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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was Justin Foster. Justin is the Co-Founder of Root + River. Justin’s presentation, “Leadership Presence: Where Inner Work Meets Outer Story,” outlined the importance of incorporating and sharing one’s own identity, creativity, and intuition to serve as the sustainable foundation from which to operate and lead most effectively as a facilitator. From this base, individuals can then express their originality, the craft of self-expression, and empathy to create a deeper connection with the audience.

Justin explained that to become an elite facilitator, one must take risks and be okay with failure.

He shared four practices to do so:
1. Practice of physicality / movement: the more in shape you are, the more confident you feel. It’s no coincidence that all the great leaders are walkers and pacers.

2. Practice of intellectuality: regularly discover. A state of perpetual learning to expand your database.

3. Practice of emotion: if you have untreated emotional wounds, it will affect you in your craft. Continue to examine yourself and your practices. Witness your own emotions and feels

4. Practice of spirituality: three S’s (stillness, silence, solitude) if you do the three, it allows you to grow and hone your craft.

Watch Justin Fosters’s talk “Leadership Presence”:

Read the Transcript

Justin Foster:

Thank you Douglas. Good morning everybody.

Speaker 2:

Good morning.

Justin Foster:

I coached youth football for 15 years, so I’ll say good morning again. And if it’s not without enthusiasm, then somebody’s got to do push-ups. Good morning.

Speaker 2:

Good morning.

Justin Foster:

That’s awesome. Wanted to thank Douglas, but also, none of this happens without a lot of moving parts behind the scenes. So I think we should give a cheer out to Lily, Tara, and Pixie in particular. So, this is an analog presentation. I like doing risky things apparently, because a couple of weeks ago I went to Creative Mornings and it was the speaker. And I talked about creativity in front of creatives. Today, I’m giving a speech with essentially new material in front of facilitators. So I think bungee jumping is on the schedule for this afternoon.

Justin Foster:

But it is an analog presentation. And what we’re going to start off with is this. I’ll give you two choices here. You can either draw, or you can just imagine. And what I’d like you to either draw or imagine is a robust fruit tree. Imagine the root system, imagine the trunk, the branches, the leaves. But most of all, imagine the fruit, whatever fruit it is, peaches, apples, oranges, just big, juicy fruit. So take a moment, just a few seconds, to sketch that out or imagine that out, and think of that image.

All right, you can keep drawing if you want. Multitasking is allowed. So this tree, this fruit tree, is your brand as a facilitator, as a presenter. When you go out into the world and you go do your thing. And so there’s a ancientness to it. Hermes said, “As above, so below.” I say, “As below, so above.” Your root system produces the thing that your audience wants, which is fruit. The audience wants fruit. And the fruit comes from the inner work that you do that produces your outer story, which is how other people experience you.

Now, facilitation speaking, oral presentation is an ancient thing. One of the most ancient ways to transfer information. And it’s still one of the best. Meetups in person or better. In-person events like this are better than virtual. There’s a sacredness to it. And the very first tattoo I got, and it wasn’t that long ago, and you can’t hardly see it up here, but I’ll just tell you what it is. It’s a Bible verse, and it’s Isaiah 50:4 which says, “You have been given the tongue of the learned to give a word in season to those that are weary.”

Now, I like quoting Bible verses in talks like this because people that are really into the Bible don’t like it, and people that are not at all into the Bible, don’t like it.

Speaker 2:

Nailed it.

Justin Foster:

So one of my goals is to alienate the far right and the far left. So anyway, what that means, the reason I got that as my first tattoo is because I do a lot of this. I do a lot of speaking and what I found in myself over the 17 years of being a professional speaker, I found some arrogance creeping in. I found this idea, this narrative, that the audience is there for me, “Ooh, they’re there for me. Validate me.”

Through some nice therapy work and other types of deep work, I realized what I was seeking was a validation for a mother and a father wound. And we’ll get into that another talk. But when I had this realization that I am there and we are, as facilitators, we are here for our audience, we’re a conduit. We are an instrument that is being used by the cosmos to share ideas, to share words and language and concepts. So it’s important. This fruit tree is important.

So I call this fruit tree presence, leadership presence, as it were. But let’s talk about it as if it were barren, as if it bore no fruit. What would cause that? What would that look like? Well, a couple of things that would happen if your root system isn’t solid, and you don’t nurture this fruit tree of presence. One thing that would happen is a sense of abstractness. Where there’s a distance between you and your audience. You don’t feel them anymore. They’re objects. This is what objectification is. This happens in large organizations and people that get disconnected from their own soul. People become abstracts.

A second thing that happens in this, is a lack of nutritional value, pablum, err, cotton candy, where you eat it in the room, and then you don’t remember at all what was said, because there was no depth to it. It didn’t feed you. That starts to happen. And the source of this sort of unfruitfulness as a leader, and a presenter, is really around drift and disconnect. And you’re drifting away from your true identity of who you are. And there’s a disconnect from yourself and from people.

So that’s the negative side of this. That’s sort of evidence of something’s gone awry. And you can reverse engineer back to that. Let’s talk about what it means to actually bear fruit so that your audience can feed on it. So let’s start with the root system. And there are three elements of the root system. There are more than three, but for today we’ll focus on three. I can’t do Kung Fu so. So the first one is your identity.

Now identity is one of those things that is, it’s kind of a hot potato topic. We have a term like identity politics, or “I identify as”. And so there’s a level of taboo-ness to this idea. But what happens is, when we are young, we produce an illusory self in order to be accepted. We all do it. And in ancient cultures, prior to the industrial revolution, really, but in certainly in all indigenous and native cultures, there was a process of going through and removing the illusory self to find out who you truly are.

We’ll go this way instead. All right. Thank you. So to remove that. So for example, the famous Sioux native chief, Sitting Bull, was given the name Slow, because when you were born in the Sioux nation, you were given a name that was associated with some sort of physical trait that you had. Then when he was 13 or 14 years old, he went on a vision quest and he fasted and took some substances, and had this vision of a white Buffalo sitting. And he came back and told the tribe, you can call me Sitting Bull now.

We don’t do that process anymore. What we do is we take on an identity we think is going to make us acceptable. And that becomes us. And then when that identity is threatened, that’s where we get defensive. That’s where tribalism comes in. That’s where dissent and separation comes in. The funny thing about it, or the interesting thing about it, is if you don’t know who you truly are, the audience is sort of just making it up as you go. They are sort of filling in the blanks. And the thing about it is that most audiences, most participants, have a pretty good bullshit detector. So this idea that if you’re disconnected from who you are, the root, the taproot of your presence is identity.

The second area is creativity, or if you’re familiar with the chakras, this is the sacral energy. This is the energy of creativity, the energy of power, the muse, all that stuff. And speaking and the spoken word isn’t art. It’s iterative, it’s practice. No one is done, no matter how many times you’ve given a speech, facilitated a thing, you’re never done. There’s an iteration there. And that iteration, that energy and that power comes from tapping into your creative energy.

This is why it’s important to do some of the things that we’ve already even touched on today, and what Linda mentioned, doing that inner work and feeling it in your body like Solomon talked about. And what you’re tapping into is that fire, it’s the Kundalini, the coiled snake of energy. And you’re tapping into it, and what will happen if you do that, is that you get one of the ultimate contagions, you get enthusiasm. That’s what happens. And enthusiasm is a fruit that people get to participate in. So I don’t believe in motivational speaking at all. I believe in inspirational speaking. I’m sometimes demotivating, I think. But the idea is, is that you’re trying to inspire or ignite something in your audience. That’s the second route.

The third route is intuition. Now there are many words for this similar to what Linda talked about related to spirit. There are many words for this. One word for intuition is Sophia, was a Greek word for wisdom. There’s a Gnostic or Gnosticism. That’s another example of wisdom. We sometimes say gut feeling. Intuition is the cosmos, this quintessential unmentionable essence of creativity were creativity comes from, that then powers what we’re trying to say. And Rumi said, “I am the hole in the flute that the breath of life passes through. Hear my music.” Or some variation of that.

And so that is that wisdom that passes through us, that we’re conduits for. So that’s your root system. And there were some other things in there. There’s beliefs and narratives, and there’s our fears and our failures. There’s some other elements in there. But if you imagine three big roots driving down into the soil, growing in perpetuity between identity, sacral or creative energy, and intuition or wisdom. Those three things, they sustain you in any situation. You can go back to those again and again, and you will bear fruit if you have those.

So now we get into above the soil, we get into the actual fruits themselves. The first fruit that people want, and that we should produce, as facilitators and speakers is originality. I mentioned the Rumi quote about being music. Wayne Dyer said, “Don’t die with music still inside of you.” So this idea that we as facilitators and speakers, we’re creatives, we’re artists. And so when we produce something and we share it to the world, we don’t want to be cover bands. We’re not doing the lounge session on a cruise ship. We’re not Michael Bublé pretending to be something that he’s not. We are original singers of music.

So we’re Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. We’re Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. We’re not Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line. We’re producers of original music. That originality comes from your root system, that divine inspiration, that identity, that’s the originality of thinking of original thoughts. So that’s the first one is focusing on originality.

The second one is the craft itself, the craft of expression. And treating it as a craft. The lead guitars for Megadeath goes and gets a beginner’s guitar lesson every year. And that’s how he keeps a beginner’s mind in the process. Michelangelo said, when he died, “I still have so much left to learn.” So this iterative aspect, or this understanding, that our craft is a practice and every single time we present is an opportunity to do a little bit better than the last time. That’s a powerful thing. And that state of continuous improvement is what makes the next round of fruit juicer and more nutritious in the process.

So this craft is one of those sort of mysterious things, because it doesn’t only come from practice. You would think that if it’s just the Gladwell’s 10,000 hours, and you go give 10,000 hours of speaking, you’d be a better speaker, but you wouldn’t necessarily be an elite facilitator. What makes a facilitator elite in this process, is the ability, or the willingness to take risks, to try new material, to present something to the audience that might fail. What it involves is expanding and thinking as an artist, into other aspects of your life, like self care or expanding your vocabulary or reading.

I’m about halfway through Madeline Angles, it’s a compilation of Madeline Angles quotes on writing and creativity. I love reading about other people’s creative processes. I love reading about other people that have a craft. I don’t know how to build a canoe, but Nick Offerman does. And I like Nick Offerman. And I’m inspired by that. I’ll probably never build a canoe, but I can build a speech, and I can build a workshop, and I can build a conversation. That’s my craft, that’s our craft. That’s what we do. So treating it as craft with some humility, and some commitment to the improvement of it, the intuitive nature of it is an essential aspect, essential fruit of presence.

The final one may be the most important and that’s empathy. There’s something about energy that it’s either there or it’s not. And we have a certain level of intuition about the temperature of the room and how the room responds. And literally this event’s called Control The Room. But really it’s feel the room. That’s really what it is. It’s feel the individual. It’s having the sense of connection, of interconnectedness to each person that you’re looking at or speaking to. And not seeing a sea of faces, but seeing individuals, and individuals that all need love, all need recognition, all have struggled or are struggling with something, all have experienced suffering and sorrow.

And we get this opportunity with our energy and our presence and our word and our craft to open up our hearts and connect with someone. What a thing. Oprah says, “Don’t add more darkness to the world.” So in our cases, facilitators and speakers, it doesn’t really matter the topic. What matters is, is that we are able to crack open our hearts, and we’re able to show the world who we truly are, and see the world as they are, and feel that sense. And there’s nothing like that feeling when you’re able to tap into it and share it.

So you have the fruits, and again, there are more than three, but the three for you to ponder today are originality, working on your craft, and empathy. So where does all this come from? And I’m going to give you four practices that I teach. I do myself, and fail at frequently. And I teach to others in the work that we do at Root and River around branding, and messaging, and storytelling, and whatnot. And I simply just call them the four practices of the modern human.

That’s a little tongue in cheek, because these are actually four really ancient principles. But there is no formula here. This isn’t a formula. This doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you the way it worked for me. It means that they’re practices. That means you’re going to implement them. If you do implement them, and they’re going to have a different result based off of your fruit tree, not someone else’s. The first practice of a modern leader, or modern human, is a practice of physicality or movement.

This was one that I struggle with. I struggle with the commitment to do physical labor and exercise. But I have a story about this, a brief one. My younger son, his name is Caden. If you are on Instagram, you can follow him at Reluctant Hobo. Reluctant Hobo is a rising artist. He’s getting paid thousands of dollars for his art now. One of the things I told him, when he decided this was what he was going to do, he wasn’t going to go to college. He was just going to go right into doing his art, is one of the things I told him is you’ve got to take care of yourself physically. And at the time he would say, if he was here, he was not in shape.

And so what he did, and he draws a direct correlation to this. The more in shape he got and the more confident he got in his physical being, and doing hard things, the better his art became. And I think that’s pretty cool. What an interesting proof of concept of this idea of the practice of physicality. It’s no coincidence that most of your great thinkers were walkers, Paulo Coelho, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, all walkers. Walked everywhere. So even that is a type of movement, it’s not necessarily getting on a treadmill, put your headphones in and just grind it out and to check a box that you exercised. I’m talking about physicality. I’m talking about chopping wood and carrying water.

The second practice is an intellectual practice that goes back to the beginner’s mind about continuing to nurture a spirit of curiosity about life, to tap into that inner child that likes to paint, and draw, and imagine, and pretend, and tap into that as a practice that you do on a regular basis. So when I’ve done that, when I’m consistent with that, what happens is a state of perpetual learning. It’s a state of discovery. And that pulls in multiple benefits to me. One benefit is that it expands my database. If I am giving a talk that I can pull from something that I’ve actually read or learned. The intellectual practice is really a learning practice.

The third one is an emotional practice. And this is kind of a sensitive thing here. If you have untreated wounds, emotional wounds, it will affect who you are in your craft. And so the emotional practice is, and what I do is, I still go to a therapist once a month, even though I feel like I’m past some of the healing, I’m on the other side of healing and now I’m in whatever that phase is on the other side of healing. But I still go, because I learned something about myself each time. It’s almost like maintenance. So that’s an emotional practice of continuing to examine yourself, examine your habits, examine your tendencies. Sometimes get outside help with like therapy or a coach or something. But it’s this ability to be a witness to your own emotions and feelings.

And then the final one is a spiritual practice. Now I don’t mean a religious practice. If that’s how someone chooses to manifest a spiritual practice, as a set of religious practices. Great. What I’m talking about are simply the three S’s of spirituality, of a spiritual practice. The first is stillness. The second is silence. And the third is solitude. If we can do those things, if we can nurture stillness, solitude, and silence, it allows that tree to heal and grow, and the fruit gets bigger and bigger. And as we hone our craft, and as we open our hearts, and as we go out into the world doing our thing of moving audiences, the tree gets bigger, they get fruit, and we all win. Thank you.

The post Leadership Presence appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was J. Schuh

J. Schuh is a Design Strategist at Sabre and Design Thinking facilitator. He spoke about the importance of sharing stories through “story stacks”—a collection of stories that facilitators can call upon to tell at a moment’s notice to communicate a lesson learned or an idea they are presenting.

He explained that storytelling is an effective way to build connection and trust in the room because our brains react positively to stories, making us think we are part of the narrative.

J. shared that each story stack should include a goal, character, conflict, and resolution. He said great story stacks have the power to:

• Win hearts
• Change minds
• Get results
• Control the room

Watch J. Schuh’s talk “Story Stack” :

Read the Transcript

J. Schuh:

All right. Can you guys hear me? Okay, so I don’t know how many of you have ever put together decks. Right? I tend to, when I’m put together a presentation, I use each of my slides is kind of tempos and then I just kind of be in the moment so I’m going to tell you a story I hadn’t planned on telling you. If you look at me, I have a lazy eye and sometimes it goes out. I keep trying to motivate it, but it’s still not there. So I went to the optometrist and you go to the optometrist and this is a person who sees all sorts of people all the time. I mean, I don’t know how many eyes this person has seen. So you know how when they cover up the one eye and they look at one eye and they cover up the other eye. So she comes over and she covers up one of my eyes and she goes, “Oh.”

J. Schuh:

And I’m like, “What’s going on?” I mean, you never want a doctor to go. “Oh.” Right? And so she knew that I had a lazy eye and we talked about it and then she covered the other eye and she goes, “Your other eye goes out too.” And I go, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” And I go, “You mean, I’m uniquely prepared for the zombie apocalypse because, like a lizard, I can look at all things.” So, with Emily’s thing, I was like, “Man, my peripheral vision is amazing.” Right? So I’m totally going to use your dot because I’m all over the place. Right? Okay, so what I just shared with you today is actually what I’m going to talk about. It’s a story stack. I hadn’t planned on sharing that story, but I was inspired because of the talks and the people I had before me to talk about that.

J. Schuh:

So it’s story stacks. This is the book I’m currently in. And last night we talked a lot about questions and I was writing notes furiously about all these amazing questions that facilitators ask groups and people. And this book by Sherry Turkle at MIT, she said, “I’m not anti-technology. I’m pro conversation.” And she’s talking about how technology has really interrupted our ability to communicate as human beings. Because I mean, one of the other stories that I’ll share briefly with you, because this is a talk about stories, she talked to a college student who had just had sex and the boy was in the bathroom and she went right back to Tinder. I mean, he’s still in the house and she went right back. And I said, “What is that saying to us as a society about intimacy?” Right? How is technology allowing us to interact with people in sometimes what people would consider the most intimate possible way and then she felt compelled right after to go to her phone and go back into it? I said, “My gosh, what is this doing and how is this changing society?”

J. Schuh:

And I’ve done other talks about it, but my name is J. Schuh and I’m a Design Strategist at Sabre and people are the most interesting thing to me in the world. And I love being with people and I love this conference because when we say control the room, really what we’re trying to do, and I think the heart of what all the speakers have said is, how can we allow people as facilitators to get the most and the best experience possible that we can help generate? It’s not about controlling the room in that sense of control factor. It’s about how do we allow people to present and get the best from them in the room. All right? And one way that I do it is using stories. We’re raised on stories almost from birth, right?

J. Schuh:

Even now, parents are shoving iPads in kids thing and they have stories and everything on it, but that’s another talk. I can go into it. But I love those old things that don’t require batteries like books, right? And that’s why I purposely picked this picture because they resonate. I still remember as a little kid sitting in a circle and having my teacher tell me a story, right. And I always was wondering, there’s always a point to stories and they resonate years and years later, you go through all these … Any of us who have multiple degrees and been through hundreds of hours, it’s the stories that stay with us. As a matter of fact, our brains are hardwired to experience stories differently. We talked earlier about being travelers. And when you tell people’s stories, they’ve seen that your brain, when you’re hearing a story, your brain, reacts as if you’re in the experience and it’s no mistake.

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J. Schuh:

And we talked about religion, I’ll see if I can alienate half of the room too, right? It’s no mistake that most religions are books of stories, right? And we have walkers. I love that, right? I connected that dot. So this is one of my, “Oh my God. You’re right. They’re all walkers.” Right? So I love that. NPR said, and there’s hope because NPR said that in 2019 more people went to libraries than movies, so it’s not just doom and gloom, right? It’s like people are still getting information and this construct is called a story stack.

J. Schuh:

It’s all the stories we collect as human beings, whether we’re reading it online or hearing it from other people or experiencing and listening to what other people say, we collect those stories and those are our story stacks that, when the opportunities present us. And a lot of times, for me in a workshop, I don’t plan on telling a story. I let the group kind of inspire me to a story. And when you tell a story, it’s like the breath, right? It’s like the breath. When you tell a story, it refocuses the group and people pay attention. And people can be all over the place and you go, “You know what? This reminds me of this story.” And you start telling that story and you look around the room and you have everybody back again. Right? So it’s a tool. It’s for us to use.

J. Schuh:

How many of you in this room have ever been in a room where people don’t want you there? Raise your hand. Right? That was 2019 for Brian and myself. We were implementing design thinking and design strategy at Sabre and 50% of all the groups in the room did not want us there. One of those groups, it was at the beginning of 2019, we had had a really … How many of you ever been in those meetings where it’s super high stakes and if it doesn’t go well, you’re fired? Has anybody been in that situation? That was Christmas 2018, right? And I was like, “Oh.” Even my boss comes, “You know, this is a political minefield, but you can do it.” Awesome. I love your confidence. One of the tools, and if you guys haven’t used this, please look it up. It’s called hopes and fears.

J. Schuh:

And you put up a poster, hopes and fears, and you let everybody in the room write down what they hopes and fears about what you’re about to do. And so they write silently and they put it up and immediately, I’m good about reading the room. That’s something I’m pretty good at. So I went in and I mean, arms were crossed. People had not great expressions on their face and you walk in and go, “Oh God, they’re here.” Right? I mean, that was kind of the emotion. And I’m going, “Oh, this is going to be really interesting what their hopes and fears are.” So hope, “I hope this is not a complete waste of my time.” Awesome. Fear. “I fear this is going to be a complete waste of my time.” And we had flown everybody out for three days and Brian and I were taking a day and a half of their three days and they were super pissed.

J. Schuh:

They were super pissed that we were in the room. They didn’t think that we could offer anything of value, any new information, that would help them get things done. So we’re going to do an exercise. So, what I want you to do is I don’t want you to tell a story, but I want you to think of a story in your story stack. And I want you to consider these things, goals, character, conflict, and resolution. And I want you to, we’re going to do a pedagogy thing of think. So I want you to spend about one minute now, just in silence and solitude. Well really quick, everybody take group breath. On that. Find that story that you think you would tell the group that I just mentioned. Think about it for one minute. Then what I want you to do is pair up and I don’t want you to tell the story. I want you to describe the story to your partner, okay? So for one minute, we’re going to think, and I’ll let you know.

J. Schuh:

All right. So, did you get some interesting insights? From the personal vantage about stories? Here’s how it played out. I tend to like to deescalate people. When people are afraid, I tend to like to calm them down. I say, “It’s going to be okay. This is going to be awesome. We’re going to find all these amazing things. Bear with me. Be open. We’re going to …” That is not Brian. Brian did the complete opposite. He came in and he goes, “You should be afraid.” He goes, “You should be very afraid because what we do here today is going to go directly to the CEO of your business unit and we’re here to get things done, and this is work and workshop.” Right? And he told a story about the one where he and I almost got fired if the results didn’t happen and he talked about how we were able to create some insights and with a report, move that business unit forward, right?

J. Schuh:

So every one of us has different approaches and different stories. If you have a great story that you tell at the right moment, it truly can win hearts, change minds, and get results. And in workshops, one of the things that I’ve noticed being in an enterprise environment, I owned my own company for 20 years, which I was the boss. I was the CEO. I could go in and I had, a lot of times an hour to listen to people around the room, decide what their problem was, and then at the end of that, they would ask me, “Can you deliver this thing on time, on this budget?” And for those of you that own your own business, you probably can relate to that experience a little bit. In enterprise things move more slowly and last night, we also talked about how in short experiences and facilitating, you can manage that experience in a short duration of time and then you leave, right, if you’re an outside person.

J. Schuh:

But when you’re on the inside, you have long-term relationships with those people that you’re going to see in other meetings and other workshops and other things, so it’s a different kind of relationship. And to me, sharing success stories that happen in an enterprise when you do have those successes, those help people buy in when you’re in a room where people don’t want you in the room, all right? So story stacks help you control the room in terms of helping them see there is possibility, in spite of fear, we can make a difference and do what needs to be done. Now I timed this out because I heard we might have questions. So I’m going to actually, because I did my job, I’m going to take it. I guess I would say this. I love the networking. It’s a net that works.

J. Schuh:

How many of you know the LinkedIn thing? Do you guys know the LinkedIn thing, the find nearby? Have you guys done that? Okay, so we’re going to do that real quick. I hadn’t planned on doing this either, but you know, I am J Schuh. All right. So what we’re going to do is you’re going to open up LinkedIn, if you have it. Yeah, I’m asking you to use the thing I told you was the devil. All right. And what you’re going to do is at the bottom, there’s a little two people, my network. You’re going to press that. And when you press that, there’s a little blue button. It’s a blue dot. Oh my God. It’s all coming together, right? It’s a theme. With a person in a plus, you’re going to push that. And there’s one that says find nearby. It’s default is off.

J. Schuh:

I can go back. Absolutely. Heck yeah. So, all right. Back all the way, little two people at the bottom, on the left, you push that, blue dot, all right, comes up. It has a person with a plus by it. Did you guys see that? Okay. Then what you do is you push the blue dot and there’s find nearby. You turn it on. And if everybody is doing what we should do, lots of people in the room pop up and all you can do is, if you want to, you can connect to anybody else who has decided to reach out to you. Right? So this is my little networking tip, and this is so awesome. And for those people that I’m not already connected to, I’m connecting to you because I love to continue the conversation.

J. Schuh:

Yeah. You just press the little thing. There’s little pluses and you use your thumb and you just kind of reach out and connect and see, this is interactive, right? I promised you, Douglas, I would include something interactive in here. And so we’re doing the interactive portion. While we’re pressing dots, does anybody have any questions about story stacks? Yes.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible 00:13:50].

J. Schuh:

Awesome. Thank you for that. That’s awesome. So it is a collection of stories that when you are in a moment and you say, “You know what? I think there’s a disconnect in the room. If I tell this story, the meaning and the idea behind the story can help bring clarity to what we’re trying to solve.” Do you want me to give you another quick example or go.

Speaker 2:

I have a follow up question, I guess.

J. Schuh:

Sure. Go ahead.

Speaker 2:

is there some way that you organize them?

J. Schuh:

Absolutely not.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so this is just a collection kind of in your mind, you don’t like actually consciously have a Google sheet or something, like all the different stories you would use in these things.

J. Schuh:

No, no, no. It’s very in the moment, in present, but they are memorized stories and if you pull them from a book or a magazine, you go, “Oh my God, this is a great story for my story stack, so I’m going to totally do it.” Like value, for instance. Oh, go ahead.

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:14:44] tips for people who have terrible memories?

J. Schuh:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So what you do, let me … I’ll do it through another story, all right? We were having a conversation about communicating with stakeholders and they were saying, I’m offering these stakeholders money and they just don’t want the money. I mean, I keep saying, if you give me this thing, I’ll give you money. And they were not responding. And I said, “One of the things you have to do with stakeholders is you have to understand the values and metrics that are important to those stakeholder and sometimes they’re not the same as us.” And I told this story. I said, There was a little girl on the side of the street who was selling a puppy. And it said, puppy for sale, a thousand dollars. And there’s guy comes up and he’s goes, “Well, my daughter’s little, I think she’d want a puppy.”

J. Schuh:

So he goes up to the guy and he goes, “A thousand dollars is really expensive for a puppy, but I like that puppy for my daughter.” And she goes, “Oh my gosh, this puppy is so warm and cuddly and he just licks your face and it’s just so wonderful. He’s worth a thousand dollars.” And the guy goes, “Well, a thousand dollars is a lot of money for a puppy.” And she goes, “I’m sorry, that’s the price. It’s a thousand dollars.” And so he goes, “Well, I’m not paying a thousand dollars for a puppy.” So he goes on. So a few days later he drove by the same block. It’s in his neighborhood and he still sees this girl selling the puppy for a thousand dollars. She’s very persistent. And then later on, a few days later he’s driving by and it says sold.

J. Schuh:

Well, he is really curious. He’s like, I need this girl on my sales force team, right. And so he goes in to her and he goes, “You really sold that puppy for a thousand dollars?” She goes, “Yes, sir. I did.” She goes, “I got two $500 kittens. I got twice as much love.” Right? So sometimes we misinterpret the value of what other people need and what we’re offering is not what they want. So when we understand the values and beliefs of the stakeholders and the metrics that are important to them, we can then reposition our offer to find compromise and connection. Guys, thank you very much.

The post Story Stack appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was Erin Lamberty.

Erin Lamberty is the Director of Strategy & Culture Change at The Design Gym. She presented on how to navigate uncomfortable conversations and facilitate the unexpected.

“No matter how much you prep and plan, it doesn’t matter. When you’re in the room, you never really know what to expect.”

Erin explained that uncomfortable conversations put people out of their comfort zones in four different ways:

1. A conversation that requires the people to participate with vulnerability, honesty, and bravery.
2. A very personal topic that might not have been addressed before.
3. A topic that’s had a lot of surface-level chatter but not a lot of in-depth talk.
4. A topic that’s taboo, polarizing, or provocative.

She shared various tactics she said facilitators need to deal with sudden elephants in the room created by uncomfortable conversations.

Watch Erin Lamberty’s talk “How to Navigate Uncomfortable Conversations and Facilitate the Unexpected” :

Read the Transcript

Erin Lamberty:

Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Great. I’ll do my professional intro in a little bit, but I also have other lives as yoga and meditation teacher. And I used to have my own studio, so that perhaps makes me the most woo. Even more than Sunny and Leisha, we’ll see.

Erin Lamberty:

But I’ve been feeling that we’ve been in a lot of inhale mode today. We’ve been taking in a lot of information. Our brains are working a lot. We’re writing a lot. So, I’d like to do a very enlightening talk spirit, enlightening exhale, okay? So I invite you all to stand up for this. You can stay seated if you’re more comfortable with that.

Erin Lamberty:

Grab a spot. Okay. And have your hands down by your side. Okay, great. And participant’s choice, if you’re super tired right now, do not close your eyes for the next 30 minutes. If you’re feeling pretty caffeinated, you can close your eyes. It’s nice for this, okay. We’re going to do a very short breathing activity that gets into our bodies a little bit. Okay. So as we stand here, I’d like you to first bring your awareness to your feet on the ground beneath you. And now you can move a little bit and bring your awareness up to your knees. And your hips. Yeah, a good little sway. Nice.

Erin Lamberty:

And your shoulders, good time to bring them up towards your ears back and down. Yeah. Nice. Good. And the very light movement in this is on our inhales. We’re going to open our palms wide and stretch our fingers out and the exhales will be a drawing back in. Okay? All right? So we’ll do three team breaths together with the hand movement. All right. So team breath. Team breath, inhale, stretch out your fingers and bring them back in. Okay, one more together. Very nice. If your eyes have been closed, you can open them and you can all have a seat.

Erin Lamberty:

Everyone’s like chill now and [inaudible 00:02:46] into our bodies a little bit. Great. So as Douglas mentioned, I work at The Design Gym. I am a director of strategy and culture change, okay. And at The Design Gym, we’re a consulting group, and we empower organizations to make some stuff, break a whole bunch of stuff and create new ways of working. Okay. And anything that requires, basically I just facilitate all of the time. Like it’s lots of different ways.

Erin Lamberty:

And I added at The Design Gym, for those of you that are Tweeting or Instagramming or whatever… My marketing team was like, “For the love of God, Erin, can you please remember that we are a company and that we should do social on this?” So there we go, so I don’t forget. And great.

Erin Lamberty:

So much like all of you, I’ve been facilitating for a long time and as my facilitation has gotten more complex and the problems we’re tackling and the things that the groups that I’m working with are working on. I’ve learned a lesson the hard way, a few too many times, is that no matter how much that I prep and plan and do the pre-work and the stakeholder mapping and the scoping sessions and all of that, doesn’t matter. When you get in the room with a group of humans and you’re asking for opinions and trying to get them to talk about interesting things and work, you never really know what to expect.

Erin Lamberty:

Ironically, you cannot control the room. Okay. Yeah, we know that. Yeah. Good. And it’s not a matter of if, but as when and how. It’s something unexpected going to show up in the room that I’m working with. Okay. And for today, I’m not talking about logistical curve balls, though very valid. I’m talking about unexpected conversation topics that are super deep and personal and real and taboo and polarizing, all of that. And that’s what led me to put this talk together today.

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Erin Lamberty:

I have titled it “Uncomfortable Conversations: How to Facilitate the Unexpected?” Okay, so what exactly is an uncomfortable conversation? Well, quite literally it puts people out of their comfort zones because it’s just something we don’t necessarily talk about on the regular and might be a little bit prickly, like our appropriate for Texas icon here. But [inaudible 00:05:04] said, I generally can bring these into four categories or qualities of these types of uncomfortable conversations.

Erin Lamberty:

Okay. So the first is that it’s a conversation that requires people to participate vulnerably, honestly, and with some personal bravery. So for example, one time I was working with a leadership group and they went out for their afternoon break and… Like 10 minutes or so. And they came back and the whole vibe of the experience, just like total 180. I was like, what the heck happened in the past 10 minutes? And it turns out that one of the leaders had resigned that day. And the group had just found out during that break and they lost all of their confidence. They’re like, well, screw this, project’s over, we’re not going forward with this. And it required them to really tap into that personal bravery to admit that they had a lack of confidence. We spent the whole rest of the day being like, “No, we totally got this.” And making space for that.

Erin Lamberty:

The second one is a very personal topic that just might not have been addressed before. For example, that one time during my team’s Monday morning meeting, that I casually announced that I was getting married on Wednesday of that week. Unplanned conversation, very positive, but unexpected nonetheless. We did not spend the rest of the meeting talking about my secret wedding. We side barred it for later, but that came up. It could be a topic that’s had a lot of surface level chatter, but not a lot of deep, real talk. You know, those slack, back channel conversations that I’m talking about. Yeah.

Erin Lamberty:

And last, it definitely could be something that’s taboo, polarizing or provocative. Like the one time I was working with the leadership group on a new product and were in like prototyping, getting pretty far down the project, and it came to light that the two co-founders of that experience were not aligned on the business model of this product. Okay. Had to address it. Yeah. You’ve been there before. Yeah.

Erin Lamberty:

Now it’s important to know that all of these conversation topics and, uncomfortable conversations in general, are not bad. They are great. We should be having more of them. In fact, I’ve done a whole other talks on how to intentionally have those, but today I’m really talking about what happens when those are unplanned. Okay. You’ve been in those situations and in walks that elephant into your meeting. Yeah. We as facilitators need to have tactics to navigate those very unexpected moments that we hadn’t planned for. Okay. Also, this is the third elephant in the slides, the sessions today, we had… Linda had the red elephant this morning, the purple elephant, we’ve got this guy.

Erin Lamberty:

Yeah. Okay. Must be a good omen. So what I would like you all to do is… You know, we laugh and it’s like cute on the slide, but are your personal memories of those uncomfortable moments, when an unexpected conversation pops up that you had not planned for, how does that feel? All right. So I’d like you just, again, take a moment to reflect. If you want to close your eyes and visualize that, or jot notes on your paper, bring to mind one of your personal moments where a situation like this happened to you. Okay, just 15 or so seconds to call to mind, so we’re all on the same mental page of what that’s like. And just take note of how does your body feel from that memory. Yeah, turns like no way, bad, bad. Maybe you had a little while, and you’re like, yeah, that was a great memory. And I am proud of myself.

Erin Lamberty:

All right, open your eyes, no matter what happens, again, in that space of uncomfortable unplanned conversations. So I have gathered some of my most trusted tactics, techniques, activities that I’ve used when this has happened. They might probably not all be new to you, but I think it’s important, as a group of facilitators, that we are talking about and reminding ourselves of the strategies to use in stressful situations. So we get in that moment and we don’t want our lizard brain default scenarios to just take over because we want to react to it. But instead, having these things in our back pockets, so we can thoughtfully respond to what the group needs and address the changing situation.

Erin Lamberty:

Okay. So I’m going to go through these pretty snappy. It won’t be as speedy as Johnny’s activities, but we’ll go pretty quick, and then we’ll see what the group has to share as well.

Erin Lamberty:

All right. Number one, as facilitator, call a timeout. So in your role, you are a deep listener with the group, but you also need to know when to put on your referee hat as facilitator. Okay. So if you hear a conversation come up or you sense it through body language or facial expressions, it is your job as the facilitator of that group to acknowledge it and put a pause and decide how you and the group want to handle it moving forward. So you will lose your credibility and trust with the group if you let the unexpected elephant lurk on the field, all right?

Erin Lamberty:

The second. We’ve heard this a couple of times last night, and today, is to name it. Name that topic that’s being talked around, but not directly about. That is your first step in getting the group to be able to talk honestly about that. And as you’re listening, you don’t need to nail the name of it exactly, but again, ask the group, “Hey, I’m sensing that like we’re not aligned on the business model. That seems pretty important. Is that correct? Should we talk about that?” And have the group weigh in. I also think it’s ironic that it looks like on the illustration my designer is giving me a hint by going to write Erin on that name tag. I didn’t notice that till like two days ago. Yeah.

Erin Lamberty:

Number three, redirect. This conversation was unplanned. So you had a game plan and agenda going into this. If you’re able to come back to that, great. But don’t steam roll the group into just force-facilitating things forward. Acknowledge it, communicate the trade-offs, “Hey, we could spend the rest of the day talking about this or not. What should we do?” But if it’s possible to get back on track, totally a viable tactic to do.

Erin Lamberty:

Number four timebox it. Classic. If you decide to tackle this topic, just like you would any other activity, put up your brand new time timer that you maybe just won, give it a time, set the timer. The group’s going to appreciate your flexibility in navigating that conversation. But also again, your commitment to honor the group’s time.

Erin Lamberty:

Number five. Write before speaking. So, because this topic was unplanned, it was not on the agenda, chances are folks have not had a chance to do their own reflection and processing about that topic. Or it’s just sort of like heated in the moment. So plan for a silent solo writing activity, even just three, five minutes longer, if it’s more about strategic business plan or the business model. Because verbally processing will just segue into that conversation… Is going to lead to confusion, and chances are, a spiraling conversation, which you do not want on a topic that’s very sensitive and people want to have a thoughtful conversation about. Remind them that what they’re capturing isn’t going to be shared. It’s not on sticky note that’s going on the wall, it’s just their scratchpad to help process, so that the conversation can be more productive.

Erin Lamberty:

Okay. Number six, go for a walk. If you can get the group out of the room, give a little, like quite literally, physical space between that conversation and coming back to it? Okay. Obviously outside I think is always best, but I live in Colorado. It was five degrees when I left. So walking around the hallways could do the trick. So that you don’t have the… Well I was going to say the joy of Austin weather, but it’s not as great this week as well. But it gives maybe the group a little more energy and like quite literally some perspective from that. So they can come back fresh and have a more thoughtful conversation and, facilitator bonus, this gives you a little time to regroup, prep, gather your thoughts and plan for what you want to do when the group gets back into the room. If you’re working with a larger group, it could also be a good chance to pair up. Say, “Hey, let’s go in pairs or small groups, start socializing your ideas, before you come back to a larger group format.” Okay.

Erin Lamberty:

Number seven, if I’m allowed to have a personal favorite, this would be it. Give the conversation some space. All right. So change up the format so that each person gets a set time to speak, say one to three minutes, but then honor an intentional one minute of silence in between speakers. All right? This gives, not only equal speaking time, but a space for the conversation to breathe, right? And it eliminates the desire we have to just instantly react or defend the last thing that the last person said. All right.

Erin Lamberty:

And last tip to share number eight, the one-on-one follow-up chat. So if the group decided not to talk about the topic in the session, check in at the break or afterwards with the person or people that did raise that topic and let them know that you see them, you heard what they wanted to talk about and thank them for their honesty and bringing that up and even help them set up time to actually have that conversation in the future. Maybe you even offer to facilitate that conversation as we go forth. All right?

Erin Lamberty:

So if you were not writing stuff fast, here’s your chance to catch them all. I know that these have worked for me in the past. I think they’re pretty good, but I know that I’m probably very soon going to be in a situation where I need different tactics than this. Stakes are higher. People are different. Formats always are changing. So the great is that I happen to be in a room of, what a hundred or so facilitators, that you probably have some tactics that are pretty good for navigating unplanned, unexpected conversations as well. All right.

Erin Lamberty:

So what I would like to do, not just yet, is gather some wisdom from this group. Okay. And add them to this running list of tactics that we can all have to navigate these situations. Maybe there’ll be the first… Or the next control-the-room little field guide situation. So I’ll take the lead on editing and bringing it together, but you all will help.

Erin Lamberty:

So what I’d like you to all to do, and if we were playing facilitator buzzword drinking game, this would be worth like 10 shots. I’d like you all to please grab a sticky note, yeah, classic. And please capture… If you can, if you don’t have one on top of mind, that’s fine too. Please capture one tip. If you’ve got a bunch great, grab a couple of sticky notes, but at least one tip that you’d like to add to this list that you think are great things that us, as a community of facilitators, should have possibly quite literally in our back pocket as we navigate unexpected, uncomfortable conversations. Okay? And if you want to be credited for this tip, please put your name on this sticky note, or you can submit it anonymously. I’d love to hear like one or two from the audience. If you’ve you’ve captured it, if you’ve got one to share. Yeah, Jay.

Jay:

So this is the value of co-facilitating. Is there sometimes when you’re already behind schedule, and you know if you’re not super tight, that you’re not going to finish by the end of the day, you can have your co-facilitator sidebar with that person so they feel heard while the other facilitator continues on the workshop so you can end where you need to end and that other person still feels heard.

Erin Lamberty:

Love it. Love it, thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Can I [inaudible 00:16:51] game?

Erin Lamberty:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

If the group is open to actually having a little fun with it, there’s a game you can play called what could be worse for you. It’s like, oh okay, so this person, this giant stakeholder just got fired during this. What could be worse than that? Oh they’re actually shutting down the whole company. Everybody has to come up with again, worse and worse. And then the reality doesn’t feel quite so bad.

Erin Lamberty:

Yeah, great. Write that down. One more, Daniel.

Daniel:

We talked about this last [inaudible 00:17:21] work I agree with you [inaudible 00:17:19]… I don’t know if it would work in a business setting, but you create a safe space for the person to say what they are withholding from the person. You make sure that both people should [inaudible 00:17:33]. And then you check in with the person that received that and say like, “How do you feel?” Does he [inaudible 00:17:37] with content, so you create a ceremony around [inaudible 00:17:40].

Erin Lamberty:

Yeah, it sounds intense. I don’t want to be in that.

Daniel:

[inaudible 00:17:46] sometimes it’s something [crosstalk 00:17:48].

Erin Lamberty:

That’s good. Thank you for that. Oh, can I do one more?

Speaker 5:

All right, one more. We got to get moving.

Erin Lamberty:

Okay. What I’d like to do is please have one volunteer from your table, grab your stack of pro tips and bring them up and stick them on this whiteboard. All right. I will gather them, put them together. I’m serious about getting them in the book. Thank you all so very much.

Speaker 5:

Awesome. So cool.

The post How to Navigate Uncomfortable Conversations and Facilitate the Unexpected appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was Hailey Temple, the Services Lead at MURAL.

Hailey’s presentation focused on designing online meetings for “distributed people with a purpose.”

Through an interactive activity, she explained that the reason online meetings feel weird is that there is a disconnect among participants. To combat this, Hailey offered several ways to bring participants together in online meetings, including defining why the meeting is online, keeping the meeting short and straightforward, incorporating icebreakers, and using MURAL’s concept posters to help individuals organize ideas during the session.

Watch Hailey Temple’s talk “Designing Online Meetings for Distributed People with Purpose”:

Read the Transcript

Hailey Temple:

Thank you. Oh my goodness. Hi everybody. This is wonderful. All right. So we’re nearing at the end of our time together today in this wonderful home space for facilitators. So I wanted to give everyone one last chance to make a connection with somebody in the room. Maybe someone you haven’t gotten the chance to talk to yet, you’ve wanted to, but just been super busy. So what I’d like you to do is stand up. You’ve been sitting for a while, shake it out and do like some jumping jacks. Go for it, shake it out. All right. And what I’m going to give you is 20 seconds to meet somebody in this room you haven’t talked to yet, but you’re not going to introduce yourself as you. You are going to introduce yourself as your alter ego. It could be your superhero name. It could be you after a couple of drinks at the bar. It doesn’t matter. Think about it 20 seconds, go.

It sounds like a lot of you guys are doing this already, but take a moment and share something meaningful with that person. Maybe a reflection about today, something that surprised you, but take a moment, maybe like 30 seconds and share that with one another.

Now, your final part for this. I want you to turn around and face back to back with your new friend, your new alter ego friends. Back to back. Yep, perfect, just like this. And I want you to continue sharing, if you haven’t already, share that meaningful moment with them for 30 more seconds. Go ahead.

Now you can have a seat. Go back to your seats if you haven’t already. All right, so I want to take a moment and just kind of like unpack that. And also you can introduce your real name if you haven’t already, or you can just keep yourself mysterious, that’s fine too.

 So how was that? Fun, playful, interesting. Okay. Tell me why.

Speaker 2:

The altar ego was really fun. Something really quick that wasn’t actually me but was still part of me.

Hailey Temple:

Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 2:

That inspired to think and do… Go on a similar track.

Hailey Temple:

Nice. Cool. What else? What about that face to face and then turn around? How was that for you guys?

Speaker 3:

More intimate?

Hailey Temple:

More intimate? Which one was more intimate?

Speaker 3:

The back to back.

Hailey Temple:

Okay, interesting. Tell me why.

Speaker 3:

Well, it’s like you’re kind of touching each other’s back, and you kind of have to get close so you can hear each other. So you’re not facing in this interaction. So its actually like a secret .

Hailey Temple:

Interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. Very cool. All right. Anything else?

Speaker 4:

I thought the back to back was awkward [inaudible 00:03:23].

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Hailey Temple:

And you’re like, you don’t know this person, you don’t even know their real name. It’s like this weirdo. All right. Thank you guys. I think I love the different insights. That’s a really interesting one about the intimacy piece. But I think that a lot of us think about online meetings, like how you mentioned is, they’re kind of awkward. We talk about face to face and we love being able to help build connections with people and establish the sense of trust. And then I think realizing a lot of our talks today, the reason that online meetings feel weird a lot of times is we feel that sense of broken connection between people. And honestly, as facilitators… I’m going to shift this over. Nope, I’m not cool. We feel like this. We fucking hate online meetings a lot, and we hate facilitating them. And I really can’t blame anybody for not liking online meetings because how many of us have been in a meeting and we’re trying to build that trust, that connection for people. And someone’s going to say, “Oh, I have this really great idea.”

“Sorry, your wifi is disconnected, trying to reconnect you now.” And you’re like, “Cool, great, thanks.” That completely breaks. That sense of trust, that connection, that momentum that we’ve built with people in that session. And we kind of want to do this, you can feel like we’re on Swanson, like fuck all this, we’re going to just throw it away, goodbye.

But how many of us have also been asked to host an online meeting? To facilitate one? A lot of us here. Oh yeah, this guy can’t come, can you just do it online? No, I really can’t. But let’s face it. We have more of these online meetings. We’re working in an online world and we can either choose to say no and defer, or we can evolve. Evolve, how we practice, evolve our craft, evolve our mindsets. And today, I want to share some nuggets of wisdom with you from my experience, facilitating lots of online meetings, honestly messing up facilitating a lot of online meetings and then gracefully recovering and like, I’m fine, and share that with you today. But before I do, I need you to let go, let go the feeling that online meetings are the ugly stepsister to face-to-face meetings, because online meetings really have an important place in this world. We talk about diversity. It brings people together from different perspectives on a problem to solve it together when they can’t be the same room. It reduces the amount of time we’re traveling to face-to-face meeting, so think about fewer greenhouse gas emissions, more time spent at home with our loved ones.

So if you’re ready to evolve with me, let go of that feeling. Let me share some ways that we can evolve how we meet online and build meetings with purpose.

First, we can define why we’re really meeting online. Priya Parker’s book, buy it over there, it’s amazing, the Art of Gathering, opens with a really simple question, why do we… It says gather, I promise. Gather. I love this question. I ask it for all of my meetings because I use that response to shift how I’m going to build that agenda, how I’m going to design that experience. And just like we need to evolve, this question needs an evolution for an online world. Why do we really gather online? Why online? Maybe it’s because there’s no more budget for the company to have people traveling to meet face to face, so online meetings are the only option. Why online? Maybe because an executive needs to be in one continent and we need to be in another side of the world having our meeting together, but the team still needs to make important decisions for the next quarter. Why online? Maybe there are no more conference rooms for your team to meet. And I’ve been there a lot before, and suddenly you have to figure out how to still get that work done.

 So think about maybe some online meetings you’ve had this past month or so. Did you know why you were really meeting online? Have you ever asked someone who you’re facilitating a meeting for why it’s happening online? It isn’t always obvious. But sooner we ask and not the better, we are prepared to design an experience that considers those dynamics and considers the mindsets and feelings of the people in that digital space.

Next, we can keep it short and simple. The technology and the methods. I can guarantee you, people are not meeting online for you to do a lengthy technology demo, and to go through all the little nuances of how this tech works. I think in face to face meetings, we rely a lot on meeting norms that have been established through our world. We have to help people have a seat, stand up, write something, peel the sticky note. But in online meetings, we’re inviting people into this new and really uncomfortable space. And even if it’s just for an hour long meeting, it kind of disorients them. But as facilitators, we have the ability to help people build confidence, to feel really excited to work together. And we also have the ability to help people who might feel uncertain get or even resistant, build that confidence and have this foundation to start collaborating with People.

First, I like to start with giving people only the need to know information to accomplish a first task in a meeting. So I refer mural, it’s a digital and visual collaboration tool. And when I invite somebody into the tool for the first time, I tell them two things, know how to navigate in and out, zoom in and out of a space like this, which is called a canvas. It gives them a sense of place in a pretty crazy online space. And I tell them how to add and contribute content through sticky notes. That’s it. Don’t worry about anything else going on on the side. Focus on the meetings and the conversations we’re having today.

 I also like to give people a little digital desk, because if I launched you into this giant canvas, it’s daunting. Where do we start? But if I give someone a desk, it’s a little home base for them to start feeling comfortable to contribute to the conversation. So you can see, I add pictures, I add some blank sticky notes for them to add in. I’ll add their names. It’s a space for them to feel comfortable to come back to if they’re daunted by the work.

Remember, we are hired. Our job is to help create meaningful discussions, not to teach people the technology. So the shorter and simpler, the better

As facilitators. We also need to make time for play as much as the work because the playtime gives people a chance to establish connections, it creates trust, it builds energy is needed. So how do we do that today in meetings, in face-to-face meetings?

Speaker 5:

Icebreakers.

Hailey Temple:

Icebreakers. Yeah, exactly. Energizers, warmups. And they are awesome for online meetings because we need those connections when there’s a huge barrier of a laptop in front of you or whatever. But they also are kind of like your little facilitator hack. I talked about creating confidence and giving people kind of like a base to work off of. And warmups are a really low risk exercise to get people engaged and to start working.

 So at Mural, we have an example of this is, we have online meetings with over 100 people. We have company all hands. And so they look a lot like this. They’re pretty chaotic. It’s a lot of floating heads. But we need to get people focused on the task at hand for that day and into the tool to start working. So here’s a warm-up we used recently in an all hands meeting. We invited everybody into this canvas and we said, share what shoes you’re wearing today. Put it in the canvas and tell us what they say about you. But I want to make sure people knew how to behave in this technology with the canvas too. So I took a picture of my shoes, in this case, I was wearing these compression socks. I put them in the canvas and I said, “Here, add a sticky note with your name, add another one of what these shoes say about you. And in my case, I said, “I’m a 95 year old woman trapped in a 20 somethings body.” So true.

And so people did stumble. It took some time at first, but it was pretty incredible to see what we were able to create together in just a couple of minutes. And honestly, I’d rather they were struggling this little easy warmup then later on, when we’re making really essential decisions together as a team.

It also creates a really fun element of play. You can see we literally enjoy trolling each other at Murals, and people are like, “Those are Lucas’s ugly ass feet.” We actually found out one of our designers in Argentina makes her own shoes and she wants to launch a shoe line someday. And so those are incredible moments that we don’t get with people around the world when we’re not able to meet between coffee breaks or at a water cooler or something. So play creates those moments and opportunities for us.

You can also use the time between meetings. So I’m talking about real-time work and asynchronous work. People think that since I’m a remote worker, I must work insane hours of waking up at 3:00 AM to meet with people around the world, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s how my team gets work done between and during meetings. So we’re planning an event and my team wants to get together to have important discussions about the events that we want to launch. So we scheduled one hour for us to meet at a time that was convenient for everybody to answer those essential questions. Why have this event? How do we think you want to accomplish this event? How is this going to help the company accomplish their goals?

About 15 minutes before the meeting ended, I gave the team homework. I said, “We have kind of a scaffolding for this event. Now I want you to create your vision for what this event should look like, and we’re going to share this event vision when we come back together.”

So I shared the instructions with the team. I said complete this before the next meeting. And if people had questions for me between meetings, they could ask me on Slack or just reach out for help, and we could jump on a call together.

In the next meeting, I was able to have everyone present their concept posters, this is called a concept poster, share out what their vision was with the team, and have the rest of the group capture feedback. So you can see those little digital desks there for people to share feedback.

So real-time work and asynchronous work is an essential part of working with distributed people, because it considers the fact that people don’t always have their most creative moments when they’re in that meeting. If someone’s working at 8:00 PM and someone else’s working at 8:00 AM, they might not be at their creative best. So if you use the time between meetings, you give people a chance to step back, reflect and bring their best creative work forward.

Finally, I love online meetings because they are the place to work visually. Visuals tell stories. Visuals clarify concepts for people. But I believe the visuals belong in every part of an online meeting, and here’s why. First of all, people have incredibly short attention spans in meetings. I have multi-tasked in a lot of my online meetings. Have any of you done that? I think we’re pretty much all guilty of it, it happens. And so I like to create an online meeting experience that’s more engaging.

Imagine I invited you into a meeting and the agenda looked like this. What story am I telling you? Can you see the direction, the flow of this meeting we’re going to have today? It’s much more immersive and engaging for someone to sit through and collaborate in something like this, versus a boring PowerPoint or word document.

 I also love to use visuals to show versus tell. So in all of my meetings, I try and capture gifs or gifs, if you’re a psychopath, to show people how to work in the tool. And this saves me a lot of time explaining mechanics of the tool, but also again, shows people how to behave in this online world.

We also have visuals because they’re responsive. We don’t really have control anymore over how people can join our meetings. And I think visuals are a really powerful way to anchor people in a conversation. I love the lightening decision jam, if you guys have seen this before, this sailboat analogy, because it really… No pun intended, anchors people around the conversation across different devices.

 I believe that as facilitators, we are creating stories. We’re creating stories where we have the opportunity to lead people through an experience, and we get to have these characters go in and out of this experience with us. And we have the choice to make that a textbook or an awesome engaging, colorful picture book in our meetings.

 So when I talk about evolution, these aren’t breakthrough crazy things. I think I’m taking a lot of what’s been talked about today and just trying to flip it, adapt it into an online world. And I really believe that that’s my… What I contribute to the craft of facilitation that we’re all here to enjoy and celebrate and to learn from.

 So when you have an online meeting, maybe the next week or month, I want to challenge you to think about how you can evolve your practice. Because when we keep it short and simple, we reduce the barriers for people to jump in and get engaged. When we make time for play, we create a chance for connection. When we use the time between, we consider that people have different creative bests at different times of the day. And we work visually, recreate stories and lead people through an experience.

So I couldn’t share all of my nuggets today with you, but if you’re curious and excited to learn more about online facilitation, you can come up to me, you can check out these references here, I wrote a blog post about this a little bit more too, and we have a facilitator’s guide over at the Mural desk for you to keep exploring this space.

 But guys, if we are going to continue facilitating meetings and controlling the room, let’s evolve together. Thank you.

The post Designing Online Meetings for Distributed People with Purpose appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was Reagan Pugh, Facilitator at Voltage Control.

Reagan lectured on the inner work of a facilitator; the essential job is done before facilitation, and how it affects the dynamic of the group one is leading.

He called into question what facilitators do before walking into the room, and reminded the group that facilitation is not about the facilitator, but about helping the group. “We don’t go into a room armed with our answers, we go in the room and help them recover the answers in the room, not discover the answers for them.”

Reagan shined a light on the importance of centering oneself and bringing positive energy to the room to cultivate the same in the group. “We need to consider where our mind is at, our spirit, and our intentions, so that we don’t bring negative bias into the room.”

Watch Reagan Pugh’s talk “Inner Work of a Facilitator”:

Read the Transcript

Reagan Pugh:

Last night a wintry minx fell upon Austin, Texas. If you’re anything like me, most likely this morning you woke up and you scurried to your window and you pull the blinds down to see if the snow is on the ground. Oh, it’s on top of the cars. And then you do, if you’re from Texas one really important thing after this, you scurry over to your laptop, you open it up and you look to see if school’s closed for the day.

I’m a grown adult, but I was still like, a school day feels really cool, especially when we’re in Texas. Because we liked the imagining school days, because you imagine it’s going to be some kind of a snowpocalypse and you’re going to have to survive it. And all of a sudden, your mom’s like, “Put the bath… Turn on the bathtub, get the water, fill it up. The pipes might freeze, make sure we got the canned food!” You figure out which of your sweaters you’re going to use to put on for warmth and which ones you can like rip up and tie around a broken broom handle and dip in kerosene for a torch.

There’s this emergency mindset that we get into. Sometimes I feel that when I’m just at home, not wanting to go get food somewhere and there’s no food left in my house. And so you go to the pantry and it’s… There’s some tortillas and I got some spaghetti some… have you ever made a spaghetti taco? I just got back yesterday from a trip and all we had was chili, and I made a chili taco. Listen to me, you can make a taco out of anything, you just need a tortilla. There’s this practice of going into the pantry and saying to myself, “Okay, I can’t go out and discover food anywhere else I’m going to have to make do with what I got. I’m going to have to recover what I’ve already got right in here right now.’.

Have you ever been making a PowerPoint presentation, and it’s one hour before your presentation, and you’re on Unsplash looking at stock photography and you’re like, “What the hell is going to say synergy for me.” And then all of the sudden, your past self walks the room, the ghost of your past self, and whispers into your ear, “That consumer beverage company you did a workshop for in 2016, three slides will work here. You’re welcome.” And then you think to yourself, “Oh yes!”

I’ve been here before. I don’t ho… have to go out and discover something else that I have to put in my playbook, I need to recover things that I’ve had. These are the stories that we love, these are the stories that we pay attention to. There’s this one about a Prince, his father gets murdered by his uncle. He’s got to flee. And so he takes up with some vagabonds and they live off the land. His sweetheart comes to find him years later to save the kingdom is in disarray. Only you can come back and save us, but he doubts that he says, “I don’t have what it takes. I think I’m going to have to go discover some new knowledge and skills…” But I’m talking about Simba, right? And this is the Lion King. I’m going to have to go out Nala and fi… And she says, “No, it’s about recovering who you’ve always been.”

Isn’t this what we do for our clients. We don’t go into a room armed with our answers. We go into our room, if we’re really going to serve our clients, believing that the answers to their greatest challenges are already locked in that room. And it is our job to bring them out. It is not our job discover, it is our job to recover. So, this is really great for us to do for our clients. But man, this is really hard to do for ourselves.

This is why the cobbler’s kids have holes in their shoes. This is why management consultants are terrible entrepreneurs. This is why the dermatologist’s kids have back zits. This is why the urologists… I’ll stop there.

What do we do before we go into the room? The success of any intervention depends upon the interior condition of the intervenor. We’ve got the knowledge and skills and spades. We have access to all kinds of things that we can bring with us, but are we willing to do the work prior to make sure that when we come into that room, we’re ready to help those folks recover what it is that they need to

I like to start with gratitude. Some folks, when we begin a session we want to get people talking and if there’s trust in the room it’s great to get folks to have an intimate conversation. But sometimes that doesn’t always work and people are a little rebuffed by that. I often find that talking about things we’re grateful for is a great way to start, because all of the sudden we’re not worried about all that we have to do. Our brains get wipes. There’s a clean slate. As Solomon says, our amygdala relaxes and people become available for something. So let’s just try this real quick. Think about something that’s going well in your life, think about something that’s going right. This is just how I would do it in a session. And just turn, in 30 seconds, and share to your neighbor like, “This is one ray of sunshine in my life right now.” Go.

Thank you. Let me hear two things, you can brag on your partner. What do we hear? What did you hear your partner say that you said, “Oh, that’s good.” Yes.

Speaker 2:

My sweet young son,-

Reagan Pugh:

“My sweet young son,”-

Speaker 2:

When he’s sleeping.

Reagan Pugh:

When he’s asleep! We keep lots of NyQuil around. What else? One more.

Speaker 3:

We’ve got a freelancer here who’s killing it.

Reagan Pugh:

We’ve got a freelancer who’s killing it, went out on her own and is making it rain. Congratulations. Give a round of applause.

But here’s the thing about getting folks to this place. You can feel the temperature in the room change whenever we talk about things that we’re grateful for, but I can’t give a gift like that to a room if I don’t have that gift myself.

I was a magician growing up, and I was good. And I would do birthday parties and I would make balls disappear and handkerchiefs disappear. But every time I would master a new trick, there was this problem. I stopped being impressed with the trick that I was performing. And so I would move from trick to trick no longer enjoying it because the knowledge and the skill didn’t seem complicated to me anymore.

So seeking wisdom, I went to the local magic shop where there was this wise old magician who would proffer advice to young people. And he would sit in the corner, and I walked in and I said, “Master, what am I supposed to do? My magic tricks are no longer impressive to me.”

He said, “Oh, it’s a sad day in a young magician’s life when he’s no longer impressed with his own magic, but,” he stands up and he walks over, puts his hands on the counter. And he says, “Learning how to do the illusion is only step one of being a magician. Knowing how to return to the wonder you felt when you first saw the trick performance, now this is the magic.” And then he snapped his fingers and he turned into a Raven and he flew out the…

If I don’t believe that I have a gift, how am I going to give a gift? We’re freelancing right now. Was there a job that you left to freelance? Was freelancing a thing that you’ve wanted to do?

Speaker 4:

Uh, no.

Reagan Pugh:

Okay, that didn’t work. That didn’t work. What does it look like for us before we begin our work to make sure that we think, “I’m choosing to be here.”

One year, two year, three years or four years ago, I wouldn’t have believed that I had the chance to do this. And if we can remember that we have this privilege of walking into a room to guide folks, perhaps then we can give this gift of gratitude back to them.

My grandmother, she would paint her fingernails methodically. She had the bottles across her bathroom and she would pull one down and the red would coat her fingernail. You could see the bristles, so slowly. I would say to her, “Nana, why is it that you paint your fingernails so slowly?”

And she would blow on them and say, “Honey, it’s because I paint my fingernails like this, that you’re alive.”

I would say, “Nana, what do you mean?”

And she said, “Honey, if I take this good care of my fingernails, don’t you think I made sure your dad didn’t kill himself?”

She had a tidy house, she had painted fingernails, her car was always clean, and her clothes were folded. The way that she did anything was the way that she did everything.

As facilitators, what mindsets do we carry about the people whom we were about to go interact with? When we’re doing discovery interviews, do you ever have someone who works for the organization you’re going to serve, say, “Now watch out for Sarah, watch out for Jonathan. They’re going to be a naysayer.” And then don’t we carry the story into the room with us if we’re not careful. Those thoughts that we carry, the way that we behave, the postures we take, this permeates into the rest of our experience. How do we make sure as we approach any engagement that we consider where our mind is at, where our spirit is at? Where are we worried? Where are we anxious? And where are we frustrated? Because this, my friends, echoes into the rest of our actions.

I had a mentor, and his name was Earl. I was in college and I couldn’t get a girlfriend. So I was involved, Students Association for Campus Activities, Student Government, Student Organ… I was busy, I was building a resume. I was going to go make something of myself. I was applying for all these jobs and I wasn’t getting them. And I was frustrated. So I would walk into Earl’s office and I would sit down and I would complain about my station in life. And Earl was patient, and he would sit in his chair and it would swivel and he would let me finish. And finally the swivel would stop. And he would look at me, and with kindness say the same thing that he said every single time, “Reagan, this is going to make a lot more sense for you when you realize that it’s not about you.” Earl died a few years later. And 1000 people went to his funeral. Earl possessed knowledge and skills, but it was not Earl’s knowledge and skills that allowed him to have a lasting impact on me and those who he served.

It is easy for us before we take on an engagement, to walk into the room believing that we are being held up and judged the entire time. It’s easy for us to believe that our career is dependent upon doing perfect in this interaction, or that us achieving the result that we told them that we would achieve is going to determine whether or not we are going to ever be successful in this field.

But let me tell you something, it’s not about you. And here’s the paradoxical beauty of realizing that it’s not about us. The second we can believe and remember that it’s not about us walking into the room to do this work, the stakes that we once believed to be so high, they can vanish. And the second we don’t believe the stakes exist anymore about whether or not we have value. The second that we are able to recover those pieces of ourselves that can really connect and be with the people in the room.

People, I don’t know if you know this, we don’t like to have things done to us, but we do enjoy it whenever folks decide to show up to a room and be with us the way that we need to be been with. This all happens before we walk into the room. This all happens before we speak to one person, my friends, this is the inner work of the facilitator. Thank you.

The post Inner Work of a Facilitator appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was John Fitch, the Chief Product Officer at Voltage Control and Co-author of Time Off.

 John spoke about the importance of rest in facilitation practices.

He presented on rest ethic and the importance it plays in the facilitation of culture. Through breathing activities, John demonstrated the ebb and flow of work and rest ethic and how to navigate and balance them in our own lives and professional practices.

Each inhale represented work ethic: how to get things done, execute, coordinate, manage, and fulfill tasks and duties.

Each exhale represented rest ethic: space for deep, internal work, expanded awareness, creativity, and time off. He explained that we need both ethics to avoid burnout and help individuals be effective facilitators for their companies.

John challenged the room to apply their rest ethic more in workshops and business culture.

Watch John Fitch’s talk “Rest Ethic in Facilitation Culture”:

Read the Transcript

John Fitch:

Sweet. So I’m sorry. You thought you were signing up for a facilitator summit, at least with my talk. Welcome to Workaholics Anonymous. I’m a recovering workaholic and this whole talk is around that topic. So everyone please stand. Let’s move those blood vessels.

And on a count of three, we’re going to take a deep breath. You’re going to hold your breath. So one, two, three. Deep inhale and hold. Okay. Hold as long as you possibly can. The moment you have to exhale, you sit down. This is a competition of sorts. Don’t feel bad if you have to exhale, but right now you’re holding. After you have to let it out, your exhale, just sit down. We’ll see who’s got the tightened lungs. Dang. Dang. Dang. Some of y’all are impressive.

We have some like Wim Hoff practitioners in here. Okay. Okay. Okay. Exhale. Exhale. Cool. Cool. Okay. Now real quick. We’re going to do like Solomon did this morning, a big inhale as a group.

Hold for three, two, one, group exhale. Ah, nice, nice. Good stuff. So that picture that I showed at the beginning was a moment in Greece that really changed my life where I had this epiphany that inhale and exhale is of course the duality of breath, yin yang with fung shui. I looked at it as inhale is our work ethic. exhale is our rest ethic and both are needed.

And our work ethic is where we get shit done. We coordinate, we manage, we email, we make, we fulfill and I’ve worked a lot in building AI applications. And most of these things about work ethic are being handed over to the machines, in my opinion, for the better, because what we don’t know how to automate and the genius of our humanity is in our rest ethic. It’s ideation, it’s human connection. It’s having that sudden epiphany. To Justin’s point. We don’t have ideas, ideas have us. And when we’re in a rested state, we’re an open channel.

So both of these are needed just like you have to inhale and you have to exhale. Very rarely do you have a perfect balance like this. For most people, this is what’s going on. For some people, they find a way to have an interesting back and forth on a micro sense of inhale, exhale, work ethic, rest ethic.

This is my preferred state. Very focused, deep work, expanded creativity and time off, which I consider the most important work actually. But the reality is most of us tend to forget the importance of the exhale and before we know it, boom, we’re burned out. Aside from that feeling real shitty, we can’t tap into the benefits of rest ethic. We can do all the hard work, but have nothing actually work.

Anyone read any of these books? Raise your hand. There’s some good ones up there. So again. So again, red background. These are books about work ethic, super important. All these work. Some of the methods I’ve even practiced, but then there’s a few books you can find, they’re hard to find that are around rest ethic, but there’s not enough of them.

So I spent the last year and a half adding to that part of Barnes and Noble. And it’s important because again, why are we burning out? It’s because we’re forgetting to exhale. We’re forgetting our rest ethic. In the book, we look at people throughout history and modern times that literally emphasize it’s a part, it’s their first step of strategy is leading with rest ethic. Brunello Cucinelli, half a billion dollar fashion, empire, 90 minute lunch, no emails after 5:30 PM. Cultural allowance for everyone in the company. Doing well and also making a significant amount of money that he calls it, investing in human dignity.

You’ve got ancient composers who went on forest walks and that’s where they were the open channel for the song and the supplies modern times. We have Terry Rudolph there at the bottom left. He’s one of the leading experts in quantum computing. Rest ethic was the first thing their entire company of scientists emphasized because he says, “If we’re just doing what everyone else is doing, how are we going to make ourselves different?”

So they have group runs. They go on off sites and go traveling together for the sake of traveling, knowing that the gift of it will be a breakthrough idea that’s going to push the way we handle computing. I want to make the point that just like these people, we all here in this room are facilitators of culture. That could be facilitators of our company’s culture about we handle vacation time or time off.

Also, when we are hosting people in a workshop, you facilitate that culture there too. Are you giving them enough breaks? Are you ending maybe what feels like a little too early? That might be the right thing so that they can show up the next day with enthusiasm. So first let’s discuss rest ethic. Who in the room finds rest through creating art of some kind? Please stand up.

Awesome. What do you make? What do you make?

Speaker 2:

I’m a gardener.

John Fitch:

You’re a gardener? What does that do for you?

Speaker 2:

Connects me to the earth and to possibility, growth.

John Fitch:

Teach me how to have a green thumb. I could use it.

Speaker 2:

Attention.

John Fitch:

Attention. Attention. Thank you. Thank you. Please take a seat. Stand if you’re someone who finds rest in sweating, getting the heart rate up. Awesome. Wendy, what does that do for you?

Wendy:

It gives me a sense of connection. Not only with others, sense of connection with others. Also just it taps into the neurons in your brain and body that allow you to feel more joy in the world.

John Fitch:

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Please sit again. You’re getting your squats in. So Chris doesn’t have to run around when you speak, just speak loud. Who takes forest baths? Stand up. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a Japanese term around just walking in nature aimlessly. Okay, great. What does that do for you?

Speaker 4:

Calms my heart, mind and soul.

John Fitch:

Calms your heart, mind and soul. Beautiful. Also leaves you smelling a little nice and natural. Please take a seat. My most favorite one is who shuts it down. You have some strict rules of when you turn the phone on airplane mode or you know when to end work and you really end work. Stand up if you know how to shut it down, that’s your way to find rest. Cam, why is that important? What happens when you do that?

Cam:

Communication is exhausting and I love just sitting down.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Thank you. Please take a seat. Who travels for inspiration? They make it a point to get out of town. Hank what does that do for you?

Hank:

I think a change of scenery allows you to kind of just see things in a different way so that when you go back to your usual surrounding, you [inaudible 00:08:34].

John Fitch:

Nice, nice. A new environment, new ideas, lovely. Stay seated, stay seated, please sit. All right, and stand up if you felt burned out lately. I’m like if I could stand up even more, I would. I’ve been more burned out than usual. You’re not alone. Even as a person who’s writing and thinking a lot about this, I still get burned out and thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that. But the good news is those who just stood up, you also stood up in some of the other categories, so you know what to do. Please take a seat.

 So what we’re going to do now is I’m going to play one of my favorite songs. And it’s just like, for me, channels some really awesome ideas. And what you’re going to do on a piece of paper is in two minutes, I want you to think about the thing that gives you the most rest. That’s the first part.

So maybe you take 30 seconds or a minute. You could draw that out. You could write it as a phrase. And then I want you to think about as a facilitator of culture, of workshops, of teams, of loved ones, how can you incorporate that more? Because you know the value of it. Does anyone have any clarifying questions about this task? Chris, play that song.

But I want to finish with an important question. Has anyone read this book? The Top Five Regrets Of The Dying by Bronnie Ware? So she worked in palliative care. This is a very powerful book. She’s helped guide thousands of people to their crossover, into the other realm. And there’s a lot of wisdom in this book. And one of the top five regrets of the dying is I wish I wouldn’t have worked so hard.

Time off. Exhale. Rest ethic can help with this, but the other four, it can help with as well. So you could have been true to yourself. The things that you just talked about at your table, that’s you. That’s really who you are. That’s your creative genius. Do more of that. It will feed into your work. You can catch up with others, have the human connection. The rest ethic is to not only help you as a facilitator not have regrets, but everyone that you facilitate, you don’t want them being case studies in this book.

They have the opportunity now to prevent that. Our book comes out next month. You can find more about it. We have a podcast too, timeoffbook.com as Daniel says, had to put out some shameless promo. Time Off literally works. One of my jobs is building products for facilitators. Control The Room is the summit. It’s now a product brand to build physical and digital tools for all of us in the room.

And we’ve been doing a lot of work on the digital side. Most of my background’s in software, no problem there, but when Douglas was like, “We need to make some physical products for people,” I was hitting my head against the wall, like where’s creativity? And my partner, Sarah, hey, gorgeous. She helps me not be a hypocrite.

 I’m guilty of only inhaling. And she’s really good at saying, “Hey, this weekend let’s have a tech Shabbat. Phones are off. Airplane mode. Away.” And when I did that, when I took that time off, I did things like catch up with Thich Nhat Hanh’s how to series. This great approachable Buddhist series on how to eat, how to walk, how to love, how to fight. And then I also tapped into my inner child and played with some Legos and built some stuff. And none of that felt like work.

But those two things combined allowed us to come up with one of our physical products series, which is the Control Of The Room handbook series, which is open to all facilitators to work with us so that less in a month’s time, you can take one of your methods and publish. If publishing a book’s intimidating, we’ve built a system to help you. And if it wasn’t for Time Off, I would not have done my job of coming up with some of our new physical products. So Time Off I think is some of the most important work that you will do.

Let’s keep it calm. Let’s exhale. More blue than red. It’s not a Crips, Blood thing, but inhale, exhale, but thank you. And thank you for also holding so much space all you speakers. Again, that was a big exhale last night was us all realizing we’re all just as flawed. We all deal with the same stuff. And I feel more confident as a facilitator just by holding space together and being able to know that there’s other people that have a shared experience and you all deserve rest. Don’t forget that. Thank you.

The post Rest Ethic in Facilitation Culture appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was Jordan Hirsch, the Director of Innovation at Phase2, a Digital Experience agency that helps companies create meaningful experiences, develop and integrate systems, drive business results, and operate at speed and scale.

He presented on how to facilitate the fun in meetings by incorporating improv. Jordan led the room through a “yes and” exercise that demonstrated the value of accepting and responding, and how it translates to the mind of a facilitator to help them respond to the expected and unexpected.

He explained that accepting does not mean always mean agreeing, and that responding is greater than reacting. Jordan demonstrated that improv helps individuals be present and accept and build trust; it is a liberating structure in one’s mind.

Watch Jordan Hirsch’s talk “Facilitating the Fun”:

Read the Transcript

Jordan Hirsch:

All right. Thanks, everybody. The coveted post-break slot. Welcome back to the improv portion of the day. My name is Jordan Hirsch. I’m going to talk about bringing improv into your facilitation work. To get started, this might shock you, but could I get seven volunteers up on stage, please? It’s just the magic number for improv games. That’s how it goes. There’s one, thank you. Anybody else? Two, thank you very much. Three, four, five, six, seven. Oh my God, we did it. Yay. I liked the specificity. I had written in my notes six to eight and then I heard Shannon say seven. I was like, “That’s six to eight.” This is going to work out great. Could you all please do me a favor and just get in a circle? I will remove them. No, maybe the people towards the back. Just take a step backward that way so everybody doesn’t fall off stage.

Jordan Hirsch:

There you go. Now let’s complete the circle. Excellent. Thank you so much. So we’re going to play. There it is. We’re going to play a quick game called the yes circle. Can you guys take as many steps back as bad. There you go. You take one back for me. Oh, beautiful. I love it. You go back. Perfect. Thank you so much. So, the yes circle. Let’s close up the circle once again, the yes circle doesn’t mean to get closer. There you go. The yes circle…

Daniel:

[crosstalk 00:01:34] Was this perfect or are we good?

Jordan Hirsch:

You are. This is it. Thank you for the circle, no. The yes circle has one objective. Your objective is to take someone else’s place in the circle. To do it, there’s only two rules. It is so easy you could not possibly fail. All you have to do is point at someone else in the circle, whose place you want to take.

Jordan Hirsch:

Could you point at someone else in the circle? Beautiful. You are going to make…

Daniel:

If I’m a target, I’m dead.

Jordan Hirsch:

You are going to make eye contact and you’re going to say, yes.

Daniel:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

As soon as you get that yes, you may begin walking towards his place in the circle. Guess what you’re going to do? You’re going to point at someone else in the circle.

Daniel:

Okay.

Jordan Hirsch:

Go for it. And you’re going to say?

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

Here you go. Now you’re going to point at someone else in the circle. No, no, no.

Speaker 3:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jordan Hirsch:

It’s only two rules.

Daniel:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

There you go.

Speaker 3:

I’ve got it. I’ve got it.

Daniel:

Yes. No, wait, that’s wrong.

Jordan Hirsch:

Yep. That’s alright. Alright, let’s reset real quick. There’s only two rules. You can’t get it wrong. So here, come on over here. Let’s get back into our beautiful circle. So you’re going to point to someone else in the circle.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Jordan Hirsch:

Go ahead. And you’re going to say?

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

Now you’re going to point to someone… There you go.

Speaker 5:

Yes.

Speaker 6:

Yes.

Speaker 7:

Yes.

Speaker 8:

Yes.

Daniel:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

Okay. So there’s only two rules. You can’t get it wrong. You guys want to try it one more time. [crosstalk 00:02:55] Okay, great.

Speaker 7:

Oh, watch yourself. You alright?

Jordan Hirsch:

Watch your step. Don’t worry about me. I’m a professional. I fall off stages all the time.

Speaker 7:

[inaudible 00:03:03].

Jordan Hirsch:

Why don’t you go ahead. Point to anyone in the circle.

Speaker 5:

Yes.

Speaker 6:

Yes.

Speaker 7:

Yes.

Speaker 8:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

So there’s only two rules. You can’t get it wrong. Folks, can we please get a big round of applause for our volunteers? And, before you all dissipate, a quick question. First of all, thank you very much. Second of all, why did we do that?

Speaker 7:

Why did we do that?

Jordan Hirsch:

Why did we do that?

Speaker 3:

Because directions are hard to follow.

Jordan Hirsch:

Because directions are hard to follow.

Speaker 3:

And, it creates habit when we don’t give the directions.

Jordan Hirsch:

That’s a good reason. Anybody, what were you starting to say? You said communication.

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

Jordan Hirsch:

What about it?

Speaker 5:

Direct eye contact. Setting a clear purpose.

Daniel:

Assent.

Jordan Hirsch:

Assent, such a Daniel answer. Permission. Yes. Permission is good. We’re leaving… Great answers, all of you, now I’ll give my answer while you get off the stage. Thank you so much. Seriously. All of those answers are correct by the way. We do that, because we can take many lessons from it. My personal favorite thing about that game is that it really nicely illustrates the concept of the importance of building a shared reality.

Jordan Hirsch:

If we are not agreeing on a shared reality, we cannot move forward with things. If you move forward without getting or giving a yes, you are trying to move into a house that’s not for sale. You are violating the shared reality that we have, and shared reality is the basis of that most famous of improv concepts, yes and… Show of hands, I’m sure it’s going to be every hand, who here has heard of Yes and…? Awesome. Could anyone give me a definition? No professional improvisers allowed. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Speaker 9:

Definition is, taking someone’s idea and building on it, rather than dismissing their idea and putting your idea.

Jordan Hirsch:

Very well put. Thank you. Anybody else?

Jordan Hirsch:

Alright. You did… Oh yeah.

Speaker 10:

Accepting a gift and then giving a next one.

Jordan Hirsch:

Accepting a gift and then giving a next one. I love all of these definitions. Thank you. I think they’re both right. I think to me, yes and… is simply about accepting and responding. It is the basis, the fundamental foundation of all successful improvisation. And what does it have to do with facilitation? I believe it is a mindset. It fosters a mindset that is valuable both for you as a facilitator and for the people that you are facilitating. It helps you respond to the unexpected and to the expected, because it gives you a framework within which to work. Now, I think it’s important to back up assertions like that with math. So, please join me as we do some improv math. Yeah. Math. Awesome. Improv math is just like regular math, except I made it up. So, the first equation of improv math is that accepting does not equal agreeing.

Jordan Hirsch:

Oh no. If I say yes and… to a dumb idea, therefore, I too am a dumb person, because I agree with the dumb idea. I don’t think it works exactly like that. It is about accepting information that’s come before and an improv show, if two people were doing a scene on the moon and I entered the scene talking about, “Oh, it’s so nice to be back in Wisconsin.”, I have not agreed on a shared reality with these people. I have broken an agreement that they have set up on stage. In facilitation, yes and… is also about accepting an established reality. It does not mean that you agree with everything everybody says. It means that you accept that the people who are saying these things, actually hold these beliefs. You accept that you are living inside of a shared reality with them. You can accept something even if you don’t agree with it.

Jordan Hirsch:

It’s one of the hardest things about becoming a grownup, but it does happen. It is a fundamental skill. To me, yes and… is the opposite of gaslighting, because it’s really all about honoring a shared reality and that builds psychological safety in groups and I think it’s a sign of respectful leadership. Improv math equation number two, responding is greater than reacting. We heard about this a little bit earlier. The power of response, instead of reaction. To me a response is simply a reaction filtered through a framework. The “and” in yes and… is where you get to be intentional about how you respond to something. Improv helps you practice and hone the skill of responding at the speed of reacting, but it really does take practice. Responding intentionally, I think, is how you want your workshop participants to be working and interacting with each other and it’s probably how you want to be acting yourself when you are facilitating a group.

Jordan Hirsch:

Think about when something goes wrong or when something goes off script in something that you’re facilitating. How do you react to that? By default, when we react instead of responding, I think we give away a moment where we might actually build something new, because it wasn’t in the script. Responding puts you in the driver’s seat. Reacting gives away a lot of your power and improv helps you hone that muscle of responding at the speed of reaction. Improv math equation number three, “Yes minus And” equals

[inaudible 00:08:07]

. Johnny, could you just please say yes every time I point to you.

Johnny:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

Thank you so much. Oh, see he’s got it. Nice day today, isn’t it?

Johnny:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

It’s quiet in here, huh?

Johnny:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

What the fuck, Johnny?

Johnny:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

Alright. Not really scintillating stuff as opposed to, nice day to day, isn’t it? Yes. Our alien overlords have finally flown home.

Jordan Hirsch:

Things are really looking up, not the best improv scene in the world, but there’s a lot more to it. Just agreeing. Just accepting, stopping there is not fulfilling the promise of yes and… accepting and building is the key to doing something really wonderful. And, I know as facilitators we are meant to be neutral parties. So, building does not mean steering. It doesn’t mean telling everybody what to think, what to say, what to do. It means creating and holding space for generative engagement and is, I want to say it’s the more important part. It’s nothing of course without the yes, but I feel like a lot of people who learn about yes and… they stop at the agreement piece and they really miss an opportunity to do something new and interesting. Finally, improv times facilitation equals awesome. You want your participants to be listening to each other to be building on each other’s ideas, to be collaborating creatively and improv works all of those muscles.

Jordan Hirsch:

It is like a workout for your brain and if you’re getting sematic about it also for your body, you are literally practicing new ways of doing these sorts of things. It also helps you as a facilitator. It helps you be present. It helps you be accepting and it helps you to quickly build trust with a group of people. Not to mention brain scans of jazz musicians, while they were improvising, showed an increase in activities in the area of the brain associated with creativity and with language, and a decrease in activity in the areas of the brain associated with self-censorship. Which means, get ready for some facilitator inside baseball here, improv is literally a liberating structure for your brain. Truly, it liberates you from your own self censorship and it activates your creativity. The act of creating and engaging, wakes up the parts of your brain that like to do creating an engaging and it shuts down the critic and that is a great mindset for facilitating or for being facilitated. Could I please get a volunteer one each from each table? Just pick a quick table facilitator and come on up.

Jordan Hirsch:

Yes, good. Cheer each other on. This is going to be great. All right. You guys are awesome. Thank you. Do we have all our tables represented? Okay.

Speaker 12:

Yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

This part’s just for you guys. Huddle around, huddle around, huddle around. Okay, so you are going to go back to your… Talk amongst yourselves. You’re going to go back to your tables and facilitate an improv game. Easy enough. Not that hard. Has anybody ever done a yes and… story before?

Speaker 13:

Oh, yes.

Jordan Hirsch:

Have you? Okay, so a yes and… story is very simple. You’re going to start off a story, I’ll give you the first line. Once upon a time this thing happened, people contribute with one line at a time, to the story. I want to be very clear about this. Instructions are tricky. One line, one sentence, at a time. Every sentence must begin with the words.

Jordan Hirsch:

Yes and… consider how you, as a facilitator, might guide people, if and how, you might guide people if they, perhaps, negate information that came before in the story or if they don’t say yes and… at the beginning, how are you going to handle that? How will you yes and… what they are doing. Any questions? Alright, you’ve got five minutes to go back to your tables, explain and run the activity. Wait. The first line of everybody’s story is, “Once upon a time there was a duck who was afraid of water.” And begin. [crosstalk 00:12:17] What was the last line that this table came up with?

Speaker 7:

“And there was another duck Memorial.”

Jordan Hirsch:

And there was another duck Memorial. What was your last line?

Speaker 14:

“And that’s why we all might drink too much”

Jordan Hirsch:

And that’s why we all might drink too much at the company picnic. What was your last one?

Speaker 15:

“The humans and the duck went on a giant firefighting expedition to Australia.”

Jordan Hirsch:

Yeah, sure. What was your last one?

Speaker 16:

“Yes and he kept paddling.”

Jordan Hirsch:

He kept paddling. Oh, what was your last line?

Speaker 17:

“And the animal activists went to Washington DC, after

Jordan Hirsch:

This is amazing. And your?

Speaker 18:

It was, “Yes and, the business ended up going under and now he’s a homeless duck.”

Jordan Hirsch:

So the clock tells me I don’t have time, unfortunately, to hear from every table, as much as I would like to, but if you could hear it, you all arrived at very, very, very different places and the reason that I pushed you after several tables were like, “Hey, we’re done. We won the exercise, we finished the story.” is that there is often much, much, much more, much more ground to be uncovered, after you think you have scaled the mountain. Yes and… to me, is about once you scale the mountain, Hey, the clouds are partying. Oh, there’s another huge mountain right there, and I really want to see it. I want to see what’s on the other side of it. So what do we learn? This graphic here of these very simplistic things was chosen deliberately, because this is basic foundational stuff.

Jordan Hirsch:

However, it goes against all of our cultural conditioning. We are not conditioned to do this. The yes circle is super hard, so we’re not used to having to wait for permission, and we’re not used to having to give permission. It is learned behavior, which is why we make comedy out of it, because it’s challenging. If time permitted, I would love to know from all of you how you think you might have used this skill in the past or how you might use it in the future of your facilitation work. The clock says, no. Douglas is standing here, so just think about it a little bit on your own. And thank you so much for playing with me.

The post Facilitating the Fun appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was Emily Jane Steinberg, a Visual Facilitator and Scribe at Delineate Ink, LLC. Her presentation was entitled: “Beyond Our Blind Spots — Seeing Context in a Changing World.” Her activities and lecture centered on the concept of awareness and how to expand it from a place of tunnel vision to see, identify, and ultimately eliminate our blind spots to more successfully help clients spot theirs.

Watch Emily Jane Steinberg’s talk “Beyond Our Blind Spots — Seeing Context in a Changing World” :

Read the Transcript

Emily Jane Steinberg:

And I’m going to ask you to just look out across the room and find a spot to gaze at, above eye level. It might be a convenient blue dot located on the wall, or perhaps on the screens. And as you gaze at that dot really focus in on it, like a laser. Let the particles of light and information come through you like a channel to that dot and really gaze into it with some intensity. And then find as you’re doing that, then you almost want to start expanding your gaze. And so go ahead and let yourself do that and really begin to expand your awareness out to the periphery, taking in more information throughout the room. And as you do, notice other kinds of information besides visual that are coming in. Sounds, thoughts in your mind, or sensations in your body.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

And just to test how far out your peripheral awareness is going, if you’ve got the room, bring your arms out to your sides and you can wiggle your fingers there at the edges of your vision. Just see how far back you can stretch and still see your fingers. And notice that the ability and the acuity to see at those edges of your periphery, is almost as clear as what’s directly in the center of your field of vision. So you can go ahead and drop your arms down to your sides now. And I invite you to come back and find your seat while maintaining this sense of expanded awareness.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

I have my index cards, just in case I forget what I’m talking about, which is expanded awareness, fittingly. That’s the name of the tool, the exercise that we just tried out, before we found our seats. And expanded awareness is also known as the learning state because when you go into a state like that, where you’re expanding out to your periphery, you have this combination both of total focus and relaxation. It actually creates the conditions to absorb new information and large quantities of information, making it a perfect skill to practice in a day like this where we’re getting a constant stream of new information. And when we shift from that foveal, focused tunnel vision out, that’s naturally what happens. So throughout the day, I invite you to try that out again and again. If you find yourself distracted, overwhelmed with content, fixating on a single point that you’ve heard somebody say, just go ahead and anchor again. These blue dots are going to be up here all day and then expand out from that space.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

Now, in a way we could actually stop right here and spend the next 15 minutes just practicing that. This tool really is that precious. It’s like gold. It’s fundamental and at the center of all the work that I do as a visual facilitator, as a public listener, not to mention as an artist and a meditator. Being able to access and function in that state is just key. But of course we’re not going to stop there. So you’ll see piles of blank paper on all your tables. And so go ahead, take a sheet of paper and I’m going to ask you to draw nine dots on it like this. And once you’ve drawn those dots, what I’d like you to do is connect all of those dots with four straight lines without lifting up your pen in between those lines.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

This is an individual exercise, so no group work at this point yet. Four straight lines continuous to connect those dots and I’ll give you one tip. If you’re trying to figure it out in your head before you start, it’s much easier to actually start by making a mark. You can’t really solve it in your head. Anybody got it, or think they’ve got it? I’ve got one over there, one over here, a few people. And those of you who do have it, have you seen this exercise before? Just to be fair.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

Has somebody got it who hasn’t seen this exercise before?

[crosstalk 00:04:50]

That’s okay. We’ll unpack it together. Someone who did solve it, would you mind coming up here and showing us how you did it? This is funny to write on, but we’re going to just… Come on up. Yeah. I’m going to give you this pen. You’re going to show us what you drew.

Speaker 2:

I got to bring me cheat sheet.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

Yeah. Bring your cheat sheet. I’ve done that before. How did I just figure this out?

Speaker 2:

You have to go outside the…

Emily Jane Steinberg:

So she’s going to draw four connected lines without lifting up her marker.

Speaker 2:

So, I went like this.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

Yeah. Thank you. People see what she did there? So when I drew those lines in the first place, what did you see? What do people see? Sorry. The dots. Yeah, you saw a square, or a box. Why?

Speaker 3:

Negative space.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

[Crosstalk 00:05:52]. Negative space? Because your mind’s filled it in. Exactly. Hearkening back to Solomon talked about this morning, that’s social conditioning. We perceived a box where there wasn’t a box. We were given nine dots and we filled in the boundary around it. Now the reason we do that is because we’re actually taught not to think critically about boxes like this. We’re given rules, we’re taught how to follow them, we internalize them and then the rules disappear. We don’t even realize that they’re there anymore.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

It’s like when you start a new job and the first day of work, you see all of the structure of this new place that you’ve joined. And as the months go by, you get acculturated until you don’t really see any of that box anymore. So as facilitators, it’s our job to think critically about the boxes of our own experience and the boundary conditions that we’ve been given for dealing with them and thinking with them. It’s also our job to think critically on behalf of our clients. We’re often brought in from outside as consultants and facilitators, so outside of their box.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

But if we don’t know how to recognize these invisible boxes, then how can we engage with them on our client’s behalf? Usually we’re hired to help solve some kind of a problem isn’t it? A problem if it’s not well-defined can be an invisible box. It can be a blind spot when it’s not framed well. Habits can be blind spots, urgency creates blind spots, boxes that aren’t really, there are blind spots. And across the globe in business and politics, hidden agendas, motives and alliances can sometimes intentionally create blind spots. So one of the biggest blind spots that exists that we can very easily miss in the day-to-day of our work in our lives is white organizational culture. And that’s why we ended up seeing so many DEI approaches that fall short.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

They’ll touch on hiring and personnel, maybe policy, and that’s it. So you end up with tokenism but not true diversity, equity or inclusion. Or a consultant, one of us maybe is hired to come in and do a sensitivity training in the afternoon one day. And leadership considers, “Okay, check. That issue is handled.” Meanwhile, mission, organizational structure and stakeholder relationships don’t change.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

So there are two main boxes that I want to dive into a little deeper today. And those are institutional and individual boxes. At an institutional level, unexamined and unspoken norms inside an organization, or an entity are these invisible features of white dominant culture. For instance, it’s a very common hiring practice to ask somebody to disclose their previous salaries, right? Who’s had to do that? That reinforces classism. It perpetuates disproportionality and disparity. If we don’t think about that, and we just continue that practice, we’re just reinforcing that disparity. Or we ask for a good cultural fit, but whose culture? We don’t ask that question.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

How many people hesitated to write down in the nine dots, because you wanted to figure it out first. Because perfectionism is a trademark characteristic of white dominant culture. We want to get it right. Mistakes are not something that we’re taught how to do well and then we judge other people and we confuse the mistake with the person and then judge the person who’s made the mistake, another trademark. Now the interesting thing is that a lot of these things you could just say, “Well that’s corporate culture.” Unexamined, yes, corporate culture is playing out white dominant cultural norms. So that’s all on the institutional side.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

Now, on the individual side, of course we’re dealing with individuals inside any agency or organization that we work with. But I also want to pose this in terms of us as individuals doing the work. Because if we don’t work with our own blind spots, then we’re not very well able to help our clients work with theirs. So one simple way, one simple practice to begin, is to start asking ourselves, “What biases do I have? What biases do I carry? What biases have I experienced?” And then stretching to the boundary conditions of what is not maybe yet in our conscious awareness, “What unconscious biases do I carry?” So now I’ve thrown a ton of information at you, maybe challenged some things that you say, “Well how do I just go about business as usual now? This could change a lot.” Where do we begin? By returning to expanded awareness.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

So go back to a dot in this room up above your eye level and put that problem, put that question on the dot. It could be a particular client issue that you’re struggling with right now. It could be something I just said. Put that problem on the dot. Leave it there. Let it really sit there tight and let it be a little claustrophobic and uncomfortable. That’s fine. And then once again, begin to expand out to the periphery of your vision, leaving it be on the dot, as you begin to take in that expanded awareness. And while staying in that expanded awareness now, I want to ask you, where is the problem? And try in vain as you might to discover that from this state of expanded awareness, you actually can’t access that problem. Sure you could leave it. You could get fixated and it’s right there waiting for you, no doubt. But in expanded awareness, you can’t maintain a negative state.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

So knowing that this actually only gets easier with practice, we have to ask ourselves, why would we ever choose to do our work from inside that small box again? And incidentally, but not accidentally, moving into expanded awareness is a shift from deductive and linear thinking to somatic and intuitive awareness, which naturally means it’s also a shift away from white dominant cultural norms. Now, I believe that it’s our job as facilitators to help our clients make these bigger connections. To their stakeholders, to outside realities and to each other.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

I think it was Douglas who mentioned earlier this morning, how isolating it was for him as a CTO. Leaders are often very, very isolated. It’s our job to break down that isolation and help create connections. And remember with the nine dots, the way that they are connected is by going outside the box. These points outside of here are where leverage and strength comes from. They’re also where our stakeholders are. Just like a bridge, if it doesn’t have those cables coming out to somewhere outside of the bridge, it’s not as strong.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

It’s also our job to keep getting out of our own boxes, to cross-pollinate and to leverage our privilege and our experience not only with our clients, but with our peers. So sometimes some of us work individually, sometimes we work in teams. But when we work in teams, is it just for the length of that engagement with that client or is it over a longer period of time? For what purpose? Is there a larger theory of change that drives our work beyond that or are we just trying to actually make our nut for the year? And even more so, even when we do start to break down the silos and the boxes for our clients, if we don’t make connections between them, we can be very effectively helping them, but we’re still going to just be moving from one box to another to another. And I really believe we can do more.

Emily Jane Steinberg:

Now, these internal moves of expansion that we’re practicing, moving into expanded awareness from foveal vision. And moving from seeing these nine dots as a box to seeing them not as a box, are really immediate examples of a shift from an ego-centered, small-minded perspective to an ecosystem awareness. And I believe as facilitators, that is exactly the shift that we ought to be trying to engender both in ourselves and for our clients. And on the organizations that we serve. And when I think of ecosystems, I naturally also start thinking of a web and a network. And the fact is that we can be that web and that network that connects our clients in this larger ecosystem. And the definition of networking that I’ve heard that I like best comes from The Peoples Institute. And they say, “Networking is building a net that works.”

Emily Jane Steinberg:

We often think of it as, “Oh, networking, just one litter away from not working.” Or, “I just got to get that business card handed out.” But no, it’s about actually building relationships based on principle and humane values. And that’s our job. To move between different parts of the ecosystem, different clients, different sectors, different projects, and to begin building those connections and serving as network weavers, as funnelers of resources. Because creating a healthy ecosystem takes all of us. And if we expand our context just a little bit, Toni Cade Bambara said that, “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”

Emily Jane Steinberg:

Now as facilitators, I think we’re social artists. So I have to ask the question, what revolution are we here for? To me, it’s an ecosystem revolution. Expanding our context and our sense of responsibility is critical to our survival. Otherwise, why are we here? Just make a better meeting and then what? To what higher purpose? So as you continue to practice expanded awareness, practice breaking down and transcending these boundary conditions and cultivating this expanded sense of our accountability, responsibility, and frankly, ability. Let’s leverage what we all actually know how to do. Really bring it all. Please consider the next time someone asks you about your work, or you’re about to give that elevator pitch. Don’t just answer the question of who are you, what do you do? But consider answering the question, who’s are you?

The post Beyond Our Blind Spots — Seeing Context in a Changing World appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of those speakers was Johnny Saye,

an Innovation and Design Thinking Coach at Alliance Safety Council.

Johnny shared his facilitator’s guide to energizing groups. Through a series of interactive games and activities, Johnny demonstrated the necessity of lateral thinking to come up with creative solutions to problems, creating better and faster results.

He spoke about three strategies to avoid TLDR and best stimulate a group:

• Play with purpose
• Make it a memory
• Never grow up

Watch Johnny Saye’s talk “I’m an Attention Seeker” :

Read the Transcript

Johnny Saye:

Can you all hear me? Yeah? We’re good? Okay. I have tiny ears, so this thing doesn’t fit me. Thanks for the intro. So, who am I? He gave a little taste of it, but how did I get here? This is intro I usually do. The goal of this is just to show you as many tools that you can use in your workshops to get people energized, back on target, focused, whatever you might need just to get people moving again. Okay? So how did I get here? I was a pro soccer player. I’m a little rounder than I used to be, but that didn’t work out, right? Then I was a journalist. My mom always said I had a face for radio. That didn’t work out either. I was a vodka salesman, got really good at it, lost my taste buds, but did sell a whole bunch of vodka.

Johnny Saye:

It just wasn’t for me. So I stopped that because I actually fell in love with a girl, a Spanish girl in Philadelphia while I was selling vodka door to door. And so I was like, screw it. I’m moving to Spain. So now with the vodka money, I moved to Spain and I’m studying a masters in innovation, right? So I got this Spanish girlfriend, I’m living the dream. I’m by the beach. Didn’t work out either. I did learn Spanish and in fact I was studying a masters in innovation because I had no idea what to do with my life. I could sell vodka and I could kick a soccer ball and pretty much nothing else. So I get to Spain, I’m by the beach, don’t have a girlfriend, don’t have a job. Start working at a design studio. There I learn about design thinking, kind of controlling the chaos that is creativity.

Johnny Saye:

I learned from one of the masters of innovation strategy. He came from [inaudible 00:01:56], which was the number one restaurant in the world. And they used innovative strategies to create their plates. So now I learn from him and another guy and I got really good at design thinking. We built flavors of juices, we built bottles and packaging, we built buildings and marketing campaigns. We did everything in the desert of Spain, right? Except giving me a visa. So I was stuck in Spain with no visa and I got another job to build other types of things with a company called IBM. There I built apps. I built conversations, I built anything that helped IBM make money. Right? That’s what they do there, right? Guys, where are you all? Yeah, no, we had a great time and we came up with a lot of stuff, but unfortunately the visa ran out there, too. Was not making enough money.

Johnny Saye:

So they kicked me out of the country. Where I ended up was here, not here, in Louisiana at Alliance safety council and at Alliance safety council I do innovative strategy for anything, whether it be human resources like employee experience or building new digital products. We use a process for creating and solving problems. [inaudible 00:03:01], just like that. Right? And there’s me. I was a little rounder then, too. So we’re going to get into it. The objective of today, why am I here is to share warmups and energizers and this is all going to be a workshop experience. So this is the most I’m going to talk the whole time. All right? So to start off, why even bother with these creativity, we’ve all seen this it’s kind of complicated. Well it’s worse because in workshops people, they get distracted a lot and they’re adults, but they get distracted all the time.

Johnny Saye:

They did not grow up. They complain about the same things and they get in your way. My little participants get in my way and I need to boss him around, right? So you got to lead them. Because they’re not really great at leading themselves. So this is why the warm ups work, because more comfort, good vibes means better ideas. More energy means more engagement and more positive attitudes mean more positive results, right? So we want to connect their experience through positive memory that makes them more committed, that makes them more dedicated. That means execution phase that we don’t control gets done. Right? So we’re on the clock. I’m going to set the stage. This came from one of my friends at IBM. I’m sure it’s probably a normal practice, but this is my favorite rule breakdown. So these are the rules for the workshop we’re about to do.

Johnny Saye:

You ready? So know the rules. No cell phones, right? We don’t need those. You got your laptop built in. So just leave that to the side. Write down as much as possible. And sometimes you’re going to have to draw. Don’t be a Picasso, but it’s a process that you’re going to have to get used to. Okay, I’m going to be a policemen. Normally I’m nice, I’m hilarious. It’s what my mom tells me, but I’m going to push you all for time. Okay? That ring, I’m not going to propose to anybody, but I need you all to be engaged, right? That’s a hilarious joke. That’s where you laugh. Okay? Don’t miss the bus, right? This is the opportunity for us to learn tools that we can apply to our day to day. Stay engaged, stay involved. Right? So let’s get to action. Last rule. It’s very important. We’re going to be like this giraffe, right?

Johnny Saye:

We’re going to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Huh? That’s very clever, too. Okay, so let’s get started right now. All right? So everybody stay at your tables. Great job. Give yourself some claps. You all did it. Incredible. Incredible. It’s getting pretty intense. Okay. It’s going to be fun, I promise. All right, so lateral thinking. We all know what lateral thinking is. This is super common over there. A super common illustration, right? Lateral thinking, linear. We walk straight forward. The path is blocked. We don’t know how to get around it. The only way is to go through or over the barrier, right? Lateral thinking is we create more options to get around that barrier by creating more options. Sometimes we get to a better result faster, right? Basic lateral thinking. So let’s test it. Let’s see, I got this over here. Oh man. Not very flexible. Okay, so let’s test it.

Johnny Saye:

All right, so I’m going to give you a little brain burner. I’m bad at counting. So let’s say let’s say Roman numerals, right? Roman numerals. What number is this?

Speaker 2:

Nine.

Johnny Saye:

Nine? Okay, cool. Nine. That’s what I wanted to write? So how… You only have one line. Okay? How can we turn this with one line, one line into a six? One line. It could be like that. You’ll be like [inaudible 00:06:28] you can cut it in half. How could you turn this into a six?

Speaker 2:

Turn it around.

Johnny Saye:

I could turn it around, right? You’ll have one minute. Write it down. Try and test it out real quick. You know what, you have 30 seconds. I’m on the clock. What am I talking about? 30 seconds. Anybody come up with a solution? Let’s see. Show me your solution. She says cut it in half, right, so then we… That’s what… Oh, that’s a clever way, but that’s not what I’m looking for, right? That’s close. What do we do? Yes.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible 00:07:03].

Johnny Saye:

So with one continuous line, I’ve come up with a six right? So the problem with that was I gave you context and I forced you into a box, right? Let me skip this. I forced you into a box. And so we don’t want to get focused and lose the overall perception of the problem, right? That’s a lot of times what we do when we’re designing a solution. Also, it’s best to be open minded. Anything can happen, try different things. That’s why I encourage you all to write it down. If you all had sat and thought about it, you never would have came up with a solution. And last thing, I’m very sneaky. I knew how to write that number down, guys. I just pretended I didn’t. Okay, so one more time. Here’s another example. A man walks into a bar and asked the bartender for a glass of water, right? The bartender pauses and smiles, then he reaches under the bar, just grabs out a big shotgun, shoots right past his face. Woo. The man says thank you and leaves. What happened? Maybe some of you have heard this before, right? What happened? Why did he say thank you? The dude just shot at his head, right?

Speaker 2:

He missed.

Johnny Saye:

He missed, right? That’s what most people say. Thank you for missing. Actually he had the hiccups he came in was asking for a glass of water to solve his hiccups. He scared him so bad the hiccups went away, right? So without the context to the situation, we can’t propose solutions, right? So don’t go around blind trying to solve problems. Get the context first people, let’s do it. Lateral thinking. Don’t think of the direct answer. See of all the opportunities before you dive in. Okay? So I’m going to jump through so we have more time. So idea juice, it’s like WD 40 for your brain. Lincoln said that. Here’s another one that I really like: More energy than a kid on his second liter of Mountain Dew. I don’t know if they still have Mountain Dew, it’s chemical whatever. But Cleopatra said that, so it must be true. Okay, so these are simple hacks for the creative sections of your workshops, right?

Johnny Saye:

These are whenever you get back from lunch and people are just being pretty crappy and don’t want to do anything. They’re just playing on their phones or their ideas are just real low level. Okay? So this is what we’re going to do now. So we’ve got table story. I need each table. So you’ll be number one for your table. Okay? So Emily, what would that make you if she’s number one? Two? Okay, so then we’re going to go all the way around. Okay? So everybody do the same thing at your table. Start with the number one. Get everybody a number around the table. You got five seconds. Good. So this, this table has it ready? One all the way to six, right? So you would be first, raise your hand. You’re first. Okay. Now what she’s going to do as first, she has to write one word down to start a story. One word.

Johnny Saye:

Okay? You have, you’re the last guy, right? You have one word to end the story. Okay? Write it down. Right now you have five seconds. Could be once. It could be, nope. All the other people that aren’t the first person or last person, stay still. If you’re not the first or last stay still. Did you write your word down.

Speaker 2:

I did.

Johnny Saye:

Okay, don’t pass it on. Everybody does the first person and the last person to have a word? Okay? Now what you’re going to do as the first person, you’re going to save your word. Then the rest of the table has to continue the story. But in order to make it a little more complicated, you also have to say your word at the beginning. So now we know where the story starts and we know where it ends. Your job is to connect it. Okay? Does everybody understand? So first person starts with the first word. You have one sentence starting with that word. You have one sentence going all the way around to finished with your sentence that ends with the last word.

Speaker 5:

Sentence or-

Johnny Saye:

Yes. [inaudible 00:10:47]. Says one sentence. Each person says one sentence.

Speaker 5:

I thought it was a word.

Johnny Saye:

I know. I was seeing where you all were going with it. It’s all right guys, we’re jumping to the next exercise just because it’s a lot of people asking questions, okay? All right. So find a partner please. Everybody find a partner right now. Find a partner. Okay. Does everybody have a partner? Awesome. Now get on your feet. Everybody get on your feet. We’re going to play Ninja tiger grandma. Ninja tiger grandma. Has anybody played ninja tiger grandma? Awesome. Okay, so rock, paper, scissors, right? But instead of rock, paper, scissors, we have movements. Okay? So we have a ninja, right? Then we have a tiger, [inaudible 00:11:41], go LSU. Then we have a grandma, right? Okay. So here’s the order of victory. Easy enough. Ninja beats tiger, right? Slices and dices. Grandma, oh, eaten by the tiger. So tiger beats grandma and grandma bores Ninja to death. Okay? So I’m going to count it down. I’m going to say three, two, one.

Johnny Saye:

And you just like in rock, paper, scissors have to pick what you’re going to use. But if you don’t make a sound, you automatically lose. Okay? So you got to make sure you follow your movement with a sound. Okay? We’re going to play one round. Ready? Three, two, one, go. Very good. Very good. All right, everybody back in your seats. Back in your seats. I only have 20 minutes so I’m cramming in way too much in 20 minutes. Okay, so great job. You guys rock. So now you’re still in with your partners, right? Still with your partners? Okay, now you have one hands. Each person grab a piece of paper. Each person grab a piece of paper. Excuse me. Each partners, you need one piece of paper between the two of you. Okay, there we go. All right, so now what you have to do is you have 60 seconds using only one hands per person. You and your partner must construct an airplane, a paper airplane using only one hands and one minute that is two hands total. One hand per person. You must, with one sheet of paper, make a paper airplane.

Johnny Saye:

Oh, you only have 30 seconds. You better hurry up. Three, two, one. Get those hands away from those airplanes. Get them away. Very good. Exactly right. Now we throw them. Great job everybody. So here’s how you can use that game. Quick debrief. That game is just to talk about communication. Collaboration. Can we quiet down for a second everybody? See all the energy we have right here. This is my specialty, right? So all that collaboration, that communication, that’s important for teams to function. That’s kind of the debrief that you would do there. But since we’re going so fast, we don’t have time. Not going to do much of that. All right, so now everybody, each person needs a piece of paper, okay? Each person needs a piece of paper.

Johnny Saye:

Everybody got it? All right, so you all remember that giraffe from earlier? That was chilling on a tree? All right, cool. He’s back. All right, so now I need everybody with their piece of paper stand up on their feet, right? We’re going to make an origami giraffe. Don’t move. Don’t touch your papers yet because you have 45 seconds to make this origami giraffe and you have to put the piece of paper behind your back to do it. Okay? So put the piece of paper behind your back. Everyone. You need to make this giraffe that’s on the screen and you have 45 seconds. Three, two, one, go. You can fold it. You can rip it, you can bend it, you can break it. Do what you must, but make that giraffe and you only have 30 seconds left.

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:15:05].

Johnny Saye:

Of course. 10 seconds. We’re going really quick. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one time. Everybody show your table what you made. Very good. We got a few good ones. All right guys, now we need everybody sitting down for one last exercise. We don’t have much time. So we’ve already done four exercises. We’re trying to cram in more. All right, so now there are cups on your table. Does everybody see the solo cups on your table? You’re going to need a little space for those solo cups. I need you to take them out, spread them out across the table every single cup and put them right side up.

Johnny Saye:

They have them the opposite way so the numbers are facing down. So the numbers are facing down. Okay? You might want to put them close together. This is our minute to win it except it’s going to be in 10 seconds because I’m out of time. All right, so you’ve got the cups on the table, right? Everybody have them? Everybody have them? Now mix them around a little bit. Real quick, mix them around. Mix them around. Mix them around. All right guys. Now here’s what you have to do. On the bottom of the cups are numbers one to 15. You as a team have to go as fast as possible. Stacking those cups from one to 15, okay? You’re going against every other table starting now. One to 15. One to 15. Winners.

Johnny Saye:

Very good. We’ve got three seconds. [inaudible 00:16:57] right now. All right everybody sit down, sit down, sit down. All right, so I crammed in six exercises in 18 minutes. If you want more about those and learn how to do them, when to use them. I just created a YouTube page, allies of innovation. Self-promoting. Has no videos, so don’t go there yet. Go there tomorrow, okay? And they’ll be there, but great job. Success. We did it. Now you all are all masters. Here’s a random picture of me. Summed up, all right. Lessons, play with a purpose. Make it a memory and never grow up. All right, thank you. That was magical.

The post I’m An Attention Seeker appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the Transcript

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 2:

Can’t you tell?

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 3:

We all practice, yeah.

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 4:

The art of possibility.

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 5:

Solving obstacles.

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 6:

Overthrow the existing order.

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 7:

He’s trying to keep everybody from wasting time.

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 8:

Avoid being disappointed.

Sunni Brown:

Avoid being disappointed, totally. Legitimate reason.

Speaker 9:

I was just going to say not create false hope.

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Daniel:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Daniel:

In one card, yeah.

Sunni Brown:

You’re right, yeah.

Daniel:

Because there’s a whole scenario.

Sunni Brown:

Totally.

Daniel:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 11:

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

Sunni Brown:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Speaker 11:

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

Sunni Brown:

You got a lot of care cards?

Speaker 11:

Care, yeah.

Sunni Brown:

Did you connect to that?

Speaker 11:

I did.

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 12:

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

Sunni Brown:

Relate to, yeah.

Speaker 12:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 13:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 14:

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

Sunni Brown:

No it’s just powerful.

Speaker 14:

Because I’m right next to the-

Sunni Brown:

You’re very powerful.

Speaker 14:

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

Sunni Brown:

Like on purpose?

Speaker 14:

Oh no, not on purpose.

Sunni Brown:

That’s just what happened.

Speaker 14:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Linda:

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

Sunni Brown:

Completely.

Linda:

And the next thing-

Sunni Brown:

The interpretation.

Linda:

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

Sunni Brown:

Exactly.

Linda:

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

Sunni Brown:

Great question.

Linda:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Linda:

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

Sunni Brown:

No, Linda, you’re flawless, lady.

Linda:

I’m transparent.

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 16:

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

Sunni Brown:

Yeah.

Speaker 16:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 17:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 18:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 18:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 19:

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

Sunni Brown:

I call it pre-work. Or priming.

Speaker 19:

Yeah, priming.

Sunni Brown:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 19:

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

Sunni Brown:

Interesting.

Speaker 19:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Speaker 13:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

Sunni Brown:

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

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