“There is so much humanity in vulnerability. If you’re going to ask others to be vulnerable, you have to be willing to do so yourself and let your walls down to have rich, honest conversations.”- Alyssa Coughlin

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Alyssa Coughlin, Chief of Staff Director for the Data and AI Platform Organization at Autodesk. Alyssa shares her journey into facilitation and leadership, emphasizing the importance of patience, active listening, and storytelling in effective facilitation. She discusses leading through influence rather than positional power, empowering team members, and creating a collaborative environment. Alyssa also highlights techniques for engaging quieter participants and the significance of addressing underlying tensions in group dynamics. The episode concludes with a focus on fostering a culture of collaboration and empowerment.

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About the Guest

Alyssa Coughlin is a seasoned leader with a passion for facilitation, a skill she’s honed throughout her career, from student council to her current role as Chief of Staff at Autodesk. Her journey began in high school, organizing chaotic meetings, and evolved as she realized facilitation was central to her leadership style. After transitioning from pharmaceutical sales to project management in tech, Alyssa embraced facilitation as a critical tool for aligning diverse teams and fostering collaboration. She further developed her skills through Voltage Control’s certification program, where she gained confidence in her ability to create inclusive, engaging, and impactful meetings. Alyssa is now focused on scaling facilitation skills across her organization, empowering others to lead conversations and drive collective success.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change. Navigating this uncertainty requires a systemic facilitative approach to gain clarity and chart pathways forward. We prepare today’s leaders for now and what’s next.

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Transcript

Douglas:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast where I speak with Voltage Control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab and if you’d like to learn more about our twelve-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com. Today, I’m with Alyssa Coughlin at Autodesk, where she is the chief of staff director for the data and AI platform organization. Welcome to the show, Alyssa.

Alyssa:

Thanks Douglas, and thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Douglas:

Of course. Thanks for joining. Well, let’s get started by hearing a little bit about how you got into this work. How did you get into being a chief of staff and thinking about facilitation and bringing groups together to make better decisions?

Alyssa:

Yeah, chief of staff is something I kind of stumbled into. At the beginning of my career, I didn’t know about this position or what it entailed. I just knew I had this myriad of skills and they all centered around bringing people together and driving organizations towards common goals and really just kind of being that connective tissue that paves the way for others to succeed. I got here through various positions. I’m actually on my second career. I started as a pharmaceutical sales rep, which is very different, and from there I moved over to the technology space and I did project and program management, and that really morphed into being a chief of staff, and it’s been a really exciting career journey because I finally found the position that if I could have just dreamed it up and picked all of the things I like to do and I’m good at, it would’ve come down to being a chief of staff.

Douglas:

I was thinking about your alumni story and how you depicted this tale of facilitating long before you really thought about it from the perspective of that role or that title. I think I remember you talking about a prom planning committee, is that right?

Alyssa:

Yeah, and student council, and I have just been doing this forever and then didn’t realize it was facilitation until somewhat recently.

Douglas:

When you think back to those early formative days, what do you think were some of the key skills or some of the key ways that you were showing up that made you successful?

Alyssa:

I think being able to read people and read a room and having a high EIQ is invaluable when it comes to facilitation. And so when I was on the prom planning committee or student council, I would see that need and I would lean into it and step in and realize that this group all has the same intentions and they want the same goals, but they don’t really know how to get there. And so I would step in and I would lead that discussion and that conversation and just help drive them to the endpoint without necessarily feeding them the answers. It’s more about discovery and giving them an opportunity to figure out the answers for themselves.

Douglas:

Oh, I love that. So this idea of not feeding them the answers, what’s your favorite go-to technique? I mean, I’m sure you’ve grown a lot and advanced a lot since those days, but I’m sure this not feeding people the answers is still core component of how you show up. And so I’m curious, nowadays, which one of your favorite ways of not feeding the answers, but making it feel productive or inviting?

Alyssa:

Funny enough, I find the simpler the probing questions, the better because they leave a lot of room for interpretation. So if the group is starting to get there, but they’re not quite there, something as simple as, “Say more about that.” Or, “How did you get there?” Make them kind of reflect on what they’ve said so far and what they’ve learned so far, and then drill back into maybe something that deserves more detail that they glossed over or recenter them back on the original conversation. It’s really just corralling almost.

Douglas:

Yeah, I love that. And so much of that is active listening and curiosity

Alyssa:

And come to it with an open mind, even if it’s a topic that you are familiar with. When you’re trying to lead these conversations, just act like you’re unfamiliar with the topic and be like, “Well, that’s interesting. Say more about this.” Or, “Why are we doing it this way?” And sometimes just drilling back to those basics helps reground and recenter the group and helps them move forward in a more cohesive way.

Douglas:

Yeah, absolutely. And I love this idea of even if we know the answer, we don’t necessarily have to provide it as the leader.

Alyssa:

Exactly. And a good leader I think focuses more on teaching. That old adage of give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life. I think leaders really live by that, and it’s so much easier to be like, the answer is ABC, but your group will never learn. Your group will never become self-sufficient and they’ll never be able to grow. And I think a good leader wants their group to actually grow beyond them. You don’t need to know everything to be a good leader or to be a good facilitator. You need to know how to embody the people around you to be their best.

Douglas:

Love that. And so let’s go back to those early formative days. If you could send a message to yourself or go visit with your younger self, what’s one piece of advice you would depart on that you now know, some of this wisdom that you’ve gained through the years?

Alyssa:

I think advice that I would give my younger self is to be more patient in the conversation. And that’s really hard. When we study facilitation, we learn about the power of the pause and the power of just a moment of silence to give others a chance to jump in or to reflect. And so as an extrovert, that’s so hard. I’m like, I’m ready to go. I have the answer. I’m excited about this. But that’s not really how you lead facilitation and that’s not really how you help the group grow. So my advice to my younger self would be just be patient, slow down and let the conversation happen more organically.

Douglas:

So this is a common one, so I find this fascinating. Did you find that that silence was uncomfortable for you or was it just this mindset of we’re going, following the energy and it’s being exciting and let’s move and go and go? Or was it just that anytime silence came up it was uncomfortable or maybe it was a mixture of both? I don’t know. How did it feel?

Alyssa:

I would say it’s a mixture of both. I definitely don’t want to lose the momentum from the conversation. And at the same time, there’s a little bit of an imposter syndrome around that silence. Am I failing if I’m not filling every second of this conversation? And moving past that and learning that, no, I’m not failing. I’m empowering and I am giving the group an opportunity to fill the space with what they see fit. But it’s definitely something that it takes practice, especially when you consider active listening and how your brain is just moving so fast and you’re like, I want to contribute all of these things to this conversation, but I need to slow down for a minute and actually listen to what the rest of the group is saying and allow them to fill some of this space as well, because it’s not a monologue or it’s not me just talking to myself.

Douglas:

You’re right. It’s not a monologue and it requires a group conversation to get past these obvious solutions to get to things that are novel and interesting.

Alyssa:

And I think what’s really important is for whatever the outcome you’re trying to accomplish, to really resonate and to have a lasting impact, it needs to be cultivated by the entire group. It’s not going to be as meaningful. It’s not going to take root if it’s just me or any one person just talking at them. It needs to be a story that we build and we tell and we see ourselves in together and not just about one person.

Douglas:

Yeah. So you mentioned the word story there. How often does story and narrative show up in your facilitation?

Alyssa:

All the time. I think people will resonate with that more. When you think about stuff that you can remember from years and years ago, whether it’s a song or it’s a story or something funny that happened, there’s a personal connection there and that’s what allows it to really stay with you for a long time versus, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, because there wasn’t a story there. That wasn’t important and that didn’t matter to me. And so I think when you are telling a story, you are inviting a sense of belonging and purpose in whatever narrative you’re trying to explain, and it becomes a shared narrative at that point.

Douglas:

Yeah. I’m also curious, we talked a little bit about leadership, it’s come up already. And as someone who’s been drawn to leadership roles from a young age, how has your sense of what leadership is evolved through the years?

Alyssa:

I think I really started to understand my brand of leadership when I transitioned into the technology sector and I was introduced to Scrum and Agile project management. And so one of the foundations of Agile is servant leadership. And the whole concept around a leader paves the way for the team. They remove obstacles, they provide resources, they set everyone else up for success. It’s kind of the mantra, leaders eat last. And so that’s where I had this moment of self-recognition or self-realization and I was like, “Yeah, that’s my leadership brand.” And that’s why I’m passionate about it. I attribute my personal success to the success of my team and those around me. And that’s something that I really love about being a chief of staff is that’s my job. It’s to make my leadership team the best they can be and the more they succeed, the more I succeed.

Douglas:

I love that. This idea of our success is measured through the success of those around us and those that we influence.

Alyssa:

Absolutely. And I think that is so important for facilitators, because how do you measure a successful gathering or successful facilitation? It’s not about how you feel when you walk away from the session. It’s, what was the outcome of the session? What is the sentiment of everyone else who was there? Was it valuable for them? Was it meaningful? Will it last? And I think my brand of leadership just so naturally fed into what makes a successful facilitator.

Douglas:

What advice do you have for folks that maybe aren’t in positional leadership roles and how they might view leadership from this lens? Because I personally feel that there’s a lot of opportunities to lead as an influential leader even if you don’t have this positional power. And so I’m really curious, I’m sure you see a lot of that at your vantage point there at Autodesk, because you get to see a lot of different individuals in a lot of different roles. So what advice do you have for folks that maybe want to be in leadership, but maybe don’t have that position or just don’t feel like they’re a leader?

Alyssa:

Yeah, for those folks the first thing I would say is don’t equate management with leadership. They’re not the same thing at all. You do not need to be a people manager or any position of authority to lead. In fact, leading through influence is the hardest way to do it, and it will be the most pivotal skill set you will develop in your career. To be able to lead up, down, and across is going to be really important. My advice would be don’t doubt yourself. Take up space. You are in that room for a reason and your experience and your contributions are valued. And so share those. And help make room for others, because people will notice that if there’s somebody in the room who is maybe feeling timid about chiming in, make space for them and be like, “Well, what are you thinking?” And people will remember that, people will automatically look at you as somebody who is leading and who is helping to guide the group.

Douglas:

That is such a great tool just to bring others into the conversation.

Alyssa:

Never underestimate the power of that.

Douglas:

What’s some of your favorite ways to A, identify those that might need to be included, and then also just bringing them in subtle but powerful ways?

Alyssa:

Yeah, I think as far as identifying those as a facilitator, there’s definitely a little bit of pre-work. So whenever you go into a meeting or a session, you want to make sure you understand the audience and that you have the right people there. Priya Parker talks about generous exclusion and it’s so important. So if you have somebody there and they’re not speaking up, the first thing you want to do is make sure, is this person set up for success? Are they actually supposed to be in this meeting or this session, or are they set up to just not be able to contribute? And that’s not going to be a good experience for anyone. But beyond that, it’s a lot about reading cues and reading energy, and that’s so much easier in person.

So with Zoom, I always suggest camera’s on because as the facilitator, you can kind of read people, maybe they’re about to say something and then they pause or you can see their face light up or a scowl, and you’ll find clues that they have something to say. Then just gradually invite them in. Don’t put them on the spot, just be like, “Hey, so-and-so, I think you have a lot of expertise in this area. What do you think about that?” Something that kind of builds them up first instead of just putting them directly in the spot and being like, “Hey, you haven’t said anything.” Nobody’s going to respond well to that.

Douglas:

Yeah, I like that. Gradually building folks up.

Alyssa:

Yeah, absolutely. Leaders build up those around them. There’s nothing to accomplish by tearing people down. Even if you think it makes yourself look better, it doesn’t. And people will remember that, especially if it’s the first time you’ve interacted with a group, there’s no second chance at a first impression. And so just remember that when you build up, rising tides, lift all ships. And so it’s important that you are elevating everyone around you, because you don’t actually know their full potential and you don’t know what they could contribute. But if you tear them down and they don’t feel empowered to contribute, then it’s just a loss for everyone.

Douglas:

Speaking of lifting others up, I believe you shared a story about an HR colleague that helped you realize that what you were doing was facilitation and being able to label your skills in that way opened up a career path or those realizations just changed how you approached your career development. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Alyssa:

Yeah, and that’s such a prime example of sometimes you really just need one person to believe in you to get you over that hurdle. So this happened back when I wanted to transition from working in pharmaceuticals to working in tech, and I was really intimidated by this change. I’d had friends tell me, and colleagues that, “You have a transferable skill set. Why don’t you jump into this industry if you’re not really resonating with the industry you’re in right now?” And I was like, “Well, I’m not an engineer. I don’t have this deep technical background. I’m not sure how I can really sell myself to a new industry.” And I had a really good friend who was an HR business partner at the time, and she just helped me kind of build my resume and go through it. And she asked me questions about like, “Well, what do you do all day?”

And as I was explaining what I do, she’s like, “That’s creating a business plan, that’s facilitating, that’s…” All of these different skill sets that hadn’t occurred to me because I was being so literal with everything I was doing. I was like, “Well, I sell drugs in the neuroscience division.” But that’s not what matters, and that’s not what transfers and translates. And so she taught me, and this is a really important skill set for a facilitator, is to know when to zoom out to zoom in. And so she said, “Pull back. Just look at the raw form of everything you’re doing. What is that? How would you describe it?” And I’m like, “Oh, well, this is facilitation.” And she’s like, “Exactly, so put that on your resume.” And so it was just having somebody who could help me get through a moment of doubt and a moment of imposter syndrome. And that’s important in leadership, and that’s important in facilitation is just sometimes everybody needs a little push and a little help.

Douglas:

Absolutely. And that’s so great to know that they were there when you needed them. And then as leaders, we can reciprocate to those in need and step into those moments too.

Alyssa:

Yeah, there are probably so many moments that seem benign or mundane to you that had an impact on somebody else’s life and you don’t know. And so I always try to show up as my best and to bring out the best in others, because you don’t necessarily know when somebody else is having a moment of self-doubt and they just need one person to cheer them on or believe in them for a second, and that’ll get them over that hump.

Douglas:

Yeah, so true. Even folks that seem like they have confidence, there might not be a lot underneath that exterior that we see.

Alyssa:

Totally, yeah. I mean, I work with VPs who in a one-on-one will be like, “I am extremely introverted. I am uncomfortable with these big group conversations, and this is not my natural personality. This is not how I show up at home.” And then they’ll give a presentation and it’s like they’re presenting a daytime talk show or something. I mean, they’re just so confident and they’re so smooth. And so people are complex and they are layers. And so how people show up in one situation or one environment is not their whole personality. And I think it’s really important to remember that and to dig through them and to encourage it, because sometimes you can get stuck in, I’m not a speaker, I’m not a facilitator. And you just need somebody to say, “Well, yeah, you are and you’ve got this.” And remember at the end of the day that everybody’s human and nobody’s perfect, and it’s really unreasonable to expect that. And I think as soon as you break down that need for perfection, you create a more welcoming environment that’s going to be conducive to better conversations.

Douglas:

I’m thinking about how you shared in your transition to project management that a lot of it was navigating conflicting priorities with diverse teams. And so I’m curious, when you think about some of these tough facilitation moments or these challenges that the teams were facing or that you were facing together as you were facilitating and they were trying to figure this stuff out, what comes to mind that might be interesting for folks to hear about? If you can’t name specifics, are there any patterns that you’ve noticed?

Alyssa:

I have. I think it’s human nature to kind of revert back to meeting your own needs first. And so as a facilitator, something that I commonly encounter is having to break down organizational silos. So for example, I used to work in the class action litigation space, project managing those, and that’s a really complex process. You have the data processing team, you have the print formatting team, you have finance, you have all of these teams, and they each have these individual goals and objectives that they need to accomplish.

And so my job as the project manager and as the facilitator was to help them break down their individual silos and their individual goals and remind them at the end of the day, helping people who have been hurt and meeting the needs of our client is our goal across the board. This is what we’re all striving to achieve. And so I think when you remind them of how their part contributes to the whole and how it’s important to have everybody’s part contributing to the whole, you help break down these barriers and move the project forward. But it’s something I still encounter to this day. Different leaders all have their own organizations and they’re all just worried about the success of their organization, but at the end of the day, it’s really the success of Autodesk that matters. And we have a belief, we call it “One Autodesk”, and it’s so important to remember that and to remember that we are separate parts contributing to a bigger whole.

Douglas:

You’ve got the mantra of what you mentioned, and I’m sure that’s effective of just helping people anchor in on this bigger purpose, this bigger why. What are some other ways that you’re aligning folks in these sessions?

Alyssa:

I think one important way to, or an important aspect of alignment is to address any sort of elephant in the room. A lot of times people will not say exactly what they mean and the conversation will just kind of go in circles and the important stuff ends up going left unsaid. And so there’s definitely an aspect of diplomacy, but bravery as well and being able to just prompt that and be like, are we actually talking about what we need to talk about right now? Or are we staying at the surface level and all trying to be friendly, in which case we’re just spinning our wheels and we’re not actually moving forward towards accomplishing our goals. And so kind of knowing when to push the group a little bit to move past those barriers and past those comfort zones versus when to step back and let them sort of do it on their own, there’s definitely an art to it. It’s by no means a science, and a lot of it is just trying. There’s so much reading people in facilitation.

Douglas:

Reading people is so essential and there’s so many signals to watch out for. What are some of your go-to methods for making sure you have your finger on the pulse, so to speak?

Alyssa:

Yeah, well, when you’re in person, there’s obviously body language is really important to keep an eye on, but we live in a hybrid world and myself, and I’m sure many other folks are primarily on video calls and Zoom. And so from there I try to keep an eye on the pace of the conversation. Are people cutting each other off more? Is it getting a little bit more assertive? Is there some hostility starting to bubble underneath the surface? On the flip side of that, has somebody completely shut down? Is somebody who is normally a contributor and who I would expect to contribute to this portion of the conversation remaining silent? And just watch for the tone, watch for, you can even just see a smile.

You can see how people are reacting or are they scowling? But it’s so many subtleties that you want to look out for. There’s very seldom going to be this glaring sign that’s like, “Hey, the group is not on the same page anymore.” If you reach the point where it has escalated to that level, you probably missed a few subtle cues you could have used to rein it in sooner. But I would say just really watch the flow of the conversation, watch how they’re interacting. Is their demeanor changing? Is their voice changing? And when it does, how can you help bring them back?

Douglas:

Yeah. What are some of your go-to approaches to bring it back? I mean, you used the word rein it in, so what does reining it in look like for you?

Alyssa:

Sometimes it means reminding the group of the north star and why we’re here and saying something along, “I hear what you’re saying, however, I’m not sure that that’s going to get us to our north star. And so let’s step back for a moment and possibly look at this from a different angle.” Another way to do it is to ask them to frame it in a different way. Say, “Hey, I don’t really understand what you’re saying right now. Can you frame it from this angle for me? Or how does what you’re saying contribute to the objective of this gathering, meeting, session?” Whatever it may be.

And so by rein it in, what I refer to is step back to step forward and just remind everybody of why they’re there. Try to deescalate, try to recenter and refocus, and then have the group get back on track. And that’s tricky, because sometimes it’s so hard to know when the conversation is going in an important direction that you should allow as a facilitator and when it’s starting to run down a rabbit hole and you need to pull it back in. And so that’s where the active listening really comes in handy. And you need to be completely engaged the entire time.

Douglas:

Yeah, that’s a stylistic thing too. How far do you let things go out into the nether regions before you bring them back in, because that’s where inspiration might hit or innovative ideas might happen. And so I think when folks shut that off too quick, they miss those opportunities.

Alyssa:

Exactly. And I come back to it’s an art, not a science. It’s really hard to know when are you blocking innovation versus when are you blocking unnecessary conflict. And it’s so much easier when you’re working with a group continually. So for me, I work with a senior leadership team all the time. I know them well. I know when they’re starting to go down an avenue that’s not going to be successful versus when they might be starting to figure something out. It’s really, really hard though as a facilitator when you’re jumping into a group you’re not familiar with. And my advice in that situation is to really lean into that naivety and to be like, “I don’t understand this. Could you explain this further?” Or, “How does this accomplish whatever our ultimate goal is?” And there’s nothing wrong with just asking those questions that they may sound uninformed, but they could be helping to prompt the group to pause for a moment just to reflect on are we going towards this path of innovation or is this a fruitless conversation that we should abandon?

Douglas:

Yeah, I like that. And it can often be used as a way to, as the facilitator, you can de-escalate using that approach. You can steer things back toward the purpose or north star, as you were saying earlier, but do it in a way that doesn’t seem confrontational. Saying things like, “Help me connect the dots here.” Because it’s not about them saying it wrong or being confusing. It’s about me, the facilitator, having trouble connecting the dots when probably everybody else in the room felt the same way, but because I’m the one that fell on the sword, now everyone gets the benefit.

Alyssa:

Absolutely, yeah. Facilitators have to be willing to just take the bullet sometimes and be okay with doing it for the better of the group. Yeah, to your point, I mean, you’re probably not the only one who’s thinking that. I guarantee you there’s somebody else in the room who’s like, “Why are we talking about this?” But there’s a group dynamic at play, and as a facilitator, you’re oftentimes seen as this impartial entity. And so it’s not going to be as intrusive if you ask the question as if somebody else in the group were to do so.

Douglas:

And also I think we practice those ways of not being judgmental or not coming across as confrontational. I think even if folks aren’t being confrontational, if they clearly have an opinion on the matter and they just blurt out whatever is on the top of mind, it probably comes across confrontational.

Alyssa:

Absolutely. And in those situations, I try to bring things back to facts. Is this just an objective opinion? Do you just feel some way about this? Or do you have information that the rest of the group could benefit from understanding that has led you to this opinion? And so if you challenge them on that, you’ll oftentimes find your answer whether they were right, and there’s an avenue that you should be pursuing that you missed. Or it’ll kind of allow them to self-check and be like, “Wow, I feel this way because I feel this way, but I don’t have any data I can bring to the group to validate it.”

Douglas:

When you were saying validation and bring it back to facts, it made me think how powerful a prompt along the lines of, how might we measure that?

Alyssa:

Definitely. And my organization, we live in the world of OKRs, which are objectives and key results for anyone who’s not familiar, and they’re a way to measure the success of an organization. And there’s such an easy thing to point work back to. So if a team is kind of going in the wrong direction, it’s like, which OKR are you feeding with this project? Are you moving us towards our common goals that we aligned on and that we agreed on as a group? And yeah, I love that you said that, Douglas. How will you measure success? Is this measurable? Is a great question to ask because it really forces them to pause and think, is there a way for me to know for certain that this is the right thing to do, or is it just a shot in the dark?

Douglas:

Yeah, I love that. I want to talk about vulnerability real quick. And you mentioned that as one of the key parts in the learning experience for you during our certification, and I wanted to see if you could elaborate a bit on how embracing vulnerabilities has helped you grow as a facilitator.

Alyssa:

There is so much humanity in vulnerability. And coming back to what we were saying earlier about facilitation, it’s just not possible if you can’t connect on a human level. I think if you’re going to ask others to be vulnerable, you have to be willing to do so yourself and to let your walls down and to be able to have these rich, honest conversations. And it’s so uncomfortable. You’re opening up a piece of yourself that you’ve probably really tried to protect, and that’s I think, a natural instinct. But learning to talk about things maybe you’re not great at or things that you wish you could do better. It doesn’t have to be a therapy session where you’re like, “Here’s my every insecurity and here’s what led to it.” But being able to show people that you’re willing to give a piece of yourself makes them more prone to giving a piece of themselves in return and then you’re having a more honest conversation.

Douglas:

Yeah. Speaking of the summit, you’re going to be at the summit this year, so what kind of excites you the most about coming down to Austin and being with a bunch of fellow facilitators?

Alyssa:

So much. I love getting to talk to other facilitators and learn from them. Everybody does it a little bit differently and so there’s always so many gold nuggets that I can borrow from other facilitators and share. Some of mine in return this year will be different. I’m excited for a different reason because I’m presenting this year, it is my first time presenting at the Facilitation Summit, and I’m actually going to be talking about some of the stuff we discussed today. We’re going to talk about using storytelling and leveraging that through facilitation to enable change management and how when you want a change to really take root and take effect, you have to tell a story that people can see themselves in and you have to bring them along on the journey with you. That’s where you get that true buy-in. And so we’re going to talk about kind of how do you do that? What are some tips? Coming back to how do you measure it, how do you know if it’s been successful? And how can you seamlessly fold that into just your everyday facilitation?

Douglas:

Love that. Storytelling is so critical. I think so often stories are such a part of getting teams to align, getting ideas to come out, yet folks aren’t spending enough time thinking about how they draw a good story out of people.

Alyssa:

Yeah, you always have to think about the what’s in it for me. So I work with the platform organization at Autodesk and we build all of these cool capabilities and then we take them to product teams and we’re like, “Hey, use this.” And the first, the human response is, “No, why? You haven’t given me a reason. What’s in it for me?” And so to be able to tell that story, to tell the story of why this is a great capability for your use case and how it can unlock new things for your work and make your life easier. Really putting them in the story of your capability or your product really makes it seem like it’s something that they belong to as well. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about some. And whether you’re trying to increase adoption or sell something or start a new idea, it doesn’t really matter. Being able to tell that story will help you be more successful.

Douglas:

So you’ve also mentioned the importance of mentoring others in facilitation at Autodesk. I’m curious, what strategies have worked best when you’ve been developing others around these skills and how do you see facilitation shaping the organization’s culture?

Alyssa:

Yeah, I think not taking for granted the ability to be a storyteller is really important because that is something that comes more naturally to some folks than others. And so we’ve really been focusing on how to be a storyteller and helping our team feel confident in their ability to articulate a story, especially because we have a global team. We have people with different first languages coming from different cultures and different backgrounds, and that can create different insecurities. And so being able to connect through story and be like, well, a story doesn’t necessarily have to know any sort of cultural bounds, it’s something that we can all belong to together.

And so I lead the extended leadership team for my organization and at our summit this past summer, we spent an entire day just focusing on storytelling and talking about all the different ways that that can be an asset in their toolset or career, however you want to phrase it. And it’s not just at work. I’m on the board for the Autodesk Women’s Network, and we’re talking about selling your own skill sets and standing up for yourself, selling your brand and what you can bring to the table in your career. And so there are just so many different ways that being able to be an efficient storyteller can help you not only move your career forward, but also help you bring others along.

Douglas:

That’s a nice segue. I was wanting to hear about, as you think about the next phase of your career, as you move that along, what most excites you about the role of facilitation and how it might play in that work that you do in the future?

Alyssa:

I think now I’m at a phase in my career where I have a decent amount of influence. And so being able to use that position to empower others is really exciting to me. When somebody who’s on the leadership team taps you on the shoulder and says, “I think you would be really great for this. I’m so proud of what you’ve done to date, and I’d love for you to share that with others.” You’re really not only building that next generation of leadership, but you’re holding a hand out to somebody else. Because at some point in my career, there was somebody who did that for me, and it gave me the confidence to kind of lean into that unknown, to be vulnerable and to take a chance.

And so now it’s my turn to do that for others and to hold the door open for those behind me. And so I’m really excited to be at a point, obviously you never are done learning how to facilitate. It’s a lifelong learning process, but I do have enough knowledge and information now that I can start to share that with others. And that’s really exciting for me. I would love for everybody to be able to tell their story and to just create this belonging all the way through our organization.

Douglas:

So as we come to a close, I want to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Alyssa:

I think it’s kind of a silly analogy, but it’s the one that I hold onto. And what I see facilitation and leadership really drilling down to is you’re kind of a collaboration Sherpa. You know the way, you’re guiding the team, but you’re still letting them make the journey on their own, and you’re helping to remove obstacles and roadblocks, and you’re getting them to where they need to go, but you’re not doing it for them. And that’s really what I try to bear in mind as a leader and a facilitator.

Douglas:

It’s been a pleasure having you on the show, Alyssa. Thanks for joining.

Alyssa:

Thank you. I had a great time. I loved this conversation.

Douglas:

I did as well, and I look forward to talking to you again probably at the summit.

Alyssa:

Great. I’ll see you there.

Douglas:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics, and collaboration. voltagecontrol.com.

The post From Extrovert to Empowerment: The Art of Facilitating Group Dynamics appeared first on Voltage Control.

“I was blown away, absolutely enthralled and fascinated. My granddad turned to me and said, “You’ve got an inquiring mind, don’t ever lose that.” It has essentially formed who I am.”- Dan Walker

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Dan Walker from Collective Imagination Consulting. They discuss Dan’s journey from the legal field to the outdoor industry, driven by his deep curiosity and evolving understanding of justice. Dan shares how his formative experiences shaped his perspectives and how he now helps organizations create pathways toward a more just and joyful society. The conversation highlights the importance of curiosity in both personal and professional contexts, the complexities of justice, and the pivotal role businesses can play in fostering social change. The episode emphasizes a method-agnostic approach to facilitation.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

About the Guest

Dan supports organizations to work in partnership with Community Leaders in the collective work towards a more just and joyful society.

He brings over 10 years of experience from across the public, non-profit and business sectors guiding organizations to do the “institutional soul work” to identify values they hold.  Supporting organizations to work in partnership with Community Leaders to translate those values in to strategy and actions that deliver the highest expression of those values and incrementally build towards a more just and joyful society.  

Dan cares deeply about respecting each person’s human dignity and brilliance, believing that co-creation can better design the systems within which we live.  His human-centred design approach supports clients to embrace these principles and pursue work that aligns with their values and support the transformative change sought.

As a member on the Board of Directors at the Vancouver Foundation, Dan advises the organization on how to better centre community need and develop governance practices that enshrine that commitment within its values and processes.  As a member of the Board of Directors at the Outdoor Diversity Alliance, he supports their mission to foster a more equitable outdoor industry through centering community expertise and catalyzing collective action across the outdoor industry.  

Balancing his love of music and the arts with time on the trails, you’ll usually find him at a local gig or exhibition, or in motion on the land.  In either context, you’re likely to find him with a huge smile on his face!

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change. Navigating this uncertainty requires a systemic facilitative approach to gain clarity and chart pathways forward. We prepare today’s leaders for now and what’s next.

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast where I speak with Voltage Control Certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method-agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab, and if you’d like to learn more about our 12 week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com.

Today I’m with Dan Walker from Collective Imagination Consulting, where he supports organizations to co-create pathways toward a more just and joyful society. Welcome to the show, Dan.

Dan Walker:

Really nice to see you, Douglas. Yeah, looking forward to the conversation.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, looking forward to chatting as well. And as usual, let’s get started with how you got your start. And I want to come back to something you mentioned in your alumni story, which was, gosh, I think you were 10 years old in London, your grandfather’s comment about the inquiring mind. Let’s talk about that a little bit.

Dan Walker:

Oh yeah. I mean, it’s a good place to start. It’s always a nice memory. I don’t know, the sun’s rising here too, so I don’t know if there’s a warmth attached to that memory. Yeah, when I was 10, I visited London with my grandparents. It was kind of the first time I’d been on a big trip like that. My grandma and granddad took me and my younger brother around London, and one of the places that we went to was the Tower of London. We went around, we were toured through the exhibits with the beefeaters who spoke to their lives and how things worked and the history. And I was blown away, I was absolutely enthralled and fascinated and obsessed with it.

And I remember coming out of that space and going down the tube, going down the tube close by to get on the underground and go to the next place, and my granddad turning to me and just saying, “You’ve got an inquiring mind. Don’t ever lose that.” And it’s essentially formed who I am. I think I’ve built my identity around this curiosity that I’ve always had. I find the world endlessly fascinating, I find everything endlessly fascinating. My biggest challenge is probably that balance of how do I say no to some things when literally whatever people are into, I just find it interesting. And yeah, it’s really shaped who I am and living into that childlike curiosity is something I always tap into. It really informs my work and how I move through the world, and I just love it. It lights me up anytime I’m doing that. So yeah, it’s a real starting point for me, and it set me on this path that I’m currently still on. Yeah, it’s a beautiful memory too.

Douglas Ferguson:

Has that punctuated moments throughout your life? Do you recall moments where that’s popped up periodically?

Dan Walker:

I think so. I mean, even now I look at it and even when I was chatting to friends the other week and they’re talking about some of the things there now studying and looking at, and I don’t know, I’m currently studying Spanish and learning to draw and sketch and these pieces and then as my friends are talking about these other areas that they’re looking at, I’m like, “Oh my God, how do I learn more about that?” So I see it all the time. I know that’s who I am and that’s what I value.

And then in work too, I think I know my ability to ask questions is my strength. I sit in a space of genuine curiosity, so I always return to that as like, yeah, that’s who I am, my heart, that’s what I believe and what I bring to the world. So it definitely comes up, it shows up all the time, and I think it’s how do I balance that curiosity with focusing on certain things in a certain moment? And also being blown away by everything, by the fascination of spaces. Yeah, I was in CERN, the particle accelerator last year, and mind-blowing what we’re doing and what does that mean and what does that tell us about the world and how 95% of the world is dark matter, and we don’t really know what that is or what that means. And I just find it all endlessly fascinating and I love the world in which we live because of that, I guess. So yeah, it shows up everywhere.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, the quest for knowledge is a fascinating thing. It’s like this ever-receding zone of the universe we don’t understand.

Dan Walker:

Yeah. I mean for you too, I don’t know, do you feel that sense of the curiousness around the planet we live in, how we interact, the social interactions, does that show up for you too?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I mean, there’s endless things that make me curious. In fact, there’s a construction project on the highway that connects the area I live in to downtown Austin and every time we drive through trying to figure out all the pieces and what are they going to do next and what are they up to and how’s this going to work and where’s this going to go, or are they going to close this down or open this piece up? And my wife finds it hilarious. And I think sometimes when I’m pontificating about the possibilities, she’s sneakily pulled out her phone and is recording me.

Dan Walker:

Which, yeah, to watch you in full flight would be great. I mean, what are other questions are you asking? I don’t know, it brings for me such a beauty to the world. I think with that fascination, I find everything, even the hard bits, I think that’s the spaces that I’ve come to in later years is how to, in the pain of things, can you find the beauty and the fascination and the interest that we can be pushed into these spaces that are really deeply painful for us? And what does that mean and how is that experience and how is that a beautiful experience at the same time? And I would say that’s an incomplete journey, but it’s a space that I’m now moving more into of how do I hold the full experience of life and the complexity of it all and bring that same level of curiosity to everything, not just the beautiful things that I’m in awe of, but also the difficult things too? And I don’t know, yeah, that’ll be the next 50 years trying to figure that out or get closer to figuring some of that out.

Douglas Ferguson:

When you reflect back, what are the things that you found you’re most curious about?

Dan Walker:

Oh, I think humans. I think humans and the interaction of us and how we understand ourselves and how we understand the collective us. I think that interaction is just a fascinating dynamic. There are similarities that come from the shared human experience, but also these profound differences as a result of the lived experience and the systems that we live in and all these pieces. How does that sit together? How do I sit as who I am within this collective system? And then how we layer over the politics and the systems that we’ve created and how that shapes and how it changes culturally from different contexts. So yeah, I find that fascinating without end, I can’t see an end point in being curious about that.

Yeah, I do think psychology, those spaces strongly appeal to me. There’s times where I’m like, “I should maybe look into doing that,” because I just find it a fascinating subject that we’re all beautifully unique and how do we sit together, how do we acknowledge that uniqueness and how do we stitch this collective blanket together as society? That is the space, which kind of ties into my work, this question of justice and what is justice, how do we build towards a more just society, sort of acknowledges those two things. It acknowledges the unique brilliance of each of us, and it questions how do we stitch that together? And that’s the space where, yeah, I could talk about that, read about that, listen to people talking about that, thinking about that, working through it without end.

That’s just a beautiful space for me and in service of a goal that I believe is most precious, I guess, how do we find this space to have respect, a depth for one another and experience joy that can come from that collective sense of belonging? So that’s probably the big piece where it shows up most profoundly. That and then sketching, or I don’t know, whatever else it is at the minute, but really it’s the central focus on just this is the thing.

Douglas Ferguson:

So you talk about justice and connection, how did that first show up for you? What were some of the ways that you started to understand or realize that this is an important thread for you?

Dan Walker:

That’s a good question. I think fairness has always been relevant to me. I think that is probably a very almost naive way of coming to connect with it. When I was younger, this didn’t seem fair, that person was treated differently, we’d worked as hard and that different results came. So I think there was a very juvenile understanding of it, like, “That doesn’t seem fair, these people are being treated differently,” in whatever context it may have been.

And then there was an essay that we had to write when I was at high school, so I wouldn’t be that old, I’d maybe be 12, 13, somewhere in that kind of range, I just remember it too, we were sat in the library at a local school, which was an unusual event, we weren’t often taken to the library for our English classes, but for that one we were, and we were given this essay assignment, there was essentially posing the question of, should we have capital punishment in the country? Should that be legal? Should it not be legal? How do we decide that? And learned all about the miscarriages of justice and how that had transpired, went into the legal background on why it existed, what the historical significance of it was, what’s a society if we don’t have capital punishment in place? And I was enthralled with it, I was totally fascinated by this question.

And I think it brought me to an answer that I didn’t have at the time, I definitely didn’t come to this at the time, but really what was under that is who determines the answer to that question? And within that system, it was determined by a few. And I think where I’ve come to is this question of how are the systems within which we live determined by us all? And that’s the piece where now my understanding of justice sits and comes from.

But yeah, it’s always been there. It’s like always this pursuit of we all matter, our opinions all matter. If we’re having a conversation today on any truly complex subject, you don’t have the answer, I don’t have the answer. Instead, it sits between us and together we shape it and you sharpen my thinking and I sharpen yours, and all of a sudden we have this better understanding, this idea, our ideas are better than my ideas, collectively, we shape it better. And I hold that to be true and I think it comes from a place of respect for other people, a place of belief that we are all phenomenally brilliant and talented, we just need to bring that together. And yeah, that’s really the work that I now do, but it stems from this belief in we all matter and we all should be valued and considered worthy and feel a sense of belonging together. Yeah, I mean, I could talk about it for hours.

Douglas Ferguson:

And you pursued law at some point, right?

Dan Walker:

I did, yeah. So I studied that and I think that was kind of a reflection of that maybe naive answer. I was younger then, I didn’t really know the fullness of the systems in which we sit. I came to it because I believe in justice, well, of the past, you can take, well, this one has justice in the title, we’re doing the legal sector, we’re going into criminal justice, which is intended to deliver justice. But having gone into that, finished my studies, came out, worked in a London Crown Court whilst I was living there to try and figure out do I want to carry on and become a barrister and do this work? It just became apparent to me that the system wasn’t what I believed justice to be.

Douglas Ferguson:

What was the big disconnect there or the dissonance you were feeling?

Dan Walker:

I would say it was systems that were imposing punishment and it wasn’t actually addressing the underlying inequities that exist. So it was just punishing for crimes committed without acknowledging that there are inequities that exist in society that were creating those. It wasn’t doing anything to address that. So for me, there was one case that we tried, prosecuted, the defendant was found guilty, served time in prison, two years later, the exact same case for the exact same defendant landed on my desk and I was like, “This is broken. This is not it.” I look now and I think there are people doing phenomenal work within criminal justice, and I could have maybe found pathways into changing and working on the system. At the time I was younger and I was like, “I don’t feel we’re doing the work of justice,” so I left.

It’s a tricky space because I acknowledge too the victim has suffered harm as a result of the crime so there’s a real importance of centering the victim’s perspective within that conversation too. But I think that we often neglect the perspective of the defendant and the person who has committed those crimes or has been charged with those crimes, they matter too. And I think often we don’t focus on that and say, “Hang on, what has contributed to that person being here today? And how as a society do we take account for that and acknowledge that and work through that and all those pieces?”

So yeah, it’s a fascinating space. I feel like I’m way closer to what I believe justice to be now. I feel like I’m working a far more true reflection of that and there’s amazing work being done within the legal spaces around access to justice and these pieces that maybe if I’d have found those, I would’ve still been there, I just didn’t and it didn’t feel like I was doing the work that I believed to be most true.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, we all take our own path, right? I think at the time you pivoted through the outdoor industry, if I’m remembering right.

Dan Walker:

Yeah, yeah. I ended up, I was in London when I was working in the courts, I left there. London’s amazing, it’s a phenomenal city. I love music, we were talking about that before, music’s my thing, I can’t play, which it sounds like you may be able to, but yeah, I can’t play, I love listening. So in London, I go to all the gigs and it was an amazing city, but at the time it’s exhausting too. It’s phenomenal as a cultural hub, there’s so much going on, there’s so many people. But also over time, that becomes draining at the same time. Every space that you are in, it’s overcrowded, it’s overwhelmed with other people. We’d go to the pub and I’d be sat on half of a stool and then somebody else with their group of friends would be sat on the other half of the stool facing the other way, and it just became a reflection of this is a busy space, I’m quite disconnected from nature here completely to get out into nature was really challenging.

So in parallel, Canada was one of the places where I was like, it seems like it has all the pieces. Nature is here in abundance. Yes, it has its challenges politically, but the conversations around the work of justice, around truth and reconciliation and other pieces are conversations that are being named. So I think that became a place where I was curious to look and ended up moving here. The outdoor industry I came to because I was like, “Well, I guess I’m going to try something different,” I know I don’t want to go back into the legal space, I love time outside, I love nature, I love being connected in those spaces so what about trying the outdoor industry? So that’s what I did.

I initially worked at MEC, Mountain Equipment Company, which is essentially the Canadian equivalent of REI. I worked alongside their CEO, it was amazing, got a really good exposure at the time. They were pushing deeply into the work of sustainability, so focusing on people and planet. And it gave me a real eye-opener as to, wow, the power of businesses to affect change, they had the revenue figured out in a way that nonprofit sector found more challenging. They could work across all different sectors, so they could work with governments, they could work with nonprofits, they could work with academic institutions, they could move so fast on anything. If they wanted to go, they could go there and they could go quickly and they could partner and they could make shifts.

And significantly, they have this huge voice, when outdoor brands say something, it far eclipses what can be said by government or nonprofits, which we can challenge and question whether that’s right. I think a lot of the nonprofits have such credible voices, such credible expertise on these subjects, but they don’t have the recognition and the respect that brands do. And I think we live in a society where the logo has power, and I saw that and how that could be used as a tool for change. So yeah, I left MEC did the same thing over at Arc’teryx, another outdoor brand based here too, worked for their CEO for the first few years.

And one of the things that came to me was every year we’d do a sample sale, so we produce gear that we’d test and see how it worked. It couldn’t then be sold commercially, but the tested gear would be sold internally, and we probably generated about $100,000 a year. And really with that money, I just started asking questions, I was like, “Well, what are we doing with that? What’s the intent of it?” It became really apparent there was no strategy of what we were intending to do. So we went through this exercise, which I can touch on, of how do we determine the highest and best use of our resources in service of a societal and/or environmental need? That’s kind of the question that we started to answer and really became my work for the past eight years, work which I love. It’s work that got me far closer to what is justice and happy to chat more if that’s relevant too, about that process.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s curious to me because for one, what the process was even like. I think identifying a guiding purpose like that with a really clear, “This is the question that we’re going to wrap our arms around,” I think that in and of itself is remarkable because so many folks are just kind of, “Oh yeah, we want to achieve this thing,” or they might throw some metrics at things to start a project, but it sounded like that was rooted in some real curiosity. And then also how did you even bring everyone together?

Dan Walker:

I would say too it was clumsy because I didn’t know, so now I look back and I can layer over and I can see the good things in what I did, and I can also see like, “Oh, you could have probably learned to do that better.” I didn’t know what I was doing in truth at that point, but, as you said, I had this curiosity of how do we do this? How do we marry what we have, the assets, the resources, the influence we have as an organization with these societal needs that we see existing in the world?

So really it was through a process of conversations across the entire company. Our CEO at the time was amazing, we’re still good friends now, but he really had a commitment to saying, “Sure, let’s try it. Let’s try and figure out what this intersection means and looks like.” So there was buy-in from the company, it was a prioritized conversation. Different groups from all across the organization we brought together to explore this topic and try and work through what that might be.

And in parallel, I was connected to the community leaders, so people within the space who are doing the work every day on those societal issues that intersect with the outdoor industry. So whether it’s equitable access to nature or truth and reconciliation or thinking about guardianship of the land, these areas, I was connected with those groups too so gaining insights from them as to what are those real challenges? What are those pieces and the needs from the real movements?

And so really starting to bring those two together to say, who are we as an organization? First, let’s do that work, right? Who are we as an organization? Why do we exist? So for the brand, it became really apparent that yes, they designed and built a climbing harness in some ways because they believe they could build a lighter, more comfortable harness, which is great. But the question remains, well, why build a lighter, more comfortable harness? And the root note to that is really this belief in the transformative power of connection to land. So we build this gear because it gets us in these spaces that moves us in these ways that my words fall short of explaining but when I’ve been outside, I’m a different human as a result of it. It moves me in these really powerful, humbling, respectful ways. It shifts who I am.

So once you know that and you’re like, “Well, our commitment and the reason we are here is because of this belief in the power of the land, what then are the societal needs that intersect?” So if you look at the outdoor industry, it has a very extractive relationship with the land. It takes from it and it doesn’t acknowledge at a depth that this land is indigenous land and it doesn’t acknowledge the fullness of what that means. It doesn’t respect sacred spaces, a lot of the language it uses and even celebrates denies the presence of indigenous peoples. So language around first ascension, language around wilderness, this is often celebrated in the industry, and at the expense of acknowledging indigenous peoples. So a big part of our work became that focus on truth and reconciliation. How as an industry do we take our responsibility for that and start to shift the narratives and move that work?

And then the other side, a lot of the community leaders name it far more eloquently than I do, the outdoor industry is traditionally male, stale and pale. I look at myself, people listening won’t see this, but yeah, I’m a white male from Northern Europe, it sits profoundly, that is where the industry has traditionally sat, and there’s a lot of work to do. And the question really is how do we embrace the wider we and how do we do this work towards equitable access to nature? So that really became the second area, this focus on supporting the movement towards equitable access to nature.

It’s those two pieces that have driven that work over the last eight years, and really then looking to bring that to life with a commitment that Arc’teryx or any organization is leading neither of those movements. Instead, their role is to listen deeply to community leaders and map their strategy and resources in service of it. Really, that’s the work I did at Arc’teryx, and it’s now the belief that I bring with me into Collective Imagination, the consulting work that I now do.

But yeah, I look back, I don’t know, the process, it was rough. I figured it out by speaking to mentors, community leaders, and we got it to a really good place. There’s so much, I would get there way quicker now, I know now the facilitation practices, how I would structure things, how we move it, building relationships, what’s the intent of these sessions and what are we building towards? But I got there. It definitely took us longer than it would take now, but the curiosity is always key. And even in the work that I do now, that’s what I’m trying to inspire in organizations to ask those deep questions and be open to where it goes and to work with community leaders who have that expertise. So yeah, it’s been a journey and it’s kind of nice to look back and see that, yeah, I have grown and I am more competent in this and there’s still so much for me to go in the journey of getting better at this work. So yeah, it’s been fun.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. What about the power imbalances that exist when you have organizations with resources trying to work with grassroots communities?

Dan Walker:

These are good. These are not small questions. So yeah, the power, it’s the think, right? I think as you do the work more and more, you realize that the power we hold is everything. It frames who is able to determine those systems that are created. Especially as a brand, you hold immense power. In many ways, you’re a gatekeeper of resources so the grants that you provide, that is a piece. A big part of the work has been how do you acknowledge that it exists, it is a reality within the context of which we live, and how do you work beyond it too? So how do you start to move from, “We have these power imbalances that exist,” into this space of, “We know they exist, but we still want to work in partnership and we want to work in deep trusting relationship”?

I remember there was an example where we had an event, an activity with one of the partners, and we always push, I would always say in conversation, “I want to hear the honest feedback. I want to hear where we’re going wrong. I want to hear where we can get better.” And one of the partners, this is a couple of years into the relationship, shared some feedback on one of the things that was challenging in this event, “It wasn’t exactly what we wanted. We felt like there was different ways we could have done it, there were better ways we could have done it.”

And in the first instance, it’s always challenging to hear that feedback of like, oh, we kind of missed the mark on something. But it also told me we’ve been doing that intentional work the right way such that now we were starting to build relationships where we could truly hear the fullness of what’s going on and start to truly work together in deeper partnership. I think it’s critical, and it takes time. Building trust is the critical piece of work. How do you really build trust? There’s a lot of harm that’s existed between the relationship of corporations and businesses and nonprofits and community leaders, there’s a lot of justifiable mistrust there because of how historically businesses have acted.

So I think you start from that place, you have to start to build relationships from a very trusting place and slowly over time come to this position where we can move into this true reciprocal relationship, this reciprocal partnership where we share the good and the bad and we work through it together. That isn’t going to come tomorrow. If you’re just starting, there’s no way you’ll get close. I think what we heard for those first few years was, “This is great, keep doing the work,” and then you realize over time there’s a depth that is not being shared, and how do you unlock that?

And I apply that to the same things. How do we truly make people feel comfortable and supported and safe within spaces such that they can share their most preciously held ideas? That’s really what we want to hear, we want to hear the brilliance of you. And in order to do that, we need to create this safe space that makes you feel belonging, that makes you feel compelled and comfortable to share, which I think, I don’t know, that feels like a track that Voltage Control is on. I don’t know whether that tracks for you, but I think this push around unlocking the brilliance of people feels like what, I don’t know, what Voltage Control is trying to unlock in all these different contexts. So I don’t know, I’d be curious for you, is my read right? Or, yeah, how do you think about that kind of hearing people’s voices and what facilitation unlocks?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, and it’s an essential component of facilitation. And I think our mission is to elevate the ecosystem at large by upskilling more people and providing opportunities for folks to really practice and grow their facilitation skills, whether it’s through certification or the community or even some of these more complex projects we’ve been finding ourselves participating in that allow us to give our alumni really in-depth on-the-job kind of experience, resume-building experience, and at the same time driving some real impacts. And it is really about how do we elevate conversations? How do we get more people in the conversations? And back to your point, hearing that things didn’t go as well as people had hoped, while it can be really disheartening to hear because you put everything into it, you really wanted things to go really well, but the fact that they’re telling you that means that you’ve done something right, you’ve created an environment where they feel comfortable telling you that. So I think that’s a keen reflection that you have there.

Dan Walker:

It totally is. And I think feeling bad is it is this work of dissolving the ego too, I think like that. And it’s a critical part as we look to show up in this world, how do we acknowledge the ego that we all hold? How do we think through that? How do we dissolve that such that we can allow this conversation to sit in a true space of what is your experience? How can I get better at this? How can we do this better together? Rather than being like, “I don’t want to listen to that, just tell me I’m doing good work.”

And I think that’s equally a part of facilitation is how do you do the self-work such that you can step into those spaces and truly create a safe environment where we all can collaborate? I think people often, and I did too, think about facilitation purely as the mechanics of how you structure conversation, how you bring them together, but it’s also this self-work that runs into life too of how do I show up and how do I make sure I’m in that space open to what I’m hearing? That feels the big piece.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes. The success of any intervention is directly related to the internal conditions of the intervener.

Dan Walker:

Oh good, I mean, yeah, yes. It feels it. And I think I almost intuitively knew that but going through the program, it’s a conversation that continues to come up of here are the mechanics of the process, amazing. They would’ve got me to that process at Arc’teryx far faster, far more effectively, far more knowingly. But this layer of the self-work too is a thread that has constantly been hit on, how are you doing that? How are you showing up? How in the moment, in the eye of the storm when things are going poorly, how do you come back to yourself, be grounded enough that you can then create an environment where to the group you’re like, “It’s okay, we’re going to work through this, here’s where we’re going”? It is so critical. And when you see it done, it is beautiful to watch people stand in the eye of that storm calm, understood, working through, human. I mean, that’s the aspiration I guess, that’s where hopefully we’re all going.

Douglas Ferguson:

So let’s hear a little bit about Collective Imagination. I mean, what’s been some recent success stories that you’re really proud of?

Dan Walker:

Yeah, I mean, it’s fun, it’s so fun. So Collective Imagination is the consulting business I set up in the summer of last year. So I left Arc’teryx, really due to this belief in what is justice, justice being that which exists when we truly co-create the systems that we live in. I wanted to push on that. I wanted to say, “How do I find organizations trying to do this work to co-create pathways to a more just and joyful society?” That’s really what I believe at my core, I want to find organizations doing that work.

I’ve been blown away. I never intended to run a business, I never intended to do anything on my own lik this, it’s not something that organically came to me, it’s not an aspiration, it’s not something I would say I really desired or pursued, but having done it, what it has unlocked in terms of the work that I’m able to do is phenomenal. I think you name in the world what you believe to be true, and all of a sudden, I don’t know, this beautiful gift comes to you where people who are like, “That’s what I also believe. How do we collaborate on things?” It has just started to emerge. So that’s resulted in the work that I’ve been able to do.

So Burton Snowboards are doing some amazing work in this space, particularly around equitable access to nature and climate action. I got to work with them on their philanthropic strategy, so really kind of applying the same logic we did at Arc’teryx into their work, asking these deep questions of who are we? Why do we exist? Based on that, what is the highest and best use of our resources? How do we center community expertise throughout the entire process? It’s amazing, it’s a beautiful example of what it can look like in reality.

Actually, Laporte who heads up that work, the VP of Purpose and Impact there, is phenomenal. I think it’s always amazing to look at people who inspire you in the work because it can give us insights as to what are those things that I want to grow into? What are the things that I want to learn? Ashley is one of those impact leaders who I look at as, “This is what the work looks like and this is the leadership we need in the world.” So that is a plug for anybody looking and interested in the work of impact, check out Ashley and what she’s doing.

Similarly, I helped to found a nonprofit a few years back called the Outdoor Diversity Alliance. And really this sits at the heart of the outdoor industry asking that question of how do we embed equity within the outdoor industry? How do we start to do that at scale through collective action of the various brands, different brands or member companies of the Outdoor Diversity Alliance? And so I facilitated a conversation with those impact leaders from the different brands.

And from that I asked the question of like, “Okay, so we’re saying equity in the outdoor industry is what we want, what are the barriers there? Why are we not making progress on it?” And what came up really was this revelation that it wasn’t being prioritized by senior leaders. The people sat in that room were lik, “I know what I’d do. If I had the opportunity, here’s where we go. We’d center community, we’d co-create strategy, we’d work into action, and then we’d keep iterating off that. What I don’t have is prioritization by our senior leaders.” So that’s the barrier.

So the next question was, “Well, okay, well, how might we work to resolve that?” So what came up through conversation and dialogue was really we need a business case for equity in the outdoors. I’ve experienced this too, everyone within these roles is stretched and tapped and can’t get to this deeper work when they’re just trying to keep the lights on in what they’re doing. So what I did with them was they helped run a project where we brought together the very tangible business case of this work. So we’ve always had the moral imperative of the work, but in a business context that just hasn’t proved sufficient. And we say these values, that hasn’t necessarily crossed the line of where we see the work needing to go.

Instead, we started to look at these macro trends and these shifts that are really impacting the world. So we have demographic shifts, we have access to capital being more tied to the work of equity, we have future generations, both consumers and employees saying, “I demand this as part of what we’re doing and my buying decisions are my decisions on where I work will be changed as a result of it.” So we created that business case, we presented it to all the members, and now we’re figuring out how we enroll CEOs and senior leadership teams in that work to really frame that this work is not just a moral imperative, but it’s a business imperative too. There’s a demand to do this.

So again, it’s that true co-creation work, working with community leaders and business leaders to understand the needs and building together on this incremental journey towards this more just and joyful society, acknowledging that it’s generational work, it will continue long after my lifetime, but what’s that next step we can take and how can we continue to move it forward?

So those are some of the projects that have come up. And coaching too, I think a lot of people are burning in this work, they’re struggling with real burnout. The question of what’s going to happen is one that I’m hearing constantly right now, there’s a lot of political change in different countries and different contexts. What does that mean? This work’s hard, I think it’s going to get harder, what does that mean and look like? And how am I doing? I’m absolutely on fire, what does that mean? So I’ve started doing that more coaching with those impact leaders to support them through it. They’re all things I’ve experienced myself first-hand. This work is deeply challenging. The closer you get to understanding community need, the more you realize how far away we are from it.

And I think that tension of the patience needed in the work and the urgency of it is really hard to hold on the shoulders of often one individual who’s hearing all the challenges from the organization and from community and often doesn’t have anybody to turn to themselves. So that’s the space where I’ve started doing more work too. I totally love it. There are some phenomenal humans that I’m getting to work with who are doing that work. So yeah, those are some of the bits that are exciting me and then more to come, more to come, more things building, which is always great.

Douglas Ferguson:

The future looks bright?

Dan Walker:

I think so. I mean, we’ll always see. But yeah, I love what I’m getting to do. It looks bright and I think in ways I never imagined. I didn’t really know where I’m going and pieces, but it’s been stunning. And yeah, I’m excited for whatever comes next.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, as we come to an end here, I wanted to offer you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Dan Walker:

Ooh, maybe don’t sit on a squeaky chair. I’d say probably take care of yourself I think is the big piece in all of it. It’s whether we look at in the context of facilitation, it’s how do you make sure you are as an individual, you are well, and you are doing that work of dissolving the ego such that we can hold space for the collective conversation? Whether it’s you are an impact leader and you are pushing this work and you’re meeting resistance to it, how are you finding wellness yourself? How are you giving yourself grace and patience and doing that work of self-care? You’re a community leader, every day you are in community doing this work, doing the hard yards of this work that often goes unthanked, unrewarded in the ways I think it should be, unacknowledged in the ways I think it should be. In all of that, how are you truly finding the grace to acknowledge yourself and to be like, “My wellbeing is critical”?

A great mentor once said this to me, and I think it’s often said, you’re only good to the movements if you’re still in them. If we’re burnt out to the point that we leave, the movement doesn’t benefit from that. So I think especially in this moment, in these last few years, I just see it rising. I mentor on the top 25 environmentalists under 25 in Canada, and we were talking about, one of the questions at the end of the closing of the sessions was, “What is the one biggest barrier and concern you see around us not making a transition to a just future and a resilient climate future?” And the number one thing by a million miles was burnout.

And it stuck with me. And I’m like, “That is the thing.” How do we, yes, push the work forward, but push that from a place of I’m well, we’re well, our collective wellbeing is taken care of? I think if we don’t get that right, we’re going to create systems that don’t serve us and the joy that I believe what I’m seeking towards. So yeah, probably that more in this moment, it feels right to take care, I’d say.

Douglas Ferguson:

Wonderful. Well, I think that’s a call-to-action for folks to take care of themselves and put on your oxygen mask first before helping others.

Dan Walker:

It’s true.

Douglas Ferguson:

Especially true for facilitators, no matter where you’re working. And with that, Dan, I just want to say it was a great conversation. Look forward to chatting with you again soon, and thanks again for jumping on the show.

Dan Walker:

So fun, so fun. I mean, I love the conversation and I look forward to catching up in Austin in a few weeks at the summit.

Douglas Ferguson:

See you there.

Dan Walker:

Yeah, see you there.

Douglas Ferguson:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe and receive updates when new episodes are released. We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics and collaboration at voltagecontrol.com.

The post How Can Curiosity Drive Justice and Social Change in Organizations? appeared first on Voltage Control.

Let’s dive into strategies and tools, such as the Focus Finder, that help us build alignment and set the stage for a productive year ahead. By fostering alignment at every level, we can create sustainable momentum, avoid common pitfalls, and maximize our impact.

Reflection: The Foundation of Alignment

Alignment begins with reflection. Without taking the time to pause and assess where we are, it’s impossible to decide where we want to go. Reflection is not a passive act but an active practice of taking inventory. It involves looking back with a clear eye to understand what worked, what didn’t, and what resources or gaps exist.

Reflection can be thought of as a layered process. First, we review past experiences and choices. Then, we engage in what might be called a “meta-reflection”—a critical analysis of the insights we’ve uncovered. For instance, after identifying successes and challenges from the past year, we can inventory the highlights, identifying the components that contributed to those outcomes. From this inventory, we’re better equipped to decide what to prioritize.

Moreover, reflection allows us to identify patterns in our behavior and decision-making processes. Are there recurring challenges that signal deeper misalignments? Are there strengths we’ve underutilized? By asking these questions, we can uncover valuable insights that inform our next steps. A reflective practice, when built into daily, weekly, or quarterly routines, creates space for ongoing alignment rather than limiting it to a single moment in time, such as the New Year.

Reflection is also a tool for fostering resilience. By revisiting both our successes and our challenges, we build the capacity to adapt and thrive amid constant change. In this way, reflection becomes a cornerstone for personal and organizational growth.

From Resolutions to Roadmaps

Resolutions often feel like grand declarations—a bold “I will” that relies heavily on willpower. However, willpower is a finite resource. Roadmaps, on the other hand, provide a structured yet flexible guide for achieving long-term goals. They help translate aspirations into actionable steps, ensuring we stay focused and aligned.

A good roadmap begins with a clear vision of the desired destination. It includes milestones along the way to mark progress and moments for celebration. Crucially, roadmaps also account for dependencies: What do we need to succeed? Who do we rely on, and who relies on us? These dependencies must be aligned to reduce friction and foster momentum.

Flexibility is another essential feature of roadmaps. Unlike rigid plans, roadmaps allow for adaptation as circumstances change. This iterative approach—plan, act, review, adjust—ensures that the roadmap evolves alongside our growth.

Beyond practical execution, roadmaps also serve as powerful communication tools. Sharing your roadmap with your team, family, or stakeholders fosters transparency and builds alignment across the board. Whether you’re working on a personal goal or leading a complex project, a well-constructed roadmap bridges the gap between vision and action.

Another benefit of roadmaps is their ability to integrate short-term wins with long-term goals. Celebrating small milestones along the way keeps motivation high while reinforcing alignment with the broader vision. This dual focus ensures that efforts remain both purposeful and adaptable.

Prioritization: Turning Ideas into Action

With a reflective inventory and a roadmap in hand, the next step is prioritization. Prioritization is not just about choosing what to do; it’s about deciding what not to do. This requires a clear understanding of what matters most and why.

Several tools and techniques can help simplify prioritization:

1. The Vital Few: Focus on the 20% of tasks or initiatives that drive 80% of the impact.
2. Value vs. Complexity Matrix: Plot options based on their value and complexity, ensuring you’re pursuing initiatives with meaningful impact and manageable complexity.
3. Note-and-Vote: Generate ideas, then narrow the list by having individuals or teams vote on their top priorities.

Each method forces us to clarify our goals and the criteria by which we measure success. This process ensures that prioritization aligns with our values and vision.

Additionally, prioritization must be dynamic. As circumstances evolve, so too should our priorities. Regularly revisiting and adjusting our focus ensures that we remain agile and aligned with our overarching goals.

Another key to prioritization is defining criteria for success. By asking, “What makes this goal meaningful?” or “Why is this a priority?” we create alignment not only with our actions but also with our values. This depth of clarity enhances both commitment and execution.

The Harmony of Alignment

Alignment is not about achieving perfect straight lines. It’s about creating harmony—a constellation of efforts that collectively support a larger purpose. This perspective shifts the focus from rigidity to collaboration and flexibility.

Consider the analogy of aligning tires on a car. When the tires are misaligned, energy is wasted, and the car’s movement becomes inefficient. Similarly, misaligned goals—whether personal, team, or organizational—create unnecessary friction. Eliminating small points of friction in our environment or habits can significantly improve efficiency and progress.

Alignment is not just about internal focus. It extends to our relationships and external environment. Engaging loved ones, team members, and stakeholders in our goals fosters shared ownership and support. This interconnected approach transforms alignment from an individual task into a collective endeavor.

Moreover, alignment fosters a sense of purpose and clarity that can inspire and energize those around us. When a group’s efforts are harmonized, the cumulative impact far exceeds what any individual could achieve alone.

Harmony also allows for flexibility within a shared framework. Rather than enforcing uniformity, alignment becomes about mutual support, creating an environment where diverse perspectives and approaches can thrive together toward a common goal.

The Focus Finder: A Tool for Clarity and Alignment

One practical way to achieve alignment is through the Focus Finder, a structured template designed to surface priorities and clarify focus. The Focus Finder breaks down the process into four quadrants:

1. Where would you like to go?
   • Envision your desired destination or outcomes.
2. What’s holding you back?
   • Identify obstacles, challenges, and barriers.
3. Who inspires or supports you?
   • List individuals, teams, or role models who can guide or assist you.
4. What do you have?
   • Take inventory of assets, strengths, and resources.

The process begins with brainstorming and inventorying options within each quadrant. From there, the focus narrows as you identify one to three key elements in each category. This creates a shortlist of priorities that align with your vision and resources.

The Focus Finder is versatile: it can be used individually or as a team exercise, fostering dialogue and collective alignment. By combining individual insights with group discussions, the tool amplifies its impact, uncovering hidden synergies and opportunities.

When used regularly, the Focus Finder becomes a catalyst for growth. It transforms abstract goals into actionable priorities, helping individuals and teams move forward with clarity and confidence.

Continuous Improvement: Beyond the New Year

Alignment is not a one-time event. It’s a dynamic, ongoing process that benefits from regular reflection and adjustment. By embedding alignment practices into our routines, we ensure that we’re consistently moving toward our goals.

Tips for maintaining alignment include:

• Mini-Reflections: Schedule short, regular check-ins to assess progress.
• Celebrate Milestones: Recognize and celebrate small wins to maintain motivation.
• Iterative Adjustments: Revisit your roadmap and priorities regularly to adapt to new insights and circumstances.

These practices help us internalize change as a regular part of life, making the process of alignment smoother and more intuitive. They also reduce the stress and uncertainty that often accompany significant transitions, reinforcing a sense of control and purpose.

The Journey of Alignment

Alignment is about more than achieving goals; it’s about creating harmony between our aspirations, resources, and actions. By reflecting deeply, prioritizing wisely, and embracing tools like the Focus Finder, we can turn fleeting resolutions into sustainable growth.

This January, take stock of where you’ve been and where you want to go. But don’t stop there. Make reflection and alignment a regular practice, and watch as the small, consistent shifts you make today pave the way for extraordinary achievements tomorrow.

Growth isn’t about perfection or overnight transformation. It’s about steady, meaningful progress, rooted in a clear understanding of what matters most. With alignment as your guiding principle, every step you take brings you closer to your vision.

Ready to align your focus? Try the Focus Finder and take the first step toward your most impactful year yet.

The post Finding Alignment – A Blueprint for Success appeared first on Voltage Control.

“Seeing the magic of bringing people together, setting clear agendas, and leaving with action items was eye-opening for me.”- Lipika Grover

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Lipika Grover, a consultant, executive coach, and facilitator. They explore Lipi’s career journey, starting from her early experiences at Accenture, where she observed effective facilitation during high-profile client sessions. Lipi emphasizes the importance of preparation, follow-up, and creating safe spaces for dialogue. She discusses managing group dynamics, particularly with chatty executives, and highlights the value of diverse voices in discussions. The episode underscores the transformative potential of effective facilitation in driving meaningful group interactions and fostering collaboration.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

About the Guest

Lipi Grover is a leadership and resiliency coach specializing in helping individuals and teams navigate transitions and unlock their full potential. With a background in strategy consulting, sales enablement, and chief of staff roles, she brings a unique perspective to her work. Lipi empowers her clients to build emotional resilience, access their inner light, and thrive in their professional and personal lives. She also facilitates transformative workshops and coaching programs for organizations worldwide.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change. Navigating this uncertainty requires a systemic facilitative approach to gain clarity and chart pathways forward. We prepare today’s leaders for now and what’s next.

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab Podcast where I speak with Voltage Control Certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening.

If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab, and if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com.

Today. I’m with Lipi Grover at Grover Consulting where she’s an executive coach and facilitator. Welcome to the show, Lipi.

Lipika Grover:

Thank you for having me, Douglas.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s great to be chatting here today. I always love chatting with our alumni. As usual, let’s hear a little bit about how you got your start in facilitation. Was there a moment, or does the story come to mind, how you started to just get curious about facilitation?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, it’s a good question. Something I reflect on often is I started out my career back at Accenture in the strategy consulting team, and when I first started in consulting, I got put on a pretty high-profile client. It was a big tech client in the Bay Area. I was an analyst at the time, really in the room to support the partners and the senior managers that were there. I got to witness some incredible facilitation in action where I was just awestruck. I was sitting in the back of the room taking notes on my laptop and watching this magic come together.

In that time I really saw how the act of bringing people together intentionally, setting clear agendas, making sure you’re sticking to certain things like having parking lots and having clear structured questions throughout that time you’re together, really active engagement throughout the room. All of those different pieces and seeing it all come to life and leaving with clear action items of how the business was going to move forward was very eye-opening for me. That was the introduction for me of how I saw facilitation in action.

Then of course, as I grew in my career as a consultant, I got a chance to facilitate sessions of my own and really leaned into more of the creative side of facilitation when it comes to innovation and design, design thinking, getting to learn some of those practices from experts at companies like Accenture. That was the start of that career.

After that, I got a chance to get my MBA at Berkeley where I really, again, leaned into that interpersonal development side of facilitation, and I got to learn from incredible professors such as Mike Katz and some other folks there that really got a chance to see again how you can build deep connections with people through beautiful facilitation.

I guess this is a theme in my career is when I see people that are doing things that I feel passionate about or I feel like this is something I want to learn from, I start to follow that path a little bit and I try to figure out, okay, how can I do that? I feel the same way about how I got into coaching in terms of I got very powerful coaching and I was like, how can I do that and build safe spaces for others in that same way? That carried into my career at Mural, which is a virtual collaboration tool, incredible tool if anybody hasn’t used it.

At Mural, I got a chance to do more remote facilitation and lead sales enablement sessions for anywhere from 60 people to 300 people at times for go to market kickoff events and things like that. So I got to learn large scale facilitation remotely at Mural. Now as an independent consultant, I am getting a chance to figure out what that means for a small business owner like myself to facilitate sessions that feel authentic and true for others to build safe spaces and build vulnerable conversations with one another to build connection. I feel like a lot of us struggle with that in today’s world and we want to make sure to create more of that. So that’s been the journey so far.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s quite the arc. I’m going to come back to some of those early moments in Accenture, and I’m really curious about what did it feel like to be in the room as you were telling that story? I was thinking about you in the back of the room, heads down on your clipboard or what you had and just every now and then raising your head because it’s like, oh, that’s interesting. So can you maybe paint that picture a little bit more about what was catching your attention and bringing you back into the room?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, I can almost picture it vividly right now as you’re speaking about it. I remember being on a laptop at the time, just in the back of the room, and everybody had post-it notes that they were using. So part of what my role was to do afterwards was to transcribe all the post-it notes that were in the room and put into notes and all of that. But what really caught my eye in the session itself was the amount of detail I think that went into building two days of incredible content. So I think it’s the pre-work that I was very impressed by.

Then in the room itself, seeing how people commanded the room, the facilitators and the partners at Accenture at the time that I saw were really in front of it was about 20 different executives that were all there from a large tech client. I got to see how they were able to, I think in general, executives are often very chatty, and so sometimes getting everyone to really pay attention can be a challenge for that long of a time. But really getting to see how the partners developed that safe space and that space for people to raise their hand, build ground rules, figure out how to create small group conversations as well as large group conversations, was really something that I admired about the session.

Douglas Ferguson:

So yeah, I can imagine walking in thinking, oh wow, my job’s to transcribe all these stickies once it’s all done. How did your impression of that work shift from knowing that that was what you were going to have to do beforehand to then being in the session and watching it unfold and then having to do it? The act of transcribing all that stuff, did it turn out to be the same amount of work that you expected? Was it different? How did it feel doing it versus what you anticipated?

Lipika Grover:

I think because I was paying so much attention in the room, I felt very connected to what the ideas were that being put on the sticky notes. So it didn’t feel like this, oh, now I have to go and do this extra step. Of course, handwriting was the hardest part, and reading handwriting is never something that’s easy to do. But I did feel connected to the content in a way that I was able to make sense of it afterwards, and I was able to work through what the large initiatives that we needed to build were and figure out who are the owners and that thing. So I think, again, that goes to a well-facilitated session because it was very clear to me who was responsible for which parts of the session and who was responsible for the action items after the session. So again, those are all just, I think, things that you learn by doing, and that’s something I very much have admired and tried to learn from.

Douglas Ferguson:

It comes back to the planning piece and the prep you were talking about earlier, because if we plan well and we have an eye toward the outputs we want to generate and the outcomes we’re driving to, we can collect the data in a way that’s conducive to that transcription. So I’m curious, did it play out that way where it’s like it was less work than you maybe imagined because it was structured so that the things that were generated were generated in a way that was easier to maybe map into whatever you were transcribing?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, I would say so. I think it was easier than I expected. Of course this is many years ago, so maybe back then it felt like a lot more work. But I would say that what was interesting was that we built six month long initiatives out of that two day session. So getting to then see what work unfolds from that session, it was a strategy session. So I feel like that was really cool to see how it actually turned into real actionable results.

I think a lot of people have hesitation with these types of large group innovation strategy design type sessions because they feel like sometimes the actions don’t get done afterwards and there’s not enough follow-up that can happen. So, great, we did all these ideations and we built all these great things, but then when it comes to the work, it doesn’t actually get done. So that’s something that I learned in that session was like, okay, this is how you actually can turn this into actionable things and then assign owners to them and follow-up. It was a large transformational project, so I was part of it for every step of the way, and I got to see how it can be really effective.

Douglas Ferguson:

That follow through is so critical. No one wants the innovation theater where there’s a razzle dazzle workshop and then you never do anything with it.

Lipika Grover:

Exactly. I think in general, what we talked about a little bit before is that prep is important, but one of my colleagues at Mural, her name is Carolyn Hogan, and she had told me that you’re only as good as your prep and your follow-up. That really has stuck with me so much because I think in any facilitation or workshop that you’re doing, I think that the prep and the follow-up is ultimately what’s going to get you, one, the credibility, but also, two, the outcomes that you are trying to achieve.

Douglas Ferguson:

In fact, without the prep, it’s hard to know what the outcomes that you desire are because you haven’t identified them.

Lipika Grover:

Exactly. Yeah. I think in a lot of corporate sessions, sometimes there’s just not enough time going into that prep work or you don’t have the right stakeholders in the room to do that prep work. So sometimes that’s where we can fall flat. That’s where sometimes the innovation part doesn’t get to the desired outcomes if you aren’t able to spend the appropriate time and with the right people in the room.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s always critical to get the right people. A lot of times that’s including people that have been overlooked or sometimes being a little bit more discerning on who we invite. I think a lot of times people get invited that frankly don’t need to be there, it’s going to be a distraction for them, or it’s just unnecessary. The more people we have in the room, while diversity is great, it’s also going to add to the number of voices we have to consider and accommodate for and design for. So being really mindful of the best folks for that outcome I think is really critical. Have you had any experiences having to think critically about who’s perfect for the engagement?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, absolutely. I think oftentimes we know who we need in the room, and then there’s the people that we want in the room, and then there’s people that are going to maybe create noise in the room that are not actually going to add as much time. So I think that tends to be true, and it’s hard to be discerning with that, but I think purposeful inclusion or exclusion is critical to ensuring for a successful session. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s interesting you mentioned people with the noise and it’s like sometimes noise is valuable. Sometimes the people that push back and create friction are exactly who you want in the room. That could be part of their criteria, but certainly folks that are pure noise, they don’t have context or it doesn’t really pertain to them, but we just like them, so we invited them or whatever.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. Or sometimes I think people point out problems without solutions, and that can be sometimes distracting because you’re not getting to a specific point. But yeah, I do think it’s important to have people push back on your ideas. You don’t just want to call people that like you and that your ideas because that’s not going to get you to the mass outcome that you’re trying to achieve either.

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. Yeah. One thing I wanted to come back to is you mentioned executives being really chatty, and I thought for the listener, we might just spend a moment maybe expanding on what you meant there and ways of facilitating or using facilitation to work with that.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, absolutely. Of course that’s very much a generalization, but I think oftentimes, not just executives, honestly, this goes for almost anybody, but sometimes you think by speaking, I will get my point across and I will be able to share my opinion, but it may not even add to what we’re trying to discuss in that moment. Especially when you’re in really large groups, you need to be extremely focused on who is speaking and at what time and for how long you’re speaking. So in terms of ways to combat that, I think there are several different techniques that I’ve used in the past.

One of them, I think mostly remotely, this can be very helpful, but having some sort of timer when you’re having people share out ideas. Let’s say you’re going through a certain session, or you do little breakouts and then you want people to come back and share their ideas. Oftentimes that can go on for five minutes per pair or group. But in reality, in order for the facilitator to stay on time, we need to be able to cap that to a certain amount. So depending on the conversation, I tend to use the timer feature. I think when you set that ground rule upfront, people are more able to see the value of it, and they’re less likely to go over the time because they can respect that we’re all trying to stick to a certain schedule and we have other things that we want to achieve. So that’s one tip that I would share.

Then another one would be to use a tool, some sort of tool, any sort of virtual whiteboarding type of tool to get people to share their ideas asynchronously during the meeting first. So even we can use the timer again, but we can say, let’s say I have a question that I want to put out to the group. Instead of having every person go around the room and share, okay, this is what I think, this is what think. Having a timer on and then having people put their post-it notes or ideas into a whiteboard at the same exact time. Then as a facilitator, I can go and call on specific people based on the idea that they’re sharing. We can cluster, can group the ideas and then have people expand on them based on what they have to share. So that can be really, really helpful when you’re trying to collect everybody’s ideas but not have everyone speak at the same time.

Douglas Ferguson:

All of that I would categorize as limiting dialogue, and I think that’s an aha moment for a lot of folks that haven’t been exposed to facilitation much because when you think about facilitation, when you think about good meetings, I think it’s customarily conjures up this idea of a lot of dialogue. Yet some of the more powerful facilitation tools actually limit the dialogue. We don’t remove it, we just limit it. So to your point, time boxing so that let’s keep it in this frame, or even activities that might allow the dialogue to take a certain shape or a certain form that then helps focus it, but ultimately constrain it because, to your point, all the voices in the room all the time fighting for that oxygen, it’s not an effective strategy.

Lipika Grover:

I’d add one thing, you mentioned dialogue is really critical, or that’s what people think of when they think of effective workshop. I think it’s dialogue, but it’s also participation. I think people just want to feel like they are present in the room. I think with these types of asynchronous things, people still are required to be present the whole time because almost more so than when somebody is talking because sometimes easy to tune out when you’re in the room and one person is talking on a monologue for a long time. So by asking everybody to either journal, this could also be in person where they have to journal in their own paper based on a specific prompt question that we’re asking the whole group, and then we ask certain people to share and certain people to add onto their ideas. I think that being present is actually the way that people feel like they attended a very impactful workshop if they feel like they were fully there.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s fascinating. This idea of presence and walking out feeling like they were there versus something they just checked the box on, attended and split, right?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

What are some of your go-to mechanisms for driving engagement?

Lipika Grover:

I would say always starting with something that’s maybe fun/related to the current environment that we are all going through. Some sort of icebreaker. I don’t really love the word icebreaker, but just something that starts at a neutral, but also a shared ground where people can all feel like they’re tied to whatever that question might be. There’s a whole host of different types of icebreakers that of course you all share on your website as well as so many other types of icebreakers out there on the internet. But I think one thing I would say is starting somewhere neutral. Then having a really strong session design to make sure that you’re always having people engaged in a certain activity, whether that is something that they’re doing independently, whether that’s something that they’re doing in a breakout group, whether that’s something that they’re doing in a whole group.

I think making sure there’s not a lot of dead time in there, especially timing your breaks appropriately, making sure that you’re creating a space where you’re always giving them something that they should be working on or doing, and very focused time for those things. It’s like let’s say you want to do deep work on your own, you want to put in a timer for 30 minutes or 40 minutes, and you probably get your most work done in that time during the day because you have a set timer for it.

It’s like what you said earlier about being constrained, and so setting those constraints throughout the session. Then I think a skilled facilitator will ensure that there are breaks built in and making sure that they’re also having time to share their voice. That can be in breakouts so that it doesn’t feel like it’s overpowering all of the time. So I do use breakouts quite a bit for engagement because I think having deeper, smaller conversations can be really helpful, and then coming back and sharing with the broader group is something that I find to be really impactful there.

But otherwise, I think using Mural is a huge… I can talk about that more, but I feel like that’s something that from a visual perspective, most of us are visual learners, and so engagement can also be from something that’s really visual and something that’s beautiful to look at. So I tend to put a lot of time into designing my murals in a way that has a certain theme or has some sort of excitement to it, and it carries that excitement throughout the session that you’re looking forward to what’s going to be uncovered next in that visual collaboration tool.

Douglas Ferguson:

I was going to ask about that, building on the engagement piece, because a lot of times people will ask about cameras being on as their signal that there’s engagement and then their solution to driving that is just requiring cameras on. Yet, I think you talked about giving people tasks, using breakouts, making things visual as ways of driving engagement. What are your thoughts on this whole video on, video off versus some of the techniques you talked about, which are more making things hands-on and tangible and giving people tasks?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, I think it really depends on the size of the group in terms of the video on or off. I do think for small group sessions, it’s very helpful to have videos on. If everybody has their video off and one or two people have it on, it becomes a very, I think, a little bit strange dynamic for the group. But if everybody decides to be videos off, that’s fine too. I think you can have a pretty engaging session that way. But if most people are having their videos on, then I think it’s nice to ask for people to turn their cameras on. Of course, if it’s a very, very long session and people need to step away for a few minutes and eat or do something and turn their cameras off, as a facilitator, I usually just say, hey, if you need to just message me so that I know you’re here. That way, it’s not like you’re disappearing and I’m calling on you, and I’m in an awkward position now where it looks like you’re not paying attention. Now everybody else thinks they have the permission to not pay attention either.

So yeah, I do think that I just ask for communication if you’re going to turn your camera off. I wouldn’t compare the techniques like, oh, it’s this or that, but I do think that having some sort of visual type of tool can really build that engagement further because it can create another, almost like a third space for people to go and create connection. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s funny you mentioned calling on someone when they’re not there, and it reminds me of the importance of signals. How are we collecting signals on how people are participating? The visual tools provide another mechanism for that. There’s a notion of presence. Are they in the tool or not? Am I seeing outputs from them? So video on is not the only signal, and I think that’s the trick. So many people rely on that as the only signal and the only thing they’re trying to change, I think there’s a lot of depth to your point. You’re sharing a lot of stuff there.

I want to pivot to talk a little bit about your time at Mural, and then we probably have a little time to talk about the future and what’s next as well. But you mentioned doing sales enablement, and I imagine some listeners might hear that and go facilitation and sales enablement, what does that look like? So can you tell us a little bit about how you’re approaching that from, what was the tools? I’m sure you’re using Mural, but what was the experience like? If someone wanted to use facilitation for sales enablement, how might that look? What might they do?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, it’s a good question. I would say what we did at Mural, I can’t speak to what sales enablement looks like at other companies, but we had oftentimes weekly live meetings with the entire sales team, sometimes the customer success team as well. So it was more revenue enablement at that point, and marketing sometimes as well where we would bring everybody together. We’d have an usually really beautifully designed Mural to be able to teach certain concepts based on whatever enablement was needed at that time.

So if it was specific to, let’s say, how to do really good discovery, let’s say how to do really good discovery on certain sales calls, we would create Mural about that, and we would have certain questions that you can go into breakout rooms to do role plays on. We’d built certain spaces within the Mural for people to be able to practice certain concepts, whatever it is that we were teaching at that time. We would often use Mural as a place for you to share resources with the teams to be able to say, hey, these are a little resource hub of this is what you need to pay attention to for this week, new marketing collateral, new, anything that is relevant, new scripts for you to use in emails or things like that. That way it’s all in one place.

We tried really, I think, to make it very creative so that people felt like, again, that engagement during that time that they were together. I think sales enablement is something, or enablement in general, I think learning and development teams often are trying to figure out how do we make this time that we have synchronously as impactful as possible because these people are doing this outside of their day-to-day job. This is something that they are opting into doing. Sometimes it’s a required thing, but most of the time it’s to level up their own skillset. So making that synchronous time very impactful is the biggest thing that was on our minds is how can we make sure that people get a lot out of this time together because it’s a lot to ask them to do.

So we would think of different creative ways to use Mural or breakout rooms or other sort of engagement strategies to make the most of that time together and have people be present. Like Q&A at the end of the session, that’s just another idea, using Mural to have people put questions in at the end as well. Then we could take that and turn it into a whole session on its own of what are the topics that you’re struggling with right now? We can use voting even to figure out, okay, what are the things that are on your mind right now and how can we design a session around that? So just another idea there.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I know right now you’re focused a lot on resilience and the coaching work that you’re doing and helping build confidence and creating vulnerability with folks. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that’s surfacing?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. So my focus with resiliency workshops is really empowering people to understand that they can do hard things and that they have all the answers within themselves to be able to achieve everything that they want to. I think so often people stop themselves from going after their goals or their visions simply because they are scared they’re going to fail and that they’re fearful that their life is going to change in a large way. We all are creatures of habit. We like being comfortable and we don’t necessarily feel comfortable extending ourselves into new spaces.

But as a coach and as a facilitator, a lot of what I do is ask people questions to help them to get to a place where they’re able to say, actually, yeah, I want that. It’s all coming from themselves. I don’t know the answers as a coach of what they want to do. My job is purely to create that space, that vulnerable space, for people to be able to talk through what their visions are, what their goals are, and get them to believe in themselves and believe that they can do anything that they really set their minds to. So that’s the focus right now of a lot of the work that I’m doing. I do this in one-on-one sessions as well as in group sessions, and so I’m excited to see how that unfolds.

Douglas Ferguson:

So the group work, how does that play out? Is this a team that you’re working with, the folks that are working together, or is it more like a public cohort where there’s a number of individuals that you’re helping just support each other in this moment?

Lipika Grover:

It’s a great question. I’m actually launching my first cohort next year or so, early next year, where we will be creating, it’s more of a public space where people can join and they’ll be surrounded with others that also have big dreams for themselves, and they have a growth mindset, and they are just needing maybe a little bit more support and accountability from others around them to get them to where they want to go.

I piloted it already, I did a resiliency workshop earlier this year in a group setting that went really well, and people really got a sense of feeling like they found that light within themselves. That was the name of the workshop was The Light Within. I think a lot of times we think, Hey, after I do this, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We use that phrase all the time, the light at the end of the tunnel. But my whole premise is that we have light within ourselves at all times. So I just want people to be able to tap into that, especially when they’re going through maybe a change or a transition or some sort of new thing in their life. So that’s the premise of what the workshops are going to be next year.

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. Most of the folks you’re working with individually are also in this moment of transition as well?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. It’s mostly people who are either going through a career transition, a relationship transition, sometimes a move, all at the same time. Most of the time we’re all going through multiple changes at all times in our lives. I wouldn’t even say it’s always a very tangible change that it’s sometimes is truly like, hey, I want to step into a better version of myself, or I want to step into a new goal that I’ve been wanting to achieve, and I just need the mindset to be able to achieve that goal. So a lot of work is like, how do I get you from point A to point B? For example, if somebody is like, hey, I really want to go to get my MBA, but I’m working and I just don’t know how to make that leap, making that mindset shift is part of the work that we do, is just getting them to understand that they’re capable of doing it and that they are going to be able to achieve success in that. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

How often do you work with folks that know that something’s missing, they’re not feeling fulfilled, but they haven’t been able to pinpoint what it is yet?

Lipika Grover:

Very often. I think a lot of times people feel like, especially in careers, I think a lot of times it’s like, hey, I’m in this job, I’ve been in this job for a long time. I’m starting to feel like I don’t connect with it anymore, or I just know that I’m not doing what I really want to do. That’s something I hear often. It’s like, I know this is not what I really want to do, but they don’t know what that other thing is. So a lot of the work is uncovering what that North Star is going to look like for them. Some of it is just understanding your strengths, understanding who you are as a person, what you enjoy doing, what you don’t enjoy doing. Going back to the drawing board in that space. I think a lot of times people also don’t realize that what got them to this point is beautiful, and we are grateful for it all, and it may not be the thing that is needed right now in this moment.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, what do we need to leave behind?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, exactly. What can we let go of right now?

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. Awesome. Well, when you think about this work, the resiliency workshops, the coaching, all this great work you’re doing, where do you think it leads to? What’s this bright future? What is this North Star that of your own? Just like you’ve been uncovering for others, what is this North Star for you, as far as when you really peer out a ways?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. Honestly, it’s a great question and it’s something that I’ve been designing for myself as I’ve started this path myself. I think I’ve also learned to surrender a little bit. Part of the North Star work is also following the leads, if that makes sense. So sometimes it’s pulling on different threads to see where we go, and we don’t always have to have this big reveal answer of what is coming up next. So while I would love to say, I have this 10-year plan and this is what I want to do with it, I think the reality is I’m following the energy and I’m following what is bringing me joy, and I’m following that path and we’ll see where it leads. I think that’s to be discovered.

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. Well, let’s check in the future and see where it went. I love that.

Lipika Grover:

Absolutely. Yeah. One thing I can say is that the work is very impactful and the work, it doesn’t feel like work in some ways because it just feels like you’re creating a large impact on maybe a smaller number of people, and that can be really fulfilling some ways. So I just want to keep doing it.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I love that. I feel that this passion driven existence is very prevalent and common in the world of facilitation because it’s the type of career that people find through passion. It’s something that people get excited about. Some careers people get into because they’re good at it, and it’s like, I’m going to be an accountant to make a living and get paid, or I am really fascinated by models for discovering whatever, but there’s not this excitement and passion about it some other fields. I think facilitation’s one of those things that’s like, I rarely meet someone that’s doing it just because it pays the bills or whatever. It’s a passion driven field.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. I think so too. I am curious, if you don’t mind sharing too, when you started Voltage Control, how did you feel in terms of what was your North Star? Did you have the North Star where you are today, or is it something that’s evolved and changed over time?

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s funny. I have multiple threads. I think you talking about pulling on the threads resonates a bit. I always refer to myself as a change junkie. I’m just obsessed with change, and I always invite change. I’m always curious about what’s around the corner. I did have a vision early on that was very anchored in facilitation and group process and helping people. I did not necessarily have this vision of being a certifying entity. I did tell myself though, that if we ever went down that path, I wanted to take it really seriously. That certificates wouldn’t be a thing we would just hand out as something you would get for attending a workshop. That I wanted to make sure that if we did that we’re really serious about it. It really meant something. It was pass/fail. You really had to do the work to receive it so it’d be meaningful to people. To me, it’s about staying true to my values and what’s important to me. Then just, to your point, following that path, but being true to those values.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. It’s something that I would say I’ve seen over time is that the dots always connect later, this is true throughout my whole career. Even you asking, how did you get into facilitation? It’s like, I wouldn’t have said back when I was at Accenture that I was going to go into facilitation or coaching as a career, but the dots always connect later in terms of how you see the threads that we got excited by or that brought us joy along the way.

I think that’s one thing that if I could leave with is I think life is long, I think a lot of times we think life is short, which is true in a lot of ways in that we should be present when we are with our loved ones or with ourselves. I think that’s very true. But a lot of times we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do everything right now and get it all done, and we have to achieve all this, achieve, achieve, achieve. But in reality, life is long and it’s almost better if we focus on one thing at a time sometimes and just see where it leads because it’ll unfold later. Yeah, it’ll all make sense later.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. Always ask my guests to leave our listeners with a final thought. You’ve given us one there. Anything else you want to share?

Lipika Grover:

I think one thing is just trust your intuition. I think a lot of times we don’t give ourselves enough credit that we know what we want and we know what we want out of life. So I would just say trust your intuition. Sometimes you have to quiet everything else down in order to really pay attention to what it is that your head, your heart, your gut is all telling you to do. So just silence the rest of the world for a moment and figure out, okay, ask yourself what is it that I really want? That can help guide some pretty big decisions, or at least it has in my life. Whenever I have listened to that intuition, it has turned out in a better way than I think I would have if I just listened to my head or after some sort of credible thing. I think there’s so many other things that we chase in this world, but if we quiet everything down and just listen to our intuition, we’re able to follow a different path and that path is not written. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. I love that. The thing I would add, because I love that so much, is I would just say that sometimes you can’t hear the intuition. I love this idea that you say here, the quiet everything down so you can tune into it. So if you’re like me where you hear your intuition quite often, then the moments where you can’t, it can be frustrating. I don’t know what to do right now. The thing I’ve learned through the years is when I find those moments, don’t spiral into the moment, just sit back and say, it’s okay. It will speak soon. Just be in this quiet time. Let your subconscious chew on whatever it needs to chew on because it’ll speak to you soon enough. So I think both is true, right? Quieting down the noise, but if everything’s really quiet, being okay with that quiet and just knowing that when the time’s right, it’ll let you know.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, exactly. I think, to be honest, you asked me that question about North Star, and it’s like sometimes it can be frustrating to not have the answer where you’re like, oh, I wish I could give you a real answer there. But to your point, I think the answer will come as I keep doing it, and I think action is progress. Progress is motivation. So if you keep putting one step in front of the other, you’re so much more able to actually see where it unfolds.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. Excellent. Well, it’s been such a great honor and pleasure to chat today, Lipi. I really appreciate you joining me.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, likewise. I appreciate the time and I appreciate getting to be on this podcast. To all of the listeners, just keep doing what you do and put one foot in front of the other. I feel like that is my big takeaway from today. So yeah, I appreciate being on the podcast with you, Douglas.

Douglas Ferguson:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe and receive updates when new episodes are released. We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics and collaboration, voltagecontrol.com.

The post Unlocking the Secrets of Engaging Facilitation appeared first on Voltage Control.

Table of contents

• Fostering Psychological Safety
• Developing Trust
• Embracing Failure
• Ensuring Every Voice is Heard
• Turning Tension into a Catalyst for Growth
• Conclusion

Innovation is not just a desirable trait; it’s a critical component of success. Companies that fail to innovate risk falling behind, losing their competitive edge, and ultimately becoming irrelevant. However, innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It requires an environment where creativity is nurtured, where risk-taking is encouraged, and where failures are seen as stepping stones rather than setbacks. At the heart of such an environment lies psychological safety—a concept that has gained significant attention in recent years, but one that is still often misunderstood or overlooked in practice.

Psychological safety refers to the shared belief within a team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks. It is the assurance that one can speak up, offer new ideas, admit mistakes, or challenge the status quo without fear of negative consequences such as embarrassment, rejection, or punishment. When psychological safety is present, team members feel comfortable being themselves, which fosters a culture of openness, trust, and collaboration. This is the kind of culture where innovation thrives because individuals are free to explore uncharted territories without the fear of being judged or penalized.

In this blog post, we will delve into the critical role psychological safety plays in fostering innovation. We will explore how to cultivate this essential component within teams, the connection between psychological safety and trust, the importance of reframing failure, strategies for ensuring every voice is heard, and how to handle conflict constructively. We will also provide actionable steps for leaders and facilitators to implement these concepts in their own organizations. By the end of this post, you will have a comprehensive understanding of how to create and maintain a psychologically safe environment that not only supports innovation but drives it.

Fostering Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is the cornerstone of any innovative team. Without it, creativity is stifled, and meetings often become echo chambers where only the most conservative, well-rehearsed ideas are shared. This not only limits the potential for breakthrough innovations but also diminishes the overall energy and engagement within the team. When participants don’t feel safe, they are less likely to take the risks necessary to propose bold ideas or think outside the box.

To foster psychological safety, facilitators must be intentional in their approach. It begins with creating a culture of respect and empathy, where understanding takes precedence over persuasion. Facilitators should actively encourage the sharing of ideas, no matter how incomplete or unconventional they may seem. This can be achieved by setting clear expectations that all contributions are valued and by providing equal air time for all participants. When people feel that their input is genuinely appreciated, they are more likely to engage fully and bring their most creative ideas to the table.

Moreover, focusing on progress rather than perfection is crucial in creating a psychologically safe environment. Perfectionism can be a significant barrier to innovation, as it discourages experimentation and the exploration of new ideas. Facilitators can combat this by celebrating incremental improvements and framing challenges as opportunities for learning and growth rather than as failures. This approach not only fosters a more open and creative atmosphere but also encourages continuous improvement and resilience in the face of obstacles.

Developing Trust

Trust is often hailed as the foundation of effective teamwork, but it’s essential to recognize that trust doesn’t emerge in isolation. It is built on the groundwork of psychological safety. When team members feel safe to be themselves—expressing their ideas, admitting mistakes, and offering honest feedback—trust naturally follows. This trust is not just a nice-to-have; it’s a critical element of a high-performing team that can innovate and adapt in the face of challenges.

In environments where psychological safety is prioritized, team members are more willing to take interpersonal risks, such as sharing unpolished or controversial ideas. They feel confident that their contributions will be met with respect rather than criticism. This sense of security fosters deeper connections and stronger relationships within the team, which in turn builds trust. When trust is present, collaboration becomes more fluid and effective, as team members are willing to engage in open, honest dialogue without fear of negative repercussions.

Leaders and facilitators play a pivotal role in cultivating this trust. By modeling vulnerability and openness, they set the tone for the rest of the team. For example, when a leader admits their own mistakes or shares a learning experience, it signals to the team that it’s safe to do the same. This creates a ripple effect, encouraging others to step out of their comfort zones and engage more fully in the collaborative process. As trust deepens, so does the team’s ability to innovate, as members are more likely to challenge the status quo and support one another in the pursuit of new ideas.

Embracing Failure

Innovation and risk-taking are intrinsically linked, but with risk comes the potential for failure. However, in a psychologically safe environment, failure is not viewed as something to be avoided at all costs; rather, it is embraced as an integral part of the creative process. This shift in perspective is essential for teams that want to push boundaries and explore new ideas without the paralyzing fear of making mistakes.

In many traditional workplace cultures, failure is stigmatized, leading to a fear-based approach where team members are reluctant to take risks. This fear of failure can be a significant barrier to innovation, as it stifles creativity and discourages experimentation. To counteract this, leaders and facilitators must actively work to reframe failure as a valuable learning opportunity. By doing so, they create an environment where team members feel empowered to take calculated risks and explore bold ideas, knowing that even if they don’t succeed, the experience will yield valuable insights.

This reframing of failure involves several key strategies. First, leaders should openly discuss the importance of failure in the innovation process, highlighting examples where setbacks have led to significant breakthroughs. Second, when failures occur, they should be debriefed constructively, focusing on what can be learned rather than assigning blame. This approach not only normalizes failure but also reinforces the idea that mistakes are a natural part of the journey toward innovation. Finally, leaders should celebrate the effort and courage involved in taking risks, regardless of the outcome. This recognition helps to build a culture where failure is not feared but embraced as a necessary step toward success.

Ensuring Every Voice is Heard

Collaborative decision-making is a powerful process that brings together diverse perspectives to create more informed and effective outcomes. However, its success hinges on the presence of psychological safety. In environments where safety is lacking, meetings can quickly devolve into scenarios where only a few dominant voices are heard, while others are silenced or overlooked. This not only undermines the quality of the decisions made but also erodes the sense of inclusivity and engagement within the team.

For collaborative decision-making to be truly effective, facilitators must actively work to ensure that every voice is heard. This starts with creating a culture of transparency, where participants feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and opinions without fear of judgment. Facilitators can use various techniques to achieve this, such as establishing ground rules that promote equal participation, actively soliciting input from quieter team members, and using structured decision-making processes that allow everyone to contribute.

Another key aspect of fostering collaborative decision-making is the emphasis on the value of diverse perspectives. When team members come from different backgrounds or have varying levels of experience, they bring unique insights that can lead to more innovative and well-rounded solutions. However, these diverse perspectives can only be leveraged if team members feel safe to express them. Facilitators should encourage open dialogue and create opportunities for team members to share their ideas in a way that feels comfortable to them, whether through verbal contributions, written input, or anonymous feedback mechanisms.

Ultimately, when every voice is valued and heard, the decisions made are more likely to reflect the collective wisdom of the group. This not only leads to better outcomes but also strengthens the team’s sense of ownership and commitment to the decisions made. By prioritizing psychological safety in the decision-making process, leaders can ensure that their teams are fully engaged and capable of achieving their highest potential.

Turning Tension into a Catalyst for Growth

Conflict is an inevitable part of teamwork, especially in high-performing teams where passionate, diverse individuals come together to achieve a common goal. While conflict can be uncomfortable, it’s important to recognize that it is not inherently negative. When handled constructively, conflict can serve as a powerful catalyst for growth, innovation, and stronger team dynamics. However, the key to harnessing the positive potential of conflict lies in the presence of psychological safety.

In a psychologically safe environment, team members feel comfortable addressing conflicts openly and honestly. They trust that their colleagues will listen to their concerns and engage in dialogue without resorting to blame or defensiveness. This creates a space where disagreements can be explored in a productive manner, leading to deeper understanding and more creative problem-solving. Rather than avoiding conflict or allowing it to fester, teams with high psychological safety are able to confront issues head-on and use them as opportunities for learning and improvement.

Leaders and facilitators play a crucial role in guiding teams through conflict. By setting the tone for how conflicts are handled, they can help to ensure that disagreements are approached with a mindset of curiosity and collaboration rather than competition. This might involve encouraging team members to express their viewpoints fully, asking open-ended questions to explore underlying concerns, and helping the team to identify common goals and shared values. Additionally, leaders should model constructive conflict resolution by remaining calm, empathetic, and focused on finding solutions rather than assigning blame.

When conflict is approached as a learning opportunity, it can lead to more innovative solutions and stronger, more resilient teams. By prioritizing psychological safety, leaders can create an environment where conflict is not feared but embraced as a necessary part of the team’s growth and development. This approach not only helps to resolve issues more effectively but also strengthens the team’s ability to navigate future challenges with confidence and collaboration.

Conclusion

Creating a culture of psychological safety is not a one-time effort; it’s an ongoing commitment that requires consistent effort, attention, and reinforcement. As we have explored throughout this post, psychological safety is the bedrock upon which trust, collaboration, and innovation are built. It is the foundation that allows teams to take risks, embrace failure, engage in meaningful dialogue, and navigate conflict constructively. Without it, teams are likely to fall into patterns of safe, predictable behavior that stifles creativity and limits their potential.

For leaders and facilitators, the journey toward building and maintaining psychological safety in teams involves a proactive approach. This includes not only fostering an environment where every voice is heard and valued but also modeling the behaviors that encourage openness, vulnerability, and continuous learning. It also means being vigilant in addressing any signs that psychological safety is lacking, such as a lack of participation in meetings, reluctance to share ideas, or avoidance of difficult conversations.

The benefits of prioritizing psychological safety are immense. Teams that operate in such an environment are more engaged, more innovative, and more capable of achieving their collective goals. They are also better equipped to handle the challenges and uncertainties of today’s dynamic business environment. By committing to the principles of psychological safety, leaders can unlock the full potential of their teams, paving the way for continuous improvement, growth, and success.

The post Creating a Culture of Innovation Through Psychological Safety appeared first on Voltage Control.

Table of contents

• Empathy as the Foundation of Change Leadership
• Creating and Communicating a Compelling Vision
• The Power of Small Steps in Driving Big Changes
• Addressing Identity and Perceived Loss During Change
• Ensuring Effective Communication During Change
• Conclusion
• FAQ

Change is the lifeblood of any thriving organization, yet it often triggers discomfort, anxiety, and resistance. As leaders, our role is not only to implement new strategies and processes but to guide our teams through the emotional landscape that change inevitably brings. In today’s fast-paced world, where the pace of innovation and transformation shows no signs of slowing down, the ability to navigate change effectively is more crucial than ever. But how can leaders inspire their teams to embrace change rather than resist it? How do we ensure that our vision for the future is compelling enough to motivate everyone to move forward together?

In this blog, we will explore the nuanced balance between empathy and driving change, the importance of co-creating a shared vision, and the value of breaking down large transformations into manageable steps. We’ll also delve into the significance of addressing identity and perceived loss, and the critical role of effective communication in guiding teams through times of transition. By the end, you’ll have a comprehensive toolkit to lead your organization through change with confidence, compassion, and clarity.

Empathy as the Foundation of Change Leadership

As leaders, navigating organizational change is about more than just implementing new strategies—it’s about understanding the deeply human aspects involved. Change can often bring up vulnerabilities, discomfort, and fear. These emotional responses can create significant roadblocks if not acknowledged and addressed. To lead effectively through change, it’s essential that we not only guide our teams but also empathize with what they’re experiencing.

Empathy becomes a powerful tool in facilitating change when leaders engage with the transformation on a personal level. By doing so, we become more attuned to the challenges our teams face, which allows us to co-create a vision for the future that inspires rather than intimidates. Instead of focusing solely on what is being left behind, it’s crucial to emphasize what lies ahead—an exciting and motivating vision that everyone can rally around.

This empathetic approach transforms change from a source of anxiety into an opportunity for collective growth and innovation. When leaders position themselves as partners in this journey and acknowledge the emotional landscape of change, they foster a supportive environment where teams feel empowered to move forward together.

Creating and Communicating a Compelling Vision

One of the most critical aspects of successful change management is the ability to create and communicate a vision that inspires. Change is far more likely to be embraced when it’s driven by a shared and compelling vision of the future. People need to see and believe in a future that excites them, and this forward-looking approach is more effective than simply trying to move away from something undesirable.

The key to creating this vision lies in collaboration. When leaders involve their teams in shaping the future, they foster a sense of ownership and investment in the outcome. However, a vision alone is not enough. It’s also crucial to break down the path to that future into small, actionable steps. These incremental changes bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, making the journey seem less daunting and more achievable.

By combining an inspiring vision with manageable steps, leaders can guide their teams through change with confidence and enthusiasm. This approach ensures that everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction, with a shared understanding of the end goal.

The Power of Small Steps in Driving Big Changes

When it comes to implementing significant organizational changes, starting small can have a profound impact. The concept of “shrinking the change” revolves around breaking down large transformations into manageable, bite-sized actions. This strategy not only reduces the overwhelming nature of change but also builds momentum as each small step is achieved.

Human beings are naturally resistant to disrupting their routines, and this resistance can be a significant barrier to change. By focusing on small, tangible shifts, leaders can help their teams overcome this inertia. These incremental changes, when consistently applied, lead to substantial progress over time. Rather than forcing massive leaps, it’s about encouraging steady, continuous growth that ultimately leads to meaningful outcomes.

Moreover, this approach allows for the celebration of small wins along the way. Recognizing and celebrating these victories reinforces the positive aspects of the change process, helping to keep morale high and ensuring that the team remains motivated throughout the journey. Over time, these small steps accumulate, leading to the larger transformation that the organization set out to achieve.

Addressing Identity and Perceived Loss During Change

Change often triggers an internal conflict for individuals, especially when it involves a perceived loss of identity or a sense of sacrifice. This fear of losing something—whether it’s a role, a routine, or a professional identity—can be a significant barrier to embracing change. As leaders, it’s crucial to recognize and address these fears head-on.

Understanding that identity is deeply intertwined with how people view their work is key to guiding them through transitions with greater sensitivity. When leaders communicate change, they must do so in a way that aligns with their team’s values and shows them that the new path is not just different, but better. This involves more than just outlining the benefits of change; it requires a deep understanding of what your team members value and how they see themselves within the organization.

Clear, value-driven communication is essential in this process. By helping people see that they’re not just losing something but also gaining new opportunities that align with their strengths and aspirations, leaders can turn resistance into engagement. This shift in perspective helps individuals move toward something positive, rather than just moving away from the old.

Ensuring Effective Communication During Change

Effective corporate communication is the cornerstone of successful change management. In times of transition, it’s not enough to simply broadcast information. Communication needs to be a two-way street, where listening is just as important as speaking. This approach not only ensures that everyone is on the same page but also fosters a culture of trust and collaboration.

One of the most important aspects of communication during change is understanding your team’s concerns. Acknowledging the challenges they face and addressing those issues head-on can make all the difference in how change is received. When people feel heard, they are more likely to engage with and support the change. This is particularly important when roles or responsibilities are shifting, such as during the adoption of new technologies or organizational structures.

Bi-directional communication is key to building trust and ensuring that the entire organization moves forward together. By creating an open dialogue, leaders can clarify uncertainties, alleviate anxieties, and build a shared understanding and commitment to the change. This approach not only smooths the transition process but also strengthens the overall resilience of the organization.

Conclusion

Leading through change is a complex and challenging process, but it’s also an opportunity to foster growth, innovation, and stronger team cohesion. By approaching change with empathy, creating and communicating a compelling vision, breaking down large transformations into manageable steps, addressing identity and perceived loss, and ensuring effective communication, leaders can guide their organizations through transitions with confidence and success.

In today’s fast-paced world, where change is a constant, these strategies are more important than ever. They provide a roadmap for navigating the uncertainties of change while keeping your team motivated and aligned with the organization’s goals. Ultimately, successful change management is about more than just reaching a destination—it’s about bringing everyone along on the journey and emerging stronger together.

FAQ

Q: How can empathy improve change management efforts?
Empathy allows leaders to understand and address the emotional responses that come with change, such as fear and resistance. By acknowledging these feelings and engaging with teams on a personal level, leaders can create a supportive environment that facilitates smoother transitions and fosters collective growth.

Q: What role does vision play in driving change?
A compelling vision serves as a motivational force that guides teams through change. When everyone is involved in creating this vision, they are more invested in achieving it. Clear, actionable steps toward this vision help bridge the gap between the current state and the desired future, making the change process more manageable and less intimidating.

Q: Why are small steps important in the change process?
Starting with small, manageable actions helps reduce the overwhelming nature of change and builds momentum as each step is completed. This approach also allows for the celebration of small wins, which reinforces positive progress and keeps morale high, ultimately leading to successful large-scale transformations.

Q: How should leaders address perceived loss during change?
Leaders should recognize that change can trigger fears of losing identity or valued aspects of one’s role. By communicating how the new direction aligns with team members’ values and offers new opportunities, leaders can help reframe the change as a positive evolution rather than a loss.

Q: What makes communication effective during times of change?
Effective communication during change involves not just sharing information but also actively listening to and addressing team members’ concerns. This two-way communication builds trust, ensures everyone is aligned with the change, and helps to alleviate fears and uncertainties, making the transition smoother and more successful.

The post Navigating Change with Empathy and Vision appeared first on Voltage Control.

Meetings are a cornerstone of organizational life, yet they often fall short of their potential. Too frequently, they become time-consuming events that lack focus, direction, or meaningful outcomes. But when facilitated effectively, meetings can be powerful tools for driving collaboration, making decisions, and fostering a positive organizational culture. The key to achieving this lies in the approach to meeting facilitation. By incorporating a set of essential qualities and strategies, leaders can transform their meetings into productive, engaging, and culturally significant events.

Effective meeting facilitation goes beyond merely managing time or adhering to an agenda—it’s about creating an environment where ideas can flourish, decisions are made collaboratively, and participants leave with a sense of purpose and direction. In today’s fast-paced and often remote work environments, the ability to conduct impactful meetings is more important than ever. Facilitators must be adept at balancing the needs of diverse participants, guiding discussions toward meaningful outcomes, and reinforcing the cultural values that underpin the organization.

This blog delves into the art of meeting facilitation, exploring the foundational qualities that drive success, strategies for setting the right tone, techniques for maintaining focus while ensuring inclusivity, and the importance of closing with clarity and purpose. We’ll also discuss how each meeting can influence and shape the broader culture of your organization. Whether you are leading a small team or managing a large group, these insights will help you conduct meetings that not only achieve their goals but also contribute to a more positive and productive organizational culture.

The Five Essential Qualities of Effective Meeting Facilitation

Successful meeting facilitation starts with a solid foundation built on five essential qualities: being purposed, inclusive, crafted, clear, and adaptive. These qualities should guide every aspect of your facilitation, from preparation to execution, ensuring that your meetings are not only effective but also engaging and collaborative.

Being purposed means starting with a well-defined purpose. This purpose informs the preparation process, guiding you in setting clear objectives, developing a solid agenda, and clearly communicating participant roles. A meeting without a clear purpose can easily become unproductive, leading to frustration and disengagement among participants. When everyone understands the purpose and their responsibilities, the meeting is more likely to run smoothly and achieve its objectives. Preparation also involves logistical details, such as distributing necessary materials in advance and ensuring the availability of supplies and resources, further contributing to a successful session.

Inclusivity is another critical quality. Ensuring that all voices are heard and valued creates a collaborative environment where participants feel engaged and invested in the outcomes. A meeting that lacks inclusivity can miss out on valuable insights and perspectives, ultimately leading to less effective decision-making. Crafting your meetings with care—by designing thoughtful agendas and choosing the right facilitation techniques—helps maintain focus and flow, allowing the conversation to stay on track while welcoming diverse contributions.

Clarity in communication is essential throughout the meeting, from the initial invitation to the final summary. Clear communication helps prevent misunderstandings and ensures that all participants are aligned on the meeting’s goals and expectations. Finally, adaptability allows you to respond to the dynamic nature of meetings, adjusting your approach as needed to keep the discussion productive and on track. Flexibility in facilitation enables you to manage unexpected challenges and shifts in the conversation, ensuring that the meeting remains focused and productive even when unforeseen issues arise.

By embedding these five qualities into your facilitation practice, you create a structure that supports the meeting’s goals and fosters a collaborative and engaging environment for all participants. This approach not only enhances the effectiveness of individual meetings but also contributes to building a culture of effective communication and collaboration within the organization.

Setting a Positive Tone at the Start of Meetings

The tone of a meeting is often set in the first few minutes, and as a facilitator, your actions play a crucial role in establishing that tone. The way you welcome participants, the clarity with which you communicate the meeting’s purpose, and the initial energy you bring all contribute to creating an environment conducive to productive collaboration.

When participants walk into the room, whether physical or virtual, the first thing they encounter should be a welcoming atmosphere. This could be as simple as a warm greeting, a brief check-in to make sure everyone is comfortable, or a small icebreaker to get participants talking and engaged. A positive start can significantly impact the overall mood of the meeting, setting the stage for open and constructive dialogue. Conversely, if you’re busy with last-minute adjustments or appear stressed, it can create a sense of disorganization and distract from the focus of the meeting.

By intentionally welcoming participants, you set a positive tone that encourages openness and readiness to contribute. This initial interaction is also an opportunity to establish rapport with your participants, making them feel more at ease and willing to share their ideas. The environment you create in those first few moments can influence how engaged and motivated participants will be throughout the session.

Once the meeting begins, clearly communicating the ground rules and objectives is essential. These guidelines help manage participation, set expectations for behavior, and ensure that everyone understands the goals of the meeting. Anchoring the session in its purpose helps manage participation and invites active engagement from everyone. This early clarity ensures that all participants are aligned and ready to contribute meaningfully. By setting a positive tone from the outset, you create an environment where participants feel valued, focused, and ready to collaborate toward the meeting’s objectives.

In addition to verbal communication, the physical or virtual setup of the meeting space can also contribute to setting the tone. In a physical setting, arranging the room in a way that promotes visibility and interaction among participants can enhance engagement. In virtual meetings, ensuring that the technology is functioning smoothly and that participants are familiar with the platform can help reduce stress and create a more focused environment.

Staying on Track While Ensuring Inclusivity

Guiding a meeting effectively requires a delicate balance between keeping the discussion on track and ensuring that every participant has a chance to contribute. Active listening plays a key role in striking this balance, allowing you to steer the conversation in a way that honors diverse perspectives while staying focused on the meeting’s objectives.

Active listening involves more than just hearing what’s being said—it requires understanding the underlying concerns, ideas, and emotions expressed by participants. It also involves being present in the moment, avoiding distractions, and giving your full attention to the speaker. By truly engaging with the contributions of each participant, you can ensure that the discussion remains relevant and that all voices are heard. This is particularly important when managing participation in meetings, as some individuals may be more vocal while others may need encouragement to share their thoughts.

Balancing participation also means being aware of who is speaking and who isn’t. As a facilitator, you should be mindful of the dynamics in the room and take steps to ensure that quieter participants have the opportunity to share their insights. Inviting quieter voices into the discussion can be done through open-ended questions or by directly asking for input from specific participants. This not only enriches the conversation but also helps build confidence among participants who may be less inclined to speak up.

If the conversation begins to diverge from the agenda, it’s important to check in with the group: Is this tangent valuable, or do we need to refocus? Facilitators must be adept at recognizing when a discussion is veering off course and gently guiding it back to the topic at hand. However, it’s also important to remain flexible—sometimes, these tangents can lead to unexpected insights or solutions that are worth exploring. This approach helps maintain the meeting’s focus while ensuring that decisions are made collaboratively and with broad input.

In addition to guiding the discussion, facilitators should also be prepared to manage conflicts or disagreements that may arise during the meeting. Addressing these issues constructively and ensuring that all perspectives are considered can prevent the conversation from derailing and help maintain a positive, productive atmosphere.

Ending with Clarity and Purpose

Closing a meeting effectively is just as important as how it begins. A strong conclusion ensures that participants leave with a clear understanding of the outcomes, decisions made, and next steps. This avoids the common pitfall of meetings that end without a clear direction, leaving attendees uncertain about what to do next.

As a facilitator, it’s your role to guide the group toward consensus or decision-making and to summarize the key points before the meeting wraps up. This not only reinforces what was discussed but also provides a sense of closure. Summarizing the key decisions, assigned tasks, and next steps ensures that everyone knows their responsibilities moving forward. This clarity helps to prevent misunderstandings and ensures that all participants are aligned on what needs to happen next.

Participants should walk away knowing exactly what actions to take and feeling confident about the path ahead. A clear and well-communicated wrap-up also serves to reinforce the value of the meeting, demonstrating that the time spent was productive and has led to concrete outcomes. This practice of closing with clarity and purpose can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your meetings, as it leaves participants with a sense of accomplishment and direction.

A well-structured closing not only reinforces the meeting’s outcomes but also helps to drive progress by turning discussions into actionable steps. This practice ensures that your meetings have a lasting impact, driving progress rather than just more discussion. Additionally, providing a brief summary of the meeting’s outcomes in written form, such as in meeting minutes or a follow-up email, can help to solidify the decisions made and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Furthermore, facilitators can use the closing moments of a meeting to gather feedback from participants. Asking for quick reflections or suggestions on how future meetings can be improved can provide valuable insights and help continuously enhance the effectiveness of your facilitation practices.

Using Meetings to Influence Organizational Culture

Every meeting is an opportunity to shape and influence your organization’s broader culture. By approaching each session with the same level of intention and care as you would a larger workshop or training, you set a standard for how collaboration and communication should occur across the organization.

A well-facilitated meeting can model positive behaviors such as clear communication, purposeful engagement, and mutual respect—behaviors that can ripple through the organization. Over time, these practices can help foster a culture where meetings are seen as valuable, productive spaces rather than time sinks. When meetings consistently demonstrate these values, they become a tool for reinforcing and spreading a culture of effective, impactful collaboration throughout the organization.

Think of each meeting as more than just a single event; it’s a chance to reinforce and spread a culture of effective, impactful collaboration. By doing so, you contribute to a positive shift in how your organization approaches communication and decision-making, ultimately leading to a more cohesive and productive work environment.

In addition to reinforcing positive behaviors, meetings can also serve as a platform for cultural change within an organization. For example, if an organization is striving to become more innovative, meetings can be designed to encourage creative thinking and risk-taking. By incorporating activities that foster brainstorming and out-of-the-box thinking, facilitators can help embed these values into the organizational culture.

Moreover, the way meetings are conducted can reflect and reinforce the organization’s broader strategic goals. For instance, if transparency and accountability are core values, meetings should be structured to promote open dialogue, clear communication of decisions, and follow-through on action items. Over time, these practices can help to align the organization’s day-to-day operations with its long-term vision and values.

Conclusion

Meeting facilitation is an art that, when mastered, can transform your organization’s approach to collaboration, decision-making, and culture-building. By incorporating the five essential qualities of effective facilitation—being purposed, inclusive, crafted, clear, and adaptive—you create a strong foundation for your meetings. Setting a positive tone from the outset, balancing participation while staying on track, and ensuring clarity and purpose at the close are all critical strategies for successful facilitation.

Beyond the immediate outcomes of any single meeting, consider the broader impact that effective meeting facilitation can have on your organization’s culture. Each meeting is an opportunity to model and reinforce the values that drive your team’s success, from clear communication to purposeful engagement. By approaching your meetings with intention and care, you can turn them into powerful tools for shaping a culture of collaboration, respect, and productivity.

In a world where meetings are often seen as necessary evils, your ability to facilitate them effectively can set your organization apart. By focusing on the qualities and strategies discussed in this blog, you can ensure that your meetings are not only productive but also contribute to a more positive and engaged organizational culture. Remember, every meeting is a chance to influence how your organization communicates, collaborates, and grows—make each one count.

FAQ

Q: What are the five essential qualities of effective meeting facilitation?
The five essential qualities of effective meeting facilitation are being purposed, inclusive, crafted, clear, and adaptive. These qualities guide the preparation and execution of meetings, ensuring that they are productive, engaging, and aligned with the organization’s goals.

Q: How can I set a positive tone at the start of a meeting?
Setting a positive tone begins with welcoming participants warmly and clearly communicating the meeting’s objectives and ground rules. This early clarity helps align participants and encourages active engagement from the outset. Additionally, the physical or virtual setup of the meeting space can contribute to creating a focused and positive environment.

Q: How do I balance participation while keeping the meeting on track?
Balancing participation involves actively listening to all participants, inviting quieter voices into the conversation, and steering the discussion back to the agenda if it starts to diverge. Open-ended questions and periodic check-ins with the group can help maintain focus while ensuring inclusivity. Managing conflicts or disagreements constructively is also crucial to keeping the meeting on track.

Q: Why is it important to close meetings with clarity and purpose?
Closing meetings with clarity and purpose ensures that participants leave with a clear understanding of the decisions made, next steps, and their responsibilities. This practice turns discussions into actionable steps, driving progress rather than just more conversation. Providing a written summary of the meeting’s outcomes can further solidify the decisions and ensure alignment among participants.

Q: How can meetings influence organizational culture?
Meetings are opportunities to model and reinforce positive behaviors such as clear communication, purposeful engagement, and mutual respect. By facilitating meetings effectively, you can contribute to a culture where collaboration and communication are valued and productive, shaping the broader organizational culture over time. Additionally, meetings can be used to align day-to-day operations with the organization’s strategic goals and values.

The post Elevating Your Meeting Facilitation appeared first on Voltage Control.

Table of contents

• Preparing for Difficult Conversations
• Exploring the Context 
• Managing Tension and Conflict
• Keeping Conversations Constructive
• Ensuring Meetings End on a Clear and Positive Note
• Conclusion
• FAQ

Difficult conversations are an inevitable part of facilitation and leadership. Whether you’re guiding a group through sensitive topics or managing conflicts that arise during a session, your ability to handle these challenging moments effectively can significantly impact the outcomes. The key to success often lies in the preparation and strategies you employ before and during these interactions. In this blog, we will explore essential techniques for preparing yourself mentally and emotionally for difficult conversations, using context to navigate challenging moments, managing tension and conflict in meetings, keeping discussions constructive when emotions run high, and ensuring that meetings end on a clear and positive note, even after tough discussions.

Facilitation, at its core, is about guiding groups toward collective understanding and decision-making. However, when emotions flare and conflicts emerge, the facilitator’s role becomes even more critical. How you prepare for these moments, the techniques you use to maintain a constructive atmosphere, and the strategies you employ to bring the conversation to a positive conclusion all contribute to your effectiveness as a leader. By mastering these skills, you can transform difficult conversations from potential roadblocks into opportunities for growth, understanding, and collaboration.

Preparing for Difficult Conversations

In facilitation and leadership, encountering difficult conversations is inevitable. The key to handling these moments effectively often lies in the groundwork you do before the session even begins. Preparing yourself—both mentally and emotionally—is essential for staying calm and present when things heat up. This preparation involves more than just logistical planning; it’s about cultivating the right mindset to navigate the challenges that may arise.

Cultivating equanimity, grounding yourself through breathwork, and developing an awareness of your internal and external feelings are all critical practices that help maintain your composure. Equanimity, or maintaining inner calmness, allows you to approach difficult conversations with a balanced perspective, reducing the likelihood of reactive responses. Grounding techniques, such as deep breathing or mindfulness exercises, can help you stay centered, especially when the conversation becomes tense. Developing an awareness of your emotions and triggers also enables you to manage your responses more effectively, ensuring that you remain in control of the situation.

Beyond self-preparation, it’s important to establish a strong foundation for the session itself. This includes having a clear purpose, setting ground rules, and discussing potential conflict scenarios ahead of time. By laying this groundwork, you create a framework that you can rely on when challenges arise, allowing you to respond thoughtfully rather than reactively. When difficult moments occur, your preparation allows you to re-ground yourself quickly, assess the situation calmly, and guide the conversation back on track. This approach not only helps manage the immediate conflict but also sets a positive example for others in the room, demonstrating that challenges can be navigated with composure and clarity.

Exploring the Context 

Context is everything when facilitating challenging situations. Understanding why participants react the way they do, and ensuring everyone is aligned with the purpose of the session, can significantly impact how tensions are managed. Context provides the backdrop against which all interactions occur, and being attuned to it can make the difference between a conversation that spirals out of control and one that leads to constructive outcomes.

Before any session, it’s crucial to plan for various outcomes, including potential conflicts. This might involve creating contingency plans or developing multiple versions of your agenda that account for different scenarios. By anticipating challenges, you equip yourself with the flexibility to adapt to whatever arises. Additionally, establishing ground rules and discussing them openly with the group can help set expectations for behavior and provide a shared framework for handling disagreements. When everyone understands the context and the boundaries within which the discussion will occur, it becomes easier to manage conflicts as they arise.

When tensions do arise, context allows you to address them directly without derailing the session. By anchoring the conversation back to its purpose and the agreed-upon ground rules, you can guide the group through the conflict in a way that maintains focus and fosters understanding. For example, reminding participants of the session’s goals and how their input contributes to these objectives can help to de-escalate emotions and re-align the discussion with its intended purpose. This contextual anchoring not only helps to manage the immediate tension but also reinforces the importance of staying connected to the session’s overarching goals, ensuring that the group moves forward together.

Managing Tension and Conflict

Managing tension and conflict during facilitation is a delicate art. The first step is to acknowledge the tension rather than ignore it. When conflicts arise, openly naming and labeling the issues helps to bring them to the surface where they can be addressed constructively. This approach prevents underlying issues from festering and allows the group to focus on resolving the conflict rather than avoiding it. Acknowledging tension also demonstrates that you, as the facilitator, are aware of the group’s dynamics and are committed to addressing challenges head-on.

Active listening is another powerful tool in managing conflict. By listening with curiosity and compassion, you can de-escalate heated situations and show participants that their concerns are being heard. This involves not only hearing the words being spoken but also understanding the emotions and intentions behind them. Active listening signals to participants that their perspectives are valued, which can reduce defensiveness and open the door to more constructive dialogue. Encouraging the group to separate the person from the problem—focusing on ideas rather than individuals—helps maintain a respectful and solution-oriented atmosphere.

Reframing negative comments into more constructive perspectives can also shift the tone of the conversation, making it easier to move forward. For instance, if a participant expresses frustration, you might acknowledge their concern while guiding the discussion towards potential solutions. This technique helps to transform conflict into an opportunity for growth and understanding within the group. Facilitators who can navigate tension with skill create environments where difficult conversations lead to positive outcomes, fostering a culture of openness and collaboration.

Keeping Conversations Constructive

When emotions run high during a discussion, keeping the conversation constructive requires thoughtful de-escalation techniques. One of the most effective methods is to simply pause. Giving everyone a moment to breathe and reflect can prevent the conversation from spiraling out of control. A brief pause allows participants to collect their thoughts, helping to calm the room and refocus on the issues at hand. This pause doesn’t have to be long—even a few seconds can make a significant difference in resetting the tone of the discussion.

Summarizing and clarifying what’s been said is another powerful tool. By distilling the conversation into clear, concise points, you can provide much-needed clarity and help participants see the bigger picture. This not only helps to lower the emotional temperature but also ensures that everyone is on the same page, reducing misunderstandings and keeping the discussion on track. When emotions are high, misunderstandings are more likely to occur, so taking the time to clarify key points is crucial for maintaining a constructive dialogue.

Finally, providing clear guidance on the next steps can help ground the conversation in actionable outcomes. By focusing on what comes next, you can steer the group away from unproductive conflict and towards a more collaborative and solution-oriented mindset. For example, after summarizing the discussion, you might outline specific actions that need to be taken, ensuring that the conversation ends with a sense of direction and purpose. This focus on actionable outcomes not only helps to resolve the immediate conflict but also builds momentum for continued progress, reinforcing the group’s commitment to working together.

Ensuring Meetings End on a Clear and Positive Note

Closing a meeting with clarity is crucial, especially after navigating difficult or challenging discussions. The end of a meeting is your opportunity to ensure that everyone leaves with a shared understanding of what was accomplished and what comes next. Recapping key decisions and summarizing the main points of discussion can help solidify the outcomes and provide participants with a clear sense of direction. This recap not only reinforces the decisions made but also helps to ensure that everyone is aligned and ready to move forward.

Acknowledging key contributions is another important aspect of a strong closing. Recognizing the efforts and inputs of participants helps to diffuse any lingering tension and reinforces the value of diverse perspectives. This recognition can transform even a heated discussion into a constructive experience, leaving participants feeling heard and valued. By acknowledging contributions, you also foster a culture of appreciation, where participants are more likely to engage actively in future discussions.

Finally, reflecting on the progress made during the meeting helps to frame the discussion in a positive light, regardless of how challenging it may have been. By closing with clarity and purpose, you set the stage for continued collaboration and ensure that everyone leaves the meeting with a sense of resolution and readiness to move forward. This final reflection helps to cement the group’s achievements and provides a positive note on which to end the session, encouraging participants to maintain their momentum in the days ahead.

Conclusion

Difficult conversations are a natural part of facilitation and leadership, but they don’t have to derail your sessions or meetings. By preparing yourself mentally and emotionally, understanding the context, managing tension and conflict with skill, keeping discussions constructive, and ensuring meetings end on a clear and positive note, you can turn challenging moments into opportunities for growth and collaboration. The ability to navigate these conversations effectively not only enhances your facilitation skills but also strengthens your leadership, enabling you to guide your teams with confidence and composure.

As you continue to develop your facilitation and leadership skills, remember that difficult conversations are not obstacles but opportunities. Each challenging moment offers a chance to build deeper understanding, foster greater collaboration, and reinforce the values that drive your team’s success. By approaching these moments with preparation, empathy, and a focus on constructive outcomes, you can lead with greater effectiveness and resilience, transforming potential conflicts into pathways for progress.

FAQ

Q: How can I prepare myself for difficult conversations in facilitation?
Preparing for difficult conversations involves cultivating equanimity, grounding yourself through breath work, and developing an awareness of your internal and external feelings. Additionally, setting a clear purpose, ground rules, and discussing potential conflict scenarios ahead of time can help create a framework for navigating challenges effectively.

Q: How can context help in navigating difficult moments during facilitation?
Understanding the context—both the broader purpose of the session and the specific dynamics at play—enables you to address tensions directly without derailing the session. By anchoring the conversation back to its purpose and agreed-upon ground rules, you can guide the group through conflicts in a constructive manner.

Q: What techniques can I use to manage tension and conflict in meetings?
Techniques for managing tension and conflict include acknowledging the tension openly, using active listening to understand participants’ concerns, and reframing negative comments into constructive perspectives. These approaches help to de-escalate conflict and maintain a solution-oriented atmosphere.

Q: How can I keep a conversation constructive when emotions run high?
To keep a conversation constructive when emotions run high, use de-escalation techniques such as pausing to allow participants to reflect, summarizing and clarifying what’s been said, and providing clear guidance on the next steps. These strategies help to calm the discussion and focus on actionable outcomes.

Q: How can I ensure meetings end on a clear and positive note?
To ensure meetings end on a clear and positive note, recap key decisions, acknowledge participants’ contributions, and reflect on the progress made. This approach helps to solidify outcomes, diffuse any lingering tension, and set the stage for continued collaboration.

The post Navigating Difficult Conversations appeared first on Voltage Control.

“If you don’t have those underpinnings of being anchored to something, it’s really difficult to do anything else. That’s just baseline sort of human functioning.”- Kellie Artis

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Kelly Artis, founder of Mission Identity, who empowers women through the Enneagram. The discussion highlights the transformative power of facilitation, particularly through Kelly’s experiences in the George W. Bush Institute’s Veteran Leadership Program. Kelly shares her journey into facilitation, emphasizing the importance of psychological safety, empathy, and deeper connections in group settings. She reflects on how effective facilitation goes beyond traditional teaching, fostering meaningful interactions and personal growth. The episode underscores the impact of creating safe spaces for dialogue and collaboration.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

About the Guest

Kellie Artis is a passionate advocate for high-achieving women, bringing nearly two decades of expertise in communications and personal development to her role as the founder of Mission Identity. As the Director of Communications at Virtual Veterans Communities (VVC), Kellie excels in supporting military-connected students who seek to advance in their careers and personal lives. A scholar of the George W. Bush Institute Stand-To Veteran Leadership Program, Kellie is dedicated to empowering women through leadership and community engagement. She has earned certifications as a Certified Narrative Enneagram Teacher and Professional Certified Marketer, leading workshops that promote self-discovery and growth. Her work has been featured on platforms like Fox News and Military.com, where she is recognized as a respected voice in helping women achieve their full potential.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change. Navigating this uncertainty requires a systemic facilitative approach to gain clarity and chart pathways forward. We prepare today’s leaders for now and what’s next.

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Transcript

Douglas:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast where I speak with vultures control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our facilitation lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltage control.com/facilitation lab, and if you’d like to learn more about our 12 week facilitation certification program, you can read about it@voltagecontrol.com. Today I’m with Kelly Artis, the founder of Mission Identity, where she empowers women to reach their full potential by utilizing the Enneagram as a powerful tool for self-discovery, personal growth, and leadership excellence. Welcome to the show, Kelly.

Kellie Artis:

Thanks so much, Douglas. I’m excited to be here.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s great to have you. It’s always amazing to me to watch folks that are making these transitions into coaching practices and becoming solopreneurs and really empowering the way they think about work and taking control of their destiny, so to speak.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, yeah. It’s wild and crazy and fraught with uncertainty, but yeah, it’s something to follow your passion, I think.

Douglas:

Well, it’s interesting you mentioned uncertainty. I always like to remind folks that most things are uncertain, and a lot of times we fool ourselves into thinking that there’s certainty or there things are knowable. It is like the safe little pod around ourselves that we think that is there. It’s not really an illusion for the most part when it’s there, and so if you become comfortable with complexity and chaos, life becomes more fun and more easy to engage with. Not easy, but easier,

Kellie Artis:

Right? Yeah. You’re less attached to it and you can just kind of flow. That’s the goal. Yeah. It’s almost like an entitlement. You’re like, things should be certain and they’re not.

Douglas:

Yeah, and I wonder how much that flow comes up in the work that you do with your clients when you’re coaching.

Kellie Artis:

Oh, I mean, it’s almost constant, right? It’s always like, okay, even the Enneagram as a tool in and of itself, which I’m sure we’ll talk more about later, it’s a professional and personal development sort of framework that you can use for self-discovery and inner observation, all of these things. But almost everyone I talk to is looking for the goal, right? Okay, how do we get there? How do I achieve it quickly? How do I do this more efficient? I’m like, no, no, no. The goal is to just allow and just kind of flow and be more okay with the flow and be less limited the pursuit of something. So yeah, I mean, it always plays a part. Is it achievable? Even saying is it achievable is like it’s kind of missing the point, right? It’s enjoyment, it’s contentment, satisfaction, all of that stuff. It’s a work in progress in my own life too. Plays, I don’t know what it actually looks like or what it means, but the pursuit and the enjoyment of the work is why I do it.

Douglas :

Awesome. Well, let’s take a little step back and look at the formative moments for you. As you were starting to realize facilitation was a thing there, skillsets and tools and the discipline around it, and I think it was the George W. Bush Institute of Veteran Leadership Program. I recall you saying that was the pivotal moment for you.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah. I’ve attended all kinds of things. I’ve attended facilitated workshops before and working sessions, and many of the various groups and nonprofits and organizations that I volunteer and work with. I’ve observed good sessions and not so great sessions. Some that I’ve walked away frustrated by and some that I was like, oh, that was really great, but never put it together that that was an actual sort of framework. I thought these folks were just particularly gifted and creative and being able to gather people and convene them in a purposeful way. When I was accepted into, yes, it’s the George W. Bush Institute’s Veteran Leadership Program. They do an annual cohort where they gather. There were 34 of us I think, for our class last year, folks that are working in military family and veteran spaces, so we aren’t necessarily all connected to the military. I happen to be, my husband has been active duty for 20 years now, but gathered all of us together for a five month leadership cohort, but the day one, first session, very first session, I was super apprehensive.

I don’t know where these people are all coming from. There’s a lot of imposter syndrome. The veteran folks who have served often, for those of us who aren’t veterans, feel like they kind of have ownership of this space so often, and just by nature of being a military spouse, I feel like I’ve always kind of had to elbow my way into certain conversations like, Hey, we’re here too. We have things to say. So anyway, I came in with all that apprehension and just really almost skeptical of how this was going to all work. Was I going to get anything out of it? Was I going to be heard and noticed, and oh, so quickly. All of that was allayed by nature of the fact that we had the most amazing facilitator I think I’ve ever experienced. This guy’s name is Todd Connor. He’s a veteran and super engaged in the veteran space, does amazing work in everything that he does, but one of his roles is as the facilitator for this specific program, and I was just in awe of being able to walk into a space and literally from the first 20 minute session we had realize we’re going to be well taken care of.

This container is well made, it’s protected. We can be vulnerable. There was psychological safety established almost immediately, and I know I was supposed to be taking part in it, but I was really doing my Enneagram five thing of stepping back and observing what was happening, and from that moment on, I was just like, it shifted my project that I was working on during the cohort. It just kind of gave me this awesome opportunity to sit back and say, wow, this is how you do complicated things, gathering really diverse groups of people and coming up with something great at the end. Wow.

Douglas:

Do you remember if there was anyone in attendance there when you were in observation mode? I’m just curious if you noticed folks that were especially moved by the experience that, because often that folks come into spaces like that and have never really witnessed good facilitation before.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, you can almost categorize personify different types of people. Who are the people that are going to jive with what they’re going to support the facilitator. There are people that are kind of dissenters in the back. They’re going to critique everything. This group was no different. We had all of that, but I feel like the people that would have otherwise not been as engaged, kind of just like, I’m here. I’m going to say my thing. I’m not going to ask questions. I’m only going to give comments. I want people to hear me and see that I’m here. I think it checked them really quickly. Oh, I’m expected to engage authentically. Just example, the very first group sort of table question that we practiced or were given was, Hey, everyone at your group write this down and then share with your table what’s one thing that people often get wrong about you.

I was like, that’s profound. That right there, you’re just laying bare. Your biggest insecurity in this really sort of just sneaky way. How do people misread you? So you’re being misread, obviously, I was misreading everyone in the room because I’m making judgements, but you’re able to then so quickly say, people get this wrong about me. And then you’ve developed empathy around the table for people who now have compassion for you about this thing that you’re self-conscious about and that you probably over project for, compensate for. Anyway, I just thought it was amazing. So in a way, it had us immediately leave all the egos at the door, and they were able to somehow kind of sustain that through every gathering. We talk about Priya Parker’s thresholds when you enter and leave the space, that was a very intentional thing that was done in order to remind us every single time that we walked into the room that we were convened in, that this is the way we’re going to behave. This is who we’re going to be. We’re not going to bring in all of our rank and labels and other sort of egos into the space.

Douglas:

That sort of thing is also really powerful when you might be judging the room, especially if you hear someone say something and it’s like, oh, wow, I totally thought that about them.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, I was guilty on

Douglas:

Several counts. They’re explaining why that’s a wrong perspective, and then it really helps everyone start to maybe just observe and think a little more versus jumping to conclusions

Kellie Artis:

A hundred percent, and I mean, I loved being able to share mine. I never share that, and I was like, oh, people think I’m aloof, and I mean, I could be perceived that way, but I’m really just trying to take it all in. I’m overwhelmed by it all. I’m more of an observer, so being able to say that and like, oh, there’s so much more to you than what I’m seeing in the moment. I loved it. I thought it was a great practice.

Douglas:

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the aloof thing. That’s one. That’s to the point I just made really powerful for connection across the group, not only for things outside the group, but in the group especially. So because if someone is thinking, well, she’s a little aloof, but then you say that, and then they realize, they start to realize, oh, wow, she is a processor,

Kellie Artis:

So

Douglas:

She’s absorbing things in a different way. They’ll just have a different perspective on you and a different level of empathy around who you are and be able to approach you in a more connected way.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, I think so.

Douglas:

Did you notice any of that having an influence on how folks related or connected across the group?

Kellie Artis:

I mean, so quickly. Personal stories were laid bare. It didn’t just stop at a characteristic because of shared experiences of this type of convening of people who are all connected to the military at a certain point in their career. We’ve been through the past 20 years of global war, so there were really close to the surface personal stories that came out in that literal first hour of us being together. So not only did we get the high level, this is a misjudgment that people often have about me, but here’s some of the personal context that also plays into my passion, the thing that I’m pursuing and that I’m working on right now. This is why this is important to me because it’s touched me personally. So just again, so quickly, there’s just humanity and compassion that often I think, in other scenarios and other maybe less well facilitated types of convenings would take forever for that to come up. So because we just,

Douglas:

If even,

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, if ever, right? Yeah, exactly. So the shared sort of agreement that this is how we are not going to share this beyond the group. This is our space, and this should be sacred, and just putting all that out there, making that clear, I think gave us all permission to say, okay, we can handle it. This is a group that will support us. And I mean, again, the relationships were instantly founded and forged. I mean, I can’t imagine never not being in touch with most of my cohort members because we were able to just so quickly connect.

Douglas:

Yeah. So it seems like Todd’s approach really broke some barriers down, and I’m curious, how did that shift your perspective on what facilitation could be?

Kellie Artis:

I mean, I think I thought of it before coming into that experience, and then obviously after working with Voltage, I had this idea that a facilitator is just a teacher that maybe there’s some teaching methodologies that my families, I come from family educators, so it was like, oh, this is just a learning design sort of, I don’t know. It’s something that you could implement in a classroom and help people absorb the information better or to latch onto the content or promotes understanding or comprehension. Right after this, I realized that there was just so much more to it, that there was so much more that you can accomplish and agree to and move forward together with and co-create with people. And so having that experience, but then also sort of holding separately this struggle that I had been having and something that I’d been noticing through all of my work in self-discovery and self-awareness, a lot of things that I’ve never really felt or hadn’t really felt qualified to do and handle.

So here I am learning the Enneagram. I’m passionate about it. I know a lot about it, but there had always been this hesitation to step fully into helping other people understand it because I felt like I could mess it up for them. Or what if, God forbid, they share something really sensitive or emotionally complex with me that, and I don’t comfort them in the right way. I’m not a therapist. I don’t know if I can handle that properly without causing damage. I was just really nervous about it. After experiencing and learning some of the facilitation tactics and techniques and realizing it’s more about making sure people feel safe versus fixing anything or deciding anything or teaching anything definite. It’s mostly about the space that you’re able to create during that time, how that is protected and handled and how people feel when they leave it, when they enter, when they leave was so much more important than any of the content, any of the other stuff. So it’s purpose, it’s connection, it’s all of those things. So that’s how it shifted for me. And then, I mean, gosh, I overlay now everything, every meeting I’m in, why are we here? What’s our purpose? How are we entering, where are we leaving? I mean, literally every aspect of any of the work that I do has some sort of element of the facilitation techniques and practices that I learned.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s so helpful to get those perspectives. And I’m remembering, you also mentioned feeling imposter syndrome, which is somewhat related to what you were just talking about, and I think you were talking about it from the perspective of when you showed up for the program and even I guess ideas in your head about not being a veteran, et cetera. And I guess what specifically shifted that? You talked about getting to a point where that subsided, and so what do you think were the critical pieces that were at play that helped you overcome that?

Kellie Artis:

There were a couple of speakers that had some, I thought profound things to say that I was able to latch onto and give myself permission to pursue relentlessly what I came in with as my passion, my project initially. So we come in and you start out with an idea of a project that you want to work on during the cohort. It’s important, but it’s not the most important thing. I mean, the projects are great and have, I mean, some people have full-blown nonprofits now because of their personal leadership project, but it’s the skeleton. It’s the structure that they put the teaching and the rest of the leadership instruction onto. So we have a capstone at the end, and then they follow up and see what kind of support is needed after you’re an alumni. But I came in with a project that I wasn’t super passionate about.

It was part of one of my day job work, and it made sense. It was good enough to have gotten me a spot in the cohort that’s a part of their application process. It’s like, what are you working on? But from the start, it was enforced through all of the activities and through all of our facilitated time that it needed to be something that you’re passionate about. How are you going to make an impact? And it can be making an impact on one person. It doesn’t have to be huge and broad reaching and solving veteran homelessness. It doesn’t have to be that big or grand, right? It could be literally making an impact in your world, in your sphere, in what you can. And I was like, well, this is who I am. I can impact the lives of people like me, people who’ve gone through things like me, using my personal story, using the ways in which I’ve kind of crawled out of stuff and made sense my life and how I’ve gotten where I am.

So being able to have that constantly reinforced from the facilitator, again, purpose, it was, this is why we’re here. Yeah, we’re going to teach you all these techniques and we’re going to teach you how to do data measurement and collaboration and all of these things, but for the most part, we want to make sure that your why is always being answered. So that sort of being the central focus of everything that we were exposed to really helped reaffirm for me what it was that I was there for and how much I belonged, how much I was meant to be. The one speaker, he was an astronaut, and he came and he was talking. He gave the story. I’d literally written in my journal, by the way, another facilitation practice that we were encouraged to do every morning during our Todd Time, set some intentions, write some agreements with yourself for today.

And then at the end of the day, we would go back and reflect upon them like, okay, did you meet your intentions for the day? One of my intentions was like, I’m going to hold onto things less tightly. I’m going to hold things a bit more loosely and just see what emerges. So there was an astronaut that gave us a story about how he was doing his first spacewalk, and he was nervous about it, and before he went up on the shuttle and everything, a former astronaut wrote him an email and all it said was, loosen your grip. And so he tells this whole story about how he’s outside on the ladder thing and freaking out and didn’t want to let go, and it was paralyzed scary, and he remembered the email from the guy, and that’s all it said was, loosen your grip. So he just kind of let go and was able to have this amazing experience that he shared with us. And I was just like, well, that was for me. So not to be too dramatic about it, but that was, I think, the moment that’s like, okay, not only do I need to loosen the grip of who I think I am and whether or not I belong and whether or not this is what I’m supposed to be doing, there’s so much more expansiveness out there and opportunity if you just kind of just go with it.

Douglas:

And after that first session, you mentioned that you were so curious about what was happening and what Todd was up to you, and you were in that observation mode that you mentioned that you actually managed to get yourself on the seat next to him on the bus ride to dinner. Did that spark the original interest in Priya Parker’s

Kellie Artis:

Work? Oh, it totally did. It was the first thing you said. I was like, I know whatever you just did was amazing, and everybody’s raving about it, but you’ve got something. You’ve got a framework. You know what you’re doing. You’ve learned this. Tell me everything. Again. I’m an Enneagram five, so it’s all about acquiring information and knowledge. So I was like, how can I research this? And he was like, okay, well, so he gave me a couple of resources, and then we got to talking about, yeah, definitely Priya Parker. I ordered it on Amazon while we were driving to dinner, and as soon as I started reading through, I was like, oh, yeah, that was that exercise. That was that. So it was neat to not only see it illustrated in the book, but then also, oh, I had that experience. I know exactly what was happening there. But yeah, and then that’s when I started rethinking my project too. It was like, not only am I interested in how you did what you did, I think that would’ve just been cool anyway. But also, I can absolutely see applying this to all of my Enneagram work, because most of it revolves around group classes, workshops.

And again, back to that apprehension of I had been really nervous to convene a bunch of people, and what if they asked me a question I don’t know the answer to. I was hung up on the knowledge part of it and the expertise versus how I would just like to be able to build a safer container for people. Maybe I could just be the person to provide the space and some guidance, but there doesn’t need to be definite. It’s not math. There’s not an equation that’s either true or false. It could just be exploration. So yeah, that really helped just open my perspective on it a lot.

Douglas:

I love the curiosity. It’s such a facilitator’s mindset, isn’t it? Wanting to know how behind the experience.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah. Yeah. It was a little meta and probably annoying. That was not the point. They didn’t convene us to learn how to be facilitators, but that’s what I took away from it. I was like, ah, this could be so useful in almost any application. So

Douglas:

Well, they were simultaneously helping you dive into your why, and I would argue that if that was resonating, maybe it was exposing some deeper insights into that. Why. So I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s all that adjacent or different than what they had planned.

Kellie Artis:

True. No, that’s true. I mean, it’s definitely a realm of leadership to be able to guide a group and do that safely. And yeah, no, it was just overall great experience. I loved what I learned about all of the things about leadership and running big businesses and all of the things. But I think, yeah, that was definitely my takeaway.

Douglas:

It’s not uncommon for students to come in having already read Priya Parker’s book. What was it like for you as one of those folks who had read it previously, to go through it again with some targeted focus and also in discussion with the cohort about the text?

Kellie Artis:

I thought it was great because it was another repetition of seeing it in practice, how it works. It wasn’t just like this anomaly that I, maybe there was something just super, super duper special about Todd. There is. He’s amazing. But it wasn’t like uniquely, he’s the one person that’s born to do this work. No, it’s like it’s work that we can all adapt and use in our lives. So that was encouraging, but then, gosh, just being able to be exposed to people who also were in on it, you know what I mean? I don’t know. Again, not having not been exposed to this as a discipline, essentially, being able to then kind of say, Ooh, what are you guys doing over here? This is kind of cool. And then not only what are you guys doing and how are you doing it, but how are you applying it?

And all of the different industries and ways in which people work. I came into the voltage cohort thinking like, well, I’m not a facilitator and I’m not trying to be a facilitator. I’m not going to put a LinkedIn post up and say, Hey, hire me to come facilitate anything you want, just come. That wasn’t my intention or purpose, and I was a little worried that that’s what I was walking into, that it was going to be a bunch of people who are just professional facilitators. I mean, I’ve done this before too, with even my Enneagram training. I took a whole course on therapists how to be an Enneagram and for therapist. I’m not a therapist, but I’m like, how are you guys using it? Because this feels like something that would be helpful to know, just exposure. So anyway, came in very quickly realized that I was in the right place. Once again, that curiosity did lead to something really profound and helpful. Okay, you can be a facilitative anything. So that was one of the biggest, the coolest things for me to see, especially overlaying everything that Priya had talked about in her work, and then seeing it executed, hearing about how people execute it, hearing about the cool outcomes of sessions or different techniques from everyone in the room, from all kinds of industries, which is really cool.

Douglas:

And after learning some of this stuff, you started to integrate it into your work with military connected families and veteran students. What were some of the first changes you made and what sort of impact did you start at sea?

Kellie Artis:

Oh, gosh. I mean, the top thing is just stop starting meetings with admin. Crap. Nobody,

Douglas:

Never start a funeral with logistics.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, logistics. It was just like, I always hate that. I mean, I’ve always hated that, but I do it. It’s one of the very first things like, no, you need a hook. You need something to grab people’s attention, and why do I deserve your time right now? Why are you giving me an hour of your life or however long? And how do I prove to you that I will use that hour well, and it’ll be well spent. So stop doing the logistics, the agendas. Setting up agreements I think has been really helpful just for me personally, for whatever reason, that has helped me step into my role more confidently. I can be really transparent about my insecurities. I mean, frankly, usually I used to do this as, I don’t know if I’m the right person to teach you all this, but here we’re going to start doing all this self-deprecating stuff.

And I realized, oh, no, we don’t have to do that, and I don’t have to sacrifice my credibility because of my insecurities. We could just all come to some group conclusions and some agreements that this is the goal. This is what we’re trying to achieve this session. I’ll do my best to guide you guys as long as you’re doing your best to participate and learn. So that helped me kind of shake off some of the issues that I’ve had around leading groups. But yeah, just being able to keep things fresh, keep it active, seeing when there’s some energy needed, not just getting stuck in the content, which is what I typically have a tendency to do, and then making sure that it anchors somewhere. Whatever the experience is, not only are we clear about what we’re trying to accomplish, but then does it resonate? Do you leave with something? Then why did I take your hour if it doesn’t? So having those things top of mind, I think just result in just such better experiences for everyone.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s interesting. Working on the agreements can be such a nice focal point to help with intention as you’re designing the session as something as simple as thinking about, well, how do people need to show up? I mean, you can’t answer that question unless you’re really clear on your purpose

Kellie Artis :

And

Douglas:

You’re really clear on the conditions and the scenario you want to unfold in the space. And I think the number one reason so many people get things wrong or stumble is because they haven’t spent enough time thinking about that. And so to your point, the agreements are a great little hack to here, just three to five things to write down. But in order to write those down, you got to think about what’s the purpose and how do I want people to be,

Kellie Artis:

And what are you stepping away from? So I’ll give you just a quick example from my world. So in the military spouse world, so when we say military spouse, we mean we’re married to someone actively serving. A lot of military spouses have also served, but most of us haven’t, and we’re predominantly female. It’s like a 94% female ratio whenever you gather folks in the military. I mean, service members wear their last name on their chest and everyone knows what that last name is and what rank is associated with that. And just by nature of us being humans, that crosses over into the spouse world as well. So one thing that I realized really early on when particularly working with folks who are attached to people that have rank, no, they don’t have the rank themselves, but they’re still married to that person with rank. So there’s still these hierarchical things that we have to navigate really quickly. I was like, I know you guys may know each other, but I want no last names. We are not our service members. I want first names only. There will be no last names. No asking, what does your husband do? That’s not a question that is valid in this space. We don’t care. We care, but we don’t care.

It’s kind of like the shortcut for any conversation when you meet someone who’s this world. So that not only kind of alleviates the pressure from the folks who are attached to higher ranking service members, but it frees up some space for folks that aren’t to be able to be authentic and true. But then a part of that agreement also is that we don’t leave with anything that we’ve talked about here. This stays here. So being able to say, no last names really clearly, at least plants that seed of y’all, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to pretend like we’re all on the same page. We’re all on the same playing field. We’re all dealing with the same struggles, and then we can work on ourselves from there.

Douglas:

I remember you talking about revamping the veteran student orientation sessions to focus more on community building rather than, I guess cramming information, I think was how you refer to it. And so what were some of those specific changes you made?

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, so we help, in my day job, I help universities stand up their veteran support services. So part of what my role is, and my self-declared purpose as the digital community manager is to make sure students feel engaged, connected, and supported. Because if we have those three things, we have a successful student experience, and then we also have a successful career experience on the backside of school, which is everyone’s goal. We want student success, and we want ultimate mission success for those veteran students who are transitioning by way of college into the civilian world. Veterans are accustomed to being given, they call it death by PowerPoint. That’s

Douglas:

Getting briefed to death.

Kellie Artis:

Briefed to death. So anytime you say you have to come to this mandatory orientation, they know they already have a preconception of what that’s going to be. They’re super excited about it because it is just like, Ugh, here’s the number for this, and here’s, then it’s boring and rote and whatever, but however the information is important and they need to have it. So what do you do? So what we’ve shifted a lot of that session, and it’s an hour, I point to places where they can find the information, but we spend most of the time connecting. So first and foremost, we have a session called Transitioning from service to school where it’s a panel. I’ve recorded it, so we kind of play the same thing over, but it’s a panel of students who talk about the things that they’re nervous about and what they were worried about and how they’ve tried to adapt certain techniques to be able to counter that fear and that apprehension. So just right out the gate, we’re doing that same practice of what do people get wrong about you? Let’s call out the elephant in the room. Are y’all nervous? You should be. It’s hard. Let’s say we’re nervous because this population has a real difficult time asking for help. It’s just part of the nature of military service. You are either told to do it, you figure it out. There’s not a lot of

Seeking help. So we want to go ahead and squash that right out the gate. This is what we’re here for. We exist to help you, and we’re going to call you and we’re going to proactively try to help you, but we also really want you guys to get accustomed to calling us too. It makes our day, when you call us, it actually makes me really happy when you send me an email. So establishing that we spend a lot of time meeting our team. I’m really emphatic about people seeing faces. We’re not just on the phone and we’re virtual. So yeah, it’s going to be a lot of zoom, but here we are, us, we’re besties. Now you’ve seen us in orientation, and then we do breakouts where we have cool fun prompts where people can talk in small groups about what it is that they’re nervous about or what they wish they had known before they left service, or it could even just be little icebreakers, energizers, things like that. So again, we spend probably 30% of the hour not doing anything traditionally considered productive, but to me, it just feels so much more important that they have made a connection with just anybody, one other person in our virtual hallways.

Douglas:

What kind of shifts in energy that you notice?

Kellie Artis:

Well, they’re so much more engaged with our office. I mean, again, we do have a physical office in one of our campuses, but for the most part, it’s a virtual sort of, we’re here if you need us because they’re not able to walk by and come grab donuts when we have them out. So there’s often a lot of like, oh, hey, if we are on campus and do run into people, I’ve gotten like, oh, you do the orientation or you post the newsletter, or, I know I don’t know them, but that’s okay. You can be internet famous for your community, and that’s totally fine. It means that they’ve seen my face and I’ve gotten across some way that makes them know and trust me in the same way that people do business with folks online. I want the students to feel like they have advocates and allies and friends and friendly faces that are helping them navigate the system.

There’s also just there’s more of an eagerness to help other students. So we’ve never had an issue onboarding veteran ambassadors, which is a work study program that we work with the VA with. I mean, often there’s a wait list of people who want to become an ambassador because they get exposed to us so early on, and the ambassadors during that orientation that they then want to step up like, oh, I could do that. That sounds awesome. You get to meet all the people and help people and serve in that way. So there’s, I don’t know, I’m not going to say it solved all has solved all the problems. Everyone gets an A and graduates on time and all the things, but at least while they’re here, they feel like they’re a part of something and they’re a part of a community and they belong.

Douglas:

Yeah, there’s that belonging. I was thinking that earlier when you were talking about the, or I asked you about imposter syndrome and you went into a story about the NASA loosening your grip and just connecting into the content and also just the work that Todd was doing to make people feel comfortable and connected. I mean, it struck me as all of that was creating a sense of belonging, and that once you felt like you belonged, the imposter syndrome wasn’t even a consideration.

Kellie Artis:

Well, now that you’re saying it, Douglas, that’s like, yeah, I mean, if I were to think back and summarize my experience as a military spouse, even, we belong to a larger community. I still belong to the town and the community that I live in. I belong to my family, et cetera. But when we overlay all of the dynamics of our lifestyle, so the frequently moving and the shifting jobs and spending seasons of really having to intensely focus on your nuclear family, your two little kids while your husband’s deployed, that sort of thing, you can, I have noticed falling out of touch or out of feeling like I belong to things before and just how disorienting that is and how it’s just not a comfortable place to be, and no one deserves that. I mean, we all deserve to be in community, some sort of community. So I do think that that subconscious maybe consciously drives a lot. It

Douglas:

Really rocks your confidence.

Kellie Artis:

Totally. And your identity. I mean, it’s the core of who you are. If you don’t have those underpinnings of being anchored to something, it’s really difficult to do anything else. I mean, that’s just baseline sort of human functioning. So for people to ever feel like they didn’t have that, and we know our society in general is becoming more detached from each other and more detached from their communities and feelings of loss and belonging are resonating high, particularly for the community that I serve, the military spouse community, those are some of the top complaints that people have. When asked about would you recommend service to someone you love, or are you satisfied with the military lifestyle? When people say no, those are the key things and the key reasons. So there’s definitely a desire and a void there that I think if we’re all working towards some sort of goal that includes belonging in some way than we’re doing good for society.

Douglas:

And I think that’s a nice transition into the work you’re really focused on now. And that brings me to the work you’re doing now, which came up briefly. We talked about mission identity and the work you’re doing there, but specifically, I’m curious about the Enneagram insights and how you’re working with spouses and what you are looking forward to as you continue to grow that business and help folks with identity and belonging or any of these other challenges that might be well suited to the work that you’re doing.

Kellie Artis:

So with Mission Identity, I am really passionate about helping, particularly women. I am expanding my view of who I want to help serve into more the woman entrepreneur space. The professional woman who, like myself, have gotten to a point in our careers where it’s just like I’ve gotten here. I’ve just hustled and done the thing and gotten to a certain point, but now I’m reflecting. I’m not going to call it a midlife crisis. I don’t like that. But reflecting on who am I now, who am I, and what does this need to look like for the rest of my life? It’s a moment to just slow down and sort of investigate who we are, where we’re going, and what’s the impact I want to leave behind. So we’re using the Enneagram as a framework for self-discovery to help make sure that we are truly understanding who we are and the motivations behind what we do and how we feel about things, how we perceive the world around us.

And the Enneagram provides a really profoundly helpful framework for that work. So once we understand who we are and we have a strong sense of self and identity, then we can move into things like purpose and then combining self identity or self identity and purpose together within left with our perception of reality. That’s whether or not we’re seeing the world clearly, whether we’re experiencing what we’re experiencing in a way that is connected to reality or maybe distorted based on some of the things that we’ve been limited by in our experience or from our personality. And then from there, I mean, gosh, there’s contentment in that, right? There’s success, there’s freedom, and then there’s where the impact can really happen. So working with women who are mid-career farther along, et cetera, just to provide, again, the space for them to do that exploration safely without any of the ego or worried about the image or the pretense.

So I want to be able to provide that opportunity for them, provide some context and some teaching, but really do this invitation into the self-discovery in community with others. They’re, again, group cohorts. I’ll still be focusing a lot on military spouses sort of as an offshoot of mission identity. The military community is near and dear to my heart, and I am so excited to be able to provide group training exercises for them, but it actually functions as more of a piece of my story and a piece of my credibility versus now. I mean, really my inspiration into doing the work that I do, and hopefully it will inspire others, but always here for anyone who’s interested in doing the work of personal discovery and growth,

Douglas:

It’s such a strong passion for empowering others, especially women, to clarify and build confidence. So I’m just kind of curious, what would be a dream outcome for you as you continue this journey?

Kellie Artis:

Oh, dream outcome. VP Harris recently said that there are not a lot of women out here aspiring to be humble. And that quote resonated with me so deeply because I think for so long, I had convinced myself that being humble was the way to be and not the way I wanted to raise my daughter, by the way. However, we limit ourselves in so many ways and we’re often the worst offenders in capping our potential, and I can’t wait to be able to look around and see more often than not women who are not only not aspiring to be humble, but who are stepping into their greatness and their power, and just changing the world, taking control, and showing us all what it means to love and to live with purpose and to live in community. Just, yeah, there’s going to be bumps along the way, and we’re still very much learning how to do this as women. But yeah, I think that really intangible and hard to measure, but I think even seeing that on a small scale is my dream.

Douglas:

Kelly, it’s been such a pleasure chatting with you today. I could keep talking for a long time, but we have to cut it off here. So before we go, I want to just give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Kellie Artis:

Be kind to yourselves. There’s a mantra in the school that I studied with for the narrative Enneagram, and it talks about having grounded presence and compassionate curiosity. I think those are valuable tenets that I try to live by and are just so important.

Douglas :

Such a pleasure. Kelly. Thanks for joining me on the show today.

Kellie Artis:

Thank you.

Douglas:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe and receive updates when new episodes are released. We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics and collaboration voltage control.com.

The post How Can Effective Facilitation Transform Personal Connections and Group Dynamics? appeared first on Voltage Control.

Effective facilitation is more than just managing a meeting—it’s about crafting an experience that drives meaningful outcomes. Whether you’re leading a virtual team discussion, a hybrid workshop, or an in-person brainstorming session, the design and preparation of these interactions play a pivotal role in their success. Facilitators must navigate a complex landscape of expectations, technologies, and participant needs. The difference between a productive session and one that falls flat often comes down to intentionality, preparation, and flexibility. In this blog post, we will explore key strategies for successful facilitation, including intentional design, meticulous preparation, incorporating asynchronous work, aligning design with goals, and mastering hybrid and virtual sessions.

Intentional Design in Facilitation

Intentional design is the backbone of effective facilitation. Every aspect of a session, from the agenda to the environment, should be crafted with purpose. This approach goes beyond simply filling time with activities; it’s about making deliberate choices that align with the goals and needs of participants. Whether it’s the timing of activities, how discussions are framed, or the physical or virtual space you create, each element should contribute to a cohesive and impactful experience.

Great facilitators understand that there’s no such thing as a bad meeting, just poor facilitation. When a session feels aimless or unproductive, it’s often a sign that intentional design was overlooked. By carefully planning with purpose, facilitators can create environments where ideas flow freely, participants feel valued, and the group achieves meaningful outcomes. Intentional design transforms good sessions into great ones by ensuring that every detail is aligned with the desired outcomes.

Moreover, intentional design demands adaptability. Even the best-laid plans may require real-time adjustments, and skilled facilitators must be ready to pivot as needed. Building flexibility into the session’s design allows facilitators to respond to group dynamics and keep the session on track, ensuring that it meets its objectives regardless of unforeseen challenges.

The Art of Preparation in Facilitation

Preparation is where good facilitation begins. Just as a surgeon meticulously prepares for surgery, a facilitator must ensure that all tools, materials, and plans are in place before the session starts. This level of preparation is about more than organization; it’s about being ready for anything. Every detail matters—from the agenda to backup plans for potential disruptions. Thorough preparation allows facilitators to be more adaptive and responsive, enabling participants to focus on the task at hand without unnecessary interruptions.

In facilitation, the difference between a good facilitator and a great one often lies in the quality of their preparation. A well-prepared facilitator ensures that the session runs smoothly and that participants can engage deeply and productively. This preparation extends to anticipating challenges and having strategies ready to address them. Whether it’s dealing with difficult group dynamics, unexpected technical issues, or shifts in the session’s direction, being prepared equips facilitators to handle these situations with confidence and ease.

Effective preparation also involves setting clear expectations for participants. When participants know what to expect and how to contribute, they are more likely to engage meaningfully. This preparation not only helps the facilitator but also sets the stage for a more productive and collaborative session.

Harnessing Asynchronous Work in Facilitation

Asynchronous work is a valuable tool in facilitation, providing participants with the flexibility to engage with content and contribute ideas on their own time. This approach accommodates different working styles and often results in more thoughtful and in-depth contributions. By giving participants the space to reflect and prepare before coming together, facilitators can foster a more focused and productive session.

Incorporating asynchronous activities into a facilitation design requires careful planning. It’s crucial to clearly communicate the expectations and purpose of these activities so that participants understand their role in the larger process. Whether it involves reviewing materials, responding to prompts, or completing pre-work assignments, these tasks should deepen the group’s engagement and prepare them for meaningful collaboration during live sessions.

When done well, asynchronous work enhances the overall effectiveness of facilitation. It allows for more efficient use of time during live sessions, as participants arrive with a shared understanding and readiness to dive into discussions. This approach not only boosts participation but also leads to richer and more well-rounded outcomes, making the entire facilitation process more effective and rewarding.

Aligning Facilitation Design with Goals

A facilitation session’s success hinges on its design being aligned with its goals. Every element of the session, from the questions asked to the activities planned, should be chosen with a clear intention in mind. This alignment ensures that the session remains focused and effective, helping the group achieve its objectives.

One of the common pitfalls in facilitation is the temptation to fill the agenda with numerous activities without considering how they contribute to the end goal. Effective facilitators resist this urge, focusing instead on what will drive meaningful engagement and outcomes. This might mean planning fewer activities, but those that are included are carefully selected to advance the group’s progress towards its goals.

When a session feels aimless or unproductive, it often indicates a misalignment between the facilitation design and the session’s goals. By keeping the desired outcomes at the forefront of planning, facilitators can create sessions that are not only engaging but also highly effective. This focus on alignment ensures that every aspect of the session contributes to achieving the group’s objectives, resulting in more impactful and satisfying outcomes.

Designing Effective Hybrid and Virtual Sessions

The rise of hybrid and virtual work environments presents unique challenges for facilitators, but it also offers opportunities for innovation. Designing effective hybrid and virtual sessions requires thoughtful planning and flexibility, as the dynamics in these settings differ significantly from traditional in-person sessions. The key is to ensure that all participants, regardless of their location, feel engaged and included.

One essential strategy for hybrid and virtual facilitation is to design interactions that bridge the gap between in-person and remote participants. This might involve using digital tools that allow for real-time collaboration or structuring activities so that everyone can contribute equally, whether they’re in the room or dialing in from afar. Ensuring that all participants have access to the necessary technology and that the session runs smoothly is also crucial for success.

Another critical element is maintaining a strong facilitation presence. In hybrid and virtual settings, it’s easy for participants to feel disconnected or overlooked. As a facilitator, actively managing the session, checking in with remote participants, and ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to contribute are key to keeping the group engaged. By designing with these considerations in mind, facilitators can create hybrid and virtual sessions that are not only functional but also engaging and effective.

Conclusion

Effective facilitation is an art that requires intentionality, meticulous preparation, and the ability to adapt to various environments and challenges. Whether working with in-person teams, hybrid groups, or fully virtual settings, the principles of intentional design, thorough preparation, and alignment with goals remain constant. Facilitators who master these elements can create sessions that are not only productive but also transformative, driving meaningful engagement and successful outcomes.

As facilitation continues to evolve with the changing work landscape, embracing asynchronous work, and mastering hybrid and virtual environments will become increasingly important. By staying committed to these principles and continuously refining their practice, facilitators can ensure that they are always equipped to lead effective, engaging, and impactful sessions.

FAQ

Q1: What is intentional design in facilitation, and why is it important?
Intentional design in facilitation involves purposefully planning every aspect of a session to align with its goals and the needs of participants. This approach is crucial because it ensures that all elements of the session contribute to a cohesive and impactful experience, leading to more successful outcomes.

Q2: How does preparation impact the effectiveness of facilitation?
Preparation is key to effective facilitation. Thorough preparation allows facilitators to be adaptive and responsive, handling unexpected challenges with ease. It also sets clear expectations for participants, fostering a more focused and productive session.

Q3: What are the benefits of incorporating asynchronous work into facilitation?
Asynchronous work allows participants to engage with content and contribute ideas on their own time, leading to more thoughtful and in-depth contributions. This flexibility enhances the overall effectiveness of facilitation, resulting in more efficient and productive live sessions.

Q4: How can facilitators ensure their session design aligns with their goals?
Facilitators can ensure alignment by making deliberate choices about every element of the session, focusing on activities and questions that drive engagement and progress toward the session’s objectives. Keeping the desired outcomes at the forefront of planning is essential.

Q5: What strategies are effective for hybrid and virtual facilitation?
Effective strategies for hybrid and virtual facilitation include designing interactions that bridge the gap between in-person and remote participants, using digital tools for real-time collaboration, and maintaining a strong facilitation presence to keep all participants engaged. Ensuring access to necessary technology is also critical.

The post Intentional Facilitation appeared first on Voltage Control.