Are you interested in facilitating a design thinking session at your workplace or for another organization? Have you learned about design thinking and want to get started or deepen your skills? If you are a newbie to design thinking facilitation, this is the guide for you. We’ve highlighted the basics you need to know to lead a design thinking or innovation workshop. Facilitation skills are essential to navigating complex business problems, and a skilled facilitator can supercharge the team’s performance. We encourage you to attend our Facilitation Lab, a weekly virtual meetup to support effective implementation.

Read this design thinking facilitator guide, and you’ll have solid tools to be successful from start to finish.

What is Design Thinking?

To start, let’s define some key terms. First, design thinking. Design thinking is a process used for creative problem-solving; a methodology that puts the end-user or customer at the center of decision-making. Design thinking is also characterized by an emphasis on prototyping and testing ideas and working in a highly collaborative manner with a cross-disciplinary team. Design thinking isn’t a passing business trend. It’s a powerful and widely-implemented approach to strategic work adopted by both startups and major corporations to tackle business challenges. Here are a few of our favorite design thinking books we recommend adding to your library for an in depth background.

What is a Design Thinking Facilitator?

A design thinking facilitator leads collaborative working sessions that utilize design thinking practices to reinvigorate creative growth. The gatherings include brainstorms, innovation workshops, executive summits, design springs, multi-day workshops, and long-term projects.

A design thinking facilitator is a coach to innovative, productive group think and work.

Design thinking facilitators help teams focus on the customer throughout the process and uncover new insights and ideas typically aren’t revealed during business as usual (ex. the boss has an epiphany in the shower and tells the team to execute). In a nutshell, a design thinking facilitator is a conduit to innovative productive group discovery and creation. Facilitation skills are key to maximizing these outcomes.

Want to learn the basics of how to facilitate a design thinking workshop? Read our 7-step guide below, then consider our Workshop Design Course to help you get started.

Step 1: Get Focused

Your first task as a design thinking facilitator is to clarify and define what you need to accomplish through your workshop or meeting. You want to determine the focus based on team needs or challenges. Record the primary goal and high-level questions to answer, and make sure participants are aligned on defined objectives.

Pro-tip: Before planning the workshop, consider 30-60-minute conversations with each stakeholder before the design thinking session to make sure objectives are clear.

Step 2: Make the Guest List

Now that you’ve defined objectives, you and the key stakeholder(s) need to determine fitting participants. Who’s taking part in the workshop? Your client will likely have a strong hand in building the guest list. As the design thinking facilitator, it’s crucial that you advise here.

Too many people leads to chaos. Too few people means too few ideas.

Diversity in skillset, expertise, attitude, tenure, etc. is essential to an informed perspective. The more points-of-view that are represented, the more applicable your solutions. In terms of number of participants, somewhere between 7 to 15 is ideal. Too many people leads to chaos. Too few people means too few ideas.

Step 3: Make Your Agenda

With the objective and participants determined, the next step of facilitating a design thinking workshop is the agenda. A wise way to plan your agenda is to start at the end: With what tools do you need to leave the design thinking session? Are you prioritizing alignment? A system or process in place? A collection of novel ideas? Are you looking for a prioritized roadmap or a paper prototype of a new experience? When you clearly define your goals, you can plan the design thinking activities to build toward the conclusion.

The individual activities you will implement varies greatly based on the challenge. Need inspiration to kick off your Design Thinking activities? There are many free resources to help guide you and your team on your journey. . We’ve also outlined exercises for virtual workshops here.) No matter your timeline, prioritize time for introductions, icebreakers, and short breaks to check inboxes.

Pro tip: Be generous when time-boxing your design thinking activities. Everything will take longer than you think. A good rule of thumb is to double the time you imagine an individual activity will take.

Step 4: Get Your Space

Next up: Where are you going to host your design thinking workshop? While it might sound like a minor detail, the space affects the day’s success.

Start our Design Thinking Foundations course today!

Learn and practice Design Thinking to help your team solve problems and seize opportunities.

Get Started

We recommend getting participants out of their workspace(s) to inspire fresh thinking and distance from day-to-day work. Whether you need to offer a hybrid option, have the budget for an offsite space, or need to use the office, consider the following to enhance the experience:

• Look for good natural light and character. (A windowless hotel conference room is not ideal.)
• Provide comfortable seating for all. (Simple, but we’ve seen it happen.)
• Guarantee wall space or boards for pinning materials and capturing ideas.
• Don’t forget AV needs: a projector for presenting, a screen if someone needs to collaborate remotely, etc.

Want more information on choosing a space? Check out 7 Things to Consider When Choosing a Workshop Venue here.

Step 5: Gather Supplies

With space, participants, and a solid agenda, you now need supplies to execute your workshop. Your exact supplies will be driven by your activities, agenda, and chosen space. Here are some basics to get you started:

• Plain 8.5×11 paper
• Large easel-style Post-its
• Small Post-its notes
• Pens
• Black Sharpies
• A Time Timer
• An HDMI cable

If you want to dive deeper into the specific supplies that are recommended for a design sprint (which are helpful for any workshop), read here.

Pro-Tip: If possible, bring a filling breakfast and lunch so you don’t have to leave to eat. Also, healthy snacks, water, and coffee will keep people engaged as the day goes on.

Step 6: Be the Leader

It’s the big day! It’s time for you to lead the group through the agenda and activities you worked so hard on. The more you facilitate, the more skilled you become. 

Make sure to be yourself and keep the following things in mind as you lead the team in design thinking:

• You’re the boss: People are looking for you to guide them. You’re prepared and are the expert. Establish your authority early and feel confident making decisions and telling the group when it’s time to move forward in the agenda.
• Establish rules: Let the group know the rules of the day. Encourage people to stay off their phones and to fully participate in the session. Let them know that there are designated breaks.

Give everyone a voice: As the facilitator, you are responsible for making sure everyone is heard. If you notice someone being quiet, pull them into the conversation. You designed the guest list with their contribution in mind.

Step 7: Wrap It Up & Play It Back

After the workshop has come to a close, recognize your role as a design thinking facilitator to equip the group with tools for long-term success. Consider these in the days afterward::

• Photograph and document: Make sure you photograph important output from the meeting: Post-its, diagrams, or worksheets that may have been created.
• Synthesize the learnings: Take time to reflect on the session and the ideas that came of it. Create a MURAL board or a short presentation to share with participants and their teammates.

Get the group back together: Schedule time to share back your learnings with the participants and make plans together for how to implement thinking and learnings into daily work.

Looking to become a Design Thinking Facilitator?

What’s the importance of bringing in a professional to lead the session? A design thinking facilitator positively disrupts the team dynamic. Read up on why professional facilitation can make a difference.

We hope you’re excited to become a Design Thinking facilitator. Voltage Control has expert design-thinking facilitators who run innovation workshops and design sprints. Our innovation training for teams and design thinking facilitator training will maximize your facilitation skills. Our Facilitation Certification programs will guide you through key facilitation skills and provide you with ample opportunities to practice. We also invite you to explore our workshop design course to learn the foundational learning science and experience design principles you can apply to maximize engagement and effectiveness as a facilitator.

FAQ Section

How does design thinking facilitate creative solutions?
Design thinking promotes creative solutions by encouraging design thinkers to explore a wide range of possibilities. Through structured activities like brainstorming sessions, the design team generates potential solutions that are human-centered and focused on improving the user experience. This methodology is ideal for fostering innovation and addressing complex challenges in the business model and product development.

What are the key attributes of a successful design thinking project?
A successful design thinking project is characterized by human-centered design, active collaboration, and iterative testing. Key attributes include clear objectives, a focus on the end-user, and the ability to adapt and refine ideas based on feedback. In this project, design thinking skills like creative thinking, empathy, and prototyping are essential to generating effective solutions that lead to actual products.

What are the phases of the design thinking process?
The key phases of design thinking include empathizing with users, defining the problem, ideating potential solutions, prototyping, and testing. Each phase builds on the last to create effective solutions tailored to the user’s needs. This cyclical process encourages continuous improvement and innovation throughout the innovation process.

What skills are needed to be a successful design thinker?
Successful design thinkers need a range of skills, including creative thinking, empathy, collaboration, and problem-solving. They must also have strong design thinking skills to guide teams through the design process and facilitate workshops. These skills enable the team to generate innovative solutions and ensure that the final product aligns with user needs.

How does design thinking contribute to business success?
Design thinking contributes to business success by fostering a culture of innovation and user experience focus. By emphasizing human-centered approaches and iterative testing, businesses can develop products and services that better meet the needs of their customers. The methodology also helps businesses explore new ideas, refine their business model, and stay competitive in the market.

How can design thinking improve the user experience?
Design thinking enhances the user experience by prioritizing the needs, preferences, and pain points of users throughout the design process. By involving users in testing and iterating on prototypes, design teams can create actual products that offer better usability, functionality, and satisfaction. This approach ensures that solutions are not only innovative but also practical and user-friendly.

What are the applications of design thinking across industries?
Applications of design thinking are vast, spanning industries like healthcare, education, technology, and retail. In each sector, design thinking helps organizations develop innovative solutions by focusing on the user’s experience and testing ideas through rapid prototyping. Whether designing new products or improving services, the design thinking process is key to driving innovation and improving outcomes.

The post Design Thinking Facilitator Guide: A Crash Course in the Basics appeared first on Voltage Control.

“Design is an artifact, it’s a thing, I believe it’s also a process. I find that there’s not a strong tie to people expressing and trying to describe the essence of the problem. To ask that question, ‘What is the essence of the problem we’re trying to solve here?’ There’s something deeper there and I think that’s somewhat been lost.” -Jim Scott

In this episode of Control the Room, Jim Scott and I examine the multi-layered career of design. We discuss the benefits of implementing the macro & micro exercise, along with the complex elements the public sector faces surrounding design. He then challenges the lack of diversity the design industry faces and the opportunity designers should embrace to create a career built-in diversity across all industries. Listen in to hear Jim reveal his innovative journey to design as he continues his pursuit to lead with adventure and diversity in all aspects of his design endeavors.  

Show Highlights

[1:41] Jim’s Journey in Design Innovation
[9:12] The Macro/Micro Perspective 
[17:28] Design Work in the Public Sector
[30:04] The Challenging Aspects of Design
[43:10] Jim’s Final Expressions

Links | Resources

RE/SPEC
Jim’s LinkedIn

About the Guest

Jim Scott is the Director of Design Innovation at RE/SPEC, a global leader with a specialty in geoscience and integrated design technologies for many leading industry sectors. Jim considers himself a passionate technology leader with over 15 years of experience managing business and technology efforts for teams, large and small. As an accomplished professional with an aptitude for translating high-level business, Jim’s main objectives strive to produce completed development goals. While collaborating and coaching diverse engineering teams with aggressive deadlines, Jim thrives to inspire his teams through the pursuit of seeking an adventurous career in design. Jim’s passion has always remained rooted in technologies that excite, inspire, and become indistinguishable from magic. In 2019, he was one of the few esteemed recipients of the RESPEC Collaboration Award, an award that recognizes performance across all boundaries to work collaboratively.

About Voltage Control

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

Run Magical Meetings

• Use our Magical Meetings Quick Guide to start having meaningful and impactful meetings today.
• More Magical Meetings resources.

Subscribe to Podcast

Engage Control The Room

Voltage Control on the Web
Contact Voltage Control
Join us at our weekly Facilitation Lab.

Full Transcript

Douglas:

Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control and others are loose. To control the room, means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas:

Thanks for listening. If you’d like to join us live for a session sometime, you can join our weekly Control the Room facilitation lab. It’s a free event to meet fellow facilitators and explore new techniques, so you can apply the things you learn in the podcast, in real-time with other facilitators. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab. If you’d like to learn more about my new book, Magical Meetings, you can download the Magical Meetings Quick Start Guide, your free PDF reference with some of the most important pieces of advice from the book. Download a copy today at voltagecontrol.com/magical-meetings-quick-guide.

Douglas:

Today I’m with Jim Scott. Jim is the Director of Design Innovation at Respect, where he specializes in innovating mission-critical solutions that enhance client success. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed multiple collaborations with Jim, bringing design sprint methods in the public sector organizations with natural resource-oriented missions. Welcome to the show, Jim.

Jim Scott:

Hey, Douglas. Great to be with you.

Douglas:

So Jim, let’s get started, just hearing a little bit about how you found your way to being a Design Innovation Director at Respec.. How did you start off your career that landed you in this really interesting role to support innovation through a design lens?

Jim Scott:

Well, the origin, I guess goes way back. I’m one of those lucky people I would say, that had an idea about what I wanted to do with my, I guess I’d call it business life, at a very young age, so basically high school. And the opportunity came about because I’ve had the ability to go spend a lot of time in nature and outdoors and farms and all, and I always was exposed to the wonder of the environment. And so when I began to explore what I might do to apply my interest in that topic, I actually came across articles in the Washington Post by the Dean of the School of Professional Design at the University of Georgia who talked about landscape architecture as a profession.

Jim Scott:

And I realized, you could actually get a job thinking and learning about the environment in a creative way, and that there was a pathway to a profession that was laid out for that. So I applied to a couple of schools but that message from that Dean just rang very deeply with me. So I said, “I’m just going to go there and go to that program.” So that’s how I got oriented to design as a concept, but it really wasn’t until I arrived there, that I was fortunately exposed to a diversity of thought and practice by landscape architects, architects, engineers, artists, other types of people. So I was fortunate that I was given an appreciation for design as a very broad area for creativity, solving problems, understanding the environment and how to work with people.

Douglas:

That’s really fascinating, this notion of learning to appreciate diversity and how it can be just a fountain of merging ideas. And while the process can often serve us, if we don’t have that foundation of diversity of thought, we can often be stifled or miss the bigger picture. So that’s really interesting that some of the early formative days for you, made that real crystal clear.

Jim Scott:

Well, one thing I will say is, I was lucky because my parents brought me up with as minimal exposure to what prejudice would be, as possible. I was a very privileged young man growing up in Northern Virginia, pretty privileged geography. But I had a very, I would call it, a progressive household that I was brought up in, where life was a spectrum of opportunities and choices and realities, both good and bad. And the people that I would encounter through that environment were very, very positive. So, I owe all that to my parents.

Douglas:

So coming back to the schooling and the lessons you learned in design, were there any memories that you have that were pivotal as far as understanding some of the underpinnings, I guess maybe, philosophies or the maybe structural or process elements that really make design work?

Jim Scott:

Yeah, there’s a few things. So one was just the structure of the classes, was very unusual, very much a critique-oriented studio environment, where it was small classes. People were given a design problem. There was some introduction by the professor or whatever the topic was, but then you had to go create your own thing and then you presented it to the group and you had to get up and present why it was achieving, whatever the problem statement was. And you had to provide a basis and a logic for it and you had to defend it. And it was quite a liberating approach because I can recall instances where things I put up on the wall were very crude and not refined, in terms of their execution, but I had thought about them a lot.

Jim Scott:

And I was appreciative of professors that would, in those cases, say, “You’ve been able to address the problem well.” And as well as other people who are a lot more talented than I was, who had beautiful designs on the wall, but there was an appreciation for the thinking that went behind the reasoning of what I came up with. So that was liberating at that point. And then there was a lot of specific exercises that were very enlightening. A lot of practices, in today, you learn… I had a professor named Mike Wall who introduced what he called, the why chain wall. So everything was why. So we went through that whole exercise, that really caused everyone to think more deeply about pursuit of those answers. So that was all good.

Jim Scott:

But even, I had a professor who was a painter who went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Design there. And we go out on these field trips and do studies, one of the exercises was called macro to micro. So we’d go out into a field and sketch a landscape and we would go halfway to the subject of that landscape and sketch it again and then we’d go further and further. So each time we did a sketch, we had more detail of what was going on.

Jim Scott:

So that whole experience taught us the concept of scale and the concept of how at the deepest levels of details, down to actually putting your face, staring into the ground and looking at pine needles in a pine forest that textures the colors, all of the things that made up that sketch that you were doing, could be tied back to the macro scale of when you saw that from a distance. So that whole macro to micro thinking, I thought useful, as I’ve been able to approach things as a professional.

Douglas:

It reminds me of the importance of observation and how often our thoughts, our ambitions, our goals, our tasks, our to-do’s get in the way of taking a moment to observe. And I was reminded of this over the weekend actually. I had a friend over who is an artist and there’s a bug on the outside of my door, my door is a glass door and there was katydid, any of you Texans will know what a katydid is, anyone else can Google it. And it was hanging out on the exterior glass, but you can kind of see its underbelly, so we had a really interesting little view of this crazy insect.

Douglas:

And my artist friend was checking it out and he said, “Check out his feet.” And I looked really close at his feet and the feet of a katydid is quite impressive. It looks like a fractal and I never noticed this before. Just an artist, someone who’s used to really dissecting things and capturing the essence of what things are, he went straight into, “Let me examine this thing.” So I loved your story about the macro to micro because these observations matter and especially in a design sprint, and other workshops, we’re sharing analogous inspiration. Well, if you’re not observing things, then you can’t make that move. You’re not going to have examples in your back pocket to pull out, because if you haven’t been observing, then there’s nothing to remember to share.

Jim Scott:

Yeah. That’s very true. And I find that today, even in reviewing the kinds of design sprint processes or design projects that I get involved in. And that’s something I always think about and try to pursue, which is, whether it’s user experience or the user interface that someone has prototyped or built, does it really reflect the details behind the thinking, even the practices of the components that built that thing from the ground up, from that sort of the atomic level? Are those things expressed there, as they should be, to be holistically expressed at the top level?

Douglas:

Yeah. It almost comes back to the fractal and feet, right?

Jim Scott:

Yeah.

Douglas:

So the micro and the macro need to resemble each other. Definitely, at least there needs to be a thread of connecting them.

Jim Scott:

Absolutely. Well, you brought up another term, another area that I was exposed to in school, which is the essence. And that’s another thing that I find somewhat intermittent, in terms of just regular discussion these days, around design. And in design, as I have experienced it recently, it’s an artifact, it’s a thing, I believe it’s also a process. Of course, there’s many different definitions. But I find that there’s not a strong tie to people expressing and trying to describe the essence of the problem. There’s a way, of course, to prototype almost anything and produce a product. But to ask that question, “What is the essence of the problem we’re trying to solve here?” That’s even beyond just what the user needs, there’s something deeper there and I think that’s somewhat been lost.

Douglas:

I agree. And I think you can even take this notion of essence and apply it almost to anything. Right? Because we could say, what is the essence of this prototype we’re building? And we can’t articulate that unless we understand what questions we’re trying to answer. Because otherwise, it might become amorphous and it might go down some strange paths that are unnecessary.

Jim Scott:

Well, and I think if you achieve it to a higher degree, it doesn’t need an explanation. It just, it is and you don’t need to talk about it. It’s intuitive, it taps into some, even I would call the mystical ideas around the human dimension of things. So, that’s always something, it’s probably impossible to achieve, but it’s always worth going after.

Douglas:

I think that’s spot on. I want to come back to something that you mentioned a little bit earlier around how your professors appreciated the thought, the real, I would say, fundamental design. And I think this is something that people struggle with a lot, whether we’re asking them to sketch during a design sprint, or we’re asking them to be… I’ve heard so many people tell me, “Oh, I’m not creative, or I can never be that creative.” And it is a muscle that requires some practice also, we have to give people permission and the courage to do it because a lot of people are free to do that stuff because it’s been beaten out of them since elementary school.

Douglas:

And I think that’s one of the reasons why they dub design, they put the thinking behind design, to come up with the term design thinking, to really point out that it’s not just about drawing pretty pictures and moving the pixels around. That we really have to put deep thought in this stuff and come up with concepts and solutions that really address the issue at hand, in a meaningful way. And I think that’s a really important distinction and that’s why some people pushed back on design thinking, because it’s like, “Well, design is about thinking.” So I’d love to hear you elaborate on that a little more, just because you mentioned the professors appreciating that, this notion of going deeper and it wasn’t just about how well it was executed? Are your circles perfectly circled and are they shaded beautifully and all this?

Jim Scott:

Well, some of that I think ties to the design process as I was taught it, and it reflects the modern approach, I think to a degree, where there’s a question or a problem that needs to be solved and there is a commitment to try to understand that. And then there’s a data collection activity trying to understand the phenomenon that you’re dealing with. And then the first thing that we would do is come up with a conceptual design. So that begins to peel back into the underlying essence of things, what those fundamental relationships are, how do they interact? What are those critical kinds of connections that are more important than others that really influence whatever is you’re trying to do?

Jim Scott:

And then you go into a design development phase, but it’s early on. There are signals early on, whether or not you’re close to embracing and understanding the problem you’re trying to solve or the thing you’re trying to create and that can be done. That’s why I really love the prototype outcome from the classic design sprint or from the five-day design sprint because you should be able to achieve the essence of that in five days. And sure, it’s not a final product, but that to me, is the signal that, of course, the validation process helps provide clues to, but there should be something profound that comes through that process, that is achievable in those five days.

Jim Scott:

So that’s why design isn’t necessarily this long, complicated journey ultimately, to have it executed in its most beautiful fashion, that it’s going to deserve that time and effort thought that goes into it. But you should be able to capture that essence pretty early on. So the idea that in a design critique, someone could basically do a napkin sketch and they should be able to have that withstand the kind of scrutiny and challenge that someone from another point of view might have, to try to validate the original thinking around that.

Jim Scott:

So, I think that provides, it’s kind of liberating that way, to give people that sense of, you can come up with this idea and you don’t have to be credentialed or have a bunch of experience, but if you have a desire to understand the needs of the problem and how to address them, that’s why it’s very democratizing I think, in this process. And that’s what I’ve loved about the work that we’ve done together because we’ve gone into organizations that people clearly expressed that they’re a chemist or a watershed model and they’ve never even thought about being a designer. But in fact, they really are, if you really tap into what they’re trying to do. So, I think that’s been part of the fun of this stuff is to share the practice and the thought process is, and how transportable they really are into different domains.

Douglas:

Yeah. It’s pretty amazing to see the folks that are highly trained in some field that you would not necessarily be associate with design, they’re mathematicians, hydrologists, creating very complicated models, they’re renowned in their field. And then they had the courage to come and say, “What we did in that week was provocative. It got me thinking differently. I’m going to come attend a training.” So we’ve had folks, we’ve had PhDs come and attend training so that they could take the stuff back to their teams. And even in small, little shifts in the way they work, and I think that’s pretty profound. And it speaks to something we were talking about in the pre-show chat around public sector in general, and how they’re starved for design, I think was your word. I often say underserved, they don’t necessarily get all the attention.

Douglas:

And I think to me, it’s fascinating because on some levels it’s more difficult because the gaps are wider. So, there’s a larger gap to bridge, but when you do, it’s so rewarding. And when it clicks, people are really appreciative because you’ve kind of presented a whole new way of working and a whole new way of thinking and opened up doors they never would have imagined. So anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts or even stories around some of this public sector work and how the work that you’re doing at Respect, or even some of the stuff we’ve done together, create shifts for some of these public sector folks.

Jim Scott:

Yeah. So I’ve found that it’s always useful, people find it useful sometimes to distinguish between the public sector and private sector. I’ve had the privilege of working in the public sector for a number of years to complement my private sector work. So maybe I’m just tuned into that idea, that there’s more similarities than there are differences. But the challenges and the commitment that people in the public sector have to provide service and to make a difference, they’re culturally ready to embrace creative ways to make places and people and systems better. So I’d say, that by and large is true. And so there is a ripeness, in terms of how ready they are, I think, to open up, but there’s always risk.

Jim Scott:

Whether it’s institutional risk or bureaucratic risk or whatever it might be, there’s a little bit of hesitancy there. And so that’s where it has been extremely rewarding to show up, give somebody a contained experience, that there’s a cost on it, it’s this amount of dollars, it’s this amount of time, this is what you should expect as the outcome. So it takes away that fear of the unknown, which when you think about all the work that gets done, particularly in the transformational technology era that we’re in, at least that’s how it’s generally categorized. There’s risk everywhere.

Jim Scott:

So that’s what I think has been shared with these client experiences is, they want to be operating differently. There’s an expectation, it taps into their consumers, social media world. They can bank online, but they can’t fill out a form online? So there’s a certain amount of desire to bring what they experience in these other domains and why not make that a part of how public service can be delivered. And I think that’s the really cool thing about today’s digital technologies, is those inertias and barriers to making that come true, are diminishing. It’s now possible to show up with this practice and actually go and take these digital assets and turn them into a solution that is achievable for a budget that’s going to be reasonable. It’s going to fit into the same paradigm that it would need to.

Jim Scott:

So that’s the big level, I think, as far as people are ready for it, and there’s that challenge to, how do we deliver better services? And so it’s a creative process. So I think we’ve been able to deliver that experience for them. And there was one experience that you and I were involved in, dealing with the executive director of a natural resource agency in the Midwest. And there was some skepticism around what we were doing. And I would call it a well-valued proposition, but it was out of the norm for them. That’s the hard part. Right? How do you get people to actually commit public dollars, the public trust, to doing something differently that has a need for generating a tangible outcome, that’s going to deliver that value?

Jim Scott:

So at the end of that whole experience, the executive director comes up to me, pulls me aside and says, “I knew this was going to work, but I didn’t realize how you were going to be able to get my five different groups through their organizational reinforcements operate differently. And now you have broken down all of their methods and cultural barriers. And you got them to work together, so easily, so effortlessly, to come up with this composite solution. Because now they understand what each other party needs and why they need it. So now there’s this shared empathy.”

Jim Scott:

So this is beyond just breaking down silos. It’s really creating another level of empathy across organizations, so that people who aren’t normally conditioned to understand those people down the hall or over in the other building. Now, they’re forced into coming to grips with that in a very positive way and go, “Wow, if this makes my job better, can it make their job better?” And then it creates that dual reinforcement, which it’ll be interesting to go back in time and see how much of that has lasted, which is an open question in many of these experiences. We get a lot of positive around the outcome of these design sprints and what we implement, the big test is, what’s it going to be like 5 years, 10 years from now? How much of that can persist through the organization, through time? That’s a big challenge.

Douglas:

Yeah. There’s a lot of inertia and things tend to regress to the mean, if you will. I think the organizations that are most successful are the ones that want to invest in the long haul. And honestly, it’s generally tied to leadership’s ability to realize that these ways of working aren’t the risky proposition, that the risk is another phenomenon that’s coming at them because the more and more complex things get, right?

Jim Scott:

Yeah.

Douglas:

Then the risk just keeps coming at us. And these approaches are de-risking mechanisms. The leaders that are starting to realize that and embrace that, are the ones that are starting to not only work in this way, but also bringing in coaching, bring in extra touchpoints where they can stay sharp. Because at the end of the day, it’s one thing when you have an outside facilitator come in and run something like this and light the light bulbs off and get everyone really aligned, but then model alignment creeps in, collaborative dysfunction creeps in and when people are faced with scenarios that are a little bit different, they’re like, “Well, how do I address this? How does this model fit into this situation?”

Douglas:

And that’s where having a coach or someone to guide you, CISCO, not public sector, but a great example of this. They created something they called the Change Lab because they’re wanting to change the way they work. And so Change Lab is a weekly, little community practice around these new techniques and they get together and coach each other, it’s a peer-led function. And they brought us in periodically to be guests in Change Lab to help and mentor and coach, just so that the focus stays there. So I think to your point, it’s sort of like a garden. If we go on and work on the garden, we can get it in great shape. If we leave it for a couple of years, it’s not going to necessarily be the results we might be looking for. So it does require some tending and some forethought on how to do that.

Jim Scott:

I think that really ties into the… I need to embrace that more and try to help people understand that this is beyond just a one-time experience that creates and delivers this prototype and all the other things that come downstream of that. But I think you hit it well, when you talked about, it’s a leadership responsibility and finding those leaders who can embrace this and make it part of the organizational long-term. And that can even flow into services that tend to be, we tend to go into projects that have a very specific need and we solve that problem. And I think what we’re talking about here, is organizations need to create an opportunity for these renewal kinds of investments made around the thinking, the practice, the cultural validation of this approach, as it would need to change over time, anyway.

Jim Scott:

So I don’t know how that gets institutionally accepted or adopted. Getting back to the public sectors, there’s all kinds of training, budgets that agencies maintain for individual certifications and things. And I think that’s where, this is an area that any organization probably should consider or think about, “How can we look at collaborative investments that are going to reinforce and strengthen this mission that we’re now on, to help build and bring this value?” Because there are all kinds of parameters to now consider. If we can demonstrate that it does de-risk our work, it takes away uncertainty, it creates all these other things. Those need to be almost performance indicators that say, “This is why we do this.” And give leadership a very clear story to say, “This is why we make these investments because they’re doing the following things.”

Jim Scott:

So ultimately, it needs to go into procurements, an easy button for people to say, “We need more of this stuff. This is what we need. This formula, these combinations, and this is the annual checkup.” Or whatever that long-term strategy is. But I think there is an opportunity to go beyond these design sprints, as experiments, as validations, and to the degree that they provide that value and demonstrate it. Then how you had that conversation about making it a part of a longer-term strategy for an organization, regardless of the detailed projects you do, is a good thing to pursue.

Douglas:

100% and it comes back to your point around, these groups often require interdisciplinary cross-organization collaboration and that’s quite a bit different than cross-functional. In a company where we’re talking about bringing a cross-functional team together, there might be some inertia on those teams around how their team leader or their department head has given them direction and guidance, and what their incentives and focus are, and that has to be shifted. But when you’re talking about different governmental or NGO, or local, federal organizations that have different regulations, different budgetary concerns, they’re trying to protect their situation and they’re coming into this collaboration thinking, “Well, how much can I really give?” Right?

Douglas:

So, they’re sizing up everything through this lens of, “What’s going to be the impact to us?” And so I think the structure design processes, where we do explore the art of the possible, and what’s the conceptual design before we worry too much about things like impact and who’s going to pay for this, et cetera. It really gets past that collaborative dysfunction, where everyone’s sizing each other up and thinking about, “Well, how’s this going to impact me?” And it’s more about, “How can we best serve the community or best serve the outcomes we’re seeking and then we can figure out how to make it work later.” And so anyway, I think that everything you’re mentioning makes a lot of sense and it underpins the need for this kind of work in the public sector, especially anything that might be cross-sector or cross-organization.

Jim Scott:

Well, that’s the real challenge. I mean, I don’t want to say it’s easy, but presenting the opportunities around the design projects that I’ve done, I won’t call it easy, but that’s just scratching the surface. The reason we do these things is for a higher purpose, I think, and for a desire to see everything become better. And we have to begin to find maybe more efficient ways and more effective ways to instill these values, these principles and have them tested and validated back to us, as to whether they’re going to take hold or not? And then if they erode or get changed or knocked off course, how do we adapt to keep them on track and provide that long-term value? So that’s the area that I like to think about because it’s hard and there’s nothing clear, there’s no silver bullet there, that’s for sure.

Douglas:

Absolutely. And speaking about no silver bullet, I think these processes themselves are just a mechanism for us to communicate some concepts and come together and get past some collaborative dysfunction and get to some forward momentum on a way of working together, a way of thinking about challenges and certainly should be scrutinized themselves from time to time. And in our pre-show chat, you were mentioning that you’ve noticed a little bit more scrutiny, or maybe a sense of challenge around design thinking, design sprints, design, as a discipline, where folks are pointing out that there are some considerations we need to make.

Jim Scott:

Yeah, I think that’s part of maybe the cycle of maturity of these practices in this modern context and the challenges that they face. Because when you take this kind of magic, if you will, and you put it into real-world situations… There’s a few articles I’ve seen recently about how there’s been challenges and issues around economic disparity, racial disparities, the lack of diversity being expressed as a part of the practice and the people driving this stuff. And all those critiques are super valid, in terms of expressing the challenges of our time in the use of design as a process. So, I’m one of these optimists from that standpoint, I think it’s an eternal thing, but we have to always tune and challenge ourselves to make sure that our work is in tune with the times.

Jim Scott:

And some of those effects might be fleeting, but some of those things, we need to be aware that they’re more lasting and we have to invest in those. So, I don’t know how we make that work as a part of the overall practice, but there’s always a knife-edge there. People can sell design as the shiny thing that people just need to have for all of its perceived virtues, but there are challenges to actually having it fulfill and express that essence of that solution. That I think ultimately, test whether it’s going to work or not, in whatever setting that it’s in.

Douglas:

It makes me think of a couple of things. One is, these startups that they just want to hire the UX designer and they’re going to sprinkle some design pixie dust, and everything’s going to be awesome. If we don’t make it part of strategy and we don’t invest in it and we don’t change the fabric of the way that we think, and the way we work, it’s not going to have an impact. And so it’s almost like tokenism, right? Maybe the impacts are not as severe, but it’s the same as like, “Oh, let’s just throw some design at that.” Versus really making design part of the DNA of the company.

Douglas:

And I think that’s really similar to this other issue, which is, if we are going to really invest in design strategy and bring forth solutions for diverse community and support everyone that might use this product or the service, we need to make sure we’re informed. And ideally, part of the design team, are going to be representative of the people that are going to use it. And I got a great story from a conference that I attended called, Culture Rati, a plug for Culture Rati, great, great conference. Anyone that’s interested in diversity, equity inclusion or anything, HR and culture-related, how we can design better experiences for our employees. Great, great conference.

Douglas:

But I was at a panel with the Head of Diversity from Target, and the Head of Diversity from Twitter, and they were both staying at a hotel here in Austin called South Congress Hotel. And they were pointing out how the shower was racially insensitive and it was very hilarious because they are very funny people. And just the idea that this inanimate object could be racially insensitive, but it’s not the object’s fault. It’s the person that designed it, which hearkens us back to the design of everyday things. Right? So, her point was, clearly there were no African-American people on the design team or they weren’t consulted, certainly, because this thing was not very friendly to the people who can’t get their hair wet frequently.

Douglas:

And so a really funny, an unfortunate story, but it really gets back to this card deck that I wanted to bring up when you mentioned this in our pre-show chat. I just had Leslie Anne Noel on the show recently, she’s got this awesome card deck called the designer’s critical alphabet. And there’s two cards in here that I think are really applicable here. One is the critical race theory. And the suggestion on this card is, “What if you had someone from a different race or background design or redesign this product or service, how would it be different?” So ideally we’re including them, but at the very least, we need to step back and use that as a heuristic.

Douglas:

What would be different if they designed it? And if we are drawing blanks, if we think it would not be different at all, then we probably need to do more our research because it means we don’t know. And in fact, we should probably be doing more research and including people regardless. And then assimilation is the pattern or trend of the majority basically engulfing the minority. So the cultures of the minority tend to fade in support of adopting the cultures of the majority. And I think that is something designers should fight against, to make sure we preserve the beauty of the minorities. And so I don’t necessarily think it’s the process, the scaffolding, but how it gets used. And I think the scaffolding is really an easy thing to attack. Right?

Douglas:

But as you know, if someone’s walking around with a hammer trying to hammer screws, it’s the person that’s wielding the hammer, it’s not the hammer’s fault. So I think that it’s really important that we step back and look at how we’re using these tools and not attack the tools and we might need to adopt the tools, as well. So anyway, I just wanted to share that because I had a lovely conversation with her about a month ago and would love to hear your thoughts on that, Jim? Because I know you’ve spent years in the design industry, have worked with a lot of different people, across a lot of different sectors and problems. How has this surfaced for you? And do you have any advice for listeners, around how we approach that?

Jim Scott:

Well, with that as a topic, I think I’m actually fascinated by that deck. I want to check that out and learn some more about that. Because what that reminds me of is going back to my education, I had an opportunity to be in a workshop with Christopher Alexander’s firm. And so you may know, Chris Alexander wrote, A Pattern Language, among other things, and there’s actually a great YouTube video of him speaking to the Object-oriented Programming Association or a group in San Francisco in 1996. So I’ve been a pattern person, in terms of, they made a huge impact on me and the idea of these patterns and when they try to express the essence of something, they’re universally transferrable and applicable to a degree, they need to be adapted to course, for local conditions.

Jim Scott:

But this whole idea that there’s higher levels of understanding that are portable and transportable, I think it seems as though there would be architectural patterns, there are social and cultural patterns. And I think that’s where maybe this concept of developing this vocabulary, this shared understanding of tuning into the times that we’re in and having modes of communication and methods that we apply that will give people hopefully, an ability to sense those things, and to be, “How do I not be insensitive? How do I be sensitive to the needs of the group I’m working with or whatever it is they’re requiring?”

Jim Scott:

So I think that’s one thing that occurs to me. I think we need more structures like that, that are shared very easily and communicated universally across the design professions. So whether that’s these decks of insights and issues that we need to be attuned to, but then how do we take that and form them into things that then, can become applied as an integrated whole, in dealing with whatever problem is we’re trying to solve? And I guess the other thing that makes me think about is, there’s oftentimes, and this is getting back to my landscape architecture education. We often felt maybe, a sort of professional ego, but this idea that we had to learn about the whole landscape and the functions of the entire landscape. And we had to put them all together and see what that meant as far as the relationships across those systems.

Jim Scott:

And then that would inform us how we would be best advised to consider changes to that landscape and it was always contracted. And this is from my architectural professors. They always contrasted that with their profession saying, “We just worried about this box. We’re just going to design this box.” So I wonder how much of that idea of design, that is disconnected from the environment, can perpetuate itself so you end up with a shower head like that, that is disconnected from the broader public. It might look cool. It might’ve shown up as some five-star rating of some hotel and everybody thought that rain shower was the coolest thing.

Jim Scott:

Well, yeah, who wrote that thing? Those become social dynamics that become popular and then fads if you will, and then people making choices, will pick them, maybe not based upon the problem they’re trying to solve or the people they’re trying to serve, but for other reasons that are disconnected. So I think we need some more of these patterns to help keep that connection and give people pause to think about, “What is it I’m really doing here and who am I really trying to serve?”

Douglas:

Wow. That seems like a really interesting field of study or at least a blog post, this notion, this difference between designing for the ecosystem and then design in the box. And it’s interesting, in the world of software, we think about abstraction boundaries and we create these abstraction boundaries so we can think about the box that we’re in. And the abstraction boundary creates, I would say, interface points. Right? There’s signatures, it’s almost like if you think about antibodies or other kind of chemistry, metaphor’s, where it’s like, “Oh, this molecule can connect to this molecule because the key matches the receptor.” Or whatever.

Douglas:

And so in software, we create similar abstraction boundaries where, I know if I build this thing, it’ll connect to this other thing, so I know the context that I’m in. So as long as I adhere to those rules, I can make this thing work, however I want it to work. But I think if we take that thinking to something more dynamic, more complex, like the human condition or just the world, where we’re in an ecosystem, I don’t think it’s quite so simple. I don’t think we have those abstraction boundaries that are really cut and dry with these very well-defined signatures that we can connect into. And I think that understanding the context you’re in and adapting your practices accordingly is really critical. So I love that, you’ve got my gears turning there, Jim.

Jim Scott:

Well, yeah, these are the things, they’re going to be perpetual pursuits, right? We’re never going to have the day when we solved this problem or this challenge because every day is different. People are different, in terms of their dynamics, their challenges. I mean, just consider what we’ve been through in the pandemic. What kinds of influences has that had on so many things? And that’s a double challenge because, or maybe it’s less of a challenge, because we’ve all been through it, to a different degree. Some unimaginable, in terms of the pain and agony that they’ve been caused, but others?

Jim Scott:

I wonder about what are the potential good things that have come out of this challenging experience that everyone’s been through and has that created some shared understanding and make people more open to others, even though we’ve been in all this isolation for multiple months? I’ve found that to be true. I think I’ve increased my potential for empathy and true willingness to open up to what other people are really going through, just trying to imagine it and whether or not I can relate to it. And I think that has a definite impact on everything that we’re doing from a day-to-day basis now. So yeah, the more that these processes can inform and be tuned to the realities that we’re all in and build structures and practices and processes that give people a way to connect and share a deeper understanding, we’ve got to grab those things and try to preserve them.

Douglas:

Awesome. Well, I think that brings us to a very natural stopping point. So I want to invite you Jim, to leave our listeners with a final thought, anything you’d like them to keep in mind as they reflect on this episode?

Jim Scott:

Well, I guess as someone who’s been doing this a long time, and actually, this is one of my other lessons from school. The sense of you, for those people that may be just getting their degree. I don’t know what the general consensus is out of design schools these days are, to advise young people going into the profession. But I was told before I graduated that number one, I had actually taken an oath of poverty and didn’t realize it, but my professional commitment was going to lead me through a long period of learning. And it wasn’t going to be until I reached, I would call it, past middle age, I’ll put it that way, that all of it was going to come together and whether it has or not, I don’t know. But there is something to be said about pursuing a career and your life journey and do it with as much adventure and diversity as you can, if you’re a designer, because it’s only going to add to your ability to grow that capacity into the future.

Jim Scott:

So, I was given that guidance early on and it has proven true to me. So I think that’s what’s interesting to be able to, for what all the work that you do and all the range of people you work with, from students, to new people, new design, to advanced professionals. I mean, this is a lifelong commitment, that’s what’s very fulfilling about it and there’s challenges too, along the way. But what I’ve found is so rewarding, is all the cycles of my career that I’ve gone through, this is the one thing that I’ve been able to maintain, as a way to keep my orientation about where my professional endeavors and my personal creative goals are. So that’s one of the positives about it. It can be frustrating, but whatever entry point anyone’s had into considering design, consider it as a lifelong practice.

Douglas:

Jim, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show today, I really enjoyed the chat and looking forward to talking to you soon.

Jim Scott:

Douglas, thanks so much. Appreciate the opportunity. Talk to you soon.

Douglas:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don’t forget to subscribe, to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

The post Episode 54: Design First appeared first on Voltage Control.

Welcome to Magical Meetings Stories, a series where I chat with professional facilitators, meeting practitioners, leaders, and CEOs across industries about their meeting culture. We dive deep into a specific Magical Meeting they’ve run, including their approach to facilitation design, and their tips and tricks for running meetings people thrive in. 

Today’s story is with Kellee Franklin, an innovative and integrative thinker, creative change agent and corporate strategist, executive advisor, and entrepreneurial-minded business leader and educator. She has been recognized for delivering sustainable business strategy and IT/digital transformation, leveraging Big Data to drive innovation, designing new and inventive ways of performing business, and achieving actionable results through using human-centered design processes and best-in-class management consultant strategies. She is also the founder of Mindful Innovation Labs. Kellee also received a PhD in Human Development with an emphasis in Adult Learning and Organizational Behavior from Virginia Tech.

In our discussion, Kellee reflects on a specific 10 meeting series she ran shortly before the pandemic lockdown. She dives into what drove the meeting design and why her unique approach was successful.

“I think what drove the design of that meeting, which really has driven the design of the vast majority of the meetings that I have with clients, is just my fundamental belief in adult learning principles, which I don’t think get communicated as often as they should.” -Kellee M. Franklin

The Importance of Meeting Design

Kellee is a big believer in spending a lot of time upfront in meeting design, because she isn’t the biggest fan of meetings. This thinking is also applied when she coaches executives, where the emphasis is placed on designing meetings. 

Her Team-Centered Meetings are an ongoing approach she uses with teams, both virtually and in person. Let’s take a closer look at Kellee’s process for making this specific Team-Centered Meeting magical.

The Meeting 

During this specific Team-Centered Meeting, Kellee was responsible for navigating 15 design teams of 32 nationalities through a design thinking process. At the end of it, each team was going to pitch a product. There was a series of 10 meetings and she met with each individual team weekly for only 30 minutes. “Throughout the week, these design teams were meeting together and they were also getting content and having access to clients and working collaboratively. But their time with me was relatively limited. So, we had to make the most use of our time together,” she explains.

Team-Centered Meeting Driver 

Kellee’s fundamental belief in adult learning principles are what drove the design of this meeting, and the design of many of her other meetings and engagements. She believes adult learning principles don’t get communicated as often as they should. She explains the aspects of adult learning, which are differentiated from how children learn: “Some of the things that I deeply believe in are that adults have a higher sense of self-direction and motivation. They have life experience and a drive for facilitating learning. They have a focus on achieving goals. They have a need to know how the information that they’re receiving is relevant to what they’re working towards. They have a need to have things that are practical. They’re open to help and mentorship. And they are open to modern forms of learning. And they want to be able to choose how they learn.”

Taking these beliefs and principles into account prompted Kellee to ask herself: “How was I going to design these meetings in a manner that was going to facilitate the most effective outcomes for them?”

The Exercise

When each team came into the room for their weekly meeting, they had goals that they were working towards for that week. First, they filled in a dashboard and Kellee then put the dashboard on a whiteboard for everyone to see. Throughout the day, she was meeting with all 15 teams. The teams filled in the following on their dashboard:

• The name of their team
• Each of the three or four goals they had
• The stage they were at with those goals (identified by red, yellow or green)
• Any questions they had or resources they needed

After the dashboard was visualized on the whiteboard, Kellee put the responsibility back on the teams to determine how to best spend their next 30 minutes together, based on what the team wanted to prioritize, tackle and focus on. “And that really…is an adult learning principle, rather than me driving the meeting, it allowed the design team to drive the meeting.”

By the end of the day, all teams’ information was in the dashboard and on the whiteboard. She would take a photo of the whiteboard and send it out to everyone. This way, each of the teams could see how one another was working. Even though the 15 teams weren’t working all together, it gave them an opportunity to learn from each other.

A Unique, Successful Approach

Kellee explains that it was a little awkward at first for the design team, because “they were accustomed to having the person in charge, if you will, run the meeting. And this was kind of a role reversal for them.” But in the end, this approach was truly what made it so successful. “As we moved and progressed through the process, they really, really appreciated and they would start to come to the meeting, much more organized, recognizing that they only have 30 minutes with me and that they needed to know what specific questions that they needed to address and how were they going to use the best use of their time.”

She elaborates on the process further: “They would come in with, as we progressed, things written down or part of their deliverables that they wanted to show me to get feedback on. And it was really a lovely way to see them develop and grow throughout this progress. So again, rather than me dictating to them, it was an opportunity to really have them showcase their work. And I have to tell you, every team came in with different questions and a different idea of how they were going to utilize my time.”

Role of the Facilitator

Throughout her engagements–both in this meeting series and her work in general–Kellee sees her responsibility as the facilitator to really think about the purpose at hand when designing the meeting. “I think that’s our role as a facilitator of learning,” she says. These are some of the questions she utilizes to determine meeting design:

• What are the objectives of the meeting?
• How can we design it in a way that everyone has the opportunity to feel seen?
• How can we design it in a way that everyone has the opportunity to feel heard?

Advice

When reflecting on the Team-Centered Meeting series, Kelle’s main recommendation for others is to think about and utilize the adult learning principles. Kellee has made it a point to incorporate them in her work and the feedback has been extremely positive. “I have more people tell me, ‘Gosh, if I had been exposed to those principles earlier in my career, I would do meetings, I would do presentations so differently than I’ve done throughout my entire career.’”

Applying these principles throughout her work has helped Kellee and the teams she works with drive more efficient and effective outcomes, something everyone could benefit from.

Do you have your own Magical Meeting Story to tell?

We’d love to hear your wizardry! Share your story with us here.

The post Team-Centered Meeting appeared first on Voltage Control.

“The facilitator plays the role of a model of authenticity for the group: listening for the depth of decisions that need to be faced, speaking only from experience, preferring remaining silent to giving ‘good advice’ ungrounded in personal experience, rejoicing in the successes of the group.” -John Epps

The best workshops are learning experiences for lasting growth and transformation. They keep all participants engaged, drive key learning objectives and facilitate lasting change. If your workshops fall short, you may need the help of a workshop facilitator to produce better outcomes. It takes a pro-level toolkit and mindset to unearth potential and maintain results.

Workshop facilitation transforms meeting structure and dynamics. A professional meeting moderator has the ability to lead objectively and strategically to produce better outcomes at your company meeting or working session.

Why You Should Hire a Workshop Facilitator

The difference between a truly impactful workshop and a mediocre one is often an expert leader–someone well-versed in bringing people together, navigating conversations, and helping solve complex problems. With a professional workshop facilitator at the helm, you can get the whole group engaged and participating, which leads to more productive meetings. Here are three reasons an outside professional facilitator is an asset to your next workshop.

1. A Non-Biased Leader

A workshop facilitator is a non-biased and neutral figure at your meeting that offers a fresh perspective. Unlike the inevitable biases that exist within your team, a skilled facilitator’s viewpoint is untainted by bias; instead, it is objective. They are removed from office politics and are an outsider to the company status quo. This vantage point allows them to ask critical questions, hold everyone accountable to the truth, and ensure ground rules are enforced. Sometimes this means helping the group embrace harsher realities that are necessary to solving problems and making thoughtful decisions. 

When the workshop facilitator is an unbiased navigator, they are able to guide the group more efficiently and effectively because their own opinions are not in the way. They can see the problem(s) at hand more clearly and are therefore able to address issues quicker and easier. This especially comes in handy when solving complex problems or settling matters of great importance. Sometimes it takes someone removed from the situation–with the other critical skills of a master facilitator–to identify how to best problem solve. 

2. Greater Engagement

Extracting equal engagement from all participants in any workshop is an art form. In short, it can be challenging. And for workshops to be impactful and influence lasting growth, you need the best of all participants. A workshop facilitator has the unique ability to work the room, encouraging all participants to interact. Workshop facilitators are trained to increase engagement and keep team members energized throughout the meeting. They do so by assessing the group’s current engagement level, minimizing distractions, and sticking to the schedule. Many facilitators also practice improv, so they have the skills to adapt to unplanned or unforeseen scenarios. For example, the facilitator will recognize a distraction or decrease in group energy levels and pivot the conversation/flow of the meeting when needed to bring it back to focus. This increases productivity and helps contribute to a more effective team dynamic.

Facilitators are skilled in a variety of engagement strategies and feel confident in leading a group. Also, workshop facilitators aren’t invested in the content of the meeting, which makes room for more opposing opinions. When outside facilitators lead, the team will be more comfortable expressing new ideas.

For example, if you are leading a meeting and your employees know that you have a certain point of view on an issue, they may not speak freely. This doesn’t produce innovation or contribution; it reinforces the company’s current structure and beliefs. When your employees walk in and notice someone else is running the workshop, they will be more excited or curious to see if the meeting pans out differently. This curiosity and excitement can lay the foundation for innovation. Your employees will feel more at ease expressing new thoughts, skills, and solutions when a new approach is presented.

Meetings and work cultures generally take on a routine. People usually know what to expect on a day-to-day basis. They also know how most meetings will go. Depending on your meeting history and feedback, this could either be good or bad. If you’ve heard more negative reviews than positive, it might be time to hire a workshop facilitator.

A workshop facilitator is a fresh new face and personality at the meeting. They can help to break old patterns and create new ones.

Start our Magical Meetings course today!

Learn the methods to make your meetings magical.

Get Started

Facilitators know a variety of engagement strategies and feel confident in leading a group. Also, workshop facilitators aren’t invested in the content of the meeting, which makes room for more opposing opinions.

When outside facilitators lead, the team will be more comfortable expressing new ideas.

For example, if you are leading a meeting and your employees know that you have a certain point of view on an issue, they may not speak freely. This doesn’t produce innovation or contribution; it reinforces the company’s current structure and beliefs.

3. Increased Positivity

When differing opinions emerge in a meeting, tensions can arise. Two employees may be very passionate about their stance, leaving you to manage the conversation without damaging any relationships. A workshop facilitator can seamlessly manage these potentially negative interactions by remaining a positive and unbiased presence.

Pro-tip: Refer to our Facilitators Guide to Questions for effective questions to ask to transform negative environments.

Hiring a workshop facilitator can also increase positivity at meetings by creating sharing and brainstorming opportunities. Workshop facilitators bring a toolkit of methodologies and strategies to employ that help teams work well together. They know when to use each method to get the desired results. Some examples include: brainstorming activities that move the group from divergent to convergent thinking to come up with and identify solutions to problems, encouraging active listening to create an inclusive and productive environment, and inspiring and balancing participation among extroverted and introverted personalities so that all voices are heard and understood by the group. The many techniques of a workshop facilitator can successfully get individuals to open up and express their opinions with ease.

Hiring a Workshop Facilitator

Hiring a professional facilitator for your next workshop, large group meeting, complicated meeting, or project kick-off will help your organization grow and solve complex problems quickly and effectively. A facilitator will provide a safe space for team members to contribute their ideas which will strengthen the entire group and overall outcome. Their organizational and problem-solving expertise will allow gatherings to flow smoothly, minimize issues, and extract important information. Workshop facilitators are an asset before, during, and after workshops, as they play an essential role in all parts of the process to ensure lasting results. 

If you’d like to hire a workshop facilitator for your next meeting or training, consider our services at Voltage Control. We offer a range of facilitation and innovation workshops that can help your company to get to the next level of employee engagement, growth, and innovation.

FAQ Section

What is the goal of facilitation in a professional setting?
The primary goal of facilitation is to guide teams through effective workshops that foster collaboration, decision-making, and problem-solving. A successful workshop is led by an expert facilitator who helps the group achieve its objectives while enhancing communication skills and fostering creative thinking.

Why should we hire an external facilitator instead of using an internal team member?
An external facilitator brings an unbiased perspective, free from internal politics or company culture. They have experience in facilitation across various industries and are trained to lead diverse groups. This helps create an environment where participants feel comfortable sharing innovative ideas, leading to more successful sessions.

What facilitation techniques do expert facilitators at Voltage Control use?
Our experienced facilitators use a range of facilitation techniques, including design thinking, brainstorming sessions, and collaborative decision-making strategies. These approaches ensure that both entry-level facilitators and seasoned professionals can guide their teams through complex challenges, fostering effective communication and leadership skills.

How do professional facilitators support leadership development and company growth?
Facilitators play a crucial role in talent development and leadership growth. By guiding team leaders and decision-makers through educational workshops and a series of sessions, they help develop soft skills such as communication and creative problem-solving. This investment in professional development enhances company culture and drives overall growth.

Can internal facilitators lead successful workshops, or is it better to rely on external consultants?
While internal facilitators may have a deep understanding of the company’s culture and goals, external workshop facilitators bring fresh insights and innovative approaches. External consultants are often more effective at identifying blind spots and introducing new facilitation techniques that lead to more impactful outcomes.

What experience level should facilitators have to lead a successful session?
Facilitators with a proven track record, whether internal or external, should possess extensive facilitation skills and experience. At Voltage Control, we offer facilitation training for both entry-level facilitators and those pursuing a facilitation career. An ideal candidate profile for facilitation includes leadership skills, experience in facilitation, and the ability to adapt their facilitation style to the needs of the group.

How do facilitation workshops benefit project managers and team leaders?
Facilitation workshops equip project managers and team leaders with essential leadership and communication skills. These workshops enhance their ability to lead teams, manage projects effectively, and create an environment for collaborative decision-making. This ultimately strengthens the leadership team and drives long-term company growth.

What is the role of facilitation in shaping company culture?
Facilitation is instrumental in shaping company culture by fostering open communication, encouraging creative thinking, and promoting collaboration. Whether led by an internal facilitator or an external consultant, effective facilitation ensures that all voices are heard, leading to stronger team cohesion and improved decision-making over a period of time.

The post 3 Reasons To Hire a Workshop 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 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.

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

A Design Sprint is a tried-and-true method that can help you jumpstart a project at work. It is a five-day process where you dissect a business challenge through a set of powerful activities. Design Sprint activities are carefully planned and executed to lead the group to their end result: a rapid prototype that has been vetted with real customers. The implementation of each design sprint activity helps you accomplish a month’s worth of work in a week.

The Design Sprint was initially developed at Google Ventures as a process for “answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.” It’s an excellent way to push through confusion and inertia to come up with new ideas and find out quickly if your customers might respond positively to them.

Why do we need Design Sprints?

Most teams and organizations probably have a challenge that would benefit from a Design Sprint. But, if you’re wondering if it’s a good thing to consider, here are some scenarios that point to a strong need for a Sprint:

• You’re about to kick off a project or a new product, and you want momentum, excitement, alignment, and focus from the start.
• You’re in the middle of an initiative, and you don’t know where to go next.
• You haven’t talked to your customers enough, and your team feels stuck in an internal feedback loop.
• You think you need to pivot in your business or product model and want to explore the right way to go next.

Any of these scenarios are good reasons to hold a design sprint. Consider setting aside five days for a cross-disciplinary team to complete a Sprint. (Please don’t try to run your first Sprint in less than five days.)

Design Sprint Activities

One of the beautiful things about the Design Sprint is that it is a prescriptive (in the best meaning of the word!) week of events. You don’t need to wonder what to do. You don’t need to struggle to come up with an agenda.

This doesn’t mean a Design Sprint is “easy”; it does mean that the activities for each day are clearly defined so any team can jump in and run a Sprint if they take the time to read up on the process.

Do you need a professional Design Sprint facilitator?

Here at Voltage Control, we are professional Design Sprint facilitators, so it’s difficult to be unbiased when it comes to this question. We think teams can certainly run a design sprint on their own if they have one person on the team who wants to take the lead, do the prep and lead the group through all the activities. However, if you can make the investment, you might want to consider a professional facilitator. They can take care of logistics and making sure the team stays on track.

Preparation & Planning

Preparation and planning for your Design Sprint is the first step. Don’t underestimate the time that needs to be put into a Sprint before it even starts. It could take one to two weeks of someone’s time to get ready for a sprint. Here are some of the things you’ll do during this phase:

• Read the book Sprint.
• Secure a spot for your Sprint — on-site, or, even better, off-site.
• Buy Design Sprint supplies.
• Make your participant list. (Spoiler: more people isn’t better.)
• Plan for how you’re going to find research participants.
• Prepare the Sprint participants.
• (If needed) Engage a professional facilitator.
• Gather background research and data that might inform your Sprint.

Day 1 | Design Sprint Activities

The first day of your Design Sprint charts the course for the rest of the week and creates the focus.

Here are the activities:

• Create a long-term goal.
• Map the business challenge you’re tackling.
• Talk to internal experts on your team to get their perspectives on the challenge.
• Identify a target: agree on the specific part of your problem that you will focus on during the week

Day 2 | Design Sprint Activities

If day 1 of a Design Sprint is getting laser-focused on the problem or issue you face, the second day is when you begin to think bout how you might solve your problem.

Here’s an overview of activities for day 2:

• Gather inspiration: the team shares outside inspiration that might inform your solution (i.e., what are other companies doing that we love or might want to “copy”/remix?)
• Sketch: The group sketches ideas for answers using the Four-Step Sketch method. Drawing ability is NOT necessary! It’s more about the thought.
• Plan for customer testing: On Friday, you’ll be interviewing customers, so you also start work on that recruitment on this day (if you haven’t already.)

Day 3 | Design Sprint Activities

On the third day of your Sprint, you look at all of the solutions you’ve come up with and start to hone in on what you might prototype and test.

Start our Design Thinking Foundations course today!

Learn and practice Design Thinking to help your team solve problems and seize opportunities.

Get Started

Here’s an overview of what happens on this day:

• Critique each solution: keeping an eye on which ones are best for achieving the goal you set on day one.
• Create a storyboard: mix and match your favorite ideas from all of the sketches and piece together a storyboard that will be turned into a prototype that you’ll show to customers.

Day 4 | Design Sprint Activities

The fourth day of a design sprint is when things get very exciting, and depending on your experience with prototyping — a bit scary or daunting. You’ll be making your storyboard into your prototype.

• Prototyping is the main activity for the day!
• Prepping for your user interviews. Make sure you have a user interview script as well as a method for taking notes.

Day 5 | Design Sprint Activities

The last day of your Design Sprint is the moment of truth. It’s when you show users your prototype and get their feedback. This is when you’ll learn if your idea has legs and you should run with it, or if you need to rethink things.

After the Sprint Activities

A Design Sprint might be a week-long, but the activities should spread into the week after — at the very least.

Some of the essential things to do after your Sprint are:

• Hold a debrief or retrospective with the group to define what you learned.
• Communicate to your larger org or team what you learned.
• Align on your next steps.
• Read Beyond the Prototype: We saw companies struggle in the post-Sprint world, so we wrote a whole book about it. Check it out for more details about what to do after a Sprint.

The post An Overview of Design Sprint Activities appeared first on Voltage Control.

Last week 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.

This year we welcomed 24 speakers who shared their insights and strategies of successful facilitation.

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.

Read on for summaries of this year’s “Control the Room” presentations.

Opening Speaker: Douglas Ferguson

Voltage Control’s founder and president, Douglas Ferguson, started the day with an introduction in how to break down the silos of facilitation and bring people together.

He reminded the group that the mission and method of the summit are to seek out diverse perspectives and share them.

“We condition ourselves so we can recondition ourselves.”

Solomon Masala

Solomon Masala is the founder of the Source Consulting Group, a team-building organization that helps companies build skills experientially to change behavior by being directly involved in the learning process.

Solomon spoke about his experimental approach and broke down the seven elements of operating experientially:

1. Objectives for skills: Skills that make your team better.
2. Practice behaviors: Be accountable for consciously practicing the actions that lead to success.
3. Total immersion: Be engaged via intellect, emotion, and physical immersion.
4. Doing the learning: Examine the access channels for learning.
5. Risk, failure, and safety: Failure is part of the experience, high perceived risk is a powerful way of engaging and should be inherent, but the emotional and physical safety should be ensured.
6. Wisdom gather: The debrief. The time to synthesize and analyze for relevant use in skill development and behavior change, and transfer the learning from the experience into the real world.
7. High fun potential: Keep it fun, but above all, keep it safe.

Lynda Baker

Lynda is the Founder and Principal Consultant at MeetingSolution. Her talk answered the enticing question, “Why is it that people crave community but hate meetings?” Lynda spoke to where facilitation meets fung shui and the purpose it serves in removing tension and blocks that appear in a meeting, so that the energy in the room can flow freely across the metaphysical, metaphorical, and practical planes.

“Like yin and yang, we move fluidly between the known and unknown.”

Lynda went on to break down the eight principles of feng shui bagua, a yin and yang energy map, and how they relate to the roles of a facilitator by sharing her meeting bagua.

Justin Foster

Justin Foster 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.

Emily Jane Steinberg

Emily Jane Steinberg is 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.

This self-evaluation is rooted in answering the questions: What biases do I have? What biases do I carry? What biases do I experience? Once these answers are identified, an individual must then go a layer deeper to uncover the unconscious biases they have and carry, and return to expanded awareness to determine what the problem is they are trying to address and solve; they must move from deductive and linear thinking to systematic thinking.

Emily Jane Steinberg on networking: “Building a net that works, building relationships based on principle and human values.”

John Fitch

John Fitch is the Chief Product Officer at Voltage Control and Co-author of Time Off. 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.

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

Panel

Kellee Franklin, Founder & Chief Innovation Officer at Mindful Innovation Labs, served as the moderator of our Dynamic Panels: Designing & Facilitating Meaningful Discussions. Four panelists shared their perspectives: Sam Schak, Senior Project Manager at Handsome; John Hawley, Workshop Wizard at JWH Enterprise LLC; Jay Melone, Innovation and Facilitation Coach at New Haircut, and Shipra Kayan, a Remote Design Sprint Facilitator.

They spoke about their own experiences overcoming challenges as facilitators including: how to keep moving forward when not everyone in the meeting agrees, how to get the group to discuss the undiscussable, how to handle conflict in a workshop, how to avoid shallow philosophies, and how to go beyond just talking about the work to talking about what the group will work on together. They also shared facilitation fears and the most meaningful aspects of their work thus far.

Daniel Stillman

Daniel Stillman is a facilitator, workshop leader, designer, writer, coach, speaker, and teacher who works to craft impactful workshops and transformational learning experiences to help teams work better together.

He led the group through a series of activities to illustrate the importance and benefit of leaving space for ideas that you don’t agree with.

Sunni Brown

Sunni Brown is 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.

“Equanimity means we all practice a state of physiological composure distributed by strong emotions, expressions, and other phenomena in which others have temporarily lost the balance of theirs.”

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.

Johnny Saye

Johnny Saye is 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

Shannon Stott

Shannon Stott is the Owner of Shannon Unlimited. She uses the elements of comedic improv, including storytelling and quick thinking, to help people become more dynamic speakers, deepen their engagement with clients and audiences, and strengthen team productivity.

Her presentation, “Stick to Your Shit,” focused on how individual success translates to group success. Shannon led the group through exercises to figure out how to realize body signals that either promote and hinder confidence.

She explained how personal hesitations translate negatively when facilitating: the audience does not trust a facilitator that hesitates, and the inability for a facilitator to identify uncertainty in a group prohibits them from successfully facilitating. To avoid this, one must be able to locate their hesitations and any that exist within a group they are leading.

Jordan Hirsch

Jordan Hirsh is 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.

Leisha Barnette & Vaishali Jadhav

Leisha Barnette is the Director of Learning and Development at Juiceland, and Vaishali Jadhav is the Senior Learning and Development Facilitator at Procore Technologies. Together, they spoke about the difference between co-presenting and co-facilitating.

Facilitation, they said, is a dynamic that requires one to react and change according to the room, which can be challenging with two people. At the same time, co-presenting is previously prepared and methodically executed.

Therefore, it is more natural to have co-facilitators rather than co-presenters to allow flow between two people and deliver a successful outcome. Through personal anecdotes and activities, Leisha and Vaishali demonstrated how to effectively co-facilitate.

Reagan Pugh

Reagan Pugh is a Facilitator at Voltage Control. He 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.”

Lee Duncan & Dan Benedict

Lee Duncan is the Enterprise Design Sprint Leader at IBM, and Dan Benedict is the Digital Product Designer at IBM. In their presentation, “Cyber-Physical Design Sprints within the Enterprise,” they detailed the six steps of the cyber-physical system (anything that can sense, infer, and act, such as self-driving cars and changing thermostats) and how to navigate the innovation process:

1. Configure
2. Compile
3. Compress
4. Model
5. Build
6. Test

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.

Taylor Cone

Taylor Cone is the Founder & CEO at Lightshed. He spoke about how to maximize the creative output of teams in his presentation: “Designing Inclusive Collaborations to Leverage Team Diversity.” Taylor elaborated on how psychologically safe teams — those that feel that their contributions matter that they’re connected to a clear purpose have unique talents to offer, and that feel included — are significantly more likely to work effectively together than those motivated by all other incentives combined.

“If we don’t intentionally include, we will unintentionally exclude.”

Taylor then explained how to design inclusive collaboration using three strategies:

1. Include: think about who you might be unintentionally excluding, and how to include them.
2. Understand: get a sense of who is at the table and what everyone has to offer.
3. Design: now that you have the right people, design how you want to think together.

Hailey Temple

Hailey Temple is the Services Lead at MURAL, a digital workspace for creative collaboration. 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.

“Visuals tell stories, visuals clarify concepts, visuals have a place in online meetings…We as facilitators are creating stories. We have the choice to make it a textbook or an awesome and colorful picture book.”

The post Looking Back: Control the Room 2020 appeared first on Voltage Control.