don’t do our homework, let me show you what’s happening. We’re literally cutting our hearts out of the game, right? We’re not using these tools, we’re sprinting to a solution. We’re literally doing that. If we don’t use our hearts as a learning tool, we can’t then process it.

So then what we’re doing is we’re taking the heart out of the head and we’re just doing some type of a logical experiment. So we’re not using all of our learning tools, and if we’re not using all of our learning tools, we’re not having compassion, we’re just doing something. And so the challenge that I would give all of you is to make it meaningful. Start with emotional empathy. This is not enough. In fact, if you don’t go out and do your research, this is really a sympathy map.

This is not enough. Going through a journey map, you’re just going through an exercise and I’m here to tell you, emotional empathy drives innovation. Here’s a story about a person that is an Auschwitz survivor, right? Do you think that you could read a report on Auschwitz and literally feel what this person felt? No.

Guess what though? Meryl Streep did a movie called Sophie’s Choice, won in Academy award. What she did was she used the method, the acting method. She actually stayed in Auschwitz, ate the same type of food, did not have much water, lost 25 pounds, and I’m going to ruin the movie for you. The choice for Sophia is your child dies or your daughter dies. Choose. Go. So what did Meryl Streep do? She had two longtime pets that she had. One of them she had to choose. So she’s literally trying to simulate that experience.

The point is, you get deeper insights with emotional empathy. It also motivates people. Here are two people that went through an emotional empathy exercise. Our assumptions, and we’ve heard it from a lot of speakers today, are very limiting. If you do an emotional empathy exercise and we have six minutes and 32 seconds left, we’re going to get to it. I promise you, Doug. It’s a great team-building exercise. We’ll do that in a moment.

Now, let me tell you why it’s important to do this because we need to design for extremes, not just the mainstream. This is Jill Avery. She’s from the Harvard Business School. She says, “Extreme users alert you to the pain points and new opportunities people have.” Amen, sister Jill. Empathy leads to innovation. When you observe people where they live, work and play, you are inspired and you build empathy.

Most of the time, we focus just on our typical users. We lose the insights from the edges. What about our novices? What about our disabled users? What about our avid fans? So here’s something that I was taught at IDEO, a case study of the Xilinx kitchen tools. They looked at a 5-star chef’s short order cook and a person taking their first cooking lesson, a child and they developed these things.

Now a lot of people here thinking, “Okay, well this is an interesting case study.” Let’s go into a little bit of detail. The pizza cutter that you see there on the top right is really for a child, right? They can’t really, they have to get their elbow in to cut the pizza. Guess what? A person with arthritis has to do that too. They don’t have the arm strength to do that like a 5-star chef has to do. Those muscles are developed. The can opener, flipped a switch. It’s good for a left-handed or right-handed person.

There’s a spring on the scissors specifically because a person with arthritis doesn’t have the strength to handle it, neither does the child. These tools are one of the most popular kitchen tools that are around. Make the extreme mainstream is the point that I want to make.

Now I want to give you the five tools. I got four minutes and we’re going to go through an exercise still. Now, you cannot have a slideshow deck without a slide from Oprah. Leadership is about empathy. Leadership is about empathy. The ability to connect with people at a visceral level.

Here is step one, your first tool for empathy immersion. You can change your perspective. What I want everybody to do right now is get on your knees. Get on your knees, right? Pray to Brian, pray to Brian. Just kidding. All right, so you’re now on your knees. Imagine you’re having to build a restaurant for children, right? Now, I want you to try to reach. Now when you reach, you don’t have the arms of an adult. You have the arms of a child. I want you to almost have T-Rex arms, right?

So I want you to reach for that water bottle that’s just a little bit out of your stretch. Reach for it, reach for it, reach for it. Okay, go ahead and stand up. Go ahead and stand up. You’re getting the point. So what they did at IDEO is they changed their perspective, right? And they looked at just the length of arms of children, their growth so that they understood what it would be like to have a retail experience.

Here’s your second tool that you can use. You can actually limit yourself. Now, here’s your second exercise. I want you to mobilize yourself and I want you to try to drink or take off the lid of the water bottle using only three fingers. You choose the three. So this would be what it’s like to be a disabled person taking it off. You might have to put it under your arm. This is how people live every day, right?

Remember the picture I had of the people with the glasses from the Federation for the Blind? That was macular degeneration, blurry vision. All of these things are ways that we can get to understand our users a little bit more.

Another way that you can do it is do it yourself. Here’s an example of the ER experience. A designer from IDEO just checked himself into the hospital. Here’s what it was like for that particular person. They checked themself into the hospital and they wait. Then they get admitted and then they wait. Then they get their measurements taken. No one likes that and they wait. They go to the room and then they wait.

The doctor finally arrives and says, “Hang on, I have another patient. Just a second.” So he has to wait. The nurse comes in and takes the vitals and then the guy waits. Finally, they see the doctor for five minutes and then they wait. The wait experience was so long. You can do this by just doing it yourself, but do it in the field.

Your fourth way is to create a similar experience. Real quick, show of the audience. If we wanted to do wound care, what do you think would be a similar experience? I need three real quick responses. Go.

Awesome, you’re stumped. Waxing. Oh, that’s painful. Right? Another way to do this is to do a day in the life of experience, that’s your fifth approach. Similar experience in the day in the life. Empathy immersion lets you experience what other users feel and you are changed as a result of it. It doesn’t take a long time, but empathy immersion leads to innovation, and that’s all I have for today, Doug.

The post Empathy Immersion appeared first on Voltage Control.

This is part of the 2019 Control The Room speaker video series.

Control the Room 2019 was Austin’s 1st Annual Facilitator Summit with the goal of bringing together facilitators of all kinds to build rapport, learn, and grow together.

The conference opened with a talk by Priya Parker, author of “The Art of Gathering.” After that, we moved onto 15 quick-and-powerful presentations by facilitators of all kinds. One of our amazing speakers was Kevin M. Hoffman, meeting designer, and facilitator. He gave a talk called “Find and Manage Your Style Biases.”

Kevin M. Hoffman

Facilitation is a balancing act. It requires empathy for a group’s interests and capabilities while simultaneously keeping them away from tempting, but unproductive, discussion.

The effort and focus needed to maintain that balance varies based on what kind of person you are and what kind of topic or group you’re facilitating. In his talk, Kevin uses three spectrums of bias to help people get a sense of their own (or anyone’s) facilitation style: Improvisation vs. Scripted; Drawing vs. Speaking; Space-Filling vs. Space Saving. These spectrums help to assess when a style supports a meeting, or when it needs something different. This brief, but fun, workshop got us thinking about our biases, how they serve us, and how they hurt us.

Watch Kevin’s talk “Find and Manage Your Style Biases”:

Read the Transcript:

Kevin Hoffman: So was talking about the I and the we, this idea that, the act of facilitation is thinking about where you sit between the I and the we. What I’m going to talk about, and what I want us all to explore together right now, is the I in the we. So how do you show up and what’s affecting how you show up?

But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about where I work. I work at the US Digital Service. I started there recently. This is Matt Cutts. Earlier you saw in Ben and Marty’s presentation, they talked about our mascot being the crab. So I’d like to try an experiment with you right now. I’m going to show you how we applaud at meetings. At meetings at the US Digital Service, we do not applaud. We do not clap our hands.

Instead, we make the crab sign. Does everybody do this? All right. So today for the next 20 minutes, when you see somebody doing this, start doing it. All right? Because it’s going to get loud. We’re all going to start talking in a minute, and this is how… do this, everybody does this, we stop talking.

Now, I am a designer. I have been a designer for about 25 years. Part of that design work is facilitation, and as a designer, we’ve seen lots of examples of the design process, and the double diamond, and many other diagrams. But inherent in all of this, and something that Brian talked a lot about, is the idea of design as a way of learning about someone else, and then trying to design for that person to help them succeed at a task, to help them find either an emotional or functional goal, by learning more about them, and then designing for them.

Brian talked about empathy, how to practice empathy for the people where we’re working with. But the reality is, that I’m not even talking about before age 20, things that affected you. I’m talking about even before age 10, there are things that happened in your childhood that create biases. As a designer, I might think, “Oh, I’ve done my user research. I’ve developed an empathy for my audience, and now I’m going to make some decisions and choices about what I designed.”

There are still a lot of biases at play when I’m making those decisions, and as a facilitator, you are also biased when you make decisions in real-time when you’re facilitating a group. In my book, I explored a couple of different biases. There’s lots of ways that they manifest, but there are a few that I think if you think about how you might be biased to behave a particular way, and then you examine, does that bias affect the outcome of the room that you’re facilitating? It enables you to be more effective and kind of figure out different ways of approaching problems that might be outside of your comfort zone.

For example, we’ve been seeing some awesome improv today. Let’s hear it for the improv. We’re saving the clapping for something special. No, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s good. I like the energy. Let’s give it up… How about this? Let’s try this. Let’s give it up for Patricia. Let’s give her real applause. Who’s doing the sketching. See? We were saving it for something special.

I think some of us are biased towards improvisation and facilitation. We’re more comfortable walking in a room, dropping a question like a bomb, and then observing what happens, and seeing where does the room go, and I’m going to react to that energy. And I think there are other people that are more comfortable being very scripted.

Earlier, Dan was talking about people bring him their agendas and they say, “Tell me, is this a good agenda?” The fact that they need to make an agenda means they’re going to be more comfortable working towards a script. And the thing about scripts is that they make meetings really brittle, right? If you think about going into a, a big workshop, let’s say with a hundred plus people and you’ve got a very specific script and something goes wrong, not even talking about technical things, let’s just say, cognitively, you’ve made an assumption that a group is able to do something they are not able to do. That meaning has broken. And if you’re not able to improvise, if you’re not comfortable improvising, you’re not going to be as successful in making that meeting turn in a different direction, the direction it may want to or need to go.

But there are certain situations that improvisation works really well in. If you have a team that’s got mature relationships, improv is great. Approaching a meeting with a very open canvas, but if you don’t have a team that has a mature relationship or people aren’t self-starters, you might need that script to fall back on.

So, on your table is a worksheet. Everybody should have a pile of these worksheets in the middle of the table amongst all the other detritus that’s on the table. I want you to grab a pen, and I want you to look at that scale between improvisational and scripted and just look inside your heart, feel your gut, and circle the number that represents you, where you’re most comfortable, where if you had no constraints, the way you would approach a meeting, and just circle that number. Could be a one or a five, a two or a four. Or it could even be a three if you’re not sure, or if you think you do both well, you’re comfortable in both spaces.

Another way we bias as facilitators is we kind of bias towards the visual or the spoken. Let me tell you a story about before I was 10 years old, so I grew up in a very conflict-heavy household. My parents had a lot of conflict when I was growing up, and it became very volatile, so when we were talking, I felt like things were more stable. I felt more comfortable, and as a result, when I’m in a conflict situation, I tend to talk more. I actually bias towards being more of a spoken facilitator than a visual facilitator. Even though my background is in design, capital D design, not necessarily graphic design, although it’s a little bit of that, too.

But some people, if you describe a problem to them like we’re trying to change this thing in this organization, the first thing they do is they go to the whiteboard and they draw. So graphic facilitation, both facilitation capture, which is what Patricia is doing, but also, just generally using graphic facilitation to elicit discussion to get people to express themselves. It’s great for designers, and there are tons of amazing books that you can pull from to learn how to do this, but it doesn’t work in every organization. So now, go to the sheet. Where are you? Are you someone who approaches facilitation from a more verbal disposition? Or do you tend to visualize things and hope that gets the results that you want?

All right. There’s one more that I like to think about, and it’s the one that I think is the most interesting, and it requires a lot of self-reflection. I think as facilitators, generally, the facilitators that I meet, the people who geek out about facilitation, are more likely to fill space.

Recently, I heard about a device, and you can see this in remote meeting software, too, a device where you wear a little screen and while you’re talking in a meeting, there’s a number on that screen that represents the percentage of time you have taken up in the conversation. That is a device you can find and introduce into your meetings if you want. I think, as facilitators, we tend to fill space, and I know, personally, from my childhood, silence kind of felt uncomfortable to me. I felt really nervous if things got too quiet for too long, so I might want to fill the space to move things forward.

That’s where I’m more comfortable. But some people are more like Jedi facilitators, and one of my favorite friends who’s a Jedi facilitator is this guy named James Macanufo. James used to work at a company called XPLANE. He co-wrote a book called Gamestorming, which if you’re a meeting facilitator, and you haven’t checked out Gamestorming, it’s a great book. James is the kind of person who can go into a room, go into a team, and say, “You know, I think the problem is this. What do we make of this?” And then step back and let the meeting emerge, and observe, and wait for the right time to contribute, and help the group move along. If you think about the difference between holding a steering wheel tightly, and kind of sitting by the side of the steering wheel, and just kind of poking at it every once in a while.

So I think people who are space fillers if there’s a room where people don’t quite understand what’s going on, if they’re nervous, if there’s low-energy, filling space is fantastic. It helps move the room forward. It helps create a kind of safety, and it helps you connect to the facilitator, which is really powerful. It’s like, “Oh, they’re talking to me.”

But one of the, one of the biggest challenges I see with facilitators that take up space is sometimes their momentum overtakes their ability to read the room. So they get so far ahead, they get so energetic, they make so many contributions that they can’t see that people are kind of backing away a little bit. You know, people are kind of tuning out. So that’s when I think it’s good to think about, okay, I need to modulate how much space I’m taking up, or filling.

So those are just three biases. I want you to figure out, are you a space-filler? Are you a space maker? Circle the number that that represents you. Okay, so now, we’ve shared some ideas. I have some friends in the audience that are going to help me out. You have circled, raise your hand if you circled a one or a five anywhere on this chart. A lot of you. Okay. Raise your hand if you circled a two or a four. All right. There’s lots of twos or fours. Raise your hand if you only circled threes. One, two. Okay, a couple of people only circled threes.

All right. In that corner, we are going to have Dan, right? Dan is going to be in that back corner. And Dan is going to have, which group do you have? So if you circled a one for improviser or a two, and that’s the most representative of who you are, I want you to walk back to there. Not now, just in a second, okay? I’m going to give you the instructions.

If you circled close to a four or five, for being scripted, I want you to come up here and hang out with Eli. So Eli is going to be up here. If you’re a talker like me, just come on the stage, okay? If you’re somebody who likes to draw, go back there with Douglas. I like to call Douglas, Douglas 1.0, I’m kind of Douglas 0.9, because I recently shaved my beard off. But go back to Douglas if you’re a drawer.

And if you are a space filler, I want you to go to my friend Reagan. Oh, Christie, right there. And if you’re a space maker, I want you to go over here to Reagan. Okay? So right now get up. We’ll make the chair noise and go to where you are going to go and I’ll get you to crab in a second. You have a question? If you have two that you can’t choose between, pick the one that’s more emotionally resonant for you.

If you have ones or fives, go to those. If you have twos or fours, go to those. If you have all threes, just look for a group that isn’t crowded. Talkers? Yup. Okay. All right. It looks like we’ve sort of distributed. If you’re all threes, just go to a group that isn’t very crowded. We have a lot of drawers, not as many talkers.

Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. We have six minutes left. You’re going to have a two-minute rapid collaboration session. So when I do the crabs, we’re going to stop talking. For two minutes in your group, talk about why this bias of yours is a superpower. Okay? What does it enable you to do that no one else can do, or what are you really powerful? For two minutes, because we only have five minutes and 32 seconds left. So for two minutes talk about why this bias is a superpower. Go.

Okay. You have two minutes left. For the next two minutes, I would like you to talk about why this bias that you have, the way that you are, is your Kryptonite. When are you in situations that the fact that you’re this way prevents you from being successful? Okay. Two minutes.

All right, that’s time. So, stay in your group. I have 20 seconds. I would like one person from the space savers group to tell me why it’s Kryptonite, in a very short amount of time. Space savers. Oh, space savers. Yeah, no, it’s okay. Your tendency is to fill space, so it’s fine. What is one area where it’s Kryptonite for space savers?

Speaker 2: We didn’t feel we could control the energy of the room [inaudible 00:14:02] a meeting could go off rails if we couldn’t bring back up the energy.

Kevin Hoffman: Right. So being people who make space, they have a harder time controlling the energy of the room. Is that kind of… Well, this is for you. Thank you. This is a copy of my book. So listen, I did not have the ability to carry as many books as I would like to Texas from Washington, D.C., but I do have a discount code for you, if you’re interested. Now, before we go, because I’m out of time, look across the room. So we need to look at the drawers, need to look at the talkers, space savers and space makers look at each other, and scripters and improvisers look at each other. What I challenge you to do, is in the next four weeks, pick one meeting, and imagine and try to sit in the other side of that room for the meeting.

So somebody who’s a scripter, you’re going to improvise, within the next month, some meeting that maybe feels, maybe not too high stakes, not too low stakes, but a meeting that you’re going to try to improvise entirely. Somebody who makes space a lot, you’re going to try to fill space and create energy. Try it one time, and see how it feels. Okay. Thank you so much for your time. I know I’m over time. I’m sure we’ll distribute these slides, but if you’d like 20% off my book in any format, Rosenfeld was nice enough to make this discount for all attendees of this conference. And again, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it.

The post Find and Manage Your Style Biases appeared first on Voltage Control.

As a facilitator, I draw from a diverse set of perspectives. I started my career as a software engineer with a deep curiosity about people and systems. This led me to study process and the impact it has on systems and the humans in them. Through my startup experiences, I’ve seen and tried many things and respect the principles that thread through many frameworks and methodologies. It is this fascination that drives me to experiment with new methods and approaches.

After launching Voltage Control, a workshop agency, I quickly realized that most facilitators are “I-shaped” and not many are “T-shaped.” This means that while they are highly skilled and experienced in their craft, they don’t have expertise in a wide variety of methodologies and frameworks.

This realization led me to design a conference that would break down the silos of facilitation. I also realized that there was the potential to bring together a tribe that had never been assembled. We would move past the guilds and methodology-centric gatherings and convene facilitators of all kinds to build rapport, learn, and grow together.

Now that I had a concept, I needed a name. After much internal deliberation, I settled on “Control the Room.” I liked the idea of playing with the notion of control and what it means—how much do we have, how much do we need, and how much should we let go of? I think it’s the most stratifying characteristic of the facilitation genres. Some approaches are incredibly rigid, and others are looser and flowing. I also liked the tension that this name might create and the discussion that might emerge.

We partnered with MURAL to provide an interactive attendee experience. The Mural allowed attendees to add details about themselves, look up information about the speakers, and submit questions. A few of our speakers even used Mural to collect and synthesize input from attendees. The tool also serves as a lasting artifact of the conference to reflect on the day.

Check out the “Control the Room” Mural boards through the links below.

• Pre-Conference Canvas: See attendees and goals they shared in advance.
• Post-Conference Canvas: See the schedule, speakers, photos, notes, and questions from the day.

“Control the Room was a fast-paced day filled with speakers that offered inspiration as well as practical advice about facilitation. By partnering with Voltage Control to use MURAL throughout the event, we were able to capture and visualize the day and provide attendees with an interactive artifact they can take home and revisit.” —Lindsey Eatough & Bentley Rubinstein, MURAL

Facilitation Master Class: The Workshop(s)

Daniel Stillman and I co-created a master class, and it quickly sold out, so we added an additional day which filled up as well. The groups were super-engaged professionals wanting to level up in a meaningful way. The day’s agenda provided ample time for practitioners to share and learn from each other through facilitated exchanges.

We focused on the Conversation OS, building agendas, Liberating Structures, visual facilitation techniques, icebreakers, energizers, eye-openers, and even allocated time to work on attendee challenges. Attendees especially enjoyed hearing tips on how to manage difficult people, juggle multiple roles, lead group synthesis, and approach groupwork mindfully.

Control the Room: The Conference

Opening Speaker: Priya Parker

Priya Parker provided a beautiful opening to the day. She started with her definition of a facilitator and engaged participants to discover how it resonated with their own experiences. Her 90-minute talk was a pure delight and received a standing ovation. She is a stratospherically talented facilitator.

Read on for summaries of all “Control the Room” presentations:

Ben Guhin & Marni Wilhite

The idea of working in government may be at an all-time low— the shutdown, the partisanship, the do-whatever-it-takes-to-be-right forcefulness that seems impossible to penetrate. Despite these obstacles, Marni Wilhite & Ben Guhin have established methods for service design, technology strategy, and stakeholder facilitation at the City of Austin that are leading the conversation for how cities design and deliver services.

John Colaroutulo

John’s work is rooted in the MG Taylor visual models for facilitation. These methods came from the work of architecture, and practitioners like John have expanded on them in meaningful ways.

He shared several visual discussion frameworks that he uses and enabled attendees to merge that with their existing skills through a mini-scenario workshop.

Keith McCandless & Anna Jackson

Keith literally wrote the book on Liberating Structures, and Anna brings many years of practice in the field. Liberating Structures is a system of 35 methods with many more in development. The open platform has criteria for assessing and adopting new techniques into the repertoire. Keith and Anna led us through a method under review called “Talking with Pixies” and then had us submit an assessment of the method.

“I loved exploring how to be a leader-facilitator in charge but not in control. Specifying only the tiny, nearly invisible elements that distribute control liberates everyone to work at the top of their intelligence.” — Keith McCandless, Liberating Structures co-author

Daniel Stillman

Daniel Stillman, the founder of The Conversation Factory and author of the Conversation OS, is an expert facilitator and co-created the Control The Room facilitator master class workshop with me. He presented a narrative framework for workshop agenda design. The approach is simple yet powerful—select a narrative structure and use that as a template for your workshop design. It frees you from the default approach of simplifying stringing together a list of activities.

“I really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with an incredibly diverse group of facilitators, not just from Austin, but from around the country and around the world! It’s amazing to find your tribe — people who care about making group conversations work, for everyone involved.”

— Daniel Stillman, founder, the Conversation Factory

Brian Sullivan

Brian reminded us that while facilitators have great tools to “Control the Room,” we must consider the “stuff” to bring into the room. One of these substances is empathy and often that has to be gathered “outside of the room.” He shared his five go-to activities to cultivate this empathy.

1. Change Your Perspective
2. Limit Yourself
3. Do It Yourself
4. Similar Experience
5. Day-in-the-Life

Heidi Helfand

Heidi Helfand is Director of Engineering, Excellence at Procore Technologies, a leading provider of cloud-based applications for construction and the author of the book Dynamic Reteaming: The Art and Wisdom of Changing Teams. She shared insights on the three levels of listening: Inward Focused, Attention Outward, and Environment. Many of us are stuck in the Inward level, and it’s critical as facilitators to move between all three. Check-in with yourself, your attendees, and read the room. She had everyone practice physical mirroring and paraphrasing.

Greg Galle

Greg Galle is an author, entrepreneur, and instigator. His book Think Wrong: How to Do Work That Matters has become a handbook for people who want to invent what’s next for their organizations, communities, and countries. Greg talked about the predictable path and how most people default to thinking and designing with only this in mind. Using a Solutions vs. Challenges 2×2 matrix, he illustrated that if you are exploring solutions and challenges that are both certain or well-known, you are considering the predictable path. He encouraged us to explore the uncertain and welcome the unexpected.

Celine Thibault

Each of us can remember that meeting. The one where everyone is crammed into a stale office, where one person presents for two hours, you struggle to stay focused. Celine showed everyone that the way we plan for and set up our meeting environment determines the outcome.

When we create a physically engaging space where people can close their computer and be a part of a group, we experience an emotional shift and make it possible for people to be vulnerable, to speak up, and to push the work forward.

“We often think of facilitation as one of those talents some people have and others don’t. Years of practice, failure, and reflection taught me facilitation is a craft that we can improve over time. Control the Room brings in inspiring, experienced facilitators who break down facilitation into methods and tools we can practice and build on over time.” —Celine Thibault

Tomasz Borek

Does this sound familiar? You’re standing in front of the people you are about to facilitate and your heart sinks—there’s that person who might give you a hard time. Tomasz shared a framework for identifying, classifying, and dealing with difficult people. His framework categories difficult people into five types: The Leader, The Introvert, The Indecisive, The Know-It-All, and The Negativist. The Leader seeks power, and as facilitators, we can use that information to work with them. The Introvert seeks instruction, and we can provide guidance. The Indecisive seeks safety, and we can provide reassurance. The Know-It-All desires knowledge, and we can leverage expertise to comfort them. The Negativist seeks resistance, and we can involve them to unleash them.

Kevin M. Hoffman

Facilitation is a balancing act. It requires empathy for a group’s interests and capabilities while simultaneously keeping them away from tempting, but unproductive, discussion. The effort and focus needed to maintain that balance varies based on what kind of person you are and what kind of topic or group you’re facilitating.

Kevin uses three spectrums of bias to help people get a sense of their own (or anyone’s) facilitation style:

1. Improvisation vs. Scripted
2. Drawing vs. Speaking
3. Space Filling vs. Space Saving

These spectrums help to assess when a style supports a meeting, or when it needs something different. This brief, but fun, workshop got us thinking about our biases, how they serve us and how they hurt us.

Terrence Metz

Terrence kicked off his prioritization session with a tricky problem that seemed like a simple math problem. The room full of bright people didn’t take long to solve it and find consensus on the “right” answer. The problem was, all but one of us were wildly wrong. He used the problem to drive home that voting is a lousy way to determine truth and an ineffective tool group decision making.

Another lesson was just how easy it is to immediately frame a problem and pick the wrong frame. In this case, the majority of us jumped to the conclusion that this was an easy math problem. It turned out that the issue required a visual model to truly understand.

“If you want to be a leader, a significant leader, of the future, follow us. Can you keep up? Many can, because they trust Douglas, actually, they love his multinational aspirations.” —Terrence Metz, CTO MG Rush

Jess Lowry

We are busy people who pride ourselves in helping our clients achieve their goals. We work hard, and often; we play hard too. Balancing everything can feel impossible and burn out is a reality for most of us. We push ourselves until we hit a point of mental and physical atrophy. We reach for external rewards when what we need comes from within. Jess’s presentation helped us learn and practice techniques to build mindfulness into our daily life to maintain balance.

Mohamed Ali

Mohamed’s Design Thinking Canvas was born from ongoing conversations on how design has an impact, alongside a search for a way to codify a comprehensive approach to design thinking. He takes experiences of forging human bonds through community and used them to structure reminders for clients of that deepest of human needs, the need to love, to be loved, and to relate.

He showed us exercises to use to open workshops, at “lunch & learns,” orientations, or other interactions where we may need to foster a more human connection between people in a room.

Neha Saigal

Too often, teams get stuck optimizing their current operating models and miss out on other business opportunities that might alter the course of an organization. Neha’s workshop proposed a shift in mindset through having a team think more broadly about new market opportunities, promote open exploration, and foster a culture of collaboration.

Whether you’re working with a startup in need of a pivot or with a company in search of new growth mechanisms, this can be a powerful way to bring a team together to explore future possibilities.

Reagan Pugh

As a facilitator, knowing how to draw the stories out of your audience is vital. The highest respect a facilitator can show for their “audience” is to listen to their experiences and tailor the session to meet them where they are.

“It’s a powerful thing when you’re able to gather together with people who speak your language. Facilitating is rewarding work, but it can be lonely sometimes when you move from client to client or team to team. Control the Room reminded us we’re not alone in the work we do, and being together served as a source of encouragement to keep doing the good work facilitators do: gathering folks together, guiding them toward clarity, and creating a sense of belonging.” — Reagan Pugh

In Reagan’s session, facilitators were run through the process and framework of “Creating a Storytelling Organization” workshop and walked away with techniques to use for any event where group storytelling might be useful.

Testimonials from Attendees

“It was a real pleasure being in the inaugural Control the Room conference. The experience of learning from other facilitators and expert doers was worth every minute and dollar of investment. I’ll be recommending my team to attend next year.” — Marc Bolick | DesignThinkers Group USA

“As an organizational consultant, orchestrating meaningful conversations to achieve business objectives is of utmost importance. There is a delicate balance between structure and ambiguity; relationships and tasks; and alignment and healthy conflict. Control the Room brought the best-in-class facilitators to share methodologies, tools, approaches, and experiences to elevate my game in facilitation.” —Danny Kim, Organizational Consultant, Centauric

“The structure of this inaugural summit was fast-paced and bookended by two impressive facilitators. As someone who has embraced my role as a 3rd party neutral facilitator for 20 years, I was inspired by my new colleagues’ creative approaches. The conference affirmed that facilitation is both art and science.” — Lynda Baker, Certified Professional Facilitator

“From a stellar keynote by Priya Parker through a diverse set of speakers and practitioners, the first annual Control the Room facilitator summit was a great day for me. I left with an improved frame for how I approach sessions, new techniques for how to execute them, and new connections I look forward to developing. Voltage Control executed the session perfectly — no pressure with 100 facilitators in the room — from the space to the pace, it was exactly what I hoped for as an attendee.”— Scott Sehlhorst

“Relative to other sources of learning, I found it exponentially more valuable to rub elbows with other facilitators where we could talk openly and vulnerably with each other about ways to be better. I found this conference to be much more human than others I’ve attended.” — John Fitch. Cofounder of Committed and author of Time Off

“Douglas delivered a packed agenda with a wide variety of topics that helped expand my current viewpoint on facilitation and why it’s so important in today’s world. His summit resulted in widening my knowledge of current methodologies and deepened my understanding of the current facilitation space.”—Eugene du Plessis, Sr. UX The Home Depot

The post Control The Room 2019 appeared first on Voltage Control.

Marni will be speaking at our upcoming event — Control the Room: The 1st Annual Austin Facilitator Summit! Taking place at Austin’s Capital Factory on May 23, 2019, learn more and get your tickets here.

In 2000, Marni was hired by the University of Texas Electrical and Computer Engineering Department to do something new (although now wildly prolific): design and develop an interactive platform that allowed students to take tests and quizzes from the comfort of their homes. This experience led to the opportunity to join one of the leading international research teams as a design engineer for wearable computers at UT in 2001, at a time when the only other notable work in this area in the US was from MIT.

After years of working in the private sector helping build products for companies like Samsung as well as smalls startups in Austin’s backyard, the thought of working for the government was not something she had considered. While she was learning a lot about utilizing data, augmented intelligence, and business models, she wanted more. She was feeling burnt out from working in careers where she felt like she was not impacting the world in a positive way when a position came up in The City of Austin’s Design, Technology, and Innovation fellows program. She jumped at the chance to use her experience in technology for a greater good.

“For those of us who have felt burned out in private industry, it’s attractive to come in for a year and help improve government services, and then you can go back. Just take a pay cut for a year and come do really great work that’ll make you proud. You’ll learn a lot and be able to take that knowledge back to your private industry career.”

What started as a fellows program eventually lead to the creation of the Office of Design & Delivery in Austin, which Marni now leads as Head of Digital Transformation. It’s one of the most successful city-level program of its kind in the US. “Starting this kind of program in government is similar to starting one in large bureaucratic companies. You need buy-in and support from leadership, you need someone leading the initiative who has done this before. You need to take hiring practices very seriously. You need to ensure that you evaluate partner agencies with projects.”

Marni has observed, both in the public and private sectors, that when teams are hired to do a job but don’t get proper buy-in from leadership, what they end up leaving behind does not work long-term. The employees cannot take ownership of the program put in place, which leads to a breakdown in the system. “The design doesn’t actually work well for the things that you’re trying to do. There aren’t the competencies in-house for the technology that was chosen to manage it for the long term, so there’s not that operational and maintenance cost that needs to be understood, and the competency set that’s necessary to do it well.”

The Pilot program that turned into real change

When the Fellows program started in Austin it was tested to see if they would be able to hire people from private industry to come in and work for the government. The government has a reputation for being boring and slow, so how could they attract people from the private industry to come into government, and will it actually help with improving services?

They ran a pilot project around recycling using behavioral science and technology that had great results and were able to get buy-in. Because of this, they were able to establish the Office of Design and Delivery to start doing digital transformation and service design work across Austin.

Marni spoke about how you need the right balance of people working on a project for real results. “It can be really hard to break a career civil servant out of the patterns that have been doing for 20 years. If we’re talking about big transformational change, you need someone that’s done that kind of transformation before to help people get past those roadblocks. Otherwise, people have a negative outlook because they’ve been stuck doing the same thing and being told they can’t do it any differently for so long. They don’t feel empowered.”

Failure is an option

One of the biggest differences she has faced when it comes to government versus private sector work in that there is a real fear of failure.

“One of the biggest things that we see in government is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt…failures can be a headline in the news.”

“One of the biggest things that we see in government is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The fear of failure is really strong. We’re a public organization. We’re supposed to be transparent. Anybody can ask for public information and so failures can be a headline in the news. There’s a fear of trying something new because they’re afraid of the backlash if it fails.”

She states that you have to work with agencies on opening up and giving people the space to try something new. She encourages fast prototyping and testing because not every prototype will work; but the faster they get done, the quicker you learn.

“Before trying to push for new ideas, I always ask stakeholders to tell me why something might fail. Usually, when you give them room to be heard regarding where they are hesitant, they will open up because they feel like their concerns aren’t being disregarded.”

Marni feels getting the challenges out of the way first makes for a better project in the end. “I picked up a technique from reading about NASA and how they do pre-mortems. You have rockets that blow up, and then it’s a big deal because people die; So they pick a project and they do a pre-mortem at the beginning and say, ‘What will make this fail? What are the failures that could happen and how could they happen?’ It actually leads to a stronger project in the end. You get more buy-in because you’re accounting for those challenges. It empowers people to know that those things are going to be taken into account and we can test for them early.”

Innovation that does good

Since Marni started working with the City of Austin she has finally been able to do things she feels are really making an impact on the community. “We worked with the Office of Police Oversight to do a department transformation — how do we interact and engage with the community? Their goal was to have enough data to make informed decisions about what kind of policies need to be in place for police training. We created digital forms for people to submit complaints and thank yous.”

She continued: “Usually, thank yous can take months to get back to the police officer. But, because we’ve done this digital implementation, now it took less than a week for there to be social recognition of this police officer who made a woman who had been a victim of sexual assault feel empowered and safe again. Being able to put people forward and say they’re doing it well is a way that you can influence other people’s behavior. It’s an exciting outcome…”

“Being able to put people forward and say they’re doing it well is a way that you can influence other people’s behavior.”

One place she’s been inspired by is the Danish Design Center, which is led by Christian Bason. In terms of service design, design thinking and designing things that meet societies needs, Marni feels that the Scandinavians are way ahead of the United States. “They understand that cognitive capacity is diminished when you don’t have income that’s at a living wage. They understand that your life is better when those things are happening. They understand that companies can support that, but their end goal is to support humans being happy and getting what they need.”

Marni knows that it’s not going to happen overnight, but thinks this type of innovation can inspire her and other government employees to find solutions that meet the needs of the city and its residents. She stated that within the government there tends to be a lot of mistrust from the public and when government services aren’t designed in a way that supports people this lack of trust grows. “I’m keen on how we can test services that function really well and regaining trust to show people that it can be worth it to invest in a government.”

Can cities work together?

Marni feels you can learn a lot by visiting other cities and getting to know those involved in making change. “ I love mayors. Mayors are incredible optimists. They’re trying to support their communities.”

She works with groups such as the US Conference of Mayors to listen and learn from what is happening in other cities and how they are innovating ways to handle issues, make big changes and solve problems. She also uses her own personal travel time to visit and take calls with local city staff.

Four tips from Marni on innovation in government

1. Empower career civil servants to think differently. Most don’t consider themselves innovators, but they are!
2. Before diving into a project, allow everyone to voice their concerns on what could fail. Think through the failures beforehand to give everyone the sense they are being heard and considered. A better product will come out of it.
3. Get buy-in and support from leadership. You also need someone leading the initiative who has done this before. Take hiring practices very seriously. Also, evaluate partner agencies closely and create a formal document to be clear about expectations and what you’ll need for success.
4. Make sure you have one decision maker that is recognized by all if there is a lack of consensus. Too many decision makers can cause confusion, and prevent the team from making progress.

If you want to read my other articles about innovation experts and practitioners, please check them all out here.

The post Government is Ripe For Innovation appeared first on Voltage Control.

I’m happy to share that Voltage Control and KUNGFU.AI will be hosting an AI Readiness Workshop as part of the CTO Summit this year. The workshop will take place on April 10, 2019, the day after the Summit. The AI Readiness Workshop is designed to help innovators and technology leaders focus in on how to apply artificial intelligence across the business.

About the Workshop

• An instructor-led event with activities to connect the dots between data, technology, and practical AI use cases.
• Includes a presentation by expert Ron Green on the state of AI.
• Working with peers, you’ll see how to align on a business objective, assess the state of your data, identify practical use cases, and define a starting point.
• By the end of the workshop, you will walk away with a framework and strategy document that guides internal conversations on how to apply this technology.

Who Should Attend?

• CTO/CIO/CPO/CDO/VP-level digital and technology leaders
• But, bring a few team members, as the activities are collaborative.

(Reach out to me at info@voltagecontrol.co if you can’t attend the CTO Summit and want to buy tickets to the workshop.)

By the end of this event, you will walk away with:

• Understanding key tenants of the successful AI strategies
• A strategic framework for identifying AI opportunities relevant to your business
• Methods for aligning and inspiring your team to do more with data

AI Readiness Workshop Agenda | April 10, 2019

9:30 AM: Doors Open
10:00 AM: Welcome & Intros
10:30 AM: Presentation from AI Expert Ron Green, CTO KUNGFU.AI
11:30 AM: Break
11:45 AM: AI Readiness Canvas: Explore Your Challenges
12:15 AM: AI Readiness Canvas: Articulating Your Goals
12:45 PM: Lunch
3:45 PM: AI Readiness Canvas: Data Worksheets
4:00 PM: Closing & Network

About Ron Green

Ron Green, CTO at KUNGFU.AI will kick things off with a lecture on the state of AI, explore the history of its application, and share some common themes on how it is being applied in business today.

Ron is a serial tech entrepreneur, CTO, and expert in machine learning. He’s built several successful companies in telecom, biotech, e-commerce, social media, and healthcare. He was most recently CEO and founder of Thrive Technologies (acquired by CLOUD), a mobile healthcare startup. Prior to Thrive, Ron ran software development at Ziften Technologies, Powered (acquired by Dachis Group), and Visible Genetics (acquired by Bayer). Ron holds an MSc with Distinction in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems from the University of Sussex, and a degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas

Venue

• We will be located in the Mobility X room inside Capital Factory.
• Capital Factory is located in the Omni Hotel: 701 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701
• Mobility X is located on the 1st floor of the Omni building. It is on the northwest corner, inside the Voltron co-working space. There will be signs and staff that can help you to the room.

Parking

The Omni has paid valet parking. There is also street parking nearby as well as lots on 8th st. and Trinity as well as 8th and Neches.

Sponsors

About the Sponsors

KUNGFU.AI helps companies start and accelerate AI programs by providing strategy and development services.

The post From AI Thinking to AI Doing: A Strategy Workshop appeared first on Voltage Control.

I’m thrilled to announce that Voltage Control is hosting Control The Room 2019, the first annual Austin Facilitator Summit! Our goal is to provide a platform for the Austin facilitator community to gather to share ideas and an authentic, meaningful experience.

We’re lining up a high-energy, highly-interactive day of learning, practicing, and most importantly, connecting. We’re looking for a few enthusiastic people to present at the event and are excited to hear the amazing proposals you have to offer.

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL HERE

The Important Details

• Time & Place: Control the Room, Austin Facilitator Summit will take place at Capital Factory in downtown Austin on Thursday, May 23, 2019!
• What to Expect: It’s a full day, single track event for facilitators to meet peers, deepen their knowledge and hone their craft. Our goal is to cross-pollinate facilitators with different methods they can effectively leverage in the future.

• Keynote Speaker: We will kick off the day with a presentation by Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Priya wants to invigorate the ways people come together in order to banish stale conferences, flat dinner parties, and unproductive board meetings. In her interactive talks, she challenges audiences to dig down to the root of why and how we make connections, create communities, and build organizations.

We’re Looking for Awesome Facilitators to Share & Speak!

• The Ask: Experienced facilitators willing to share their methods/tools/stories in an interactive session with other facilitators. We will consider a wide array of topics that are innovative, engaging, inspiring, and informative! Co-presenter presentations are accepted and encouraged.
• Deadline: The Call for Presentations is now live and we will be selecting speakers on a rolling basis through Friday, February 15th (announcing speakers Monday, February 18th) so if you want to participate, please fill out this form ASAP!

Looking for presentations that are…

• Interactive — Think 10% tell and 90% show
• Relevant — Is this relevant to or at least interesting to most facilitation leaders?
• Actionable — What will the attendees be able to do better by the end of the presentation? There should be specific, actionable takeaways to help the attendees better facilitate and lead groups.
• Concise — Short format presentations keep the day high impact and high energy.
• Diverse — We’re committed to the diversity of our presenters and attendees

We are committed to a speaker lineup representing the diversity of gender, race and thought that we should expect in our community and are doing our very best to improve the diversity of our attendees as well. If you or someone you know might make a good speaker and would bring valuable diversity to the event or is part of a traditionally underrepresented group, please encourage them to apply and/or reach out to me at douglas@voltagecontrol.co. I’m happy to connect personally and help to plan and submit a presentation.

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL HERE

Or, maybe you just want to attend?

Tickets are on sale! Buy now to take advantage of the early bird pricing and lock in your spot to see Priya. (Oh, and tell your friends!)

BUY TICKETS HERE

The post Facilitators, We Need Your Stories! appeared first on Voltage Control.

“We’ve fully embraced this new way of thinking and applied it to our entrepreneurial process.” — Zac Maurais

The co-founders of Austin-based startup Favor, which was recently sold to grocery chain H-E-B, just announced their next company, Sunroom. While Ben Doherty and Zac Maurais’s first startup answered a need in the food delivery space, Sunroom is a real-estate startup that helps renters find homes and apartments and book tours on-demand.

When Sunroom was in stealth mode, I had the opportunity to facilitate a Design Sprint for their team. Now that their new endeavor is out in the open, I took the opportunity to talk with Zac about how their Design Sprint impacted Sunroom, both then and now.

The headline: the Design Sprint has been a powerful tool for the Sunroom team and they’ve adapted it in smart ways that work for them.

Why Design Sprints

First of all, I wanted to know what was the driving force behind Sunroom embarking on a Design Sprint in the first place. What made this tool or way of working intriguing to Zac and the team? “Time is the most valuable asset for companies, especially early stage ones,” Zac said. “Design sprints allow you to talk directly with target customers & make your first attempt at solving their problems. Those conversations and light-weight designs save the company a ton of time in the long-term.”

“Design sprints allow you to talk directly with target customers & make your first attempt at solving their problems. Those conversations and light-weight designs save the company a ton of time in the long-term.”

In addition, the Sprint’s emphasis on working fast, but grounded in customer insights, is also key for Zac: “You can learn a lot from talking directly to customers about something without having to build it all out, which is awesome.”

The Power of a Name

Before our Sprint together, the Sunroom team had worked in a similar fashion, just without the set structure or official name: “We used to do a lot of the same things that are in the Design Sprint, but it was less of ‘Put it in a box with a bow on it.’”

There’s power in putting a name to a certain way of working: “Now we can just refer to it as a Design Sprint: over the next two to three days, we’re gonna be dedicated to uncovering X question.”

Not only that, but Zac has found that the clarity of the Design Sprint even helps with internal understanding: “Everyone in the company is familiar with our design process. Our engineering and operations team know before building a huge new feature we’re going to do a Design Sprint. Our entire team is always curious to hear the results.”

Adapting the Sprint

I was pleased to find out that, since our Sprint together, Sunroom has adopted (and adapted!) many of the methods and folded them into their work: “We’ve made them even more lightweight, and something that we can do with a really small team, like two or three people, instead of seven.”

I was intrigued to find out more about how they’ve tweaked the Design Sprint to work for them, with a smaller team and in a shorter time frame. One way they do it is by compressing the Sprint’s Day 1 and 2 activities (goal setting, knowledge sharing, and sketching) into a couple hours. According to Zac: “Since we’re still an early stage startup, it’s a lot to ask every single person in the company to participate. That said, it’s an important activity, so we’ll pull 2–4 people into the project. Even with a slimmer team we’re able to come out with actionable insight.”

The Need for Speed

Zac has also found that the Sprint’s compressed schedule and clear goal setting can translate to speed to market: “I think that focus makes sure it gets done and gets done quickly.”

Additionally, by testing not only high-level concepts, but also UX and messaging, Sunroom is able to get ideas into development faster. They usually do about two rounds of prototypes, even iterating between interviews as needs or changes become evident. This gets them to a level of refinement fairly quickly: “It gets it to a point that it’s really close to being shippable that I can hand over to an engineer to build the spec and run with it.”

“The focus helps make sure it gets done and gets done quickly.”

Lessons in User Interviews

Because Zac typically leads the user interview portion of their Sprints (how’s that for a hands-on founder?), I picked his brain for advice. What would he say to someone approaching their first user interviews? “I’ve found it’s best not to stress or overthink your questions,” he shared. “Some of the best questions I’ve thought of on the spot. It doesn’t have to be all thought out going in your first interview.”

Despite being so close to the product, Zac isn’t the type who only wants to hear positive feedback from users. He understands the importance of critique: “Sometimes, depending on who the [interviewee] is, they can get into a rhythm of giving positive advice and it’s important to bring them out of it and remind them that you’re really trying to get to why this wouldn’t work. So, I’ll often times ask them, ‘You’ve said a lot of good things, but why is it gonna break? What fears do you still have about it?’”

“As designers, we need to be humble within the process. Approach the project without an ego. Remove your ownership mentality and strive for the best idea. Humility helps make better ideas & keeps you from being upset when customers give unexpected feedback.”

He went on: “We have a tendency as entrepreneurs to think we’ve came up with something really good, but I try to think of the work as not necessarily my work but just concepts. Win or lose, it’s still a win for me. I try to remove the ownership component. Just being humble within the process and not having an ego about your designs. I think that humility helps.”

It was a great leading Zac and Sunroom team through their first Design Sprint. To me, their story really illustrates how five focused days can have long-term effects for a team. As Zac says: “We’ve fully embraced this new way of thinking and applied it to our entrepreneurial process…”

The post Why the New Startup Sunroom Loves the Design Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.