In this Facilitation Lab podcast episode, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Rubens Filho, Director of Spells & CEO of Abracademy, about using magic as a tool for transformative learning and team development. Rubens shares how magic, psychology, and learning design are blended to create engaging, research-informed workshops that foster curiosity, wonder, and collaboration. The discussion covers the origins of Abracademy, the power of metaphor and storytelling in leadership, the importance of embracing diverse perspectives, and the impact of shifting from militarized to magical language in the workplace. The episode highlights the value of human-centered, memorable learning experiences.

Show Highlights

[00:04:27] Personal Journey into Magic
[00:06:10] Integrating Psychology, Neuroscience, and Magic
[00:11:04] The Role of Secrets and Trust in Magic
[00:15:22] Challenges in Blending Magic, Science, and Learning
[00:19:02] The Dual-Facilitator Model
[00:26:56] Magic’s Universal Language and Global Reach
[00:34:09] Looking to the Future: Humanity and Technology
[00:42:21] Final Thoughts: Shifting from War to Magic Language

Links | Resources

Abracademy on Instagram

Abracademy on X

Abracademy on the web

About the Guest

Rubens Filho transforms the way teams and organisations learn, grow, and connect. As Director of Spells & CEO of Abracademy, he has spent the past decade reintroducing the magic of human potential into the workplace—helping people rediscover wonder, belief, and collaboration through a unique blend of expert facilitation and real magic (yes, actual magic!).

Before entrepreneurship, Rubens spent 17 years as a Creative Director in global advertising, leading award-winning campaigns and multicultural teams across Brazil, London, and other international markets.

His mission? To make business more human—one magical experience at a time.

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab Podcast where I speak with Voltage Control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab, and if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com. I’m with Rubens Filho, co-founder of Abracademy, where he creates magical learning experiences that helps teams grow, collaborate, and rediscover wonder in the workplace. He blends professional development, psychology, and real magic to transform how people learn, work, and connect. Welcome to the show, Rubens.

Rubens Filho:

Thank you, Douglas. It’s a pleasure to be here. Curious to know where this conversation will take us.

Douglas Ferguson:

I am interested as well, and we spoke earlier this summer, I guess it was late spring, early summer, and you’re anticipating a nice holiday and this 10 year anniversary, a lot of excitement around that for you. So I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. And so I want to start by looking back at the dawn of Abracademy. In 2015, Unicode founders set out to unlock the magic potential in people. So I’m just curious for the listeners, what inspired the idea of blending learning design and magic?

Rubens Filho:

Well, thanks for your question, Douglas. I guess in 2015 there was an idea of trying something different like making learning more engaging in some way, and that kind of converged with this, how can I say, skill that I had. I’ve been a magician since I’m a teenager and I met another magician. We start to talk about things about possibilities, and that’s when Alex told me, one of my business partners, he said, “Rubens, what if we create a school of magic?” I said, “Well, Alex, perhaps we don’t create a school of magic, but if we could use magic to teach people other things, that could be beautiful.” And that’s how we started it.

Douglas Ferguson:

At the time when you were thinking about teaching other things, were there needs you were noticing, or were there things that you were driven to help people understand about themselves or the world?

Rubens Filho:

Yes. I came from, after 20 years in advertising, I joined Hyper Island for a masters in digital transformation. So this year at Hyper gave me lots of space to think about the things I wanted to do, the business I wish to create, and that kind of brought me to realize that I wanted to work with people’s transformation. After working in communication for long, I wanted something more purposeful. And what I realized at Hyper is that digital transformation technology is just one side of the story, what’s important to change the other side, which is change the humans. And that kind of came together with this idea of bringing something new. So how can we help people transform and change? And magic seemed like a great way of doing it in an authentic manner with a different perspective.

Douglas Ferguson:

And did you meet Jenny at Hyper Island? Jenny Thielen, a good friend of Ultra Control and familiar with her work for a long time. Now I know she’s with you over at Abracademy. So did you all meet when you were at Hyper Island?

Rubens Filho:

No, not at that time. Jenny joined us two years ago. Of course, when we hear that each other went through a Hyper Island experience, then it makes everything easier. But at the time we didn’t know each other. We have lots of friends in common that are there or were there, but yes, it’s a recent acquaintance, let’s say.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, yeah. And so coming back to beginnings, how did you first get into magic? What was the original draw there?

Rubens Filho:

Yeah, I had this drive for performance. So first I start doing juggling. I liked circles, I played with circles in my early teen days. And then one day I saw this magic course and that triggered my curiosity. I said, “Oh, let me take it.” It was before YouTube, so I had to become an apprentice of a magician, which was quite interesting. I was an apprentice for four months, and then I graduated with a magic show. So that was fun and that kind of… I started the journey. Then I became very passionate for a few years, and then as my career took off in other realms, then it became just a hobby until Abracademy.

Douglas Ferguson:

And what was your first magic show? Do you remember? Was there anything interesting about one of your early magic shows that’s memorable?

Rubens Filho:

Yeah, it was old times traditional magic, but I do remember that I performed three magic pieces and one of them was with doves. So I worked with doves for a few years, later on became bigger stage show. But today people don’t work with doves anymore. But I had two doves, would nurture and train them, and we worked together, collaborated well.

Douglas Ferguson:

Oh, wow. So early on it was collaborating with doves and now it’s collaborating with people.

Rubens Filho:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I did other things, very interesting pieces of magic. But that was a great start.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I’m just curious about exploring more of the influences. There’s this psychology, magic coaching. How do you see them all fitting together?

Rubens Filho:

Yeah, I must say that first of all, there was my career in advertising as a creative director, I had to work with people from different backgrounds that had lots of different wants and needs and egos, and a lot of my talent was dealing with these people and bringing them together. So I think that is one part of the story of the foundational things that later on played a role. But when we got together and start to explore how magic could help, the first year of Abracademy, we only worked with young people and the need there was to give them confidence, to provide psychological safety so they could contribute. There was a sense of belonging that was born there. There was the element of play. We start to work with number of schools, but also with the NHS. We did work with some kids that had mental health challenges that struggled to keep their attention, even if it’s for 30 seconds and magic helped grasp that attention and then bring something new, some kind of learning.

There is this element of the experiential learning that in part I start to experience at Hyper Island, but we took to another level, how can we make experiential learning interesting and powerful? So the psychology and neuroscience aspect comes from another need. I realized that for us to use magic for a purpose that went beyond entertainment, we needed to bring credibility. So from the onset we partnered with a number of magicians that worked with Goldsmith University. They were researching through magic and we start to do some collaboration. And for years we had a scientist in the team. So we first started with neuroscientist, then we had a scientist that focused on well-being and positive psychology. Then we had another one that focused on decision making, and now we have one that’s about cross-cultural collaboration. So I think that was important to bring credibility to the work and the methodology we developed.

Douglas Ferguson:

So tell me a little bit more about the research. How did that work exactly?

Rubens Filho:

Well, there is a number of incredible scientists that do everything with magic. So they research cognition, they research attention, control, they research connection. They research whether secrets help build trust or not. So there are a number of researchers going on that use magic. When I entered this collaboration with Dr. Gustav Kuhn, who also wrote a fantastic book called, The Experience in the Impossible, published by MIT Press, and all this research is there somehow not entirely connected to what Abracademy does, but lots of seeds of things that can be further explored. So my idea at the time was to do things that went beyond just a gut feeling, “Oh, this could work, this could not work.” And that has been working incredibly well.

Douglas Ferguson:

Any particularly memorable research that’s come up that’s really influenced your work?

Rubens Filho:

I guess in terms of the areas, the research, for example, there is this element of perception and how perception works. And this is, let’s say, bringing awareness to the limitations of our perception. It is something that we do using the magic, and it’s fantastic because you can show something, then you show that people didn’t see it, it’s in their faces, and then you bring the reflection and you can move forward. And there are lots of different researchers in terms of where we don’t see and where we see. And that’s what we started to put together. There is also a great research. We had Dr. Hugo Caffaratti was our neuroscientist. He was researching wonder. And that moment that we experienced wonder, the very moment of this cognitive dissonance that we see something that doesn’t match our previous experiences. And then we have this moment of confusion, which is super powerful. But even more powerful is what comes after which is curiosity. And this developed into what we call the wonder mindset.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. You mentioned secrets and my ears perked up. What kind of secrets are we talking about there?

Rubens Filho:

Yeah, it could be all kinds of secrets. When you share something with someone and you can’t give your confidence to this person in a way, does that help or not help building trust? And it’s still controversial. I don’t have an answer, but the indication is yes, but the circumstances may vary of depending on what you share and what’s the intention behind sharing.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s not binary, right? There’s a level of intimacy maybe we’re willing to go into.

Rubens Filho:

And this is something I learned working with scientists along these 10 years is that research is difficult. It’s difficult because it researches a particular moment in time. So for example, if you want to research if a workshop is effective or not, it doesn’t work scientifically straightforward because there are so many elements into a workshop. So you can research probably one piece of it, a little part, one exercise, but not the whole thing, becomes a lot.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s really hard to control when you think about controlled experiment. It’s like how do you exactly compare an organization that did the thing versus one that didn’t do the thing? And were all the circumstances the same and all the outside variables. Interesting to think about, especially when you compare someone doing scientific research in a more specifically scientific realm versus a business realm.

Rubens Filho:

Exactly, yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

I’m still stuck a little bit here in these kind of informative moments. Can you share a moment or a story around an early tada moment that you had with a client?

Rubens Filho:

Yeah, I guess it was very interesting because first we worked with the schools and after a year we were going bankruptcy, right? It’s not easy to work with schools. I didn’t have knowledge about the grant space, how to apply for grants. So we started to shift our work towards the corporate space and work in the workplace. So we created the first workshop, it was a pilot, and then immediately we got a workshop with Comic Relief, followed by Twitter. And then came Freeformers, which was another learning company that after doing the workshop with us, they said, “Hey, we have this possibility of pitching for a project with HSBC would like to join us.” They thought the magic could bring something special to the proposal. So we pitched together and we won. So all of a sudden in company in collaboration with Freeformers, we had to train 4,500 people.

And I think this period, it was for a nine-month period, we used magic and we start to train our facilitators, magilitators we call them because they blend magic and facilitation. And I think the insight there was about the potential of magic because I had this idea that magic could teach certain things, but what I start to realize doing it more and more is that it was vast because magic has so many different elements from the science to the psychology, to the empathy, to the relationship with the audience, to the mastery, to the control of attention. So it is so vast that in this space of nine months we could really repeating it again and again and again, see that we had a proper business in our hands that demanded more and more attention.

Douglas Ferguson:

And it’s fascinating, all the variants of things that you can explore there. And I’m curious, which things did you find to be challenging? I’m sure that some things were magic just was ready fit for, but what were the things as you were building the business and working with the clients that you’re became real head scratchers? They’re like, “Oh, we really have to spend some time tackling this one.” Because I asked that question the most proud of those kind of moments when we hit the obstacles and really figured it out. So I’m curious what you ran into over the years like that.

Rubens Filho:

Okay, yeah, I’m going to share some and then you share yours. So we learn from each other. But I think one element that’s so always difficult is to blend all together, blend the science, blend the learning, blend the play. So making things make sense together. So if you developing a new session, let’s say, to talk about attention and how we notice the world, let’s say bringing all these elements together in a way that’s useful for teams, organizations, that is always takes time and takes effort. Over these years we have developed about 15 magical moments we call them. They are three-hour sessions that have one focus. It could be unlocking creativity. We have another one called Unleashing Imagination. We have the power of perception. So each one of them does one thing. Developing one, it’s one of our biggest pleasures to create something new using this vast resource that is magic. And also using, as we talked about, professional development, psychology and everything else.

Douglas Ferguson:

I think that single focus is so valuable. I think oftentimes people try to cram too many things into their agendas and it comes from often a healthy place of we want to do a lot for these. We don’t want to bring a lot of value, but it ends up just being distracting and overwhelming.

Rubens Filho:

And you see sometimes you create something that you find amazing, but maybe people are not ready for it or it’s not their focus at the moment. I don’t know how you find it. Would be curious to hear one of your experiences there.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, for sure. The thing that came to mind for me was balancing because we get a lot of folks that are brand new as well as folks that have been facilitating for years. Coming in and shaping an experience and curriculum that can support both of those folks in the same space at the same time was a fun challenge. And a lot of it has to do with getting people into the right mindset of curiosity and how we can learn. Because for the folks that have been around a little bit longer if something that looks familiar, how do we make sure that they are put in a head space where they examine it and think about what’s different this even though it seems familiar? Because the more experience you get, the more everything starts to look the same because it’s like, “Oh, I can categorize this now I have this language and these ways of thinking about it.”

And also setting up structures, prompts, questions, and even building or scaffolding the experience where the folks that are more experienced can start to understand that there’s a lot to learn from the beginners too, just in how they show up and how they ask questions and how they struggle. Because that’s part of becoming really masterful in your senior capacity is your ability to notice what novice folks are doing and how to even coach them. Being able to explain why you do things the way you do, because some stuff just becomes maybe a force of habit or intuitive after doing things for a long time. So building that capacity to be able to explain it to others I think is really where you get into the higher levels of craft.

Rubens Filho:

Yes, indeed. And the passion that young facilitators bring, it’s amazing, isn’t it? So you have this blend of the experience that know how things work, and they are brilliant at creating these conversations that harvesting the learnings, but then you have this passionate facilitator that brings their energy and wants to divert things. I love that connection and that contrast. And in that regard, I would like to say that Abracademy has a very specific approach regarding magilitation as we call it, which is we always have two people in the room.

We have someone that comes from a facilitation background that can hold the learning, make sure that learning outcomes are there, and we have someone coming from the magic background that is in charge of the magic, but of the joy, of the energy. So it’s not fixed because depending on the facilitator and the magician, it could be that the magician knows facilitation. It could be the facilitator knows magic, a bit of magic, and they play. And I love it because it allows you to bring energy and rhythm to a session that otherwise would be more difficult.

Douglas Ferguson:

And it’s sort of like the improv concept of the ensemble. You’re bringing them together because they have these complementary qualities and when they work together in a cohesive way, it’s bigger than the sum of the parts.

Rubens Filho:

Definitely. When you find a team that becomes extraordinary, right? Because the two of them together makes something even more fantastic. Yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

And something think is remarkable about what you all are doing is if we step back and think about how magic is a powerful metaphor to begin with, and anybody could just invoke the magic metaphor in our facilitation or in how we relate to work, but you’re really taking it a deeper level. It’s more of an experiential tool in addition to the metaphor. So I’d love to hear a specific example of actual illusions or magic that you’re using to either shake up expectation or spark curiosity in learners.

Rubens Filho:

Yeah, thanks for the question, Douglas. I think I can share a few different things because it’s not one thing, the answer is difficult. The first one is, it is, let’s say common that we use a metaphor, we present a magic trick and we share the main idea of the workshop there or something that we want to focus on. So we have a magic trick, for example, which is a small box. And we talk about how important it is for leaders to be curious. And we ask people, “Hey, what’s in the box?” And people say, “Oh, it could be a ring, could be this or that.” And I say, “No, actually this is you.” “This is me,” I say, “And you can see that I’m quite blocked in my way. It’s quite squared. I need to stretch in order to get moving.” And so I take the elastic band off, as I say stretch, I open, but when I open there is a surprise because there is another box inside the box, I say, “But you see it’s not that easy because I’m more square than it looks.

I have all these defenses, I don’t want to change. But if I keep searching and then I open the other box, I find my values,” and inside this little second box there is like a sponge ball. It’s like a little fluffy ball and say, “When I find my values, which is what I care about, what’s important to me, magic happens.” And this moment when I reassemble the box, the box that was outside becomes inside and the one that’s inside comes outside so that I can talk about possibilities. So when I find my values, I can lead with integrity. And then as I open it again, there is another ball. So I say, “Hey, this becomes contagious. When I lead from within, I can bring more people with me.” And there is a less movement where I bring another ball from a different color and I talk about people from different backgrounds and all walks of life. So it straight away makes the point of the workshop, let’s lead from our values, let’s lead with integrity from our values.

Douglas Ferguson:

What a great way to connect people into an important learning. And I imagine too with the magic flare, there’s probably a bit of performance and how everything’s presented and how the ball show up and these kinds of things.

Rubens Filho:

Exactly. I broke it down a bit just for you to kind of understand, but when you do with the magic, it’s quite captivating and you create this wonder and then from this moment of wonder, we have a conversation about wonder, what’s wonder, how it impacts us, and then how curiosity is born. And then we invite people to be in this space of curiosity towards whatever they’re doing. If it’s a leadership workshop, could be about being curious about themselves, being more self-aware. If it is a team development work, it could be being curious about each other and how they work together. And if it’s something bigger for the entire organization, a change program for example, we can ask them to be curious about the entire organization. So using this magic prompt and this magic feeling, this feeling that magic creates to help people then start to shift their perspective.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I imagine modeling such a powerful tool, and so if magic can allow people to flip a switch and experience wonder, and then you can talk a little bit about what was it like to experience that and how can we harness that more readily in our work? I imagine that’s a pretty pithy conversation, a lovely debrief to have with the team.

Rubens Filho:

Exactly. Exactly. And that’s what great facilitators know how to do also because we are known for the magicians, but we are also extremely good because our facilitators are very senior and extraordinary themselves. So when you are able to harvest an experience like that, then you can move on in their learning journey in a way that’s quite different. And it is not that linear, but it’s fantastic. It’s beautiful like reaching people from a different space.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I’m going to switch gears here a little bit and talk about, if I understand correctly, you spent four weeks in Brazil and a week in Kenya, intentionally slowing down. And what did that journey reveal about your leadership, the company, and your broader purpose for Abracademy?

Rubens Filho:

Thanks for the question actually because I think we need to talk about leadership in different terms nowadays and try to create at Abracademy space that we walk our talk so that we can all be curious and that we can have a less hierarchical structure so everyone can lead depending on what’s needed at the time. So I need to share that we had two maternity leaves in the first six months of this year, and we are not the big company. So it has an impact when two of your business partners go maternity leave. So I had to really accelerate and I was trying to be everywhere and doing beyond my role, and I did, but I was exhausted by July. So I said, “Now is the moment that I need this space and we will need to survive here.” So the rest of the team stepped up and they did what they need to do. So I come back now and I’m regenerated to a certain extent and we can continue to do what we need to do.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s amazing. You stepped up when time called and then when you needed a break, the other stepped in. And I think that’s really what good teamwork’s about is supporting each other when we need to provide each other support.

Rubens Filho:

Kenya was work already, so it was very nice project, was a lab that we are creating for an NGO. And I think it’s fascinating for me is how universal the language of magic is because we’ve done workshops in 10 languages now, countless number of countries, and it always works. And it works not only because the magic, but also because of the emotions that come out of from magic, the spaces that magic allows you. They’re quite global. If you talk about this feeling of wonder, that’s a global feeling. Everyone in the world feels wonder. So it’s possible to debrief where you’re working with Chinese, Japanese, French, English, German, America, any culture, Brazilian, in any language. Curiosity, how perception works, there are so many elements, empathy, it’s a beautiful space to talk to humans because I think in this world of technology, we need to become more human. So we need to find ways to provoke the human there and magic is a good one.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that idea of provoking the human. Let’s shift a little bit here with our remaining time. I want to talk about your 10 year celebration and maybe look to the future a little bit as well. So speaking of the 10 year celebration, I know you had a plan that had a really interesting arc. In fact, for me, [inaudible 00:28:31] work is such a core part of how we teach facilitation, how we think about it, big fan of open explorer clothes. And then I love that your appearing act to vanishing act arc because it was so rooted in the magic experience and so super cool and playful. So how did the team come up with that storyline and what does each phase mean to you? Just tell us a little bit more about this really thoughtful and creative journey that you’re taking with the 10 year celebration.

Rubens Filho:

Just to let everyone know, we are doing this 10 year anniversary schedule. It starts with this appearing act, which is September, October. We kick off with feasibility, with our stories, our origin stories. So it’s about sharing these moments and milestones that we had. Then we go coming together to rituals. So this is the gathering. This is the moment for our community to connect all the facilitators, magilitators, the clients, the collaborators. Then there is a moment of gifting and giving, which is like we call a generous spell. So we want to gift inspiration tools, sparks of magic for other people. The last one is the vanishing act. So this is what we are calling the transformation is how we want to close the cycle is with learning. It’s like a reflection where you have one takeaway. What did you learn over along this 10 years? So this is the moment, and I think I consider very important to your question, because we design learning like we design experiences.

This is something very important for Abracademy. We design a workshop, one would design a magic show. So we think a lot about the moments. If you look at a Abracademy design, normally we have four phases, which is we ignite, we explore, we unlock, and we embed. And we always follow these four moments, a moment of igniting the magic. A mindset, it could be that’s a possibility mindset because we have belief mindset, possibility mindset. We have the wonder mindset. So depending on the challenge, we ignite one mindset, then we explore what’s there to be explored in that particular challenge. Then we start with after this exploration to unlock could be connections, it could be thoughts, it could be anything. And then how do we incorporate this in the day-to-day we embed and we try to also design these 10 years in a way that was more meaningful and that lasted a bit longer. So we thought that each one of these phases demanded attention and could do the job that it needs to do, which is we are not celebrating ourselves only, it’s not celebrating our community and the amazing clients that trust us.

Douglas Ferguson:

Super thoughtful and I’m excited to track it from a distance. And one of the things that really resonated with me was this gifting and giving in January, February. And a thought that I had that was emerging for me is our annual conference is in February. And so in the spirit of gifting and giving, I would like to invite you to join us, a free ticket in February if you’re able to make it, or maybe someone in your stead. So I’m just throwing that out there.

Rubens Filho:

Wow, that’s beautiful, Douglas. And I’m happy to do something there if you want me to go share something. It could be one exercise, whatever. I don’t know what shape it takes, but let’s make this even more beautiful. I’m a deep believer in serendipity. I don’t know-

Douglas Ferguson:

There you go.

Rubens Filho:

… how much you read about the serendipity mindset. But it’s beautiful. We’re incorporating in our learnings too, and it’s a bit of what’s happening right now.

Douglas Ferguson:

Amazing. Yeah, the spirit of our conference is all about practitioners coming together and learning together. And so it would be absolutely many moments to try things out and show stuff. And so yeah, we’ll talk more about that. That’s exciting. And then I guess the vanishing act lasts from March to April. Do you have anything planned to really punctuate the end?

Rubens Filho:

I think what we want is kind of make sense, make meaning out of this period. So it’s not something that’s totally structured yet in terms of how we’ll make it, but it is bringing people together to kind of make a reflection. So for example, we have our magilitators club where we have the community. It’s not a massive community, it’s the people that work with us, but we want to bring them together, have a moment, and share the learnings over this period so we can create the future together also. So this can give us ideas and insights to a new moment. I think we also are firm believers in unforgettable experiences. Whatever we build is memorable. And when you create insight for people, when you create connection, you create something memorable. So I think this is a bit of what we are aiming at for this last act, let’s say the vanishing act, imagining the future. Also, obviously from the past and the present, we can imagine the future a bit like the magicians do, right?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s kind of a bit of a lens that we can peer through. And speaking of the future, I was thinking about your next 10 years and I’m curious how you envision Abracademy’s place in evolving landscape?

Rubens Filho:

It’s a very good question, and I guess the foundation is that in this world of technology, we need to become more and more human. So how can we push us to open up to this deeper humanity? How can we empathize much more? How can we be more daring, more creative? How can we innovate? How can we create things together? Maybe collaborating thousands instead of collaborating in dozens or in small groups. I would love to work with a group of 37,472 people, and can we create something there that’s amazing, that’s unique, that’s different? And I think that the technology will enable us to do that.

So help people embrace uncertainty, help people become more and more curious. These are core skills that we need to live in this space of not knowing. Magic is about being in a space of not knowing. We are constantly not knowing. If you want to create impossible, how can you know? You don’t know. So how can we support that? I think there is a massive aspect in terms of and how they can cope. I talk a lot about choosing curiosity over anxiety, choosing curiosity over ambiguity. So I think there are beautiful spaces for us to deep dive and create new things and create learning that’s engaging, but also that allows the human to be there. It’s not like something that you look and then you forget, that makes a difference.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I mean to use your words, it has to be unforgettable.

Rubens Filho:

Yes. Yeah. Curious to hear a bit from you too where do you want to go next 10 years? Because it is a difficult question to answer.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, certainly people hear from me on every one of these episodes, but I echo your sentiment around leaning into our humanity. I think that AI is going to force us to do that. There’s a lot of fear of job loss and these things, but I think just with any massive technological shift and invention, it’s going to force us to reimagine what work is, what life is. We’re only on the tip of the iceberg. I usually compare it to when the iPhone came out. Amazing technology, App Store was also an amazing invention, but the first apps in the App Store were calculators.

Rubens Filho:

Yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I want everyone to just think about the fact that we’re in the era of calculator apps in the App Store, and so when do we move to… When we get to the point where we’re Uber is showing up, that’s when this AI stuff is really going to be mind-blowing. People think it’s mind-blowing now, but we’re still in the early days, and as rapidly as it’s accelerating, there’s a lot more in store. And I think that it’s important and incumbent upon us to think about our humanity, think about how we’re showing up, think about the life that we want to create for ourselves. It’s easier to guide that now before it’s thrust upon us, and we haven’t been intentionally tending.

It’s sort of like a garden. If we don’t take the time to carefully put the pieces in place, then we’ll end up with this overgrown garden then we had to deal with. So the daily tending and learning and spending time with this stuff I think is super important. So that’s where I’m really focused. It’s hard to have a very specific concrete vision of what it’s going to be like. I just know that we need to spend time cultivating our humanness, being really curious about how it’s changing and attentive to those things so we can set up structures that we’re going to be comfortable with.

Rubens Filho:

When you look at the serendipity mindset, there is a lot about when we tell a story, we make it much more linear than it is, and we forget all the details that were unpredictable and that change our direction. So I loved your question in the beginning when you asked a moment where things had an insight or there was a big change and there were so many of these moments, but I think these moments worked because we had an intention. Our intention remains the same as bringing more magic to the world, specifically the magic of people. Of course, we use the rep in the hat, but we want to unleash the magic of people getting to know themselves, each other and becoming curious about the world they live in. So how can we make this magic bigger? And we know it’s a big task. We won’t do it alone.

That’s why we need collaboration. That’s why we need to be creative, to innovate. But it’s very inspiring to keep that because then when the opportunity arises, we step in. For example, globally, we wanted to become global, but it was not that we, “Oh, let’s become global and create an office here or there.” It was in the pandemic that we became more global than ever because there was a limitation there that you could see as, “Oh, I lost all my business that was face-to-face in day one.” For four months there was zero. I am very curious to hear your story, but for us, we had the dream clients.

We were working with Netflix, we were working with Sony Music, and then all of a sudden, boom, nothing next day. And then we said, “Oh, let’s just start playing online. Let’s do something. Start giving away workshops and just learning the tool, learning how to create the emotions online and how to collaborate.” And I think that openness allowed us now to then become a global business. And now we can be anywhere in the world, not only online, but also physically. We have facilitators in different languages and from different cultures.

Douglas Ferguson:

Serendipity mindset, definitely very helpful during the pandemic being open to possibility. A lot of it was just going with the flow, right? Like, “Oh, here’s a new thing that just happened and how do we address this?” And just a lot of being very comfortable with uncertainty.

Rubens Filho:

Yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s my recollection. To your point, there’s so many details. Some of them you forget. Some of them it is just boring to retell. But man, so much of it was just like, “Wow, everything’s just changing almost on a daily basis.” And you just had to roll up the sleeves and try things and see what stuck and listen to people’s needs. But it’s the same as it’s always been. But there was just so many people experiencing change at the same time that I think that’s what was so unique about it.

Rubens Filho:

Yeah, I love to observe how people react differently. There were people that were in fear for a few months. There were people that were problem solving straight away. And seeing all these different responses I think shows how different we are and how we need to understand each other to be able to collaborate and work better together. Because you cannot just leave one part of the people out because they’re not good in this and the others are. And it’s also like this beauty of diversity and bringing people with their strengths, but also their weaknesses to collaborate.

Douglas Ferguson:

There’s so many working styles and making sure we are supportive and our collaborative ways of working aren’t optimized for one type of individual.

Rubens Filho:

And that’s what the learning we want to create also, right? That can fit different personalities and ways of learning because there is not only one.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, as we’re coming to an end here, I want to make sure to leave you time to offer our listeners a final thought.

Rubens Filho:

Well, thank you for this opportunity, Douglas. I would like to say that in the world of business, we use way too much the language of war, but we are in the front line. We create the war room. There is so much terminology about war, and there is so much terminology about sports, winning and losing and the ball is in our court and the champions and so on. But what if we use the language of magic, possibility, curiosity, wonder, in magic we make the impossible possible, we make the invisible visible and we make the ordinary extraordinary. So that’s my message. I think the extraordinary starts with us, and I hope we can all together create something beautiful. All these facilitators that are changing companies, that are changing teams, that are provoking people to grow and evolve. I hope we can get together, create something beautiful.

Douglas Ferguson:

I really like that there’s so much of business language as militarized. It’s hard to go a full day without just getting bombarded with. In fact, that right there, I mean, is a little bit of a stretch, but there’s so many places where these metaphors and jargon shows up. And I love the sentiment of adopting more magical language. I’ve heard of people saying they’re going to demilitarize their language, but actually offering them up an alternative I think is powerful. Also, if we really attune to those things, what a fun way to have a memory device. There are these daily reminders of like, “Oh, I just said that, or I just used that, or someone just said that,” and let that be our little memory device, our little reminder, the string around our finger that we need to be thinking more about magic. We need to be thinking more about wonder. So I love that invitation, Rubens.

Rubens Filho:

Thank you. I feel that the world’s not in a good place, and the more we use this violence, violent language, or a language where one wins and the other loses, I mean, this has an impact in our everyday lives and how we connect to other people. So if we shift, I mean, it makes a massive difference where you pay attention and how you act, therefore, because it’s also connect to your thinking and your actions. So let’s give it a go. It’s not easy, but we can try together.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. Well, Rubens, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I really appreciate you jumping on the show today. We’ll talk more soon.

Rubens Filho:

Thank you very much, Douglas. Thanks a lot everyone.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Lori Boozer:

I’m hoping, and I’m just really getting started. I feel like Thailand was the birth of a vision, and now I’m in the space of trying to build out the different elements that I see, and that is a long game, but what I would love to see is really just creating more spaces for individuals to talk about healing and what that journey is really like, what it really takes. So that our workspaces and our places of engagement can be spaces that can hold the wholeness of people and not just the fragments that we’re expected to show up with. So that we are connecting because we understand that people are carrying so many different things, either things from their past or things from their present that are affecting how they show up. And so how do we just take away the stigma? And make it acceptable to say, “You know what? If we’re not healing, if we’re not healing ourselves, if we’re not investing in that, our workplaces are going to stay sick, our society doesn’t get better.”

Like collective healing and transformation, all the things that we say we want have nothing to do with just changing the system and everything to do with your own personal change. People are who make systems. We build the systems; they’re a reflection of who we are. So the more we give ourselves permission to heal and expand, the more we help our systems heal and change in ways that support people who can be whole people. So I think that’s where I’m hoping this conversation goes. What does healing look like? How do workplaces become safe containers for whole people? What role does facilitation play in helping people to make that bridge? And how do we embody that? How do we embody that in an age where we’re dealing with artificial intelligence, which I’m not against, but how do we not lose ourselves to it because we become more embodied in our humanity?

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, what an amazing journey to be on, and you’re at this moment of exploration and curiosity can be exciting and daunting and all the things. And I want to remind you, as a Voltage Control alumni, you have access to free office hours, and we love supporting and also just being a sounding board. Sometimes it’s just helpful to tell someone else something and then see how it feels to say it out loud. So join us for the weekly office hours if you ever, you know, contemplating a direction or wanting to sound out some ideas because that’s why we do it. That’s why we want to be there for y’all as you’re going through these transitions.

Lori Boozer:

Definitely. And I think I definitely will. I remember doing my little portfolio. And my picture was about, “How do you have difficult conversations?” And I remember saying, “I want to lean into the hard stuff. That’s where I want to be, in the space where people are afraid to talk.” So I think knowing that there’s continued support as I develop the vision that I’m working on is always great to have operating in the background.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, happy to help and glad to be there for alumni. As we wrap up, I want to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Lori Boozer:

I would say for a final thought, I’m going to say two final thoughts. One is every time you feel fear; that’s the moment where you need to lean in. And I think right now there’s a lot of fear because of everything that’s happening, and so we shut down. But it’s like, how do we challenge ourselves to lean into what that fear is asking us to think about or to consider? I think we just have space with everything that’s happening back home to really lean into our healing and to lean into change and personal transformation and use that as an opportunity. And that’s on the individual side.

And I think on the collective side, I feel like, I don’t know that I’m a Meghan Markle fan, but she gets a lot of slack for her show, With Love, I think it’s called. But at its core, it’s really about connecting. And I feel like for all of the backlash that happens, and the way it’s talked about, it’s not just about making the jam; it’s the fact that she’s bringing these people into her world and they’re doing these activities together. And I guess, how do we continue to find ways in all that’s happening to have little moments of connection? To keep the charcuterie board parties going, jump on a Zoom with a bunch of friends. Like, how do we just continue to honor that and create space for that in front of us?

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. Well, Lori, it’s been a pleasure. I could keep chatting with you on and on and on, but we had to hit the pause and pick up again some other time. But it was a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Lori Boozer:

Thanks for having me. And to be continued.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

The post The Greatest Secrets of Blending Magic and Psychology for Team Growth appeared first on Voltage Control.

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab Podcast, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Lori Boozer, a narrative strategist and wellness visionary. Lori shares her journey from law to facilitation, emphasizing the importance of creating inclusive spaces for genuine participation and healing. The conversation explores group dynamics, the power of storytelling, and removing hierarchical barriers to foster authentic connection. Lori reflects on her experiences in Thailand and the need for “reparative engagement” in communities. Together, they discuss how facilitation can drive collective transformation, especially in workplaces and a world increasingly shaped by technology.

Show Highlights

[00:04:07] Recognizing Group Dynamics
[00:09:09] Zooming Out and Sensing Group Energy
[00:13:38] Reparative Engagement in Politics and Community
[00:22:39] Facilitation as World-Building
[00:28:43] Blending Facilitation and Narrative Change
[00:32:28] Understanding Behaviors and Work Stories
[00:36:32] Vision for Healing and Wholeness in Workspaces
[00:39:58] Final Thoughts: Leaning into Fear and Connection

Links | Resources

Lori on Linkedin

Lori on Instagram

Lori on the web

About the Guest

Lori Boozer is a social impact strategist, narrative alchemist, and wellness visionary with 20+ years of experience spanning law, politics, government, and philanthropy. Known for making the complex usable and the invisible visible, she has built a career designing stories, strategies, and systems that enable people and communities to thrive.

Her leadership has included senior roles in New York City government and philanthropy, where she directed multimillion-dollar initiatives focused on poverty alleviation, health equity, and community empowerment. At the Robin Hood Foundation, Lori led the $25 million Mobility Learning and Action Bets (LABs), advancing community-driven strategies to lift families out of poverty.

Drawing on lived experience and professional expertise, she integrates research, foresight, and cultural insight to help leaders and institutions move beyond performative change toward deep, transformative change. She is particularly recognized for her ability to merge strategy, storytelling, and spirituality into frameworks that shift paradigms, policies, and possibilities. She is also an adept facilitator, known for creating spaces where diverse stakeholders can engage truthfully, bridge divides, and co-create solutions that last.

Currently based in Southeast Asia on a working sabbatical, Lori writes, consults, and explores global approaches to wellness, belonging, and sovereignty. Her emerging platform, Root × Water, centers individual and collective healing, reminding us that systems change begins with self-liberation.

A sought-after speaker and facilitator, Lori creates spaces grounded in truth, courage, and connection. Her work continues to be guided by a simple belief: healed people heal systems — and build new ones.

Outside of her work, Lori finds joy in writing afrofuturist fiction, nature photography, global travel, and long afternoons at the spa.

About Voltage Control

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

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Voltage Control on the Web
Contact Voltage Control

Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Today, I’m with Lori Boozer, narrative strategist and wellness visionary. She’s the creative root and water, a developing platform dedicated to individual and collective healing, freedom, and reimagining community. Lori is also writing about her journey from survival to alignment and the practices that help us move toward wholeness. Welcome to the show, Lori.

Lori Boozer:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s so great to have you here, and really neat to have you calling in from Thailand on such a special break from the insanity.

Lori Boozer:

I’m happy to have a break. I’m happy to call in.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, so often we need breaks and we don’t get them, so I’m happy that you’re taking one and we get to spend some time doing it, so you’ll be… You’re clear-eyed and fresh and whatnot. So let’s get started here. You began your career as an attorney focused on individual cases in New York City. Looking back, what were some early moments that hinted you were already stepping into facilitation?

Lori Boozer:

I think I can say one of the earliest things that hit me, probably even before I got to law school. I remember interviewing for a fellowship, and they gave us some individual exercises, and then they gave us a group exercise, and I remember thinking, “This is the most perfect opportunity for me. I’m going to kill this.” And while we were in the group exercise, I remember sort of defaulting to… I wasn’t as engaged in the act of solving the problem they gave us. I was more focused on how to organize the group, how to collect everyone’s thoughts, how to keep the conversations moving. That was sort of just my default, the default position that I ended up playing. I don’t think that’s what they wanted us to do. So I didn’t get the fellowship, but I remember, it’s funny, this just came to me as you asked the question.

I remember in that moment thinking that that was really weird, and I said to myself, “Why were you doing that? Everyone else was leaning in and trying to solve the problem, and my draw was to how do we get the flow of this space to work?” And I was too young, I think, to kind of contemplate that facilitation was even a thing. But I think as you asked the question, I was sort of playing that role, and I think that that is an energy that has sort of always emerged from me in the different spaces that I’ve worked in. I think it’s maybe a combination of that, but also just the way that I think and sort of recognizing that I tend to be able to zoom out in a lot of ways that people aren’t able to when they’re stuck in the thick of a problem. And so I think just naturally I sort of take on this sort of facilitator-like position in spaces. And so that brought me to wanting to explore a more formalized way to improve the practice of it.

Douglas Ferguson:

Do you remember what you were noticing in the moment that made you want to focus more on the dynamics in the room versus the problem at hand?

Lori Boozer:

Disconnection and chaos, and I think I have… It’s like nails on the chalkboard. So when I’m in a space and I see humans unable to center and organize, I think I just naturally default to, “How do we bring order to the chaos?” because we’re trying to move towards a goal. And typically I’m in spaces where that goal is something that is to improve something, someone’s life, the betterment of humanity. And so that pull for me to want to see the outcome, the impact, brings me to a space of, “Well, I don’t need to dabble in the problem always, but if I can help us move towards, move the conversation that’s solving the problem,” that feels just as powerful to me. So I think that that’s kind of what I’m feeling. And I think the more you become embodied in your leadership, you start to feel physically what your friction points are. And so for me, my friction point is always, “We’re going in circles, we’re not moving towards the goal, people are frustrated. How do we make this feel like a smoother process for people to participate in?”

Douglas Ferguson:

So you’re more invested in getting to an outcome versus what the outcome was.

Lori Boozer:

Yeah. In that type of role, I think it’s more about creating the space, creating the container for people to show up in a way that allows us to get to the outcome. I’m invested in the outcome too. I guess it depends on what my position is. I have a job to do. If I’m purely a facilitator, then yes, but if I’m a manager, it’s probably a mix of both. I’m invested in what the outcome is, but I also know that in order for us to get a good outcome, my team has to operate in a certain way.

And I think one of the things that I took away from my training with Voltage, and I didn’t think this was going to be a part of the conversation, was the work we did around group dynamics and meeting structures. And I think people in management positions, we tend to make agendas and throw up meetings, and we don’t really think about ourselves as facilitators in that moment. And so in hindsight, after doing the work with your team, I really started to make the connections between this facilitation for a facilitation sake. You serve specifically as a facilitator; you show up in the space, and that is your role to create the container, to hold the space for the action and the activities to take place. But there’s also just the skill that you embody when you may hold different titles and positions in workspaces. And how do you bring the idea of facilitation through the way you organize your meetings, the way you create your agendas, the way you structure time with your teams to be more efficient? So I think that there’s a duality of that as well.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it comes down to, are we talking about competencies versus tools or identities or behaviors? And I think you’re speaking from that perspective of competencies. Anyone can take these competencies and apply them in lots of different scenarios.

Lori Boozer:

Yeah. And I think what’s important too, and why I think facilitation has become so critical and especially now, is that we’re so easily disconnected that I really, and maybe this is just my own personal way of thinking about it, but I think that there’s just a powerful moment in our current state of being where we need people who can hold those spaces because we’re so naturally inclined, in this day and age, to be so disconnected. We have computers in between us, we have social media in between us, we have AI now coming in between us. And so to use Priya Parker’s term, The Art of Gathering, in different spaces, in different capacities, to be able to bring people together in conversation or to achieve a goal or to work through things or improve dynamics and workspaces. I think people are overlooking, to some degree, how critical the competency is and how we need to, I think, train towards being able to hold or create more of these containers for ourselves.

Douglas Ferguson:

And you talked about zooming out earlier when you were in that moment, and I’m curious to hear more about that. What does zooming out mean for you? It conjures a few different things from me, and so I was just curious if it was about the moment or if it was about seeing a bigger picture somehow or stepping outside of what everyone else is in and noticing dynamics. What does zooming out look like for you?

Lori Boozer:

Zooming out for me, I think it looks like noticing where my own energy is being pulled and if there’s a bit of an imbalance there. So if I’m starting to lean into the dynamics of the conversation, like we’re trying to solve X and sort of recognizing that… It’s like I’m able to pick up on the human, the unspoken dynamics. I can see in this person that they don’t feel like their response is being heard or the idea is being respected. I can see tension, I can see hesitancy and people who don’t want to participate. I can see the people who are participating and taking up all the energy. And so sometimes that for me triggers, “Okay, I want everyone to belong.” I think it’s just a part of my natural wiring. I want everyone to feel heard. I think some of that comes from being a black woman and sort of understanding what it is to not feel heard or to not be seen.

So there’s a particular focus that I have sometimes in spaces where it’s like, “Is this space welcoming everyone’s participation in a meaningful way?” And so I think the zooming out is starting to zoom out, and I think a lot, we don’t do this right; we don’t really pause to pick up on the energies and the dynamics that play. We sort of just get really wound up in the thing that we’re trying to do. But when you have this inclination to facilitate, I think you can zoom out and say, “Ah, it looks like it’s a conversation, but really there are people who aren’t speaking.”

There’s stuff that’s not happening, which means that that collaboration, that interaction, that exchange isn’t going to be able to produce the best outcome because it didn’t have the participation of everyone in a way that would get to the best outcome. I think we get outcomes, but sometimes the silent people are carrying information that we need, and people who are not speaking up or people who are having their ideas overlooked. And so how do you create a container or space where everyone starts to feel engaged so that the outcome reflects the breadth of everyone?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s making me think how, I don’t know how good this metaphor is, but what’s conjuring up for me right now is this idea of some people’s style is more like they have a megaphone and they’re trying to rah-rah-rah and rile folks up. And some people have a bit more of a, they’re more like an antenna. They’re tuning and measuring the energy in the room and trying to drive engagement by understanding what’s there and responding to it versus the “Let’s pour energy in the room and hope everyone responds to the energy.” And certainly both approaches can work, but it’s fascinating to think about that distinction, and I’m wondering if any of that conjures up any memories or any thoughts.

Lori Boozer:

I think the rah-rah has its place. I think it’s like, you kind of want to walk around with a toolbox, and you want to understand what different spaces might require, and some spaces might require a rah-rah or some inspiration or an energy that just kind of elicits things from people. I think it depends on what the purpose of the space is. And I think that there’s different spaces where it’s intended to maybe be more collaborative, not so much focused on a particular person or a particular… Energy is supposed to be about this exchange. And I think in those spaces, rah-rah can kind of take up the space, but it doesn’t necessarily invite everyone’s participation in a meaningful way. I think if we zoom this out to society and not to, I don’t know, be a little rude. I think it’s the way we think about our political system. People run for office, and those people are like, “rah-rah,” and they bring in energy, and that energy elicits something out of you.

You go vote. There’s not really an exchange. You might not see this person in person. You may not ever be someone that goes to a debate and sees them hash out the issues, but there’s a dynamic at play that as a society who’s going to follow along in that energy. But I think what we notice is where the breakdown is, the disengagement of voters and sort of the silos of people who aren’t responding to the rah-rahs anymore. The people in Cole County who feel left behind, people who for whatever reasons are on the margins, and it’s like, “Well, the rah-rah isn’t enough to get those votes.” What they require is actual reparative engagement. And reparative engagement means that that’s more of an energetic exchange and more of a collaborative way of listening to and receiving what they have to say and inviting them into conversation. And that’s the difference. I think that’s a different part of the puzzle.

And I think that that’s maybe where politics kind of gets some things wrong in the ground game. We rely a lot on the rah-rah, but we don’t do enough in small communities to actually listen and lean into people who are not, what I would say, we have this idea of the polls telling us this group votes the most, so we’re going to rah-rah at that group, and that’s who we rely on. But then now we have built up these silos of people who are on the margins and who are not really feeling heard and seen within their government. So I think that’s the example that I would say demonstrates the difference between inspirational leadership and magnetism and moving people in the direction versus engagement and maybe reparative engagement in spaces where it’s about listening and exchange and collaboration.

And I think as we think about just how disrupted we are as a country, how divided we are, in order for us to see our own landscape shift, we have to think about… We look at facilitation as like this thing we use in office spaces, but it’s actually universally applicable because it’s really about the capacity to zoom out, zoom in, and understand how to bridge connections, hold space, and create containers for people to engage in dialogue and to feel belonging and that they matter. And I think we have an opportunity where it’s time to be out in some of these communities to do that, to change, to move away from just the rah-rah paradigm of politics.

Douglas Ferguson:

Wow. Yeah, I love that that question led to that line of thinking and sharing because I think it’s super relevant what you share here about voter behavior and politicians’ behaviors. It’s an important topic now given the landscape, but also it parallels how things work in the office, how things work in organizations of all sorts. Anytime you have a constituency that needs the need to be met, those dynamics are at play, right? That’s really fascinating, and I love this idea of reparative engagement. I haven’t heard that term before. Does that come out of the work that you do, or what are the origins there? Of that term?

Lori Boozer:

I think you mentioned that I’m on this break, so my time at my last job sort of came to an end, and I was in this in-between space of, “Do I get another job, or is there something else that calls to me?” And I was close to getting another job. The job I just left, I did a lot of work in community. My focus was really on community engagement. And I think as I was shifting into this space of giving myself permission to kind of rest and think about vision and what would I want to create, the question you asked, “If you had all the money in the world, what would you do?” And I think a lot of it really centered around healing and sort of healing as the missing link to some of the conversations that we’re struggling to have. And from a community perspective, I think I started to think about the ideas of what is repair at the community level.

There’s community engagement, but usually when we engage, we want something. I think reparative engagement is more about what does the community want and what are we building together? And how are we restoring trust in our communities? I think if you were looking at it through a political lens, reparative engagement is critical because communities don’t trust their politicians. And so I think it’s if you move away from a model where it was just about extraction, “I’m just going to show up when I need your vote, I’m going to give you enough things so that you feel like I care about you.” And moved into a model that said, “I have a two-year runway or a four-year runway. What does it look like to keep boots on the ground and to keep conversations going and to speak in my community from a place of repair and understanding? The harms that this community may have suffered, the harms that they currently suffer, the needs, the wants in a real meaningful way.”

I think that that’s how you restore the trust and how you bring a lot of siloed communities and siloed voters back into the fold. But you can’t build that trust if you’re just showing up a couple of months before the election. And I think that favors the status quo system because it doesn’t give people space to make a decision from a place of having had any real encounter. It’s just the name recognition, and there’s maybe limited options, two or three candidates, and you have to vote or you don’t vote, right? The worst case is you don’t vote. The medium case is you vote for someone you’re not really interested in, any of the candidates, because there’s not been any real engagement there.

Douglas Ferguson:

I want to bring us back to your trip in Thailand. So in the pre-show chat, you kind of mentioned some recent experiences and how it felt so different from your experiences at home, not only having a big break from being deep in work and in the grind but also just culturally. And it kind of echoes something you said earlier about being a black woman and how that influences how you show up in spaces. And it sounds like you had a similar experience in Thailand, just noticing what it was like to be in those spaces.

Lori Boozer:

Yeah, I noticed what it was like to feel welcomed and to feel… I think in America we talk a lot about this idea of belonging and inclusion and all the fuzzy words, and I don’t think anyone understands how to actually create that. And I think while I’ve been here particularly, I was in the northern part of Thailand, in Chiang Rai, for about four months, and it was an interesting… I felt unguarded, and I felt less hypervigilant, and I felt more belonging than I do at home because it is almost like there’s a level of hospitality and engagement that just accepts you in the state that you’re in.

I never really, I didn’t walk around feeling, “Oh, well, I’m black, so now I’m being watched,” or, “I’m black so I’m not going to get good care or good treatment.” I actually had to have surgery in Thailand, and I found myself kind of going along with the care in a way that I just would not back home because I would say, “Oh, they kill black people in America. I have to ask all the questions, do all the things. I don’t trust this doctor. I don’t feel comfortable; I don’t feel safe.” That’s sort of where the trauma exists. And then to be in a different country and feel like you can kind of relax, I think it’s kind of been really healing to give my system the space to feel free in that way.

And that’s why a lot of my work now is really thinking about healing and reparative practices and how do individuals heal, but also what does a collective healing actually look like. Because I think we don’t really know how to get ourselves there. So when you’re in a place where you just feel welcome and you can kind of let go, it’s like, “Well, how do you translate this energy? What’s the difference?” What’s the difference, Douglas?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah.

Lori Boozer:

What is the difference between the energy in a place like this versus the energy in America, and how do we get some of this good juju?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. How do we create that imaginary world for folks so that they can start to adopt it on a more regular basis?

Lori Boozer:

Or how if we really wanted to explore ideas of belonging, when you think about it as a facilitator, this is the energy that you want to… That you create. You create that hospitable, welcoming, be-yourself, you-have-permission kind of energy. If you’re good, I have some bad facilitation. You’re just like, “Ah, I don’t know about this.” But I think when you do it, you kind of create that kind of energy. And it’s weird. It is like facilitation kind of lets you create these; it’s like world building.

You get to create these little spaces that are not the outside world. You’re going to leave the space and go back to the real world, but in the facilitated space, it’s protected, and it’s cocoon-like to some degree. And so I think the energy that I experienced here feels a lot like that. Welcoming energy is you want to create in those spaces. And I think, I guess, how I’m trying to connect this is… Part of how we move forward back home, I think, is in creating that energy more often, creating that welcoming, “I see you just because you’re you” energy, which I think is really hard for us because we’re so into containers and labels and boxes. But how do you create that? I think that that could be really healing for people to experience.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s making me think of this group here in Austin. I used to get invited to, called House of Genius, and they had this thing where when you showed up, you weren’t allowed to tell people anything other than your first name. You couldn’t say what your job was, you couldn’t say your last name, you couldn’t talk about anything you do when you’re networking and chatting ahead of time. So as these startups are presenting and everyone’s given advice, everyone’s advice is on an even playing field because you don’t know if this person next to you is on three different boards of public companies or the janitor or whatever. And at the end you get to reveal during the networking after. I thought that was really interesting. When you remove the labels, when you remove the expectations, how much it shifted the dynamic of how I experienced the room and showed up, and I’m a white guy, and so it was a super neat space. They were creating.

Lori Boozer:

It’s interesting; when we did the last convening from the Mobility LABs initiative that I worked on at my last job, we did something similar. We purposefully had people leave off their organizations and their titles, and all they had was first names and the word “community member” on their name tags, but it was for the same purpose. It was to mitigate power dynamics, to remove the separators, the things that make you play a particular role. Because if you are a manager or the nonprofit and you see a funder and a foundation, there’s a default set of roles that you fall into. I think we don’t even realize that the way that we’re programmed, we sort of fall into roles within spaces based on how we react to people’s titles, what we perceive someone can do for us or not do for us. So it is interesting, the similar concept of how do we just make this about human beings in a room and less about in the room because you do X or you have Y.

And so I agree. I think that that’s actually a really powerful way to structure time, communal time together to take away the separators, the things we use to create distance or false connection. We connect with people for reasons that are about service to what we need, not necessarily the depth of who we are. So it’s a false connection. “I don’t get to know Lori, but I get to know Lori, who may have money to give me.”

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, yeah.

Lori Boozer:

It’s a very different thing. I used to hate that about my job because all I felt like was a dollar sign walking around.

Douglas Ferguson:

False connections. I love this idea. You’re making me think about how the false connections are very superficial, right?

Lori Boozer:

In front of you.

Douglas Ferguson:

Because they’re there because of some other pretense, but it really gets in the way; it’s a hindrance to go into, actually, deeper.

Lori Boozer:

How can you actually solve problems if there’s not or any real connection there? I think, as I was saying, that’s one of the things working in philanthropy that was a pain. It was like I wanted to connect deeply with people or learn about work that people were doing. Not necessarily because I had money to give, because I often didn’t, but I think people just connected with me as a dollar. And so that was like if I said, “I don’t have any money to give,” it was like, “Okay, next.”

But I’m like, “Well, I could probably help you in 10 other ways,” but because there’s no space to connect more deeply outside of the role. This wasn’t everyone, but there were just instances where you could tell where it was like, “Oh, I don’t have any money.” So that’s the end of that conversation. And I think, to your point, false connections, we have a lot of that. It’s like an epidemic. Social media is a false connection. We think we’re in community, but we’re not. We’re just on there chitchatting, and we feel like we’ve got a million followers, but we’re not actually connected in any meaningful way. We’re more socially isolated than ever before. So how do you get back to the real connections?

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that. I want to pivot a little bit to the future here as we’re kind of ending our time together. And I remember you talking about blending facilitation and narrative change and storytelling. What would an ideal project at that intersection look like for you?

Lori Boozer:

So I think the idea first came to me at my last job, where I was hosting a Women’s History Month event, and I did an activity, which was an icebreaker, where I basically wanted to demonstrate the concept: we’re not as connected, but we have more in common than we actually understand ourselves too within our workspaces. So I had people close their eyes and think about the community that they came from, not where they live now, where they grew up. What did it smell like? What did it look like? What did it feel like? Who were your neighbors? What did you do when you were a kid? You weren’t running up and down your local street. And then when we came back together, I asked people to share their experiences. And it was fascinating to watch these people who didn’t talk much in the office or seemed to not anything in common light up around these sort of shared childhoods filled with pride that they had in their communities or recognizing that they had touched the same spaces and letting people sort of tell their story.

And I think it disarms the room because you start to see another human. You don’t see the job, you don’t see the title. You see Lisa from Pennsylvania, and your aunt is from Pennsylvania, and then now it’s like, “My aunt is from Pennsylvania, and I grew up there too,” or… So it’s interesting letting people tell those stories because I realized that when we worked together, we are trying to solve the same problem, but we’re influenced by the perspectives that we have playing in our minds that are related to our personal stories. Whether we say it out loud or not, I am impacted by my personal childhood as a black woman growing up in a particular neighborhood. And when I’m in a nonprofit space, whether I’m saying that out loud or not, the perspectives that are playing in my mind are influenced by that experience.

And so I need to understand your experience, Douglas, but what was your experience? Because that helps me understand the perspective that you bring to the work and how we might bridge disagreement about the work because now we’re able to see eye to eye and understand sort of where we’re coming from. So when I think about narrative change and facilitation, I think that the narrative change piece, as twofold, is the personal storytelling to break down the walls between individuals, and then it’s the forming of a collective narrative in the facilitated space that supports the outcome that the group is trying to achieve. So once you break down the wall, and this is kind of like the divergence-convergence theory in some degree, right? There’s divergence in the beginning, but a lot of times it’s not just about the work; it’s just personal perspective. So how do you sort of chip away at that a little bit so that you can get to this collective outcome and use storytelling to do that?

And then when you get to the outcome, it is also, “What is the shared vision?” but, “What’s the narrative around this that we all are going to tell?” We now have a shared story. So we’ve gone from, it’s like divergence and convergence and narrative. We had these individual stories that are driving us in the background that we’ve now talked about and brought into the facilitated space, and we move toward this outcome, this shared outcome, but also a shared narrative and a shared story that we’re now going to tell collectively as a group that unites us around the work and how we want to present that work to the world.

Douglas Ferguson:

It also makes me think even slightly less deep, maybe a little bit more superficial. This trend manifests itself too, because you’ve got situations at work or disagreements come up, and when I say work, this could be in any collaborative endeavor. We’re trying to work on something together, and problems start to arise. And oftentimes this is rooted in beliefs and values and even fears that have been created in our prior collaborations, our prior projects. So it might not have been how we grew up or some of the foundational things about what we believe, but just some beliefs that we gathered around, “I don’t like this tool because the way my prior company used it was really painful,” or “They treated you really bad if you didn’t enter stuff in a certain way.”

And now when I’m being asked to use it here, I’m resisting. Whereas the person on the other side is like, “Why are they so resistant to the simple thing?” but not understanding the context by which some of those behaviors and beliefs were rooted. And I think people don’t spend enough time trying to understand the why behind behaviors. They just look at it as like, “Well, that’s dysfunctional, or that’s a difficult person.” And I think the spirit of digging deeper, really getting connected and grounded in what’s driving the need to feel supported in a different way.

Lori Boozer:

Right, yeah. We all have a work story. We all have a personal story, but it is just we’re carrying these things in every space that we go to, but there is no space to hold it because I think we came out of a time when it was looked down upon to be honest about how you feel. If you were bothered by the tool, you couldn’t just say what you thought, right? You had to kind of go along lockstep with whatever your job was asking. So then you do get labeled, or you get ostracized, or you don’t really feel like you’re fitting in, but it’s something that could be resolved if there just was understanding about what was happening. Or I think even people show up with all sorts of challenges that they don’t talk about, but we spend how much time at work. How much time do we spend in our job with coworkers?

I think it’s absurd that we have to leave all authenticity and humanity behind when we’re in these spaces for at least seven, eight, or more hours a day. They’re only 24 hours, so almost half your lifetime is spent working, right? I don’t know the exact data points. But what would it mean to just have more storytelling and narrative work in spaces? I think narrative work can also just be how the space tells its own story to create space for you to show up in that way. Like, “This is a space that values X, and it looks like Y.” And then you show up and you say, “Okay, I’m having difficulty with this because…” So it kind of feeds into the permission to lean into more authenticity, more connection, more understanding within the workspaces. So I’m still playing around those concepts, but I think just from an organizational change perspective, there’s a space for storytelling and narrative work that can be really powerful in terms of how we work.

And I think with AI now more than ever, we have to learn how to connect. We have to. We can’t go to work anymore and just be, “Oh, that’s just Bob,” and that’s it. Because that human connection is the thing that is going to distinguish what we do versus what a computer does. And the more we allow ourselves to lose that, the more likely it is that people will feel like, “Well, humans are just replaceable.” And I don’t think that that’s the case. I think that we’ve just lost a little bit of our humanity along the way.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s important for us to identify what that is and cultivate it. So what does this work look like for you as you continue to shape it? Where are you hoping it leads to?

Lori Boozer:

I’m hoping, and I’m just really getting started. I feel like Thailand was the birth of a vision, and now I’m in the space of trying to build out the different elements that I see, and that is a long game, but what I would love to see is really just creating more spaces for individuals to talk about healing and what that journey is really like, what it really takes. So that our workspaces and our places of engagement can be spaces that can hold the wholeness of people and not just the fragments that we’re expected to show up with. So that we are connecting because we understand that people are carrying so many different things, either things from their past or things from their present that are affecting how they show up. And so how do we just take away the stigma? And make it acceptable to say, “You know what? If we’re not healing, if we’re not healing ourselves, if we’re not investing in that, our workplaces are going to stay sick, our society doesn’t get better.”

Like collective healing and transformation, all the things that we say we want have nothing to do with just changing the system and everything to do with your own personal change. People are who make systems. We build the systems; they’re a reflection of who we are. So the more we give ourselves permission to heal and expand, the more we help our systems heal and change in ways that support people who can be whole people. So I think that’s where I’m hoping this conversation goes. What does healing look like? How do workplaces become safe containers for whole people? What role does facilitation play in helping people to make that bridge? And how do we embody that? How do we embody that in an age where we’re dealing with artificial intelligence, which I’m not against, but how do we not lose ourselves to it because we become more embodied in our humanity?

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, what an amazing journey to be on, and you’re at this moment of exploration and curiosity can be exciting and daunting and all the things. And I want to remind you, as a Voltage Control alumni, you have access to free office hours, and we love supporting and also just being a sounding board. Sometimes it’s just helpful to tell someone else something and then see how it feels to say it out loud. So join us for the weekly office hours if you ever, you know, contemplating a direction or wanting to sound out some ideas because that’s why we do it. That’s why we want to be there for y’all as you’re going through these transitions.

Lori Boozer:

Definitely. And I think I definitely will. I remember doing my little portfolio. And my picture was about, “How do you have difficult conversations?” And I remember saying, “I want to lean into the hard stuff. That’s where I want to be, in the space where people are afraid to talk.” So I think knowing that there’s continued support as I develop the vision that I’m working on is always great to have operating in the background.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, happy to help and glad to be there for alumni. As we wrap up, I want to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Lori Boozer:

I would say for a final thought, I’m going to say two final thoughts. One is every time you feel fear; that’s the moment where you need to lean in. And I think right now there’s a lot of fear because of everything that’s happening, and so we shut down. But it’s like, how do we challenge ourselves to lean into what that fear is asking us to think about or to consider? I think we just have space with everything that’s happening back home to really lean into our healing and to lean into change and personal transformation and use that as an opportunity. And that’s on the individual side.

And I think on the collective side, I feel like, I don’t know that I’m a Meghan Markle fan, but she gets a lot of slack for her show, With Love, I think it’s called. But at its core, it’s really about connecting. And I feel like for all of the backlash that happens, and the way it’s talked about, it’s not just about making the jam; it’s the fact that she’s bringing these people into her world and they’re doing these activities together. And I guess, how do we continue to find ways in all that’s happening to have little moments of connection? To keep the charcuterie board parties going, jump on a Zoom with a bunch of friends. Like, how do we just continue to honor that and create space for that in front of us?

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. Well, Lori, it’s been a pleasure. I could keep chatting with you on and on and on, but we had to hit the pause and pick up again some other time. But it was a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Lori Boozer:

Thanks for having me. And to be continued.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

The post How Can Facilitation Foster Genuine Connections and Healing in Our Communities? appeared first on Voltage Control.

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson speaks with facilitation experts Tammy Shubat and Robin Cory, both Voltage Control certification alumni. Tammy shares her journey from leadership to facilitation, focusing on relationship-building and creating safe spaces for bold participation. Robin discusses her facilitation approach, inspired by Tammy, and emphasizes thoughtful session design to foster engagement and creativity. Together, they explore the challenges and opportunities in the nonprofit sector, highlighting the importance of collaboration, purposeful gatherings, and centering relationships to drive meaningful change within mission-driven organizations.

Show Highlights

[00:01:33] First Sparks of Facilitation
[00:06:42] Tools, Techniques, and Intuition
[00:10:30] “Wreck and Rebuild” and Improv Activities
[00:13:54] Designing for Bold Thinking
[00:21:14] Honoring People and Setting the Stage
[00:25:44] Warming Up for Bold Participation
[00:28:38] Head vs. Heart: Actions and Connections
[00:34:09] Future Challenges: Collaboration and Collective Impact

Links | Resources

Tammy on Linkedin

Robin on Linkedin

About the Guest

Tammy has worked in health promotion and education for more than 22 years, and specifically for the last 17 years with Ophea, advancing health and well-being in Ontario schools. Currently in the Director of Partnerships and Public Affairs role, Tammy aligns provincial and national partners, business development opportunities, and strategic objectives for Ophea, and for the sector at large. With a practice in grounded in social justice and anti-oppressive approaches in education, Tammy is a proud member of the 2SLGBTQ community, an advocate, and a mum.

Robin Cory is a strategist, facilitator, and coach dedicated to turning bold ideas into meaningful action. With over 20 years of experience, Robin has worked alongside non-profits, foundations, and collaboratives across Canada to sharpen their strategies and deepen their impact.  

About Voltage Control

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

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Voltage Control on the Web
Contact Voltage Control

Transcript

Douglas:

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

Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab and if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com. Today I’m with Tammy Shubat and Robin Cory. Tammy is at Ophea where she facilitates and enables partnerships and public affairs for the organization and for the education sector more broadly to advance the health and well-being of kids in schools across the province of Ontario. Robin leads a strategy and facilitation practice that helps mission-driven organizations at pivotal moments gain strategic clarity, make powerful decisions, and take bold action. Welcome to the show.

Robin:

It’s such a treat to be here. Thanks, Douglas.

Tammy:

So happy to be here with you both.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s a treat for me too because I usually don’t have two people on at the same time. So I get two alumni in the room with me today. I’m so excited to dive in with both of you, to hear both your stories and it’s an intertwined story because you work so closely together. You do a lot together, so it’ll be inspiring to hear how you collaborate. So let’s start at the beginning. Could you each share the moment of facilitation that first caught your attention?

Robin:

My mother was really a born facilitator. As a child, I got to witness her in lots of community settings, whether it was advocating for a new school in our neighborhood or leading community meetings or door-to-door fundraising. So I really saw her in action and left me really inspired. And as I went through school, high school in particular, I gravitated towards roles where I got to lead groups and influence people and work in teams and it really gave me a buzz. And I’ve since then continued through university and through jobs to be leaning into that passion.

Tammy:

I love that, Robin. I feel like I would’ve probably in my earlier life self-identified as a leader, but maybe not as a facilitator. And I think probably my spark was probably seeing you facilitate for the first time when you came to Ophea about 10 years ago to sort lead that initial strategy exercise. I remember just being so taken by your approaches and how you engaged people and how far you sort of pushed the questions that you were sort of asking us. And so I would say you were my spark to the practice of facilitation as something that I wanted to maybe embed in my own practice in some way.

Robin:

And our kind of journey together has been such a fun one. And it’s so interesting to hear you reflect on that because really today we operate as peers and spend so much time co-facilitating that it’s hard to even imagine that you are inspired by me, because I’m so very inspired by you in many, many ways.

Douglas:

Tammy, in your alumni story, you mentioned previously identifying more as a leader versus a facilitator. Oftentimes, I’ve seen that come down to how language and vocabulary influence how we self-identify. When you reflect back to those days of just having that lens of leadership, how much of what you were already doing was rooted in some of these beliefs and philosophies that we now hold dearly in facilitation?

Tammy:

It’s a great question, Douglas, and I wish I could be kinder to myself because I’ll be honest and say I think my, I really loved in my earlier days, having the room and having the space and I always thought I had something so great to say. And I remember even thinking to myself, “I can’t wait for this person to stop talking so I can say what I have to say because it’s so much better than what that person has to say.” So I think it’s actually taken a fair bit of growth in my own learning trajectory to see my role differently, which is perhaps less as the contributor or the most powerful voice in the room, but rather as the person who has the ability to perhaps tease out a variety of perspectives that can enrich the conversation in a more full way. So I would say my early days were not exemplary. They were perhaps great ground for learning though. And I’m sure a few people put me in my place, which is wonderful and has gotten me to maybe where I am now.

Robin:

Admittedly, I can relate to that feeling certainly. And I also think, Tammy, when I think about you in a room, what I think is actually such a powerful part of the way that you facilitate is that you hold the space and you invite people’s contribution in such a sort of warm and welcoming and inclusive way, but at the same time, you actually aren’t afraid to assert a point of view. And I think sometimes in facilitation it’s this dance between really creating space for others but also offering perspectives and questions and ideas that are going to move the conversation forward. And I feel like you do that selectively and intentionally and it really does indeed, I think move the conversation forward.

Tammy:

Thank you for that. And I love that point in the sense that I think the idea of a neutral facilitator is false. None of us are. And actually in fact, even if we’re pretending to really just facilitate the voices in the room, we’ve designed the facilitation, you obviously have a desired outcome. So I think I appreciate that and I think I appreciate that perspective around the dance that that is. And so how do you strike that sort of balance in the spaces that you create versus where you may be contributing more pointedly?

Douglas:

That makes me curious, do you have tools and techniques that you rely on or is it intuition that enables that? What’s helping you determine when to step back or when to step forward? When is my opinion valuable to the group? When is it disruptive?

Tammy:

I love that question. So there’s a lot of intuition in how I would operate for sure, but I think I’m always watching for cues and I think for those, for what you’ve just articulated, I tend to prefer in-person facilitation because it allows me to read the room in a really different way than in a virtual facilitation. So in an in-person facilitation, I’m always watching body language, where people are sitting, where they’re looking, if they’re having sidebar conversations, those are all cues to me around somebody in this room has something to say or there’s this underlying feeling of dis-ease.

And so how might I pose a question that allows folks to bubble up what it is might be going on under the surface? I think I struggle a bit more with that with virtual facilitation because I think people use so many tools differently, like the mute function or they’ll go off-screen or I think the strategies for engagement I haven’t fully maybe figured out, but I’m trying to. But yeah, but there’s a fair bit of intuition there in terms of when I might inject my perspective. I don’t know, Robin, how you feel that.

Robin:

Yeah, something I’ve seen you do and I think I try to do as well is potentially frame up a hypothesis. “So based on everything that I’m hearing, it feels like where you are leaning is this.” Or, “Based on everything I understand and know about your organization and your context or your team, it strikes me that Y would be a really healthy and effective path forward.” Let’s say. And then it at least creates that opening for them to say, “Actually, no.” So it’s a hypothesis they can react to or get the feeling of, “Absolutely, yes.” And then that sometimes helps to just move the conversation to the next level. We actually don’t have anything that we need to discuss anymore, we’re actually aligned and clear.

Tammy:

I love when you do that session-effective approach.

Douglas:

Do you recall a time when that happened recently?

Robin:

It’s funny, as Tammy was talking, I was thinking about a session I had yesterday, and actually I don’t think it was the best version of this, but it was an attempt to do this and I think it yielded the results I wanted, but I sometimes think the risk is, so what happened yesterday in this conversation I was leading was that I felt like there was a point of alignment where I was trying to distinguish between in my work what an organization might think of as their ultimate impact, which is kind of that big lofty goal they’re driving towards, but they’re not likely to be able to hold themselves accountable for it, and hunger and homelessness, that kind of thing. Versus the intended impact, so what are the things that they can directly contribute to and hold themselves accountable to or for?

And in this moment yesterday I kind of declared, like I said, “I think we can all agree that your organization is not likely to drive or be able to hold yourself accountable to this particular ultimate impact, so let’s talk about what you can hold yourself accountable to.” And they pushed back actually and said, “That’s actually not our operating assumption. We do believe that we can contribute meaningfully to that ultimate goal as big and lofty as it might be.” And that was really helpful for me to hear. It wasn’t a point at which I was going to agree or disagree with that, but it actually really was an important thing for me to know about how that organization relates to that particular goal.

Douglas:

That reminds me of a powerful technique, posing the wrong answer or a prototype for folks to respond to. Oftentimes, if I have a thought, I like to couch it in, “This is probably wrong, but what do you think about it?” Because it makes it safe for them to tear it apart or let them go, “Actually, yeah, that does make sense.”

Tammy:

Totally.

Robin:

Yeah, yeah. Or, “This is here for you to wreck and rebuild.” My partner, Margot loves to say that and I adopt that as well. And that really gives people freedom. Usually they’re like, “No, no, no, we don’t need to fully wreck and rebuild.” But then you can kind of dial back and say, “But we could tweak or change these few things.” And giving people permission to do that I think does create an opening.

Douglas:

Wow, that wrecking and rebuilding is making me think about. Fortunately, an activity that was used as a closer for a recent facilitation lab facilitated by Lori Wilson, also known as fortunately, unfortunately. Unfortunately We is an improv game where participants take turns creating the story together, alternating between positive and negative developments. The first person starts by describing a fortunate event, beginning with the word fortunately, we, the next person follows up with something unfortunately, kind of tearing down the previous thing, starting with unfortunately, then it goes back to fortunately and so on. It’s quick, playful, and challenges everyone to think creatively and stay present.

Robin:

Yeah.

Tammy:

That’s cool.

Robin:

That’s a good one. I really like that. It reminds me a little bit of the pre-mortem where you start with all the things that could go wrong at the beginning of a process as opposed to waiting for the post-mortem at the end of a process. And I think it reveals similar things of how do we preempt or potentially avoid certain things from happening? How do we lay the track or put the conditions in place for this to really be successful?

Tammy:

I think, and even just in both of those examples, sorry, it opens up space for, it is precisely what you folks said around giving people permission to participate in that way where we’re not going to tiptoe around the issues. We will give ourselves permission to actually boldly engage with what we’re going to talk about today or participate and be able to take that risk. So I love that.

Douglas:

Let’s further explore this idea of taking bold risks. What are some of your other favorite ways of doing that?

Tammy:

We talked a little bit about this morning, Robin. It makes me think about maybe just style. I think maybe we set the stage differently, but I think sometimes for me it’s about relationship building with people in the room first to allow for that. So if I’m, for example, facilitating in a space that might have folks with different levels of power within an organization, or the board is there with the staff, and so we’re trying to create something collaborative off the top where they’re able to work together.

So in a recent facilitation that Robin and I did together, we did something arts-based at the beginning. That seemed like a little bit fluffy, but for a lot of the more junior staff who were in the room, they really valued that as a beginning point. It allowed them to become more comfortable in the space and to open up on something that was, I’m going to say maybe lower risk in the moment, but allowed them to take more risks later on during the day. So I think that’s one of the ways. I think Robin, you do a really good job often, perhaps maybe less so with an activity, but more around what are the conditions for participation today. But go ahead.

Robin:

Yeah, no, I agree. I think doing that early work to set the table so that people feel like it is a space where you can be bold and sometimes the boldness comes out of the messiness and the friction, and so how do you make sure that there’s freedom to imagine and to dream. And we used, actually it was in terms of the cascade in that particular session’s design, Tammy did a beautiful job actually in the morning with this particular exercise. It was called Pionki, and it was this really cool thing that they built that looked like a spider. It kind of looked like a mobile if you picture hanging from a crib. And it’s, I think you said a Polish word, and it’s all about harmony and good fortune and interconnecting this with people. And so everybody kind of built their strand of this Pionki as a group and then they had to assemble it. So it actually hung together and worked.

And I thought that was really powerful, because it did let people see where they were coming from and they actually had to discuss something related to the strategy and related to something that they were connected to around Ophea’s work and Ophea’s strategy. As the day followed, we spent some time talking about the context and some of the conditions that might be standing in the way of some of the kinds of outcomes that Ophea is driving toward. And then we actually ended the day, so back to your question, Douglas, about bold, how do you set the stage for people to think boldly? We actually used the deflection point exercise that I learned as a part of the Voltage Control program that allowed people to first start talking about with Ophea’s plans as they’ve been laid, what would be the status quo outcomes? What do they think they could achieve if they continued on the path that they’re on?

Then we talked about what does the bold path look like? So what if you were to times 10 your impact? What if you were to take audacious and transformative steps towards even greater impact? What would that look like? And then we talked about the rockets and the anchors. So what are those things, the rockets that are going to kind of propel you towards the bold path and what are the anchors that have the risk of pulling you down to status quo? And we’re really at the early stages of a strategic planning process with Ophea. So I thought it gave us some really good fodder for what boldness could look like and help us kind of calibrate where people’s thinking are right now. And in some cases we’re going to need to push them further, and in some cases we’re going to be able to, I think, lean into some of the things that people surfaced. Is that fair, Tammy?

Tammy:

Totally. And I think I want give you your flowers for how thoughtfully you designed that particular activity because I think that could be a quick sort of somewhat mechanical activity. But I think Robin put a lot of thought into the design and the questions that would support people in really identifying what truly were some of those bolder opportunities and what actually might hold people back. And I think and really played it, we played it out a fair bit before actually moving into the facilitation. Like, how might people answer this question and how will this sort of play out in the broader facilitation? And I think we were able to sort of stick with that activity for quite a long time and I feel like it really unlocked some of the bigger opportunities and maybe some of the bigger barriers that we’ll face in trying to get there. So it was really powerful.

Douglas:

Robin, hearing her talk about how you just didn’t throw the structure at them has reminded me of your alumni story and how you shared your intention of transitioning from relying on structure to navigating complex dynamics with more ease. I’m hearing that you thought about the people, the questions, and the prompts you need to get the desired reaction. It seems like you’re actually leaning into those dynamics a little more rather than just throwing the structure out there.

Robin:

Yeah, yeah. And that’s part of, I think one of the things that is so helpful about having a co-facilitator, even though Tammy in this case was the client and sort of hired me to do this work, we’ve done so much co-facilitation in the past I think, and Tammy brings that skillset that usually when I’m doing things with her organization, we are co-facilitating it. And so I think that sometimes if I don’t have a Tammy, I do have to kind of just go in on faith and trust that the exercise is going to work well. But what’s nice is the thought partnership of being able to sort of, as Tammy said, sort of test what could this look like with your crowd? How do we think people might answer this? What are some of the things that might come up that I wouldn’t expect? And going into rooms, I do like to have that preview wherever possible of what could happen and how I might be able to get ahead of that.

Tammy:

I think that’s one of your greatest strengths as a facilitator, Robin. I think it’s what you bring to the facilitation process. As someone who’s worked with you for a really long time, I would say there are a lot of folks who have tools and who can just throw a tool out there and facilitate. But I think the thought that Robin puts into the design in advance really is one of her greatest strengths as a facilitator. Because I think I’ve worked with many facilitators who will just sort of throw tools or throw canned exercises into a room based on what they think might be a standard process or a standard outcome that groups are trying to achieve.

But I think the way in which Robin tries to understand context and how a particular question might land with a group of people really brings that extra added value, because when she plays that out and then we actually bring it to the space and it does land in a particular way, it can be really transformational for a group of people versus just what folks might just mechanically go through an exercise. It’s a tremendous value that she brings to that process for sure. I often joke with my colleagues, it’s never easy to work with Robin. It feels like… No, I mean that in a loving way. I’m not looking for easy. It’s like she pushes you and pushes you and asks that next question and, “What if we think about it this way? And what if we think about it that way?” And twists the whole thing up to then move us through what will be a better experience? It’s absolutely worth it, but it’s not easy and that’s a good thing.

Robin:

I still remember when we were planning for last week’s session, we were at a cafe, actually, Douglas, when we were planning it, and Tammy looked at me and she said, “I’m done.”

Douglas:

Tapping out.

Robin:

“I think we got it. I think we got it.”

Douglas:

That’s so good.

Robin:

I do kind of really get into it. Yeah, but I tend to work with partners and clients that are kind of up for it and Tammy most certainly is.

Douglas:

Great point, Tammy. You’re throwing accolades at Robin for bringing this attention and care to what might surface in the room. It’s also important to acknowledge the fact that you value it and you’re embracing and encouraging it and you’re able to articulate insights on the team. There’s a lot of leaders that facilitators might go to and ask the same questions, try to get the same stuff, and either they don’t value it or they don’t have the right observational tendencies or abilities to be able to reflect the important stuff back. And it’s a real gift to have to collaborate with partners like this that can help point out some of the things so that we don’t have to just guess or totally just tune our radar into the moment without any prior knowledge.

Robin:

Yeah, totally. I want to give an example actually, because I think hopefully for listeners, some of the facilitation examples are instructive, but in this particular session just because it was so recent, it’s top of mind. When we talk about the way we set the stage for being able to have people feel connected, in addition to doing that exercise, the art exercise, the other thing that Tammy actually built into the session was that there were two staff members that were hitting their 15 year anniversaries with the organization. And it was a strategy conversation, it was a board staff retreat, but she felt like it was a good moment to actually honor these two staff members.

And so I’ve been to lots of anniversary celebrations of people that hit milestones in workplaces, and this was very unique. What they had actually done was they had, for each of the people had put up on the wall, what’s their catchphrase? What was their core values? What were their favorite places? What were their favorite foods? What were their favorite expressions? And that was all up there as Tammy and other people were kind of saying, acknowledging things right down to if this person were a mascot for the organization, what animal would they be? And what about the fox or what about the raccoon represents them? And admittedly, I was listening, I’m like, “This is long.”

And Tammy knows that I’m all about, “We got 10 minutes. We got 10 minutes.” But I sort of obviously pulled myself back and I thought, “My God, how beautiful is this moment? And how honored do these people feel? And how rare is it to really deeply acknowledge people who have contributed so many years and so much to an organization and have them be seen and appreciated in front of all the people they probably care most about?” This was the board of the organization, this was the full staff of the organization. So really hats off to you, Tammy, because those are the things that I know we didn’t even talk about it in the debrief, but that I think really made for the kind of environment that then enabled us to get to where we got to.

Tammy:

Thank you. I appreciate that so much. I think, and we’ve talked a little bit about this, one of my biggest drivers, or maybe one of my core values is how people feel. How people feel, and also to have people feel something as a result of something that we go through together. And I think whenever there’s a moment, and even if it’s a longer moment, to embed that, I actually think it goes a long way in the rest of the day. So I’m happy to spend the time there. But yeah, thank you. I’ll find your mascot animal, Robin, next time I’ll identify your mascot animal for you.

Robin:

I was hoping, I was hoping.

Tammy:

It’s coming.

Douglas:

Tammy, in your alumni story, you mentioned letting go of control and learning to be present. I’m curious, how’s that journey going and how did it impact how you showed up at this recent session?

Tammy:

That’s a great question. I think I will say that’s a lifelong journey for someone like me, Douglas.

Douglas:

Of course.

Tammy:

I’m an A type personality who enjoys a tremendous amount of control, and I think that’s why I like being front of room, because I’m not at the mercy of how other people are going to run a show. I feel like Robin’s probably the only person I trusted to run a room with. But I think in recent years I’ve had a lot of positive experiences in, I would say more collaborative approaches that leave a little bit to chance because I think there’s always a way to sort of steer it from the sides rather than the center, if that makes sense. So I think in this particular example of this day and that arts-based activity, I didn’t realize how worried I was about how that was going to go or not go.

I spent a stupid amount of time getting materials ready, thinking about how people were going to thread their stories together, thinking about all these little elements for what was really just an introductory activity. I probably spent more time there than I should have, but I think it was because I was leaving so much up to chance in that moment, in that particular activity in the room. And it could have flopped, they could have not been able to pull it off. They could have not wanted to engage, but it didn’t. And I think there’s perhaps a whole bunch of reasons for that. And also we just have a good bunch of people who are willing to take a risk. But to some degree, maybe some of those conversations and the staff accolades and stuff at the beginning maybe set the tone for a space of low enough risk that it was a space of care that we were in.

Robin:

Yeah.

Douglas:

You talked earlier about using art and getting people comfortable and preparing them to be bold. That got me to thinking about how singers will warm up their voices. If they just start to show up and then just start seeing immediately, they might damage their voice or they might just not be ready or capable of doing the things they might demand of their vocal cords. And it’s these transformations and change that takes time and care. And so asking people to be bold and innovative or just behave in ways that aren’t asked to day in, day out is hard without a transformation or a transition.

Robin:

Yeah, it’s funny, I was thinking of a quote that I actually wrote down that Eric, I think it was Eric who said during the Voltage Control training, and he drew it from psychological safety, it sounds like sort of pedagogy. And the quote was, “You need to decrease social friction to increase intellectual friction.” And I think there’s something there about the way in which Tammy’s oriented to forming connections that, and we’ve joked before about Tammy maybe being more the heart and me being more the head. Although I don’t think, I think there’s a strong overlap in our Venn diagrams on that. But I do really try to channel that in designing sessions so that you’re really having people feel connected socially and connected to each other so that we can have sometimes really tough conversations intellectually. And I don’t know if that directly answers your question, but that’s what was sort of sparked for me when you were asking it.

Tammy:

And if I were to maybe amplify that, I would say I think we’re, even if I think about facilitating five or six years ago or in a pre-pandemic context, I think that the world is a bit of a different place now, and I think this desire or need for connectivity is greater maybe than it was before. I think people are increasingly disconnected. People work in their remote work environments, they’re largely connecting online. Sometimes we’re bringing them together in a room and we expect this muscle that they used to have to be ready to go, and it’s not actually.

And so I actually do think it is worthwhile taking a little bit more time in the upfront to set the conditions for everyone to be able to be present and be in the room and contribute in the way that we’re hoping that they will. And I think they crave it, but I don’t think they know how quite, I think. And I notice that there are some generational differences in that as well, there are identity-based differences in how people are able to show up. But I do think now more than ever, there’s a need for us as facilitators to sort of zoom in on that maybe as part of our practice.

Robin:

Yeah. And we didn’t actually say the heart and the head. We talked about people feeling a focus on you, sort of focusing more on connections and me focusing more on actions and decisions. And I think that there is, just apropos to what you just said about the lack of people being physically together, is that I’m finding there’s a lot more work you got to do to get people to the point of making decisions and taking action because they’re not, to your point, doing that, engaging with each other in the same ways with the same regularity and sometimes not about tougher things. So because you’re a box on a screen, you’re just not going to put the energy often into disagreeing.

It’s like, I’ll just be okay with that, or I’ll go off-screen and deal with it elsewhere. Versus when you’re in spaces live, there’s just more friction that happens, like healthy friction and you work that muscle of working through it. So I think as facilitators, it puts more of an onus on investing the time and energy in doing some of that. And I have to hold back my desire to quickly get to decisions and actions and do more of that, making sure the ground is fertile for that.

Tammy:

If I were to give a nod to one, I’m going to say approach that really helped me during the cert was the e-learning course on a narrative futures design. And so I think that’s an approach that has served me as a facilitator, I think, in thinking about this moment and the disconnection that folks are experiencing. And it really opens up the space to dream in a way that perhaps other approaches haven’t. And so I’ve really enjoyed utilizing that, especially if we’re doing sort of forward-thinking work and as opposed to designing to solve a problem. Let’s imagine the desired state, not with all of the obstacles or barriers sort of discourse that we would typically use when we facilitate. So I think that is one particular approach that supports dreaming and connection and these sort of approaches that I think really serve having people show up in a space in a particular way.

Robin:

And Tammy, you said, I remember after because that was one of the electives in our Voltage Control course, and I remember afterwards you were saying that you’ve been finding it particularly effective with young people.

Tammy:

Yeah, yeah, because I think if we think about generational impacts of the pandemic or even just sort of where we’re at in the world, I think there’s certain generations of young people that you speak to that maybe don’t dream or that possibility of dreaming has sort of gone away. The perception of the future is not so great, but if you ask them to, they’re very capable, but I think no one’s asking them to. They’re always caught in these conversations about these really dire social issues or these moments that we’re in as opposed to how might we dream or imagine the world that we want to be in and contributing to.

Robin:

Yeah, and one of the things I know that has resonated both with Tammy and me that came out of our Voltage Control conversations and training is this idea of the spaces we create being these temporary worlds, I think is how you all talk about it. And so to that point about dreaming, we have the privilege as facilitators to be able to create this world, this space where people can do things that they don’t do outside of the room. And if we do it well, that creates an opening for people to connect in different ways, to think together in different ways, to potentially lead to different kinds of results than they can have. And the practice of operating in this temporary space potentially in new ways, maybe more creative, maybe more silly, maybe more vulnerable ways can then carry over if we do it well into other environments.

And I think that what I’m finding in this moment, particularly working in the nonprofit sector where the virtual work has remained, I think more so than in corporate settings where people are going back to work more days of the week, I’m finding that the moments where I get the opportunity to lead staff sessions or bring teams together around strategy conversations are some of the rarest in-person moments they have. They’re just precious moments. And so I feel like there’s a privilege, but there’s also responsibility in making sure with these rare moments where people are together in the same room, that we’re not just checking the box around, have we come up with the right strategic priorities? But we’re really maximizing that time to, usually organizations have lots of different goals that they’re packing in to what they want to achieve in a single day or a single retreat.

Tammy:

What I tend to try to do with that one, Robin, just around this idea of this temporary world that we’ve created is if I’ve intentionally sort of done that at the beginning, I always try to end with what of this world would you like to take forward with you in your day to day? Because I think although these moments are rare, I would like for that way of being or existing or engaging to be less rare for folks. So what is it of what we created in that moment that they would like to embed in their practice or in their regular meetings or in their day-to-day? Because I think that is the culture shifting stuff that an individual touch point can sort of have in the future.

Robin:

What a great prompt. I love that.

Douglas:

Let’s point our attention toward the future and hear about the challenges and opportunities you’re most energized to take on.

Robin:

I think that the challenge that I am probably, as Tammy knows, spending the most time thinking about, is really about how to more intentionally, maybe more creatively, maybe more effectively be able to bring multiple stakeholders, organizations, groups together that can align around shared goals and need to really chart a course towards achieving them. And I think in this moment there, we kind of had a heyday of collective impact a decade ago where I think people really were drawing from and leaning on that pedagogy. And I feel like there’s still collaborative work, there’s still collective work, but I feel like there isn’t as much as is needed to address the complex issues that we face.

And I’m really clear we’re not going to solve some of the big intractable things that we’re, or seemingly intractable things that we’re faced with on any dimension, homelessness, climate, food insecurity, all the things that organizations I work with deal with one organizational strategy at a time. It’s just not going to happen. And so the interplay between different players is what gets me really excited. And how do you create those spaces for innovative thinking and dialogue and alignment around them? So I’m looking for opportunities to do more of that and organizations that want to sort of be together in a sandbox to try on some different ways of working together.

Tammy:

And I think if I were to piggyback off of that, Robin, because we’ve chatted about this a fair bit, and I think we’ve tried through some of our facilitations to do some of that broader sector work, but it’s hard. It’s difficult in this current climate and context. I don’t know if this is true in the US, but in Canada, charities and nonprofits are really struggling. There’s a number of smaller ones that are shutting their doors. There’s a real, I would say, survivability mindset as opposed to a more collaborative mindset or a mindset of abundance where we might all sort of benefit from working more together.

So I think as someone who works within an organization who is pleased to collaborate, it’s been really difficult to even convince funders to put money into a pot for a number of organizations to work together. So I think that continues to maybe be the challenge of the future, but it is certainly the only way to solve the problems that we’re seeking to solve. So I think continuing to, in the absence of really direct pathways to achieving that, what are some of the creative ways that we can pull that off is I think a bit where we’re at in a future state, but it’s definitely, it is a driver. There is no one individual charity or organization that will change the world on the issue that they’re trying to change the world on. It’s not possible.

Robin:

Yeah, and you see this up close with the kind of system level work you do as an organization. So it’s kind of in your DNA to work this way.

Douglas:

Amazing. You’re doing important work, and I’m glad you’re focused on it. I hope you catch the next wave of collaboration and collective work.

Tammy:

Yeah, totally.

Robin:

Yeah. Thanks, Douglas.

Tammy:

Yeah, I hope so.

Douglas:

As we come to a close, I’d like to invite you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Tammy:

My final thought for listeners would be to reflect on the importance and the value of relationships in the work that we do. And so at the end of the day, we are all in relationships with each other. Some of them are good, some of them are strained, and we’re seeking to enhance those. And without centering our practice on those relationships, I think we will inevitably leave people behind.

Robin:

That resonates for sure. I am a huge Priya Parker fan. The Art of Gathering I know was one of the books we read as a part of this, and my, I guess final thought would be around, for anyone out there that’s gathering people or facilitating conversations or leading meetings, there’s a really simple truth at the heart of her book, which is that you need to start with purpose. And while it seems obvious, so many meetings happen without actually crystallizing why we are coming together. And so starting your with that question of why and what will be different and working backward from that outcome, so you were designing with that why in mind is something I go back to often from her work.

Tammy:

You definitely walk that talk, Robin, because-

Robin:

Thank you.

Tammy:

You definitely asked me that question probably three times in the last three weeks.

Robin:

Thank you for the validation.

Douglas:

Well, it was my pleasure having you on today. It was so great chatting. Hope to see you again soon.

Tammy:

Likewise. Thank you for your time, Douglas and Robin. It’s always a delight to share ideas with you, so thank you.

Robin:

Yeah, same, Tammy. And thanks Douglas, and thanks for the gift that keeps giving of this program.

Douglas:

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

The post How Can Facilitators Foster Bold Participation and Collaboration in Nonprofit Organizations? appeared first on Voltage Control.

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson engages with Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Input I Output and Co-Founder of Cardano. They delve into themes of facilitation, collaboration, and governance, particularly focusing on Charles’s work in developing a decentralized governance model for Cardano. Charles shares insights from facilitating workshops across 50 countries to draft Cardano’s constitution, emphasizing the importance of communication, trust, and consensus-building. The conversation also explores the impact of historical governance models and modern organizational design on decentralized systems, offering valuable lessons for fostering innovation and collaboration in diverse groups.

Show Highlights

[00:01:56] Talking Stick Artifact
[00:03:13] Decentralized Governance Insights
[00:06:03] Challenges of Governance Creation
[00:8:44] Building Consensus Across Cultures
[00:13:28] The Role of Trust in Transactions
[00:19:32] Failure and Leadership
[00:33:06] Objectivity and Trust
[00:35:00] Working Groups and Community Input
[00:39:35] Future of Decentralized Governance

Links | Resources

Charles on X

Case Study: Facilitating the World’s First Blockchain Ecosystem Constitution

Cardano on the web

About the Guest

Charles Hoskinson is a Colorado-based technology entrepreneur and mathematician. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and the University of Colorado Boulder to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure. His professional experience includes founding three cryptocurrency-related start-ups – Invictus Innovations, Ethereum and IOHK – and he has held a variety of posts in both the public and private sectors. He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013 .His current projects focus on educating people about cryptocurrency, being an evangelist for decentralization and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream. This includes leading the research, design and development of Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency that launched in September 2017.

About Voltage Control

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

Subscribe to Podcast

Engage Control The Room

Voltage Control on the Web
Contact Voltage Control

Transcript

Douglas:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast where I speak with Voltage Control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab and if you’d like to learn more about our twelve-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com. Today, I’m with Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Input Output. He’s also a bison rancher, runs a healthcare clinic in Wyoming, serving over 11,000 patients, owns a construction company and takes a keen interest in synthetic biology. Welcome to the show, Charles.

Charles:

It’s great to be here. Doug, how you been?

Douglas:

I’ve been great. I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation because I’m really kind of wowed by the project around the Constitution, and as I was reflecting on this, it brought up some memories for me along the way. Specifically it was, I remember my first visit to the IO offices and you were leading a really engaging tour and at some point you showed us this Native American artifact. I’ve viewed it as a primitive technology for improved conversations. And I’m just curious if you could start off maybe by sharing a little bit about that artifact and what it means to you and how it connects to your philosophy on communication.

Charles:

Yeah, so I got that right here. This is a talking stick, it was used by the Sioux amongst other Great Plains Indians, and basically how it works is whoever has a stick gets to talk and if you talk out of band, they hit you in the head with a stick. That’s why it’s got a bone on it, but I always love having it in the office. I’ve only had to use the talking stick once. I have a lot of artifacts and what’s really cool is that when you come in the office, we have everything from hyperdimensional spaces here that are kind of compressed in a cube to Samurai armor over there. We have the talking stick and a lot of paintings, a lot of sculptures and all of these things. I pick them up because they connect to something that I’m interested in. I have an ant hive in the office where they poured molten aluminum into an ant hive and then they dug it out and cleaned it off.

And it shows you power of complex systems where simple rules apply again and again can actually result in these amazing structures. But the Native American art is some of my favorite. I collect Kachina dolls and I have a lot of various things throughout North America. When you look at governance of the Iroquois or the Cherokee Nation, especially the Iroquois, they had this decentralization about how they made decisions and consensus building behind how they made decisions and almost like a participatory democracy. And it was just really extraordinary that you could think, wow, these guys had to find a way to get along and they had to find a way to communicate even though they would only meet maybe a few times a year, and there was a lot of challenges and difficulties there and no modern technology, yet they were still able to build a stable government.

So there was a lot of lessons there about how do you build a decentralized government? How do you build a government of equals? You don’t have a king or a president, more like a council of elders. And that was something that stuck with me when I learned about it as a teenager and throughout the years I kind of learned all the upgrades and updates to these types of things. And the Maori people over in New Zealand, for example, have a very sophisticated system, they also have a very sophisticated reputation system that’s concept of mana, which is like the amount of credit that you have in society in many different senses. So having traveled through Africa extensively, I also picked up a lot of tribal traditions there. And there’s a lot of really cool interesting things in Asia, especially Central Asia. You spend some time in Mongolia and you see how they made decisions and they pull these things together.

It’s really sophisticated for the technology that they had. So I always wanted to put that into a system and build it. And with Cardano is a great example is Cardano has no executive function. Most governments, they have a judicial branch, a legislative branch, and an executive branch. And you have one group of people make the laws, one group of people that execute everything and one group of people interpret it whether everybody else is being honest. Well, with Cardano, we have a pseudo judicial function, it’s the Constitutional Committee and we have very strong legislative function, but there is no president, there is no executive branch, there are no bureaucracies or things. You have members-based organizations, these other things, but they’re voluntary and they have no monopoly over power and they can be fired at any time and these types of things.

So it’s an interesting experiment because if you don’t have a strong executive function, then everything has to come from the bottom up instead of the top down in the way that the system operates, which is not really what people tend to think when they think of effective governance or they think of a strong government or a government that’s highly efficient. But yet there are many examples like Switzerland for example, with its Confederacy structure or other countries where this has worked. And there’s organizational design examples where that works. Like Holacracy is probably the most prominent example of that, and Sociocracy is another where that could work.

So we were highly inspired by a lot of these different concepts and we worked through them and we tried to put something together and the single hardest part is bootstrap, which is why you guys came in because we had this issue of how do you build consensus and consent when you have no incumbent decision system. In America, we have this concept of a vote and we have a concept of a voter, and it’s pretty clear how to do that. So when you want to elect a president or elect a senator or a congressman or a governor, you know how to do that. Well, what if you don’t have a concept of a voter and you don’t have a well-established consent system or a Constitution, how do you get to America from nothing? And that was kind of where we were at.

So we thought workshops were a super cool idea and we needed facilitators, and that’s how I met you guys. And we had workshops all across the world, 50 countries, 65 workshops just for the Constitution and a lot of other workshops for CIP 1694. And the first one was here in the office. And I remember that day very clearly, because everybody’s very skeptical. They’re like, “You’re just not going to pull this off. It’s going to descend it to chaos and everybody’s going to vote against it and it’ll get bike shedded.” And it was a tremendous exercise and building of consensus.

Douglas:

Why do you think there was so much skepticism?

Charles:

Well, because it depends on your philosophical beliefs about humanity. And unfortunately, when you have a strong executive function and you live in a very cynical society, and we are in the age of cynicism, when my grandfather was growing up, my grandfather lived in a very optimistic time in America. And so when John F. Kennedy said, “We will go to the moon.” Everybody believed him because like, “Oh yeah, the government always does it. They’ll figure it out.” Because this is the government that when FDR said, “Hey, I need you to go build the world’s largest office building in a swamp and you have six months to do it.” Leslie Groves said, “You got it, sir.” And he went and built the Pentagon. So there was this can-do spirit of, “We don’t really know how to do it, but we’re just going to figure it out and it’s going to get done.”

And people had a great degree of confidence in the government’s ability to deliver. And then over time, this postmodernism kind of leaked its way into society and now there’s a skepticism that no matter what, it’s never going to be as good as you think it is. It’s probably not going to happen. Even if it does happen, there’s something wrong with it. So a great example is that when William Shatner went to space, this was like a Rorschach’s test for generations. So the older people who grew up watching him on Star Trek, they were like, “That’s the coolest thing in the world. That’s so amazing. Wow, Captain Kirk finally made it to space.” They felt some pride because it’s like a hero that they grew up with. And he finally got to go to space and do that thing. And then the younger generation said, “Oh, global warming this, and it’s a waste of that. And why did you send a 90-year-old fat guy to space and just a marketing stunt and…”

It’s the exact same set of facts, exact same set of people and two radically different interpretations of that event. So when you look at the Cardano governance to work, what you’re really saying under the hood is, “Okay, well, here’s what’s going to happen, people who have never met each other from all over the world, different languages, cultures, different perspectives, different socioeconomic classes are going to come together and those people who have never met each other from all those differences are going to find a way to set those differences aside and collaborate without compensation on a common product, somehow agree and then produce something that other people get to use, perhaps not them.” And most people when they hear that, they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t think so. We’d have peace in the Middle East if you could pull something off like that.”

But it turned out we had the right thread and it was one of the most challenging things I ever did in my lifetime to kind of come up with some methodologies to bring those types of people together and act as a peacemaker and deal with fights and also just educate people on missing skills of collaboration. It’s very easy to work with people who have been trained to collaborate, even if they’re competitors, even if they’re philosophically opposed to you. There’s ways you communicate, there’s ways that you, there’s a respect behind the communication. So it’s like you think ahead, what do they need to know to do their job? There’s an understanding of how to negotiate and how to disagree without being disagreeable. There’s a lot of moving pieces to people that are well-trained in negotiation and communication and collaboration skills. If people aren’t trained that way, then what ends up happening is the minute that they feel like it’s not going their way, they immediately take all their toys, go home, go to Twitter, complain about it and try to burn everything down and get upset about that.

But if they’re trained in that way, then they use the process and together you kind of eventually get to where you need to be. So a big part of the process was just education and teaching people collaborative skills and teaching people iterative skills and teaching people the art of negotiation and growing people up and managing expectations and saying, “Look, just the very fact we came together and wrote a Constitution, even if it’s not a perfect Constitution, is a monumental achievement because people from 50 countries had to come together and get something done.” And that’s a consensus of those people. And if that process is reused, we can write a significantly better one because everybody has confidence that we can do that, because we know we could come together and get these things done. So the very first one is really a minimum viable product and it’s a trust building product, but once you have that, you have this great foundation to stand on and you can grow from there.

And once people got that in their head that this is a long goal, it’s a long game and it’s not about winning every round of the game, but rather it’s about participating and playing the game and learning and growing from the game, then they got substantially more collaborative. The learned helplessness went away and the cynicism disappeared almost overnight, and then people got excited to roll up their sleeves and get to work and get it done. And boy, it was challenging to get it done, because it’s just so many meetings and so many communications. There was, wee tallied it up, over 5,000 man hours of just deliberation on the Constitution.

Douglas:

There’s also the phenomenon when people build things together, it connects them, it draws them closer, it becomes their artifact. They’ve had some say in some participation in it, so they own it.

Charles:

Yeah. And that’s the most fun of it is that once people get over that hostility and they start working together, then they actually come up with interesting things and they enjoy working together so you don’t have to twist their arms and force them. They’ve made lifelong friends and those delegates that went to the Constitutional Convention, they’re still talking to each other. They’re still friends with each other, they still have those relationships, and a lot of these people are like, “Hey, I grew up in Norway. I never thought I would be best friends with a guy in Senegal or somebody in Cameroon or somebody in Argentina.” It’s not a common thing, and yet now it’s there and you’re on a first name basis. It was really like the United Nations, when you walked in and saw those flags. It was a truly remarkable thing.

Douglas:

It was amazing to see so many groups come together. Pretty impressive really to think about hitting on 50 countries and bringing that much voice to so many people.

Charles:

And you can’t rest on your laurels. The most important part of it is just saying, “Hey, how do we structure this in a way so that we can continue the collaboration?” So if it was just the end all be all, and once we sign the Constitution, we’re done, we all move on, that’s a great achievement. The bigger achievement is an iterative process where year by year people continue to come together, it gets larger and more meaningful, and then you treat it like an open source work project. And what’s really cool is that in a very short period of time, like three to five years, you can probably have the best Constitution ever written because people just keep working on it, they’ll keep thinking about it, they’ll keep beta testing it and adding new capabilities to it, and you can build a lot of sophistication. One of the things that I think modern society has lost is the value of trust.

And I’ll give it an example. I talk about this often. So let’s say you’re doing a real estate transaction and you and your neighbor trust each other. Okay, you have a ranch, they have a ranch, 100 acres, whatever, and you go over there, you talk to them, you have dinner with them, say, “Hey, I want to sell you these 100 acres. I need the cash.” And you’re like, “Yeah, okay, yeah, I’ll buy that. That’s fine.” So you handshake on it and you start putting all the paperwork together and it turns out there’s some issue with it. So how do you solve that issue? Trust the guy. So you go over and say, “Hey, I have this issue, blah, blah, blah.” He say, “Oh yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ll fix that for you.” Okay, you shake hands, you’re done. Buy the land.

Okay, so then let’s say you hate your neighbor. You absolutely detest this person. You have no relationship. Same piece of land, same transaction. So the facts and circumstances are identical, but when you go to buy the land and first thing that happens, you get a lawyer, because you don’t trust him, he gets a lawyer, because he doesn’t trust you, you negotiated out this contract, takes a lot of legal work. Then halfway through you run into that same issue. Then all of a sudden you’re in litigation and you’re suing each other. It takes two, three years to resolve a litigation. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, depends on the nature of the litigation. And then at the end of the day, you close the deal, you get the land, the outcome is the same. The difference is I had beer and steak with him, shook his hand and we got it sorted and I spent $100,000 or whatever you bought the acres for.

And the other one, I hate his guts. I spent two to three years to close the transaction and millions of dollars. And the only difference, the only delta between those two realities is trust. That’s it. So when you build systems that over time produce trust, what ends up happening with that is you create a momentum where you can do remarkable work quickly and get things done quickly. And you’ll notice that the ratio of organizational design to trust, the historical ratio of this, where high trust things tend to have low bureaucracy and low trust things tend to have high bureaucracy, because you don’t need the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy’s purpose is to de-risk. And if you trust everybody, then you know that even if some mistake happens, that person’s got your back and he or she’s going to go and take care of you and figure that out. So you don’t need layers and layers and layers of accountability and audit and oversight and this department and this manager and this manager and that.

So look at NASA in the ’60s versus NASA today. So NASA in the ’60s, there was a political mandate, move fast and break things. So even when astronauts died, like when that terrible Apollo disaster happened and the astronauts burnt to death in the capsule, there was an understanding that NASA was going to get this done, and so they just let them be NASA and they moved forward. Then after Challenger in Columbia, it badly damaged the reputation of NASA and it changed the culture so that we can never have a failure, which meant they had redundancy after redundancy, redundancy after redundancy, and that culture was so restrictive, it’d take 20 years to do anything and it’d always be $5 billion. Then SpaceX comes along and you have a culture where people are like, “We trust the leader. He’s going to take us to Mars. Everybody’s aligned with the mission and if we break some things along the way, it’s encouraged.”

So when the rockets blew up, the Falcon 9s and Musk was right there on the beach with these guys collecting pieces of rocket right off the beaches. And Starship is a phenomenal example of that where you see blow up all the time and they make this exponential progress on the platform, because they’re totally comfortable as a culture losing two or three Starships a year or four Starships a year, but they know that within five years that’s going to be a productized platform. You tried this with NASA, they’ve tried it for the last 20 years, they haven’t been able to match it. So culture of trust is what gets you there. When I went to the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, they’re building a rocket every two days, a full rocket every two days. It’s just, I’ve never seen anything like it. And everybody just works as a team, they communicate extremely well. It’s very horizontal and structure, so there’s not this high vertical bureaucracy, just everybody has a domain and there’s a lot of admiration and respect there.

So I really admire organizations that figure out how to inculcate that, develop that, and I think good systems produce trust over time. People just believe it’s going to work. Chinese people trust the Chinese government. It’s a really weird thing. We Americans, we look at it, we say, “Well, China’s a dystopian hellscape because, they have social credit and these other things.” Well, when they look at the approval rating of Xi or these other people from people rank-and-file China, most of them believe in the next 10 years, China will be more progressed, more prosperous and more powerful than the last 10 years, and that will be shared adequately with the people of China because gone from nothing in the 1970s where people would starve to death on a pretty regular basis to one of the world’s greatest superpowers, and they did this decade after decade after decade.

So whatever they’re doing in that system, it’s producing trust in its citizens for that. And so trust doesn’t necessarily equate to our notion of honesty and our notion of morality or our notion of ethics. Trust just basically means that for whatever the system is intended to do, you over time start believing it’s probably going to do that and it’s going to do it well and efficiently and it’s going to do it more likely than not to my satisfaction. You might disagree with that system or disagree with the methods, but that’s the thing. And blockchain is much the same. It’s a high trust system, and the number one thing for blockchains is not market utilization and TVL or any of the things, it’s the trust in it, which is why Bitcoin is still number one. It’s the most trusted asset on the planet, even though it has seven transactions a second and it takes an hour for finality, and there’s not really strong smart contracts or any of these things. It’s the trust that makes Bitcoin so powerful.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s interesting. I think you hit on something that is a little in my mind, differentiated from trust, which is the ability to allow failure. Leaders that when something goes wrong, freak out and treat it as a anomaly and something that’s really, really bad, you create a phenomenon where no one wants to mention that things are going poorly and then that leads to more catastrophic failures because we can’t even surface the small ones.

Charles:

Yeah.

Douglas:

And I think this gets into Amy C. Edmondson’s work around psychological safety. It’s like, are we fearful to even talk about things that are not going to plan? Because teams that can talk about these things and surface stuff and fail forward, to your point, they move a lot faster, because they’re making big, bold discoveries.

Charles:

But that’s the trust issue at its core too, because at the end of the day, you don’t trust the leadership to protect your interests. You know you’re going to make mistakes and if the response to mistakes are find someone to blame and kill them, that’s a very different environment than these leaders historically, they might yell at me for it, but at the end of the day, they’re not going to fire me or prevent or destroy my career. We understand part of the business is failure, and when you’re a leader, you have to clearly understand and articulate what your tolerance is for your product and for your endeavor to failure, you have to put those rules out there. And there are some cases where failure is not an option. The aerospace industry is a great example of that. Failure translates to what we just saw in Washington, D.C. with a Blackhawk helicopter crashing into a passenger jet. That’s somebody’s children. It’s one of the most tragic and horrible circumstances, and every single person, they feel sick to their stomach if they’re connected to it and they say, “This is the worst day of my life.”

That’s failure where it’s not an option and you can’t have a culture that says, “Well, that’ll happen every now and then, but in general, we’re getting it done.” But in other systems like agile prototyping or aerospace prototyping or other things, when you’re dealing with a group of people where they’re deeply inspired and they’re willing to encumber risk and they sign up for that, like the test pilots testing supersonic aircraft or these types of things, and they died all the time, it didn’t matter because they signed up for that and they were all in the same boat. They were explorers in a certain dimension and that culture permitted that to exist. So really you have to ask what tolerance for failure do you have and how does the organization respond to failure? I think the Navy did a phenomenal job with the submarine programs. They had the Thresher and the Scorpion, and both of those were lost because of poor design and accidents.

And so they responded by saying, “Look, we’re not going to go and punish every admiral and go and yell at the submarine companies or anything. We’re just going to create a program of excellence.” It’s called SUBSAFE. Actually, the Navy had to go and teach NASA after Challenger how to build stuff. So after Challenger happened, the Navy came in and they say, “If you’re actually going to build spacecraft, this is the program you have to follow.” And SUBSAFE is a really rigorous way of constructing submarines. Since the Navy did it, I think they’ve only lost one submarine the entire history and they had hundreds before, and that was the one. So every system has to be upfront with those expectations and then you build a culture accordingly. And then there’s, what do you do when failure occurs? Because failure does happen and do people feel like they’re going to be treated fairly or do people feel like the exercise is more about subscribing blame?

And this is the dark side of NASA. When failure happens, especially with Challenger, the game was not to admit it, but rather hide it and find ways to bury it in the guts of something. And Feynman and others had to dig it out with a presidential commission, but eventually they figured it out. But bad cultures, they tend to hide enough and make things oblique, whereas good cultures, people proactively search for the truth and they bring it on up and they don’t care about the consequences of the truth, they just want it out there, because they think it makes everybody’s life better and they have the capacity to say they’re sorry. It’s a two-way relationship. Every society has a forgiveness mechanism, a lever of forgiveness that they pull. And in some societies, it’s quite easy. In other ones it’s quite draconian and harsh. Like in China, anytime there’s a financial collapse, they’ll just go execute some of the bankers.

They have these trial, they pull them out and they’re like, “Oh, this guy, mortgage crisis, whatever.” They go execute them, makes them feel better. I guess in other societies, they don’t punish people at all. Like in ours, 2008, there was too big to fail and these guys robbed us of billions of dollars and they got to retire with hundreds of millions of dollars and there was no consequences for anything that they did. So that’s the other side of the pendulum is what a society’s response to these types of things and both a personal liability and a professional liability, and what’s the organizational response to these things? And then there in that structure, you start thinking about, well, how do you build psychological safety if it’s even possible at all? In some cases it’s not.

Douglas:

How do you view building this trust that’s so essential and the safety that’s so essential when you’re talking about distributed teams and you look at the Cardano community, all the folks that were involved in drafting the Constitution, coming from wildly different backgrounds with different interests and goals in mind, different careers. What does trust building look like there? How did that even happen?

Charles:

Well, first and foremost, you have to be willing to let people express themselves without beating them down even if they disagree with you. That’s a huge component of it. And it’s hard at times because sometimes they say things that are just materially not true, and I sometimes struggle with that or they don’t give you the benefit of the doubt when you’ve earned it. If somebody, I’ll give you an example, if every day for two years a person finds someone’s wallet and it’s got some money inside of it and they go out of their way to return it to that person with the money inside of it, and then somebody leaves their wallet in front of you and then they immediately snatch it and say, “Oh, thank God I took it, because you would steal my money.” You’d probably get a little off about that because it’s like, “Well, my track record here indicates something very, very different and you know that I have this track record and you know how I act.”

So you get pretty offended when people accuse you of things like for example, some people with the budget process say, “Well, the only reason Charles is doing this is just to loot and steal all the money from the budget.” And deep down inside they know that that’s a lie, and they know that that’s not what we’re doing. And they know that if we were going to go down that road, we had many opportunities before to structure it in a different way where we could have achieved that end and probably not had any consequences for it. But instead, we acted as good citizens and built a collaborative process and bring people together. So if you respond the wrong way and you respond negatively and harshly, unfortunately those people say it in today’s society, they have no accountability and then they immediately clutch their pearls and play the victim and they make it a David versus Goliath thing.

The very powerful person is picking on this very weak person and they go and try to create sympathy from people who aren’t intimately connected to the situation. So that is one of the issues, and you see that a lot. So many people, they get very panicky or flighty when an event happens. Like we’re having a budget issue right now where the budget process has always been broadcasted roughly the same way, and we say, “Look, the Constitution first, then the product roadmap, then the budget. And the budget’s going to be a proposal and there’s going to be competing proposals and there’ll be a reconciliation step.” So give Intersect and IO some time to put a coalition together and figure out some basic principles and a basic sizing that needs to be done. And by the way, we’re going to do that under NDA or under private groups, because we don’t want intermediate work products to be leaked because it would be an unfair representation for intermediate products to go out there because some of those things are stubs, some of those things, there’s no intention.

Other things, the price of ADA was 25 cents and it just hasn’t been updated, and people think it’s now four times more expensive. And if every single time you do an intermediate work product, it immediately goes to the internet and people freak the hell out and they get super upset and then they take sides and judge you based on that, then nobody will contribute because they don’t want to get attacked and they don’t want to be part of that toxicity. So unfortunately, somebody in that group leaked it, or at least I guess an early draft of things that wasn’t accurate. And now we have a whole bunch of people dogpiling on Twitter doing that, and it diminishes the credibility of the process and then it makes everything we do thereafter look reactive. So even if we do the right thing, “Oh, they only did the right thing, because we went to Twitter and criticized those people.” As opposed to. “They were planning on doing this all the time.”

And I’m not sure exactly how to resolve that. It is a deeply frustrating modern phenomena in politics. Two generations ago for the really serious stuff, nobody thought that the people in Washington would just be so blatantly against the American people. Let’s say there’s nuclear weapons crisis with the Soviet Union like the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example. Eisenhower and Kennedy were talking to each other every day, Republican former president, Democrat president, and 100% of Washington was aligned. And they’re like, “What can we do? How can we help? This is a national security issue. We’re all in the same boat.” Now in Washington, every national security issue, they look at it through the lens of, “How can I gain political power as a result of manipulating this event to my own interest?”

So there’s zero trust in these types of things. If you ever have a meeting with a person who’s politically opposed to you, they don’t have your back. Even common decency’s out the window now. Like Bernie Sanders for example, and Tulsi Gabbard, she gave up her career in the Democrat party. She was a rising star. She could have been president one day as a Democrat. She gave up her career by backing Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton and criticizing Hillary Clinton and how she kind of strong armed the 2016 nomination against Bernie. And Bernie’s probably going to vote against Tulsi running for DNI. It just shows you how far partisan politics have gone. If I know that this person gave up their career to support me and they had integrity and fought hard for something that was important to me, I wouldn’t betray that person, stab them in the back for a job that I knew they were qualified for, but I’m only voting against them because it’s a party line thing. Where’s the good in that?

So when you see a system behave that way, you tend to just lose all trust in it and you start doing pretty extreme things. So it’s a delicate thing and it’s a hard thing and events happen and they make you a little angry at times. And then you’re very disappointed in people and their conduct, especially when they do things a certain way. And at the end of the day, if you have benefit of the doubt, then you realize that even if it’s not a perfect work product, the person’s heart is in the right place and you can work with this person. So if somebody’s heart’s in the right place and they produce something you don’t like, your first response should be just pick up the phone and call them and have a conversation with them because they could be persuaded and you’re both on the same side. You both want the same outcome.

What you do as an adult, you explain, “I think you’re trying to achieve this and this and this is that, right?” They say, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m trying to achieve.” Say, “Okay, well here’s the problem with what you’ve proposed, if we go down this road, we’re going to run into A, B and C. And I think if you do choose this alternative, you won’t have A, B and C, but you’ll still achieve the same end.” And then they hear it out and they say, “Oh yeah, actually that makes a lot of sense. I think we’ll go with the thing you’re doing.” Or they’ll disagree and they’ll say, “I thought about the thing you’re doing, but here’s this other thing you had no idea about that I know about and I’m going to tell it to you and that’s why I was forced to do the proposal that I had.” And people say, “Oh yeah, that does kind of make sense.”

So maybe there’s something on your side that you had considered, because you’re not God. You can’t step into somebody’s brain and trust works in both directions. Does the person talking to you respect you enough to listen to you? Does the person talking to you respect you enough to acknowledge that you’re a human being with your own independent ideas and maybe just you have more knowledge about this than they do and that’s the reason why you’re proposing the type of thing. And it goes back to that benefit of the doubt. We live in a society now where people have a hard time conceiving that certain people have access to other information. Like when Trump said COVID was made in a lab, that’s a pretty credible source.

I understand a lot of people, all politics, he’s an evil orange monster and all this stuff. Whatever you think, he is the President of the United States and maybe just the President of the United States is given information we don’t see. He was arrested for that. The whole classified information Mar-a-Lago thing. So the president gets to see stuff we don’t get to see. So if the president says something, especially something very significant like that, it’s a credible source in more cases than not, but we just let our politics get in the way or our personal distaste get in the way, and that’s another big problem. So you have to have objectivity is I guess what I’m getting at and you have to divorce the names and your reactions to the names and the people and where they come from from the conversation, and you have to objectively look at these types of things and then you have to say, “Okay, objectively does the argument and the data make sense?”

And if you are taking things on faith, you have to look at the totality of the person’s track record and say, “Historically in these contexts, have they been reliable or unreliable?” There is no secret in the world that I do not get along with Vitalik Buterin. He has very little respect for me. He thinks I’m less than a piece of dirt on the ground, and there’s a rule in the Ethereum Foundation, they are never allowed to mention Cardano. But let’s say somebody accused Vitalik Buterin embezzling money from the Ethereum Foundation, I wouldn’t believe it unless there was overwhelming evidence for it because I know from his track record, he’s had hundreds of opportunities throughout his career to steal money, to take the easy road, and he’s not motivated by money at all.

I’ve seen it myself working with him, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say, “Unless there’s overwhelming evidence for that and circumstances for that, it’s probably made up rumor and it’s probably not true.” That doesn’t mean I agree with him or I like him or we even get along, but I can objectively separate the person from the event and say, “Well, what’s my lived experience with it? And also what have I seen through his conduct over the last 10 years?”

Douglas:

I was thinking about the working groups that I observed and how there was this interesting tension around the need and the value for transparency and also this notion of getting content to a point where it was consumable. And so if we wait too long until we perfect it, then the community is getting concerned. It’s hard for them to extend the trust long enough for folks to get things to be presentable and ready. Curious what your thoughts are on this idea of like, “Well, if we want to be transparent, but we also need to get things to a shareable state.”

Charles:

Yeah.

Douglas:

Tell me about that tension there.

Charles:

It depends on the work activity that you’re behind. So if you are doing something that everybody agrees on the outcome, it is really good to share that as soon as humanly possible. Like Ouroboros Leios is a great example of that. It’s a protocol we’re implementing for Cardano, and if we’re successful with it’ll make Cardano probably 100 times faster than what it is right now. That’s awesome. Very, very happy about that. So everybody agrees about the outcome. They say, “Oh, we want it.” Where they disagree is about the process, how to get to that outcome, the resources required, the design, these types of things. So what you do is create a working group, bring as many people as you can together and then publicly broadcast the intermediate work products and then everybody grabbing a shovel and they want that to happen. When you have a process where there are winners and losers in that process, and budgets by definition and political campaigns by definition are winners and losers because if somebody got funded, it’s seldom the case that everybody got funded.

So there’s somebody who eventually gets left off and for that particular person, that’s existential and it’s the most meaningful and important thing in the world and they feel cheated and they feel like it was an unfair process and the process has to be torn down, they were a victim of that process. So when you know ahead of time that people have that type of reaction, the problem with intermediate work products is you’re debating winners and losers sets sets, and the problem is you haven’t made your conscious choice of which one of these you want to bank on, and because of that, you’re going to get the worst of all worlds where you get basically prejudged for things you didn’t even do. What if it’s as simple as Bob just put in a stub for $100 million for development and just left in one company because he hasn’t gotten the final list of it?

Then if I saw that and I was on the other side, “Oh, that one company got all the money and none of us got anything, these guys are terrible and they’re planning on stealing from all of us.” That’s why you got to keep that secret until you’re absolutely certain that you can live with the consequences of the red button, the launch button. And you say, “Okay, it is what it is. We just have to live with it.” The other circumstance is competitive and in some cases your intermediate work products can be stolen by your competitors, and when they get taken, they can be used for their own products and that’s less of an issue in an open source decentralized ecosystem. But it could be an issue if you have a fork of the chain.

Let’s say that there’s a Cardano and a Cardano Classic, or there was Ethereum Classic and there was a Bitcoin Cash, and let’s say you’re working on a new protocol that’s super awesome and you want your ecosystem be first to launch that protocol so that you can basically not lose the fight between these two competing chains that are going after each other. So in those circumstances you don’t share, even though perhaps sharing would be better if you didn’t have a native competitor. The nice part about Cardano is it’s so technologically different from the EVM ecosystem, we don’t have any of those concerns. Nobody’s trying to steal eUTxO or Plutus or Ouroboros.

We’re kind of living in our own world, and even if they want to like Haskell, it’s a weird language what’s going on? It’s not easy for them to do that, and that’s actually means that we can be far more collaborative and far more open with people. And that’s why we have 168 scientists we’ve worked with for the 230 papers we’ve published, and that’s why our code is so open and all the protocols are so open and the prototyping process is so open, there’s just no interest in espionage for that. Whereas maybe you’re a layer two on Ethereum and you’re just exactly the same as all the other layer two neighbors, you’d be a little bit more careful with that and you want to try to create some first mover advantage.

Douglas:

That’s fascinating. I want to come back to the convention and the workshops leading up to it. What impact do you think the facilitative approach made to the final outcome?

Charles:

Everybody entered in with trust, and that’s why the convention worked. It was hard because there was strong disagreements, but because they trusted each other, they were able to converge to a compromised state. If people didn’t enter in with trust, it would just be physically impossible. There’s too much to go against the tides, the cultural stuff, the language stuff, the asymmetries and experience and knowledge and power and money. There’s just too much there, but everybody entered in with trust and that’s the thing that made the difference at the end of the day.

Douglas:

When you think about the future developments around community-driven governance within Cardano or other broader blockchain spaces or contexts, where is it headed? What is the future?

Charles:

We see it. We see it with Metagov over in the Ethereum space. We see it with Tezos, we see it with Polkadot, we see it with Dash and Cardano, and all of these are examples of decentralized governance. In real time, you’re really asking three things. Does the system have three properties, integrity, efficiency and effectiveness? Integrity means you start with a founding intent and does the system preserve that founding intent? So the Constitution is the founding intent of Cardano. Then you have the efficiency, which is how quickly can the system converge to make a decision? Is it a day, a week, a month, a year? And it could be different for different types of decisions like hard forks versus protocol parameter changes or treasury withdrawals. But how quickly does that take? And effectiveness is how good are the decisions you’re making? So if you set an outcome, can you make that outcome?

So for example, we say something like, “We think this budget for 2025 will double the size of Cardano as measured by transaction volume and TVL.” Did it happen? If it did, it’s an effective system because those were the measurement criteria. That’s the outcome we wanted to achieve, we achieved it. So typically you have a governance trilemma where you only get two of the three if you’re good. Sometimes you get all three, but it’s hard. So China is a great case study in efficiency and effectiveness, but no integrity. What I mean by that is from a western perspective, integrity to me means that you don’t persecute minorities. Integrity to me means you protect human rights, integrity to me means you value freedom of commerce and expression. But when I see Jack Ma be disappeared because he disagrees with the government or camps set up in Western China because they had belonged to an ethnic minority or eminent domain used to basically just take people’s land and if they complain, shoot them, that’s not a preservation of human rights and integrity.

On the other hand, gone from a backwater to a superpower in five decades. So it’s a very effective, efficient system upon that optimizing function. Then you have places like Switzerland, which are high integrity. They have rule of law, they protect human rights. No one Swiss thinks, “God, is the government going to purge me?” In fact, they’re more about some of these rights than most western nations and they’re very effective. So effective translates to when they make a decision, it tends to have a good outcome. That’s why they’re one of the richest countries in the world. They’re horrendously inefficient. It takes a long time to make a decision in Switzerland, and Zurich is a great example. If you go to the basement of one of the buildings, they have this beautiful large wooden model of the city of Zurich, and you have to go through these stages of steps.

Whenever you want to build something in Zurich, you have to actually, they’ll add it to the wooden model and the account council will debate it and talk about it. It’ll take 20 years to get a permit to build a skyscraper or to modify something inside Zurich because they say, “Oh, we have like 800 years of legacy with this city. We don’t want to squander it because you’re going to make some pretty building, but it won’t fit in.” So everything in Switzerland operates this way. They think in terms of decades and centuries, and Japan is the same way in certain places where everything is deliberate and takes a long time to get done, but it tends to be very effective. So efficiency goes away. So you typically get two of these things and really bad systems, you don’t have any of them. You’re inefficient, you’re ineffective, and you have no integrity.

A lot of dictatorships end up this way. They start highly effective and highly efficient, and then the dictator gets old and crazy and he has sycophants all around him, and then the efficacy disappears and the efficiency disappears inside the system. We see that with Russia, with Vladimir Putin where he was thinking, “Oh, I have this badass army and they can do all these incredible things.” And they were just straight up lying to him. They were fake armies on paper and fake training on paper and equipment. So when he made a war plan to invade Ukraine on four fronts and try to take the whole country in two weeks, he’s thinking, “Oh, this will be easy because everything I was told is this way.” And it turns out it was a disastrous decision for him because, because they didn’t actually have what they said they had, and that’s why they’ve gotten mired down in this three-year meat grinder, which has killed about 800,000 Russians and 600,000 Ukrainians, 1.4 million people.

It’s a remarkable loss of life. So bad bureaucracy has those types of consequences. It kills people, it slows things down. It’s ineffective. So we’re now assessing Cardano on those three criteria. Once the Constitution’s in place, we have a litmus test for integrity and we have a point to measure and we say, “Did the government ever try to make or make a decision that violated the constitutional intent?” If it did, we lost integrity. If it didn’t, we preserved it. And then you look at things like the budget, the roadmap, and other events like protocol parameter changes, hard forks, and you say, “How long did it take?” That’s your efficiency. And then you look at the outcome of those events and say, “Is the system making good decisions and is Cardano consistently growing in these types of things?” So that’s your efficacy inside the system, and we can measure it year by year.

And what’s cool is you can measure your neighbors too. Like Ethereum for example, when they did the DAO hack, the bailout there, I would argue it broke the integrity of a blockchain. They’re supposed to be irreversible, code is law. They don’t agree. But that’s after they did, that meant that Ethereum now has the option to do that. The same with staking discrimination where they’re getting some other people who approve transactions to be OFAC compliant as validators, and so they can censor the Mempool to remove transactions that are on the OFAC list. So now there’s transaction discrimination. So I remember in the early days at Ethereum, we put up “censorship resistant” out the door, “immutable” out the door. So for me, it’s not an integrity system, but people love that ecosystem. They seem to think that way and they don’t value that. So that can be like China, I guess there’s no coincidence that Vitalik speaks Chinese.

These things are okay. They have a different viewpoint of these types of things. Where Bitcoin, that will never happen. We all know that. They’re hard hardcore people. They have one view, it’s called maximalism, and there’s only one God, it’s Satoshi, and they follow that to the core. So the most important of the three for Bitcoin is integrity. So much so they’re willing to sacrifice any notion of efficacy and efficiency. It takes three to five years to put a major upgrade into Bitcoin with Taproot being the last one in 2021, and they’re debating all these upgrades. But it takes years for those types of things to come in. It takes us months.

And the power of an on-chain government is it allows you to move trade-off windows. So what we’re banking on is we can preserve an integrity like Bitcoin has, but we can move as fast as Ethereum does in terms of upgrades and be that efficient. Then we’re also banking that the wisdom of the crowds will make the decisions we make over time more effective. So over time the budgets will get more effective and over time the product roadmap will get more inclusive and effective for what we need and we’ll see. But if it works out, it’s a great case study in governance models and it’s something to learn from.

Douglas:

So thinking about the community-driven approach to drafting and voting in the constitutional draft, what challenges do you foresee in scaling this approach as you think about bringing in more community members, more ADA holders, more voices?

Charles:

I think that the thing is designed to scale, and we know that because we’ve gone from nothing to 780 DReps. We’ve gone from nothing to 108,000 people participating in governance in some form or fashion, and we’ve done all of that without the network collapsing and actually having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s a really amazing thing. The workshop is the single most expensive artifact, and I’d like to have it as an ongoing concern, but really for a representative sample of the world, you’re talking about seven of the order of magnitude of about five to 10 million per year. And not just for governance workshops, but also product and budget workshops. So I think they have a place and purpose, especially in areas that are very disenfranchised, that just don’t have native access to the ecosystem and they don’t have the money to travel.

So that’s a model that you pull out and you use. And also when people start developing their own communication channels, like the DReps are starting to all talk to each other and they’re forming coalitions and they are in the same Discord and they have regular meetings and these types of things, that is an organic bottom-up coordination. And once it occurs, then it becomes very efficient. So if you want to percolate information through the entire ecosystem, it’s very straightforward. You just do three, four things and then boom, you’ve talked to half of Cardano. Now innovation also can help. One of the things we’re working on in terms of technology is I really want a Pub/Sub mechanism that when you go ahead and delegate your ADA or your vote to a stake pull operator or to a DRep that you also auto-subscribe in your wallet to their comms channel so those people can push messages to you.

I really think that that would be an amazing feature. And we’ll probably roll something like that over into LACE and then hopefully gradually get into the Cardano protocol. Well, minute you have that, if you’re a DRep or if you’re a stake pool operator, you now have a button to click to talk to every person who trusts you. That’s really powerful, because you don’t know those people. It’s a permissionless system. They could be in Nigeria, they could be in Vietnam and not speak English. They could be anywhere in the world when you really think about it. And when they delegate to you, they’re not giving you their name, their email, or any of these types of things. So having a comms channel where those messages can be pushed, super valuable, because then you know how to reach everybody.

But wait a minute, if everybody, like 70% of the Cardano users are delegating to SPOs, and about 20% right now are delegating to DReps, and that’s growing every day. Once we have those systems in place, just by talking to a few hundred DReps and a few thousand SPOs, you literally can talk to every person in Cardano. That’s the power of networking. So that’s awesome. So you just create a horizontal communication channel for that. And even if you want to coordinate and scale at a level of 10 million people or 100 million people, you now have an effective way to do that. So part of the game is just making sure you have the right comms channels and the right collaborative media workshops. Their primary thing isn’t information discussion. You can do that over Zoom. The primary thing is trust building, because when people actually meet each other and they spend time with each other and they get to know each other, that creates a reality where they’re like, “I now know this person. I now understand where this person is coming from.”

And everything that seemed dramatic and weird, it evaporates away and we’re all reading from the same hymn sheet now. So it’s important that you have in-person touch points on a regular basis in a decentralized thing, because there’s what we call relationship entropy. And so if you don’t meet up, the opposite thing happens over time. You start becoming more suspicious of people, you start having fights with people, and then you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. So workshops pull people together and they restore the relationships, and then people pull apart organically. So you have to do that on a recurring and regular basis, and we’re trying to figure out how to do that as an ecosystem in a cost-effective way because there’s just a lot of people and there’s a lot going on, but I think it is one of the most important things you can do to keep a decentralized ecosystem cohesive.

Douglas:

Incredible. Well, Charles, we’re coming up on the end here, so just want to say thanks for joining today and really enjoyed the conversation and look forward to seeing you again sometime soon.

Charles:

Absolutely. You’re a permanent member of this ecosystem now, whether you like it or not, because you were part of there at the beginning of governance, and we’re going to do as an ecosystem is keep learning. Minimum viable governance is so exciting because it’s a foundation, it’s not an end, and you can build on that. So now that we have great dirt work and we just put the flat work down, we got the concrete down, we can build one hell of a structure on top of that, because it was pretty thick pad that we poured. So I am real excited and real happy and thank you for everything you do. And I love talking about these topics.

And usually when I do interviews they’re like, “When is the price of ADA going up?” Or, “How do we win against Solana?” Or these things. And getting to talk about the actual collaborative models is phenomenal. And I’d highly recommend you interview Tam Haasen, the president of IO, because this is what she does. She’s super, super good at these things and she’s in love with the idea of building better collaborative models, and it’s always fun to talk about them.

Douglas:

Ooh, yeah, I’d love to. Fantastic. Well, thanks for the recommendation, and again, thanks for coming on the show.

Charles:

Thank you, Doug. Cheers.

Douglas:

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

The post From Talking Sticks to Blockchain: Revolutionizing Governance Through Collaboration appeared first on Voltage Control.

“It’s so much more beneficial when everyone gives up ownership of ideas and creates something that belongs to the whole group.”- Emilia Åström

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Emilia Åström, facilitator at Howspace and co-creator of “Perspectives.” Emilia shares her journey from competitive advertising to collaborative facilitation, inspired by her experience at Hyper Island. They discuss the transformative power of facilitation in fostering inclusive, innovative group dynamics and how structured methods like design thinking enhance leadership and learning. Emilia also highlights the impact of digital tools and AI in large-scale facilitation and emphasizes facilitation as a mindset that enriches both professional and personal growth.

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About the Guest

Emilia Åström is Head of Community at Howspace, where she facilitates peer learning communities for leaders in learning and transformation. With over a decade of experience, she was part of the early days at Mural, helping define best practices for remote collaboration. She co-authored MethodKit for Remote Workshops and created the toolkit Perspectivas for inclusive advertising with Publicitarias. Emilia began her career in digital strategy and has since used design thinking and facilitation to guide advertising agencies and teams through complex digital transformations.

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab Podcast, where I speak with Voltage Control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method-agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences.

This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers.

Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab, and if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com. Today I’m with Emilia Astrom at Howspace, where she facilitates peer learning communities for leaders in learning and transformation.

She’s the co-creator of Perspectives, a card deck for inclusive advertising developed with Publicitarias.org, and co-author of MethodKit for remote workshops and hybrid teams. Welcome to the show, Emilia.

Emilia Astrom:

Thank you, Douglas. Really great to be here. I’ve been longing to talk to you again and have this conversation, so.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, looking forward to it. It’s been a while. We were just remarking and it’s like pretty much a year, which is remarkable.

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah, time goes by quickly when you’re busy and have fun.

Douglas Ferguson:

Indeed, indeed. So I want to go back a little bit to the origin story here of how you got started. I know for you, Hyper Island was pretty pivotal in your early journey.

So let’s look at that first moment at Hyper Island. What was it like for you, the one where you realized facilitation could be more than a technique, but a calling?

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah. I had been working in advertising previously, so I came from an environment where it was quite common that you would compete against other creatives with your ideas, and then the best idea would be picked up. So when I started Hyper Island after that, and I had the first experience in a facilitated design thinking workshop, I was just really amazed with how a whole group were able to in such short time, come up with such great ideas together.

And before that, I hadn’t really known that human-centric design or facilitation existed and that there was a job you could actually do. So when I met the facilitators who came there when I first started Hyper Island, my idea or intention was to continue to work as a digital strategist or a creative. But I quickly found that it was much more interesting and I was much more fascinated with how can you make others come up with better ideas more quickly?

So that’s how it started, just that feeling of really belonging in a group, feeling that flow or coming up with great ideas together, and I just wanted more. So I continued to explore and study that, and look at what the facilitators who came to Hyper Island to teach courses and workshops would do. And then at the beginning, I would just imitate them and try to do the same, but then I started to explore and create more things on my own as well. So that’s how it started.

Douglas Ferguson:

A couple of things I was thinking about there was the point you made about the competitive environment in the ad agency.

And then the flip side, you’re talking about pulling out the great ideas from others or creating conditions where people come up with the great ideas.

How would you categorize those things, like how are they different, this competitive atmosphere versus this atmosphere where we’re drawing ideas out?

Emilia Astrom:

I guess in some way, the competitive atmosphere can be beneficial too. It can inspire you to be improving and to learning new things. But at the same time, I think that through a more collaborative experience or way of working, you’re much more able to join those ideas together and get the best of everyone.

So that we can come up with something that’s bigger, that’s considering more different perspectives and coming up with better, more strong ideas together. So you also get to better ideas quicker than you would do maybe through developing them individually, separately.

Because you can take all those different good parts from the different ideas and put them together much more quicker.

Douglas Ferguson:

What were some examples of early moments when you started to realize this power of shifting to a more collaborative and a more maybe inclusive approach?

Emilia Astrom:

I think it was really during Hyper Island, we had one week that was focusing just on idea development, and we had some really excellent guest facilitators who came to the school to facilitate those sessions. And those people later, I stayed in touch with them because I was curious to learn more. And there wasn’t that many people in my group either who were curious about facilitation, so I stayed in touch with them and continued to learn more afterwards.

But it was just in those workshops, the way that they were guiding the group through different steps and activities, and I realized how the structure could actually also help you build more creative and come up with better ideas. That moment in that workshop was really changing the perspectives for me. And I also think that I had, as [inaudible 00:06:19] advertising, I had always felt like I struggled a bit with coming up with good ideas.

I didn’t feel like I was maybe that creative or had that good ideas. But with those tools that you get through human-centric design and design thinking, I really felt like I got tools that helped me come up with better ideas. And I was really excited to share that with others as well, to let others have that experience that I had in that workshop in that moment.

Douglas Ferguson:

This kind of feeling that you had, it seems like you were compelled to share with others.

Is that something that’s been pervasive throughout your career or your life, this idea of spreading the news to others and assisting?

Emilia Astrom:

I think so. Actually, I remember a story that my mom used to tell me several times about when in kindergarten, she would observe how I would come up with games and stories, and come up with worlds that the other children would then join in and participate in. And I would come up with like give people roles.

I would come up with missions and we would all go out in the forest and do something together or build something, and so I think that’s something that I’ve probably always been pulled towards. And in school, that could sometimes be a little bit of a challenge, being too inspired and wanting to share your ideas with the group and try to steer the work of the groups as well.

And I think that through facilitation, they also got some tools that helped me make the most of that inspiration and curiosity and the desire to create things. Create worlds and play with others, but in a more constructive and more focused way that could also create better results for everyone. That’s a very interesting question. I never really thought about it that way.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s interesting you were talking about this innate curiosity thing, behavior or trait that you have, and how these facilitation tools are allowing you to maybe funnel that or harness it in a way that’s really productive.

And I’m curious, were there some early tools or some early processes where the light bulb went off to say, “Oh, this feels real natural”?

Emilia Astrom:

When I facilitated or when I participated in a facilitated experience?

Douglas Ferguson:

I’m curious about either. And to your point, sometimes participating in stuff, you could go, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be a game changer. I have to incorporate this.” But certainly when you’re practicing yourself, it’s a totally different experience.

So I’d just be curious, what jumps out to you as maybe a poignant moment around connecting back to that innate interest and curiosity to create these worlds? And was there a particular structure or experience that really stood out that helped you bridge that gap?

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah. I think the first design thinking workshop I was part of that I mentioned, where we very clearly separated the conversation we had, or the moment where we explored the challenges or the needs of the people we would be designing for. And then have a more structured idea generation session where we also used the structure.

And this is something that Hyper Island later also included in the Hyper Island toolkit page, where you can find it yourself if you want to try later. But there’s an exercise called Mash-Up where you come up with different, you start by mapping different needs, different digital technologies, different maybe channels and platforms.

And then you connect them together to come up with new combinations and new ideas and you create new things together. So I think that was a really powerful thing for me, that also by using sticky notes, you take things apart but then you can put them together.

So I think that was a really powerful way as well that I learned through how also the visual aspect of facilitation can work in a really powerful way.

Douglas Ferguson:

So was that the first time you experienced someone sequencing a meeting or a session into its constituent parts so it flowed?

So you were focused on one piece and then moving to the next, versus what we tend to default to, which is like, “Oh, let’s just figure it all out”?

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah, definitely. In advertising, which I was used to before, you usually use a brief format where you do state what the problems and challenges, and needs and opportunities and insights are that you can use to develop your ideas. But after the brief has been created, everyone goes in their own direction, and then you have more of that sometimes you call it a technique like the blue sky.

You just go out in the world and wait for the perfect idea to hit you. Maybe you look at some references, some inspiration, maybe you look at some trends to try to get some ideas, but it’s not a very structured process and that can be a really great way to come up with ideas as well. So I definitely think that both, just a natural, creative process where you dream up new ideas over a longer period of time can have its place.

But sometimes you don’t have the luxury of time to come up with solutions quickly. And sometimes you also need to ensure that you follow a structured process, so that you make sure to do your proper research, that you test things to make sure that they really solve the problem that you’re setting out to solve. So I think that was also something that I was really just amazed with initially.

And thinking back at it now, those are things like today, I take those things for granted, it’s such an ingrained way of how I work. But initially, this was something that was really, really powerful, and this was over 15 years ago now, time goes by quickly. But thinking back at what it was like that first time when I realized this, it was really powerful.

It felt like a whole new world opening up, a whole new level of solving problems and collaborating with others.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I would argue it’s a whole new level of leadership.

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah, that as well. And I think today finally, facilitation is starting to become more part of the discussion more often of what skills we believe that leaders need.

And I absolutely think and today, fortunately when looking around me, when looking at the people I work with, facilitation is starting to become something that most leaders know about and start to apply a little bit.

I think we could do it even more than better, but I’m really happy to say that the awareness of facilitation and the benefits of it are starting to spread more and more.

Douglas Ferguson:

It is very encouraging to see this trend of folks recognizing facilitation and honoring it more. Too often, we see folks talking about leadership as presentation skills or executive presence or this and that.

But as you mentioned earlier, this ability to draw things out of others, to not be the one that has to have all the answers, but to help everyone on the team have great answers. I would argue that’s probably the best leadership skill you could have.

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah. And when I was young and my intention was to continue working in advertising and become a creative or strategist, I think one thing that drove me back then was probably a bit more like, “How could I have better ideas? How can I contribute a bit more through my ideas?”

But through discovering facilitation, really that was a big change as well, just realizing how it’s so much more beneficial when everyone give up that ownership of ideas, and let them do something that belongs to the whole group.

And how that can really, yeah, also support leaders in thinking about, “How can we support the group to have better ideas together?” So that was really interesting as well.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it also is an interesting lens into how different cultures and different teams and different industries approach problems. Because when you’re focusing on facilitation skills, it typically exposes you to lots of different groups.

Whether that’s through your community of facilitators or just through the nature of the variety of work that you’re doing, and you’re no exception to that. You facilitated across continents and industries and formats. So I’m curious, what do you see as the through line in all those experiences?

Emilia Astrom:

I think that’s something that I started to realize more and more just recently. When I started out with facilitation, it was more of helping teams coming up with better ideas, but then now when I reflect back on it. Because recently, the last years, I’ve been finding myself more and more intentionally using facilitation as a way to help teams change the way they work and learn together in order to be able to change as well.

And I think looking back at the way I used facilitation when starting out, that was actually also about facilitating change. Because at that point, and this was back in 2010, then there were a lot of changes happening with new digital channels and tools coming in. And organizations were trying to find new ways of adapting to these new digital tools, and adapting to these new ways of working that this meant for them.

And human-centric design in facilitation was a tool that I found that I could use to help teams analyze what were the needs and what were the challenges of these new circumstances, and the new digital environment that we suddenly found ourselves in? So I think maybe those two parts, human-centric design as a way to facilitate change and learning, because change and learning are also very closely related.

It’s very hard to change if you’re not learning something new. And learning often means that something is changing as well, the way I changed by learning about facilitation kind of.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s certainly difficult to change when you’re in a fixed mindset.

And learning forces you into more of a growth mindset or a curious space, because you’re already framing and opening yourself up to learning new stuff.

So your brain is changing, you’re less change-adverse, I guess, is the way I like to think about it.

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah. And I think facilitation also makes you less more adaptive to change, because many facilitation techniques and facilitation practices, it’s embedded in the methods and the tools that we use.

The reflection and the looking back at what we did and thinking about how we can improve, so that’s something that really supports that mindset of change in growth as well, I think.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. When done well, it certainly does reinforce just by the nature of doing it, it keeps us in that growth mindset.

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And as a facilitator, it’s always important to learn and grow and learn new things. I think throughout my career, I haven’t been planning too much or thought too much about the future what I would like to do. I feel like I’ve been more of a receptor just listening to my surroundings and seeing what my surroundings need.

And maybe that’s also in a way something that comes through facilitating, because you become a more attentive listener. You’re listening to your environment to feel what the people in the room needs, while still focusing on where you need to go in a way, what is it that you are trying to achieve, what the group is trying to achieve?

So you move between the both, listening and learning to grow, and that’s also something that’s embedded in many of the facilitation methods and tool that we’re using thinking about, “What’s the desired future state that we want to go towards?” And even when designing workshops, we often start with the end goal state.

So I think that’s something that also becomes very present in the way we think and work and learn through the facilitation mindset. So that’s another benefit that I think you’re getting from being more aware of facilitation, just being more mindful about how you listen, how you learn, how you grow.

But also thinking about the future and the desired state, and how we can design our will to get there. How we can facilitate us getting there. Sorry, that became very abstract, I realize now, that I’m thinking about growth and learning.

Douglas Ferguson:

The thing that’s emerging for me is this idea of when you internalize facilitation, when it becomes a deep part of your practice, it’s not just something you show up and do for work, or it’s not just something that you sprinkle in to meetings and experiences you have with folks. It has a shift on how you view the world, how you navigate the world.

Because you’ve internalized it at a deep level, so you’re a better listener, whether that’s in personal relationships with family and loved ones, or whether it’s like you’re buying a car, you’re noticing these details. Or maybe it impacts how you negotiate anything and how you move through, and also to your point, how open you might be to possibilities.

And so I would say it tunes your radar in a way that, I think, is valuable in a broader scope than just in work life.

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah, totally. I’ve noticed in the last years especially how I subconsciously or unintentionally or sometimes with intention too, start to facilitate or be more present and more mindful about how I go about every day and life events. And I also observe a lot in my environment all the time what different experiences are like, what it feels like, what I can learn from it.

So I get a lot of ideas for my facilitation just from interacting with, as you mentioned, products or services or holidays, and these everyday ceremonies and rituals that you go through like Christmas, and I don’t know, midsummer and things like that. I also think that international perspective helps in a way with that. Having lived in different cultures and different countries, you become an outside observer as well.

And after moving back to Sweden recently, I’m also observing more from the outside in a way, even though this is my culture and where I’m from. And that’s also something that’s really helpful for the facilitation mindset as well. Changing environment, which is something you do automatically by facilitating in different environments as well, which is something that helps us be more aware and observing too.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s a lot easier to observe if you leave and come back.

Emilia Astrom:

Exactly. And that’s also, talking about growth and facilitation, I think that’s also been something that’s been really helpful for me as I’ve been growing through my career and moving from different industries, and different contexts, and obviously using the experience I had from before. But then also applying, looking for new things that I need to learn and apply it to this new context.

Because even if I started out in advertising, I quite quickly started moving on working with large enterprises in general, supporting them with adopting new ways of working, more human-centric, design-centered and more facilitation. And that was also interesting, I think, when I started my career, I started out with facilitation during the big wave of design thinking when that was really trending.

And that was something that everyone wanted to do and work with, but then I think today it’s a little different. That’s something that more organizations already have embedded in their organizations today, so there may be not as many organizations that are asking me today to come and help them to adopt the more human-centric way of working.

Today, I feel like it’s more about coming up with collaborative ways of learning together, coming up with collaborative ways of facilitating change and transformation. Making those processes more co-creative, more involving by using or also leveraging the collaboration, and improving it to use it as a tool to change the culture. And by that, being able to really anchor and succeed with change.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it can have a really big impact. And speaking of impact, your work with Publicitarias and Tech Elevator highlights your commitment to inclusion and impact.

And I’m curious how that’s going now and what’s new, is emerging around that work for you?

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah. And that’s another area where I feel like I really, and that was also unexpected in a way, that’s something I could never have imagined would be something I would do during my career. But that’s another space where I really felt and saw the positive impact that facilitation can have, using facilitation as a tool to create positive change in different areas and industries.

So for example, with Publicitarias, which is a foundation founded in Argentina that works for more inclusive communication and advertising. With them, the main project I did, was together with their community and together with experts, facilitate a human-centric design process through which we co-created a tool that individuals and teams at advertising agencies.

But then the tool was actually used across brands and marketing departments, universities, schools, and many other places. But using facilitation both to gather the whole community to co-create this tool together, that would be something that the community members themselves could use to become change agents in their own terms and in their own environments.

And the tool is basically it’s a deck of cards, which is an idea that I had gotten from MethodKit and Ola Moller, which is also one of the facilitators I met through Hyper Island. So that was another actually way that Hyper Island had a really big impact on and inspired me in many ways.

But it was really encouraging and inspiring to see how this tool that we created together using design thinking and facilitated methods, then became a tool that enabled almost anyone. Or I would say anyone to facilitate a structured idea generation and evaluation process with their team in a safe way, that would be playful.

And allow other teams to have valuable and transforming conversations that would help change the way they work and the way they looked at advertising. And that’s also connected to, we touched on that earlier before, the power of just visual tools in facilitation.

So through these visual tools, it would also be easier for teams, by coming with those visual tools, you would help build credibility for the conversation. You would feel that it had more importance, but also help create that shared vocabulary that you need to really produce the change and new behaviors and ways of working.

Because through the cards, you could then have a more structured approach to how you would evaluate your ideas. It would help remind you of new ways of looking at things so that you could come up with ideas in a different way. And this is something that through also packaging this facilitation tool in a way like this, we were able to train thousands of people through our workshops.

We also printed and sold the cards. So there are hundreds of advertising agencies, universities and freelancers out there who also have these tools and can use them with their teams that they’re working with. So what started with a relatively small community became something that grew.

And we actually also heard some success stories about agencies that used these tools, and were able to radically change the way they looked at how they would communicate about different products. So that was really, really strong to see how a simple facilitation technique can have such a big impact.

Douglas Ferguson:

And how has Howspace challenged or expanded your understanding of digital or asynchronous facilitation?

Emilia Astrom:

I think, yeah, that was really interesting. So just to set the perspective, so before I started working with Howspace, where I’ve been working for a year now. I was working for almost nine years together with Mural, which is a digital whiteboard that you can use for human-centric design and facilitation as well.

But I think when you collaborate with human-centric design methods in a visual whiteboard, that’s something that it’s easier to do with smaller groups. But as soon as you want to scale, that can easily be a little bit more messy, and I’m talking big scale, like hundreds or thousands of people.

So what’s been really interesting with Howspace, has been to explore how facilitation can work in a digital way with larger groups of people or even entire organizations. At Howspace, we’re working with customers who are using Howspace to facilitate transformation with organizations where the invite may be 4,000, 5,000 people to participate.

And that has been really powerful to see that you can have the conversation at that skill and still make sense and meaning of it. And that also comes back to that shared vocabulary, that shared experience and collective knowledge that you need to be able to really anchor the change, and have people change the behavior, change the conversation so that the change becomes visible and in the everyday.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that sounds exciting. When folks are able to realize this vision they have for where they want to go and bring along that many people, it’s really quite profound.

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah. And I remember when I started out working with facilitation, and during the first years, I don’t think I did that much digital facilitation, to be honest. Most of it was in person and at that point, I wasn’t even imagining that you could do these things with thousands of people at the same time. And that’s also something that wouldn’t have been possible at that point either maybe, because we didn’t have AI tools yet that could help make sense of those amounts of information.

And that’s also been very interesting starting to work with Howspace to explore just how artificial intelligence, especially GenAI, can be used to help make sense of information so that you can really get something out of those big groups’ conversations. Not just seeing all those individual messages and go beyond just word clouds. But actually being able to make sense of it, get some key insights, but also turn that into options that people can make decisions on in real time.

So that has been really eye-opening for me. And I think most people I’ve been talking to in the last year who use generative AI or AI in facilitation, the use cases I’m still hearing the most are maybe you use artificial intelligence to plan your session in advance. Maybe you use it to support your transcripts of the video calls. Maybe afterwards, after the session, you take all the insights and you synthesize them and summarize them with the help of AI.

But with Howspace, it’s been really interesting to explore how you can also use AI in real time, in the moment of the session to get insights and to advance the process with the group. So that’s been really interesting to explore and something that I’m looking forward to do more of in the future as well.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. We actually held a workshop at South by Southwest on this very topic, how most people look at AI as a utilitarian tool, that it’s a one-to-one. Like I as an individual, I’m going, to your point, use it for my planning, use it for some retrospective.

And it’s very much a, “It’s going to do a task for me and I’m going to get a thing out of it.” But bringing in the AI as a collaborative partner has some really interesting, I would say, outcomes. And it’s not about adopting some tool right now, I think it’s about adopting a mindset of like, “Hey, let’s use this in different moments, in different times, in different ways.”

And eventually, the tools are going to show up that are intended to be used in that way, and then it won’t feel so foreign. Because I think that we’re going to see more and more of the stuff just embedded almost like AI teammates and coworkers.

Emilia Astrom:

Yeah. And that’s something that people talk about quite a lot. I think still in the future, we’re probably still going to want to have real human facilitators to have that human touch, and who can really read the room and understand the feelings.

But I also think it’s really valuable to use artificial intelligence as a co-facilitator or another team member in the room, who can help come up with better ideas, help synthesize and things like that in real time.

So that’s really interesting to explore as well, how we can collaborate with it, and how we can embed it more and more into the facilitation until the point where we almost don’t notice it. It’s so natural and such part of the process.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes, I love that. And then I’m just curious if you have any reflections? We talked about facilitation being a really important leadership skill.

And I’d love to hear if you have any advice on, or just for any of our listeners that might be interested in how they might harness the power of facilitation, or even how organizations might better harness it?

Emilia Astrom:

I think there are many different ways. I think something that I’m working with quite a lot right now, is on one hand, the role of facilitation in transformation. And I think that’s an interest that are starting to emerge more in the last years, as with the challenges of the world and the economy, the pressure, of course, on people leading transformation to be able to show impact potential results is becoming increasing all the time.

And then I think facilitation has really showed up as one of those tools that you can use as a leader who’s leading change, to ensure that you’re getting the results that you’re hoping for. And doing so by as we talked about initially, my first insights about facilitation and human-centric design. It allows you to have more perspectives present earlier, which ensures that you maybe make less mistakes later on.

It also ensures that you’re testing and getting feedback ongoing. So hopefully, that would ensure to set you up for success and avoid making some mistakes, and getting more value out of the change that you’re trying to produce earlier. And the other area where I’m working quite a lot right now is how I can use facilitation to facilitate social learning and knowledge sharing.

And that’s also in a way connected to the change. Because I think organizations are starting to become more aware of just the need for before implementing a big change, make sure that people have the skills and the tools they need to be able to adopt those new ways of working. I think still in the news, in Sweden at least, you can quite often read about organizations or public institutions are implementing new systems or new ways of working.

But without having that training initially, and then the adoption doesn’t look as you had hoped, and there’s a lot of costs as a result of that. So having that learning facilitated as part of that, is also very powerful. And what’s also very interesting, especially now with new technologies like AI

What I also heard quite a lot recently is how central learning teams often have a hard time to keeping up producing learning materials and content in the same speed that the employees are adopting new technologies and ways of working, and especially in the case of AI. So being able to facilitate these knowledge-sharing possibilities and facilitating this social learning also becomes a way to keep up to speed with new change.

And in that way, being able to support the change and transformation that needs to take place, but I also think that it’s a way for us to have more fun and to connect more at work, and that’s something we wanted especially now. After the pandemic and many years working at home, and now we’re also being asked to come back to the office.

And if we can use facilitation to make those things more meaningful and get more out of it, I think that’s something that’s very beneficial as well. So not just for the profit and the value, but also for our well-being and our joy at work.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. Well, as we come to a close, could you leave our listeners with a final thought?

Emilia Astrom:

Yes, of course. And I think that’s very much connected to what we’ve been talking about most recently. After especially I think starting to work with Howspace and get insight into how organizations really change, because that’s something that we’ve been supporting quite a lot.

But also looking back at what I’ve been doing in my career, helping facilitate digital transformation, but also helping facilitate cultural change through Publicitarias. I think what I really learned is just or what I’ve seen is just the power of involving people early in the change and inviting them to co-create it.

And just how change becomes more effective and sustainable when people feel ownership of the change. We invite more voices, we invite the voices of those who are impacted, not just those who are in charge of the change, which is very important. But if we want to do so, we need to know how to facilitate it and many organizations are a little hesitant to do those things still.

But I think that the answer to that and how you can feel more comfortable in inviting people into the change and co-creating it is through facilitation.

Douglas Ferguson:

Excellent. Well, it was a pleasure chatting with you today, and look forward to chatting again sometime soon.

Emilia Astrom:

Yes, thank you. Great questions. I feel like it became very introspective, a little bit abstract at some points. But I hope that this will also awaken some more curiosity and interests from people about what more can you get out from facilitation? And how can it support your personal growth, but how can it also open up new career paths?

And I strongly believe as well that through the needs, technology is changing faster all the time, and we’re going to have to change more all the time and learn more all the time. And I think facilitation is one of those skills that’s going to still be needed many years from now to help facilitate those things, and help us overcome all the challenges that we’re facing as a world.

Douglas Ferguson:

Let’s hope so. Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe and receive updates when new episodes are released.

We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics and collaboration at voltagecontrol.com.

The post From Competition to Collaboration in Idea Generation appeared first on Voltage Control.

In facilitation, leadership, and systems change, edges are not simply metaphors. They are indicators of movement, of invitation, of challenge and potential. They show up when we notice our comfort being tested, when our default tools no longer fit the moment, when our story rubs up against someone else’s, or when a group tiptoes toward transformation.

This July, we’re exploring the theme of Edges not only because it shows up again and again in our work, but also because it will guide us through our upcoming Facilitation Summit. To support this exploration, we’re highlighting one of our favorite peer coaching tools: Troika Consulting. This structured activity invites three people to rotate through the roles of client and consultant, holding space for reflection, clarity, and challenge.

This month’s featured facilitation activity is Troika and we’ve included five provocative prompts you can use for Troika that are tied to the acronym EDGES:

• E – Explore the Unknown
• D – Disrupt Patterns
• G – Generate Dialogue
• E – Embrace Tension
• S – Steward Emergence

Each prompt invites participants to work with a different kind of edge—personal, interpersonal, systemic, or strategic. Below, we unpack each letter of the acronym, explore the deeper meaning, and share how it can guide your practice.

Explore the Unknown

Troika Prompt: Where in your work or life are you currently standing at an edge—something uncertain, emerging, or uncomfortable?

The edge of the unknown can feel exciting—or terrifying. For some, it sparks curiosity and energy. For others, it can produce anxiety and resistance. What matters is not whether we enjoy it, but whether we learn to stay present with it. In our certification programs, we often frame this as a “growth edge,” a place just beyond what’s familiar.

Edges are not always visible. Sometimes, we sense them before we can name them: a pattern breaking down, a restlessness we can’t explain, an opportunity that feels both thrilling and destabilizing. Exploring the unknown requires a stance of openness—not to answers, but to noticing.

It also helps to remember that edges don’t always emerge spontaneously. Sometimes we have to seek them. That might look like joining a new community of practice, offering to facilitate in a new context, or even initiating a difficult conversation. Growth happens in motion.

Facilitators aren’t immune to stagnation either. We often see facilitators return to tools and scripts that used to feel alive but now feel rote. Standing at the edge of our own evolution means becoming reacquainted with uncertainty—sometimes even learning to love it. That’s a skill in itself.

Troika is especially powerful for surfacing these edges. As you speak your uncertainty aloud, others can help you see the contours of what’s forming—even if you can’t quite see it yet.

Disrupt Patterns

Troika Prompt: Where are you being invited to stretch beyond your facilitation comfort zone—and what’s at stake if you do?

Disrupting patterns means naming what’s familiar—and questioning whether it still serves. That might be a facilitation habit, a team dynamic, a structure, or even a mindset. Disruption doesn’t have to be violent. It can be intentional, thoughtful, even gentle. But it does require honesty.

We often see facilitators cling to methods that once worked but no longer fit the moment. The urge to “stick with what I know” is strong. But so is the cost of stagnation.

Stretching beyond the comfort zone requires vulnerability. It can also reawaken creativity. The edge here is not about abandoning everything—it’s about holding your tools lightly, staying flexible, and listening for what the group really needs.

In learning theory, this aligns with the zone of proximal development: that sweet spot where challenge meets support. Troika can illuminate this zone by reflecting back where your current comfort is limiting your next step.

And while pattern disruption may start with technique or practice, it often moves inward. It asks, “What am I avoiding by staying in this groove?” or “Whose needs am I prioritizing when I fall back on this routine?” Sustainable disruption requires pausing to explore our own attachments to comfort, control, or perfection. This deeper layer is often where real transformation begins.

Generate Dialogue

Troika Prompt: What’s a provocative question that lives at the edge of your current project or inquiry?

Some edges live between us. They show up in culture, power, language, identity, and expectation. These edges often surface as friction—but underneath that friction is potential. When we generate dialogue at these edges, we open doors to new understanding, deeper collaboration, and collective insight.

Provocative questions help us reach these edges. They challenge assumptions, uncover values, and reveal blind spots. The edge might be a conversation your team has been avoiding. Or a topic you’re nervous to name out loud. Or a question that feels just a little too big to answer.

In our Facilitation Lab meetups, some of the most powerful moments happen when someone asks a question they’ve been carrying alone—and discovers that others have been holding it too. That’s the power of dialogue.

This Troika prompt encourages you to name one of those edge-questions, and let others reflect it back, stretch it, or reframe it. What feels provocative to you may be the spark that helps your collaborators move forward.

Not every question will feel welcome in every space. That’s part of the edge, too. Facilitators must tune into when to push and when to pause. A provocative question in the wrong moment can close a group down, but in the right moment, it can open up entirely new territory. Timing and trust are everything.

Embrace Tension

Troika Prompt: Where have you felt tension at the edge of a group, culture, or identity—and how is that informing your work today?

Tension is not the enemy of progress. It’s often the signal that something important is at stake. In facilitation, we sometimes talk about the “tightrope” between comfort and discomfort. Stay too comfortable, and there’s no movement. Lean too far into discomfort, and people disengage.

The most skilled facilitators learn to surf this edge. They notice when tension arises. They stay grounded. And they help others interpret the tension, rather than flee from it.

Sometimes, we have to sharpen the edge to make it visible. Other times, we need to soften it so the group can move safely through. There’s no single rule. As we discussed recently, facilitation is not about erasing all tension, but about knowing how to hold it well.

This Troika prompt invites you to examine a moment of past or present tension—especially one connected to difference, identity, or power. How did it shape you? What did you learn? How are you applying that learning now?

We also encourage facilitators to notice their internal reactions to tension. Often, the discomfort we perceive in a group mirrors our own edge. Instead of smoothing over the moment, try asking yourself: What if I stayed curious? What might this tension be pointing to? What’s just beyond it?

Steward Emergence

Troika Prompt: Where are you holding on to an old pattern or process, even though you’re aware something new is trying to emerge?

Emergence is the process through which something new comes into being—often gradually, unpredictably, or at the edges of what we understand. It’s not the same as a goal or a plan. It can’t be controlled. But it can be stewarded.

Many facilitators sense when something new is trying to surface. A group dynamic shifts. An old strategy loses traction. A client begins to ask different questions. You might feel it in the language people use, or in the energy of a room.

The challenge is that emergence often requires letting go. That might mean releasing a process that once served you, or admitting that your usual approach is no longer aligned. It can be humbling—and freeing.

Troika is a beautiful space for stewarding emergence. By naming what feels outdated or misaligned, and asking others to reflect what they sense is trying to take shape, you create a container for clarity. You also signal your readiness to evolve.

This final prompt asks you to name the edge between what was and what wants to be. That’s where the real work begins.

And here’s the truth: emergence rarely feels efficient. It feels messy, slow, ambiguous. That’s because we’re not just solving problems—we’re making room for what didn’t exist yet. Facilitators who learn to live in this ambiguity become better stewards of systemic change, helping groups build resilience for the unknown.

Edges as Practice, Not Destination

Edges aren’t places we conquer. They’re places we practice. They invite us to show up with presence, humility, and curiosity. They are, as one of our team members recently said, where the magic happens—not because they are magical, but because of how we meet them.

As you explore these prompts, we invite you to try them in a Troika with your peers, team, or learning cohort. You don’t have to have answers. You don’t even have to know exactly what your edge is. You just have to be willing to look, to name what you can, and to listen to what others see.

We hope these prompts serve as a doorway to your next threshold—and that you walk through with intention.

Here they are once again, ready for your next Troika:

1. Explore the Unknown: Where in your work or life are you currently standing at an edge—something uncertain, emerging, or uncomfortable?
2. Disrupt Patterns: Where are you being invited to stretch beyond your facilitation comfort zone—and what’s at stake if you do?
3. Generate Dialogue: What’s a provocative question that lives at the edge of your current project or inquiry?
4. Embrace Tension: Where have you felt tension at the edge of a group, culture, or identity—and how is that informing your work today?
5. Steward Emergence: Where are you holding on to an old pattern or process, even though you’re aware something new is trying to emerge?

Walk to the edge. Look around. Listen. Something powerful lives there.

The post On the Edge of Something Powerful appeared first on Voltage Control.

“Somewhere along the line, as we grow up, we get so used to doing things a certain way that we lose touch with that creative side of the brain. As kids, we tried all sorts of things and never stuck to a certain methodology or structure, but I think facilitation brings out that childlike curiosity, which makes the whole thing very special. And I think that’s what’s kept me going.”- Varsha Prasad

In this Facilitation Lab podcast episode, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Varsha Prasad of IdeaCompass about her journey as a facilitator and entrepreneur. Varsha shares insights from her first design thinking workshop, the impact of mentorship, and the importance of creating engaging environments. She discusses navigating cultural differences in facilitation, her transition to independent consulting, and the value of community support. The conversation highlights the power of innovation, structured reflection, and open-mindedness in workshops, offering practical advice for facilitators seeking to inspire creativity and collaboration across diverse teams.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

Varsha on Linkedin

IdeaCompass on Instagram

About the Guest

Varsha is an innovation strategist and the Founder of IdeaCompass, a consulting practice dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs transform bold ideas into actionable strategies. She specializes in facilitation, design thinking, and business innovation, working with diverse industries including tech, education, transportation, hospitality and e-commerce and public sector.  

With a strong background in customer success and corporate innovation, Varsha has collaborated with organizations globally to drive impactful change. She is passionate about building human-centered solutions that deliver tangible business results.  

Varsha’s expertise lies in guiding cross-functional teams, fostering creative collaboration, and simplifying complexity into clear, actionable strategies. Her approach blends structured innovation frameworks with a deep understanding of customer needs, ensuring sustainable transformation for the businesses she works with.

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

Thank you, Douglas. Happy to be here and chat with you.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s so good to have you. And I guess let’s get started by hearing a little bit about how you got your start. Take us back to that first design thinking workshop at Cisco. What do you remember about how it felt walking into that room and why did it hit so different?

Varsha:

Yeah, that was a different kind of day for me, especially because I was used to one hour meetings in a conference room with long tables and chairs on either side of the tables, one person standing at the front of the table walking through a presentation, and most of us joining off or just looking into our phones. But that was a special one because as soon as we entered the table, the room set up was totally different. There was music playing in the background.

And we had our director, who was supposed to be one of the senior most people in our organization, standing at the door welcoming people with smiles, and I could see sticky notes, colorful sticky notes and Lego blocks and all sorts of cool stuff lying on the table there. So that was very new to me. And from the time we entered, I didn’t know how the day passed. It was eight hours. We walked in at 9 AM and then we finished, I’d say I think five or something with a break in between for lunch. That was the day that things turned around for me and I fell in love with the whole process of design thinking and creative workshops.

Douglas:

Was there a specific moment in the day where something clicked for you?

Varsha:

I think the fact that ideation is, I think one of my favorite ways to work around things, like from the day I realized that this is how you can brainstorm and come up with new ideas. Idea bombing is one of my favorite exercises. Every time I feel like I’m in a clump, I’m stuck, I just stick to this plain, simple exercise. I take a sheet of paper and a pen and just start writing as many ideas as I can. And some of the best ideas come up when you are sitting with a tight timeline. You say, put a timer of 10 minutes and in the 10 minutes come up with as many ideas as you can. And that is one of my favorite exercises, and I keep using that over and over again, both with my participants and myself as well.

Douglas:

I love that. Have you ever done ten-by-ten writing from Liberating Structures?

Varsha:

I’ve done, I think the eight-by-eight, is the Crazy Eights the same thing?

Douglas:

Crazy Eights is a little different. I love Crazy Eights too. To your point, that’s another rapid fire time constraint activity. The ten-by-ten writing is, it’s not part of the Liberating Structures repertoire, but it’s listed as one of the in development. And basically you give your participants a prompt and they’re supposed to write 10 responses to it, and then you give them a second prompt and they write 10 responses and a third prompt, and they write 10 responses. And it’s about just creating so much volume because essentially they’re writing a hundred things that they’re writing 10 things to 10 different prompts.

Varsha:

Exactly. Yeah, that’s an interesting one. Probably the next ideation exercise for me to try out.

Douglas:

Yeah. You can get really playful with the prompts too. One of my favorites is what is something that users don’t want.

Varsha:

I think that there’ll be a list of 20 of them. [inaudible 00:05:04].

Douglas:

Yes. So often we’re making things that people don’t want, right? That’s amazing.

Varsha:

True. I agree.

Douglas:

So you mentioned your lead being a real pivotal mentor, and I want to come back to that kind of scenario you described of just walking in and the room was set up totally different and they were greeting you at the door and there were all these things sprinkled around the room that were different and just how much of an impact the way the room is set up can have.

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit?

Varsha:

Yeah, a lot, because I think this also came up in the Art of Gathering by Priya Parker, when we were doing the certification. So how you set up the room, how the room is placed when participants enter it changes the mood, the psychology of the participants, I think to be in a different environment. I think that’s key. I think for me, it just transported me into a very playful environment and having the music around and seeing those creative, colorful sticky notes, it just activated that creative side of the brain. I guess that’s what it did to me. And ever since then, I realized that that plays a very crucial role because corporate meeting setups, usually there is a hierarchy where the head of the meeting stands at the front and everyone is seated around the table in rows. So it’s a stark difference for sure.

Douglas:

And it’s interesting how powerful that can be. Just putting some thought into how we might just rearrange the space, how we might group folks different, how we might change the seating. It’s a totally different experience walking in with rows of seats versus clusters of chairs or… Very powerful. Also, I took note of you talking about how you were greeted at the door.

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

It’s like so often the host is stuck behind a laptop trying to get the HDMI cable to work or whatever, and that feeling of being invited in, being welcomed, so powerful.

Varsha:

Yeah. And it shows that they were in the room much before the meeting started and they prepped for it. They got all the stuff in. So it shows how much effort they’ve put into designing that space for us, and that automatically signals that we need to be just as involved. It allows us to reciprocate that.

Douglas:

Yeah. The facilitation doesn’t start, once everyone’s in the room and we’re getting folks attention. It starts when folks are first arriving and how are we making them feel comfortable. And to your point, you even just mentioned that you were starting to feel a certain way around like, oh, I’m already in a creative mindset. I’m ready to play games. I’m ready to be totally different in this space.

Varsha:

Yeah, yeah. Especially when you’re not used to that in your office and when you hear music in the office, it just plays on your mind. Yeah.

Douglas:

Yeah. So cool. So coming back to your mentor, what did you learn from shadowing him and working alongside him and how did that shape your early style as a facilitator?

Varsha:

Yeah, so my mentor, his name is Viva, that’s how we call him, Viva. And he was the one who had been to a design thinking workshop, and then he realized how powerful the framework is, just the mindset that it puts us all in. And he decided to introduce that into our organization, and I think we were one of the first or the second teams that he introduced this concept to. The day we did the workshop, I went up to him and I said, “Hey, I really liked the whole workshop that we did today. How can I be part of this?” And he said, “There is no formal design thinking club as such, so let’s start something here.”

I think his mindset was to… He had already embraced the design thinking mindset where you test things out, you prototype it, and then if something doesn’t work, then you reiterate on it. He had a playful mindset himself, so that encouraged us to be bold and accept that. And I think that played a crucial role. He never expected us to be perfect. He didn’t say, if we walk into the room, we need to have answers to everything. That was a huge learning that I had from him.

Douglas:

Yeah. It also sounded like you were really curious throughout your tenure and just trying lots of different things and being persistent and following through on things, what helped you keep that drive and that curiosity and that willingness to explore new things? I could imagine some folks might lose steam or get frustrated or not stick through things. So what kept your passion alive there?

Varsha:

To be honest, that’s a question I keep asking myself even today, because I’m the kind who just jumps from one hobby to another. I don’t keep through with things. I’ve tried dancing, I’ve tried singing, I’ve done all sorts of things. But this is one thing that I think I’ve been doing it for six plus years now since the day I first walked into that room and learned about design thinking. Every time there is a workshop, every time there is some ideation session, I want to be the one who’s facilitating it. I want to be the one who’s driving it. I think one of the key things is when we walk into the room, there is a lot of chaos, there’s a lot of misalignment, and what do we do?

There’s a lot of confusion when we enter the room, and then by the end of it, people are so happy with the amount of ideas that were just generated and the amount of clarity that they get by the end of all those exercises and activities. And somewhere along the line, I think as we grow up, we got so used to doing things a certain way that we’ve lost touch with that creative side of the brain. As kids, we tried all sorts of things and we never stuck to a certain methodology or a structure, but I think it brings out that childish behavior, that childlike behavior, I shouldn’t say childish. But childlike curiosity, which makes the whole thing very special. And I think that’s kept me if I need to answer that question.

Douglas:

Yeah. It sounds like unlike some of the other things you’ve tried, this really connected in with something deep and meaningful that you just couldn’t let go of.

Varsha:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Douglas:

And so also noticed reading your alumni story, the arc of building creative culture across three countries. There was the group, they’re in Bangalore, then Poland and now Netherlands.

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

So I’m curious what you’ve learned about facilitation from doing this work across these three different cultures around how people show up in different ways or just anything you’ve noticed about the differences or the similarities even.

Varsha:

Yeah, I think when I was facilitating back in India… And also it was more around very technical teams. So one thing that I’ve noticed is technical folks are very rooted in a structure. They have a certain way of working and introducing creative ways of working is something new to them, and it’s not as acceptable to these folks. But when I moved to Poland and I started the design thinking club, I think there was a lot more acceptance on or curiosity around how does this work? What does this contain? I think when it comes to cultures, I think Poland has been a lot more accepting in terms of being playful, but I think the culture is also getting better in India where people are open now to newer ways of working. But there was this initial resistance, especially from technical folks where they said, “Hey, what are you making us do? What are these sticky notes? What are these activities and energizers that you’re making us do?” But yeah, over time I think there’s been an acceptance around these new ways of working, these new ways of thinking even.

Douglas:

Coming back to the technical folks having a bit of resistance early on. When you look back on that, what were some of the things that helped them connect in with the purpose or understand more deeply why that was important? Or was it getting to the other end and realizing that, oh, there’s value in this, or was it some clarity that they were getting along the way? What was it that do you think that really helped them?

Varsha:

Yeah, it is definitely the clarity that they get along the way where we… Highlighting the fact that no matter how good your technology is, if it doesn’t connect with your customer, then that’s going to flop. So telling them or making them understand that important fact has played a very crucial role. So especially when you say, we did a lot of these training programs for technical leaders, so aspiring solution architects and technical leaders, because they need to get out of that structured or single one way of thinking into now how do we bring innovation within our company, within our teams, and how do we change that culture within our teams. So once they saw how design thinking works, I think they were a lot more accepting, thinking that this is something we need to embrace and it’s new, but it’s something that we need to embrace. So, yeah.

Douglas:

Yeah. You’re making me think too if the technology folks start to realize that, oh, we’re making this technology for humans. We need to think about the experience they have, and in order to explore that, maybe we need to use some tools that have a bit more human connection

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

So that we can get in that mode of understanding and thinking about and maybe empathizing with other humans.

Varsha:

Yeah. And I think it also helped when our organization itself was renamed as customer experience, so that put the customer at the center of everything that we do. So I think that changed a lot of our mindsets as well.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s fascinating too, that you bring that up. Just naming the group had an impact. ‘Cause if you think about how those folks were showing up early on, they might’ve just been resistant because they were confused. They’re like, where am I at? Why is this team doing this thing? How does it fit in to the bigger picture? How does this impact the work I’m doing? But then you reframe it, you tell a different story around the fact that, “Hey, we’re helping with customer experience.” Now they’re showing up in a different way with a different expectation, and they say, “Oh, this is going to help customer experience. I see why we might be thinking about things a little different or even interacting with ourselves a little bit different. We might need to do some make believe because the customer’s not here.” If we need to think about them, we might be in a different mindset.

Varsha:

And I feel like the culture shift comes a lot from top down. What are your leaders speaking? What are their core values? So customer centricity was one of the biggest value that we had. As we shifted names, we became the customer experience organization, and I also became part of the customer success team where we had to be in front of customers day in, day out. Our job was to understand what the customers need and how we can help them. So I think that also played a huge role in the shift of the mindset. Yeah.

Douglas:

Yeah. Also, I remember you saying that facilitation actually disrupted the hierarchy you’re used to. Can you talk a little bit more about what that means and how it showed up in the rooms that you held?

Varsha:

Yeah, so if you remember, I said that our director, who’s one of the senior guys in our organization, he was at the door inviting people and then he was smiling and he was just encouraging people to be more present and to be involved in the whole process. And then we had our managers, our team leaders on the same table that we were sitting in. So we had our be it our team leads or solution architects, so who are senior in the team, and someone who just joined the team also contributing to the ideas that they were trying to pool in. So they were all solving the same problem of how do we help the customer, but they all belong to different grades.

One was talking from the perspective of managing a team, a manager. And a senior solution architect, he was bringing in his perspective, and then there was a person who just joined the team and she was bringing in her own perspective of what she thinks is happening with the customer and how she’s dealing with things. So it was a round table rather than that long table where we sit according to our grades.

Douglas:

I love that shifting from the long table to the round table and maybe flattening power structures. I love it.

Varsha:

Absolutely. Yeah. And then I think power structure, when you say about that, I have seen where managers said, “We don’t mind sitting out from this because we know that the dynamics might change if we are present in the room.” And because they understand the purpose of say that particular workshop or meeting where they want their employees to be more authentic and speak out. And I’ve seen managers sit out from certain meetings and the dynamics of the rooms completely change. So that’s also very powerful.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s so fascinating and amazing when leaders realize that dynamic is there and are willing to do what it takes to make sure that we can still move forward to subdue that a bit.

Varsha:

Yeah, yeah, and I think I’ve been fortunate where I’ve worked with leaders who understand that and they know that it’s not about them, it’s more about the culture that’s already present and the biases that are present. So in order to remove them, they need to be out of the meetings. So that’s been a good thing.

Douglas:

Yeah, got to love the leaders that believe in we, not me.

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

So you made the leap from Cisco to independent facilitator. What was going through your head during that messy middle? I’m sure it was a little bit… It’s got to be scary, those moments. I know when I started Voltage Control, I was like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? So I’m just kind of curious, how did you finally make that decision and what was going through your head?

Varsha:

It was definitely the messiest middle that I’ve been in. I mean, I’ve done over a hundred workshops and I’ve seen a lot of messy middles, but this was a messy middle in my life. So I think when I decided to quit my tenured job as an employee to become an entrepreneur or a independent consultant, firstly, I was super scared. There were days when I could not sleep just thinking about what am I doing? I didn’t tell this to anyone except for my husband. So it was just me and my husband discussing this because I didn’t want anybody else’s opinions to sort of mess with my thinking. And I think that was the best decision because I really wanted to know if this is what I really want to do. And once I had that clarity that yes, I have been doing these workshops for six years now.

This is not a hobby anymore. This is something that I really love doing. I think I can figure things out on my own if I get the right kind of support. I actually designed think that phase of my life, I think. So I literally sat down and did a sailboat exercise, and I said, “What are the challenges that I’m facing right now? What is the things that are pulling me back or holding me back? And then what are my wins? What is helping me at the moment?” So I sat and did a whole exercise on what I need to do. By the end of that workshop that I did with myself, I had an action plan for the next 90 days. From the day I put my papers, or I rather told my manager that I’m going to be quitting, I had three months time, so I knew exactly when I woke up, what are the things that I need to do in order for me to go through this messy middle.

So automatically, I think my brain was like, this is not a difficult task, you know exactly what you’re going to do when you wake up, and this is what you’ve achieved in a week’s time. So I did have these check-ins with my husband every week I remember and I said, “This is what I’ve achieved. Look.” And I just felt good about having that clarity on where I’m moving, and I actually wanted to name my business Chaos to Clarity because I love the name, because that’s how I always saw my teams moving from chaos into clarity. And that’s how I felt at that moment when everything was just so chaotic and confusing and I moved through that into a space of clarity. I think that’s how I overcame my messy middle, and it was a huge benefit knowing these kind of methodologies exist that eventually ground you. I think that’s how I felt once those three months were done.

Douglas:

That’s really incredible. And I would argue you need a good compass to move through the chaos and get to clarity. So I think you still kept the name in that spirit.

Varsha:

Yeah, I took off with something that I really loved as well. It took a lot. I had all my design thinking, all my toolbox, books out with me, and then I was sifting through all the pages and I keep writing down all the names that I thought could help in naming this business and eventually was Idea and then how do you guide people with these ideas. So Compass came in and I’m happy with the name.

Douglas:

Yeah. And I wanted to talk a little bit too about compasses and journeys. You came to Voltage Control. It all started through one phone call with Eric that led to the certification and then the summit, and then co-leading or leading the Amsterdam region. And also that’s been a little bit of a journey for you anyway around leadership. And I’m just curious, your leap into the Voltage Control community and leading the region, what did that leap into the leadership teach you? What did you learn as you were going through some of those motions?

Varsha:

A lot of learning. I keep telling my husband this, that the amount of learning that I’ve had in the past six months, I don’t think I’ve learned so much throughout my career time. Because it’s like I’ve been put on fast track because I think I have to do everything on my own now and I don’t have someone teaching me, but having a community is so… I realize how important it is, especially when you don’t have a team or a boss to tell you this is what you need to do and these are our goals and stuff like that. But in those three months, this messy middle, my first goals was to get a formal certification in facilitation itself. So that I think was the basis or the foundation over which everything else is built up. So I don’t think all this would’ve been possible if I didn’t know that I’m already good, but this has made me even better.

So that’s the confidence that the certification gave me. And being around other facilitators who do the same kind of work that I do, and especially seeing other facilitators… Because I think facilitators do this out of a space of love and passion for what they do. Most facilitators that I’ve been working with, even in the community or on my LinkedIn community, they’ve all been extremely helpful. And I think empathy is where they all operate from, and that’s how I think the certification itself helped. I think before I even enrolled myself, I was already part of the community and I said, “I want to volunteer,” because putting myself in a volunteer position helped me grow a lot more than if I hadn’t been there. I was leading the solopreneur or independent facilitators community at Voltage Control, and through that I learned how to do organic marketing. For example, I didn’t have a single post on LinkedIn during my professional career at Cisco, but then I realized how important it is to be visible to your network to make sure your work is seen by others.

And that’s when I decided that I’m going to do a weekly post of all the learnings that I’m going to learn through the certification, and it helped me keep accountable both on my marketing and also my learnings. So that was a great start to both learning and marketing and yeah, that’s how I think the certification played a huge role. Being a part of the community and volunteering at the community helped. I think anyone who’s come to me after that, I said, “Just go join the community first. See how the vibe is. Volunteer if you want to learn about facilitation and especially if you are starting on a new path in the facilitation space, this is a great space to be in.” I think that’s how it played a huge role.

Douglas:

Yeah, amazing. And looking ahead for what’s next. Gosh, I think it’s so much potential when you think about the moment you’re in and growing a business and whatnot, and I’m curious, what’s one hope or vision you have for the future of your work, either in your own practice or for the future of the field at large.

Varsha:

Yeah. And I think I realized as I was building the business and what I wanted to do, also the coaching calls with Eric helped a lot when I was trying to figure this out. I realized how much I love innovation. Also, people say innovation is a very broad term, but to me it’s about creating something new. It’s about using what you have and the creative powers that you’ve got to make the world a better place. And for me to be able to play a part in that is a huge win for me. And I think that is what keeps me driving. And I think our world has a lot of problems that can be solved and the place can be made a lot better than what it is now. And that’s what I see for my future and for the future of IdeaCompass at the moment.

Douglas:

As we come to a close here, I’d like to invite you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Varsha:

That’s a deep question, final thoughts. I think if there’s one thing that I had to say is to my technical folks, I keep saying before every workshop, “Trust the process.” And if you are in any workshop, creative workshop like this, switch off the rational mindset and switch off the skeptic mindset to embrace what’s coming through in your workshop. It doesn’t matter if I’m facilitating or if there’s anyone else facilitating, because that makes a huge difference in the output of the workshop itself. I think that would be something that I really want my listeners to… If there are technical folks or if there are skeptical folks who are entering the workshop, that is something that I would like to tell.

Douglas:

I think we could all learn from that, right? Let’s put our guards down because our assumptions and all of our prior learnings inform those guards, and if we want to innovate, we got to put those guards down and be open to almost anything. And then we can of course put up the spectacles, pull up the guards, start to criticize stuff, but let’s wait a little bit before we start doing that and create some space for it. So I think that’s great advice, and not only for your techies, but for anybody, because I think we all get set in our ways and could use a dose of like, let’s ignore our best advice and try to come up with some good stuff here.

Varsha:

Absolutely. Yeah. I think the energy just shifts when people enter with that kind of mindset. And as facilitators, I’ve seen a lot of facilitators try their best to create an environment where those fears, where those biases are shut down. But as participants, if there is an effort from there end, then that’s a powerful workshop.

Douglas:

I couldn’t have said it better. Varsha, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you today. I hope we can do it again soon sometime.

Varsha:

Absolutely, Douglas, thank you so much for having me and having this wonderful platform for facilitators to share their learnings, their experiences. I love listening to your podcasts, and I hope there are many more other folks who can join the podcast and we learn from them.

Douglas:

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

The post How Can Facilitators Ignite Creativity in Diverse Workshop Environments? appeared first on Voltage Control.

At a recent Facilitation Lab in Dallas, an interesting tension emerged. Some participants expressed a need to do more planning, while others realized they needed to loosen their grip and be more adaptive. It was a moment that perfectly captured the spectrum of growth in facilitation. And it pointed to something deeper than any single method, activity, or tool: the importance of competency-based practice.

At Voltage Control, we’ve seen firsthand how competencies—foundational skills that are observable, transferable, and practicable—enable facilitators to grow beyond reliance on static methods. While methods are valuable, they can become crutches. A competency-based approach, on the other hand, provides a durable structure for reflective growth, adaptive leadership, and collaborative impact.

That’s why, in our Facilitation Certification and across all our programming, we center our work around five core competencies: Purpose, Inclusive, Clarity, Crafted, and Adaptive. These competencies create a common language for facilitators to assess where they are, reflect on what’s working, and grow with intentionality. In this month’s newsletter, we’ll explore what each competency means and how they come to life—highlighting one of our favorite exercises, Nine Whys, and giving a nod to the Facilitation Superpowers tool that helps build reflective muscles.

What Are Competencies (And Why Should We Care?)

Competencies are the skill sets and behaviors that transcend any one facilitation method or context. Think of them as the core building blocks of great facilitation—portable, observable, and repeatable. While methods can be learned and deployed, competencies are practiced and honed.

The reason they matter is simple: facilitation isn’t about running perfect activities. It’s about being able to read the room, adjust in real time, and bring people along. And that kind of capacity can’t be downloaded from a template. It’s grown over time through practice, feedback, and reflection.

A competency-based approach to learning shifts the focus from “Did I use the tool right?” to “Did I show up in a way that supported the group’s purpose?” This opens the door to reflection, growth, and adaptability. Because competencies are observable, they also give us a way to assess progress—whether we’re doing that ourselves, in community with others, or within a structured certification program.

In short, competencies give us a clear, common language for growth. They allow us to get specific about what great facilitation looks like and help us avoid the trap of confusing motion with progress.

Building with Competencies—The Foundation of Our Certification

Our Facilitation Certification is designed from the ground up to help people grow through competencies. From day one, participants are introduced to five core areas that form the foundation of the program: Purpose, Inclusive, Clarity, Crafted, and Adaptive. Each one maps to a set of habits and mindsets that great facilitators practice regularly.

By anchoring in competencies, we’re able to be method-agnostic. We don’t teach one framework or approach—we help people understand the why behind the method and equip them to decide what’s best for their group and their goals. That flexibility is crucial, especially for facilitators working across diverse industries, cultures, and challenges.

Competency-based learning is also deeply practical. We create opportunities for participants to get reps in—not just running activities, but making decisions, facilitating discussions, and navigating ambiguity. And because competencies are observable, we’re able to give meaningful, grounded feedback that accelerates growth.

This approach culminates in a portfolio—a living artifact that represents a facilitator’s growth across the five competencies. But more than a final deliverable, the portfolio is a practice: a cycle of reflection, experimentation, feedback, and adjustment.

Purpose – The Compass of Great Facilitation

Of all the competencies, Purpose is first for a reason. Without a clear understanding of why we are gathering, who we’re serving, and what we hope to achieve, everything else risks going sideways. Purpose is the compass that guides every facilitation decision—from who to invite, to what methods to use, to how to handle challenges in the moment.

But purpose isn’t always obvious. We often assume it’s clear, or we avoid interrogating it because the conversation feels tedious or political. Yet when we make the time to surface it, we often uncover powerful insights—and sometimes, deep misalignments.

One of our favorite tools to do this is Nine Whys, a simple but profound activity from the Liberating Structures repertoire. The activity begins with a basic question like, “What’s the purpose of this project?” or “What drives you to do this work?” Then, working in pairs, one partner interviews the other by repeatedly asking, “Why is that important to you?” The goal is to peel back layers until you hit something essential, something felt. Often, the ninth why reveals the true motivation that has been hiding under layers of assumption.

We’ve seen this activity shift entire trajectories. In one cohort, a facilitator working in the public sector initially described her purpose as “helping people navigate civic spaces.” After a deep Nine Whys session and continued reflection through her portfolio, she reframed her purpose as “creating real community in an era of algorithmic isolation.” That clarity changed how she approached her work—and how she described its value to others.

Inclusive – Designing for Belonging and Bravery

If Purpose is the compass, Inclusion is the heartbeat. Once we’re clear on why we’re gathering, the next question is: who should be in the room to support that purpose—and how can we ensure every voice matters?

Inclusive facilitation means more than inviting a diverse group. It means creating the conditions for all participants to feel safe, seen, and heard. It also requires deliberate choices about who not to include in a given moment—what Priya Parker calls “purposeful exclusion.” This isn’t about gatekeeping. It’s about being strategic in service of the group’s outcomes.

True inclusion surfaces hidden voices, supports dissent, and creates the psychological safety necessary for generative conflict. And it’s essential for navigating the messy, often emotional terrain of group work. Without it, you get artificial harmony at best—and dysfunction at worst.

Facilitators who build this competency learn to see the system: to recognize power dynamics, honor lived experience, and make space for authenticity. When inclusion is practiced well, people feel it. They open up. They step in. And real transformation becomes possible.

Clarity – Making the Invisible Visible

Clarity is about translating purpose and inclusion into concrete action. It’s what allows a group to move forward together without confusion or hesitation. And it’s often the difference between a workshop that feels powerful and one that feels chaotic.

Facilitators must bring clarity and seek it. That means designing with clear goals, crisp prompts, and focused outcomes. It also means actively listening for moments of confusion, misalignment, or hesitation—and addressing them in real time.

In our certification program, we emphasize how even small design choices can create clarity: the way you structure breakout prompts, the visuals you use to frame a discussion, the transitions between moments. Every one of these details can reinforce (or undermine) a group’s ability to make progress.

Clarity is especially vital in hybrid and high-stakes environments. The more ambiguity a group is facing, the more important it is for the facilitator to illuminate the path. That might mean naming the uncertainty, framing the choices, or simply slowing down to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Crafted – Intentionally Designing the Experience

Crafted is where preparation meets artistry. It’s the act of designing an experience—not just an agenda—that will carry a group from where they are to where they need to go. And it’s not just about structure. It’s about emotion, energy, and flow.

Facilitators who develop this competency don’t just copy/paste old decks or run the same three methods every time. They ask: what does this group need? What emotional arc will support their journey? What choices can I make in pacing, framing, and modality to help them succeed?

Being crafted also means holding your design loosely. Yes, you’ve made a plan—but you’re also ready to pivot. In fact, the best designs are the ones that make room for emergence.

This is where the craft of facilitation shines. It’s not about perfection. It’s about intention. A well-crafted experience sets the stage for insight, connection, and forward momentum—even if it doesn’t go exactly as planned.

Adaptive – The Pinnacle of Facilitator Growth

If Purpose is the foundation and Crafted is the container, Adaptive is the dance. It’s the ability to respond in the moment—to shift based on what’s needed, not just what was planned.

Adaptive facilitators don’t panic when the room goes quiet, or when conflict arises, or when someone challenges the agenda. They adjust. They trust their presence, their preparation, and their purpose.

This competency is often the most elusive. It can only be built through reps—through showing up, trying things, reflecting, and adjusting. And it’s why the other four competencies matter so much. The more grounded you are in purpose, inclusion, clarity, and craft, the more confident you’ll be when you need to flex.

At the Dallas Facilitation Lab, some participants realized they needed to let go more. Others saw they needed to plan more. Both realizations were right. Adaptive isn’t about being spontaneous for its own sake. It’s about knowing when to adapt—and how.

Reflective Growth – The Portfolio as a Practice

Growth isn’t just about doing—it’s about noticing. That’s why we anchor our certification in reflective practice. And the heart of that reflection is the portfolio.

In our program, participants build a portfolio that showcases their growth across all five competencies. But the real value isn’t the final product. It’s the process of creating it. Asking: What happened? Why did it matter? What would I do differently next time?

Some participants stick with our Miro template. Others remix it into pitch decks, websites, or storybooks. One facilitator in Hawaii built her portfolio around the metaphor of traditional irrigation—using water flow to illustrate each competency. That creativity is itself a sign of deep engagement and reflection.

For those not in the program yet, the Facilitation Superpowers template is a great starting point. It helps you reflect on where you shine, where you want to grow, and what stories you’re already telling through your work.

A Call to Practice with Purpose

Facilitation is not about running perfect exercises. It’s about showing up with intention, curiosity, and the courage to lean into uncertainty. It’s about being a mirror, a compass, and a guide—often all at once.

Competency-based growth is how we get there. It gives us a common language, a shared focus, and a structure that supports both individual reflection and collective learning.

If you’re looking for a place to start, try Nine Whys. Ask yourself, or a colleague, “Why is that important to you?”—and keep going. You might be surprised by what you find. Or explore the Facilitation Superpowers to identify your strengths and your edges.

And if you want to go deeper, join us in the Facilitation Lab or explore our Facilitation Certification. Because this work isn’t about checking a box—it’s about growing into the facilitator you’re meant to be.

The post Facilitation Is a Practice, Not a Playbook appeared first on Voltage Control.

“Connection moves at the speed of vulnerability. It takes courage to be the first on the dance floor or to reach out to someone, but those brave steps can lead to powerful connections”- Bahaa Chmait

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Bahaa Chmait, a facilitator and 2024 TEDx speaker focused on combating loneliness through shared experiences. Bahaa discusses how his Lebanese heritage and family gatherings around food shaped his approach to fostering connections. They explore the importance of vulnerability, intentional design, and playfulness in adult interactions. Bahaa shares strategies like assigning roles in social settings and creating zones for different engagement levels to alleviate loneliness. He emphasizes the need for proactive connection and the transformative power of shared joyful experiences.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

Bahaa’s Ted Talk

Bahaa on LinkedIn

Bahaa on the web

JoyMob on Instagram

JoyMob Events

About the Guest

Bahaa is an experience designer on a mission to end loneliness one shared experience at a time. He believes the world could use more human connection, so that people can live more joyful lives.

About Voltage Control

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

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Voltage Control on the Web
Contact Voltage Control

Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab Podcast, where I speak with Voltage Control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method-agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences.

This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab.

And if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com today. I’m with Bahaa Chmait at JoyMob Events and BahaaChmait.com, where he is on a mission to end loneliness, one shared experience at a time. He’s also a 2024 TEDx speaker, workshop facilitator, and vibe maker. Welcome to the show, Bahaa.

Bahaa Chmait:

Hey, thank you for having me, Douglas. Always good to see you.

Douglas Ferguson:

You as well. You as well. And we’ll get back to vibe maker. But before we do, let’s hear a little bit about you getting your start. I believe you brought it back to the Lebanese family gatherings. Can you paint us a picture of one moment that really stuck out to you as you reflect on some of those origins?

Bahaa Chmait:

There’s the dinners, food, gathering, breaking bread together. I think that’s the biggest thing. Every time I think about the origins of my facilitation career and where I’m at today and gathering people and creating a vibe, it all started around food. Lebanese people just love to gather.

And of course, every family has their traditional dish that they bring when everyone gathers. And so everyone pulls you aside. They usually grab your wrist, and they don’t let you go, and they say, “But you like mine the best, right.” And it always just brings me joy to think of those moments.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s funny, I just saw the premiere of a new McConaughey film called The Rivals of the Amziah King, and interesting film. He was a mandolin player, beekeeper, quite an interesting fella. But when the producer came out, he dedicated the film to anybody who’s ever been to a potluck.

And there’s an amazing scene where they’re at the potluck and McConaughey is telling this young lady about all the dishes and the heritage of, “You might not want to eat this one. And this is like… This one always comes from Billy.” And he’s telling her all about Billy.

And so there’s this connection to the food and the people who made it and their personalities. And so you’re bringing me back to that moment, of I can certainly remember some potlucks growing up.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, yeah. There’s something about breaking bread and just sharing time and space together, so it’s old as time, right. There’s some potlucks that I’ll host, and instead of having a curated meal, we’re just like, “Bring a dish, bring some utensils, bring a dish, and let’s share. Let’s break bread together.” There’s something beautiful about that.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. And especially in community, I mean, you were talking about relatives pulling you aside and saying, “Hey, you like mine the best, right.” There’s this kind of identity around what they brought, and maybe Aunt Edna always brings the country ham biscuits, or I’m sure the Lebanese dishes are a little different. But it’s kind of that idea of this connection to I’m bringing this sustenance. It’s also something I really enjoy making that I can provide and be excited about and proud of.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, absolutely. And the heritage of that recipe gets passed down through the generation. I think it kind of gets lost now, but some of the old world ways of doing things, and then they put their twist on it, maybe a little bit too, and they’re like, “But you like my version better,” even though it’s the same dish. And as a kid, you feel this social pressure to be like, “Yes, yours is the best.” But at the same time, you’re just like, “I’m here to enjoy some really delicious food with some wonderful people.”

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. And it brings me back to your quest to address loneliness. When I think of community where folks are gathering a lot specifically around food and heritage, you would imagine maybe loneliness wouldn’t be such a problem there, but it could also shine a big light on it.

If you juxtapose those moments that maybe aren’t happening all day every day, those are special moments, maybe once a week, or I don’t know how frequent, but it could even put a highlight on loneliness that’s there.

Or if you’re seeing it in others, it might make it more obvious because maybe they don’t have those experiences because they don’t have those opportunities to gather. I’m kind of curious, does any of that resonate with you, or did that lead to any of your discoveries and wanting to help others that were experiencing loneliness?

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, great question. Absolutely. I think that loneliness can… you can be surrounded by a sea of people and still be lonely. You know what I mean?

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-hmm.

Bahaa Chmait:

And when I was growing up, I grew up in a small rural town in Canada, and no doubt about it, hey, it was a small place, 500 people. And I’ve had this first-generation Lebanese Canadian family comes to this rural town, and everything was different. My lunches were different. I would [inaudible 00:05:40] Kafta. Have you had Lebanese food before? [inaudible 00:05:43].

Douglas Ferguson:

I love it.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-hmm.

Bahaa Chmait:

It’s delicious, right. But when you’re a kid, you just want to fit in. And so they had peanut butter and jam sandwiches. They had lunchables.

Douglas Ferguson:

The juice boxes.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, the good stuff, right. I mean a charcuterie board for kids. Those Lunchables were, I mean, come on now. That was delicious. But of course, I wanted to fit in. And so I was kind of the exotic kid. Had a unibrow, even my name was Bahaa. And so, as an adult, everyone’s like, “Bahaa, that’s amazing. Lebanese food, that’s awesome.” But when you’re a kid, everyone’s like, “Bahaaaaa.”

So that disconnection was challenging, and my parents wanted to ascribe… me to ascribe to old world beliefs, traditions, values, and I’m trying to fit in. And so, where do you belong? Where’s your community? Who’s your tribe? And so that lack of belonging led to that loneliness that we’re talking about right now. And it can be isolating trying to figure out where you belong.

I sometimes talk to kids who are not just first generation kids, but kids who have parents from different races or heritages. And so both tribes don’t fully accept them, they say, and they’re kind of stuck in this no man’s land, and that’s a pretty isolating place to be. I’m sure some of your listeners have probably connected with that before.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, for sure. And I’m curious, when you’re working with this kind of eradicating loneliness, how are you confronting that? Is it through these conversations you’re having with folks, or yes, and? Are there other things that you’re doing? How does that show up for you?

Bahaa Chmait:

I think the main thing is designing experiences. As an experience designer, I can tap into that isolating feeling. We’ve all been to a mingling thing or a networking thing, and we just kind of didn’t form a circle at some point in that mingling thing. It’s hard to break into that circle and connect, and so you’re kind of just left off to the side. And so my goal when I’m facilitating with groups in public gatherings or team gatherings is, how do we create connection before content?

So before we just jump into the event, people came for the event because they want to see the event, but they come back because they connected with people. They met people that they connected with. So facilitating an icebreaker, an ice melter, whatever you want to call it, allows people the opportunity to come out of their shells a little bit, especially if you give them a safe and vulnerable environment to do it in. And then they get to choose their own adventure. I think that’s the biggest thing is not forcing anything. Forced fun is never fun. You know what I mean?

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-hmm.

Bahaa Chmait:

Trust falls are kind of lame, and team building can sometimes feel like going to the dentist. Necessary, but you don’t exactly want to do it. So, how can we make it more engaging and fun and playful for people and just meet them where they’re at?

Douglas Ferguson:

What’s something recent that you’ve done that you can kind of point to that might draw a more realistic picture for folks?

Bahaa Chmait:

I do a lot of movement-based practice as well, and sometimes they’re flash mobs, sometimes they’re public sing-alongs on trains. With the flash mobs, I worked with a global hotel chain, an executive leadership team of global hotel chain, dancing in front of your colleagues can be vulnerable. They wanted to produce a flash mob for their 40th anniversary of the hotel. So we first gave them a tutorial video that they could practice in the comfort of their own home.

And I tell this story in my TED Talk. But one thing that I left out in the talk was that one of the leaders came up to me afterwards and said, “Hey, I was practicing at home in my time in one of my spare rooms, and my daughter walked by and saw me practicing the dance moves at the tutorial video, and she started joining me” and they started having this bonding experience where there were dancing together and connecting.

And it was this beautiful story of how, by intentionally creating something like a tutorial video so that they don’t feel vulnerable and unsafe in front of everyone, they could kind of build that courage first at home, they got a chance to bond, and it had ripple effects beyond the workplace, beyond this thing that they were initially doing to connect with family.

And there was this beautiful sort of intergenerational father-daughter moment that may have not happened otherwise if it wasn’t for intentional design. And I think it was really beautiful. It’s a really beautiful story to share. Those little moments I hear in every experience that we design. There’s always a little nugget or takeaway from something that I’ve designed, and I think that’s really rewarding for me and really just spreads joy in the world.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s super fun and cool. And I guess, what other ways are you seeing joy kind of appear these days? Because I think that it’s really easy to get caught up in the rhetoric of the times and the divisiveness and stuff. And so, how are you seeing these opportunities for joy?

Bahaa Chmait:

I think being intentional. Priya Parker says it best. “Purpose is your bouncer.” Just being purposeful with your day, with your interactions with people. I’d say that connection moves at the speed of vulnerability. And when… Have you ever been to anywhere where there’s a dance floor, so a wedding, a bar, anything like that, and you saw that no one was dancing? Have you ever had that happen? Yeah. And why is no one dancing? Because no one’s dancing, right. No one wants to be the first one on that dance floor. It’s scary.

It takes a lot of courage and bravery because what if no one joins you? If everyone joins you, it’s a party. And so no one goes on the dance for, so no one goes on the dance floor. And it’s the same thing with human connection. Whether you’re trying to bridge a connection and reach out to somebody that you know, or don’t know or you’re trying to even apologize. If nobody goes first, then nothing happens. And you can only control what you do, not what other people do or how they react.

And so finding that courage and that bravery to get out on that dance floor or reach out to that friend and say hi, or reach out to that colleague, that work teammate and say, “Hey, there’s some friction between us. Can we talk about how to resolve this?” It can be incredibly scary and incredibly hard, but so powerful because connection, it moves at the speed of vulnerability. And so, yeah, I just invite everybody to take that step and be brave and see what happens. The worst that can happen is you’re at where you’re at.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, true, true. And what are some of your go-to mechanisms to get the first person out on the dance floor? I mean, are you modeling that? Is that something you’re doing, getting out there first?

Is it about inviting more people in so that they’re more encouraged and feel invited, versus just getting brought to the event versus getting invited on the dance floor? I mean, I don’t know. I’m just going to throw in some things out, but I’m curious, what have you found to be the mechanisms to really get people to engage?

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, I would say that always looking at things in terms of team, in terms of collaboration, in terms of group, when you’re thinking in terms of group. So if I’m facilitating something where I want somebody to be vulnerable, whether it’s a debrief in the team in group sharing or it’s getting out on the dance floor after a talk that I’ve given, which we did. We threw a dance party for 500 people after the TEDx talk that I gave because it was all about dance and movement, primed everybody to just be playful and give themselves permission.

What I like to do is I like to connect with a few people and say, “Hey, if I call for somebody to just raise their hand and say something, will you be the first one?” And I think just inviting people, giving them a role at the gathering, gives them a sense of purpose. “Can you be the host of the person that kind of greets people when they look like they’re standing off alone? Or can you be the person who greets people when they first come in so that their entry is this warm and welcoming thing?” Everybody wants to be part of something, and I think if we co-create it, we’re able to achieve really cool things.

But if it’s just all about you and you’re the only one doing something, it can be really hard to start a movement and get people going. So I think it’s about offering an invitation, setting it up ahead of time for success, and modeling what vulnerability looks like for sure. There’s definitely been times where I’ve invited people to come dance in the streets in public sort of pop-up, flash mob style dances, and I created a video to say, “Hey, this is where we’re going to be dancing, and here’s me dancing right now as people walk by to show, ‘Listen, I know this is weird and kind of awkward and vulnerable, but I’m doing it right now and I want you to come join me as well.'” It can be magic.

Douglas Ferguson:

When you mention roles, it’s making me think about how important it can be to have a focus as an attendee. Or oftentimes when someone shows up and is looking around the room and wondering, “Oh my gosh, what can I do here? Where am I supposed to go? Do I go to the bar first, or do I go over here first?” And so having a role or a responsibility can be a really great way to curb some anxiety and know where to fit.

In fact, I think it’s a powerful thing to do, even if you’re going to a house party and it’s some folks you just met, maybe ask the host how you can be helpful. “Can I go stir this pot, or can I take out the recycling? It looks a little full or something.” But just having some role or thing to do can be really helpful to calm the mind and the nerves. So I thought that was interesting, you brought that up. Does that show up a lot in how you think about shaping these experiences?

Bahaa Chmait:

Absolutely. I think to resonate with that, I think as kind people, we reach out to the host and I say, “What can I bring?” Ice, bottle of wine, whatever it is. But then, once we get to the party, we forget that we can still support the gathering and support the intention of the gathering. And so it’s nice. I think about this often when I’m designing experiences.

I used to be the type of experienced designer who designed in the background and not be in the forefront, so I wouldn’t give a public speech or anything. I would just design it and then let the audience kind of take over. And I think about that with people who love to do photography and videography. They love to be behind the lens. They don’t want to be the subject of the experience. They want to be behind curating, but how can we encourage everybody to have a role?

“Yeah, when you get to the party, hey, can you make sure that the cups… everybody has a drink or everybody’s having fun,” and each part of the household has a different vibe. The kitchen has that big party vibe where all the things happen, whereas the couch, the living room, may be more chill, the backyard. So there could be zones. I don’t know. What do you think? There could be zones for creating some rules for people as well?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. We always talk about pop-up rules and temporary spaces that we might be designing for or supporting. And I like this idea of zones. You could have different rules or different expectations, different criteria, different games in the different zones, for sure.

I mean, it kind of naturally happens when you’re talking about a house party because just because of the nature of the space. And also, I think kitchens just have that quality to them. When people are in a party, they’re magnetic.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, yeah. They’re standing. They’re energized. Usually the shots are there.

Douglas Ferguson:

Right. There’s that.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, there’s all the factors that come into play. Yeah, interesting. Maybe at a public event where you’re at a conference or a networking thing, they create zones and each zone has its own vibe, the breakout sessions, the seminars, the main room, the dah, dah, dah. And so, yeah, creating experiences specifically for those zones, I think we’re onto something here.

Douglas Ferguson:

Space and how you allocate space and break folks up, how you decorate it, how you set up furniture, all those things can be subtle cues into how we want people to engage with the space or what the rules are.

Bahaa Chmait:

I think one thing that we tend to miss as adults is playfulness. We always think we have to show up in this sort of polished way, and it doesn’t have to be completely refined and polished. It can be playful. It could be a banter, an exchange.

I think that, as adults, we start to lose our sense of play. NASA conducted a study, and they concluded that 98% of children are born creative geniuses, 98%. And then, they did a study later on in life. They said, as adults, only 2% still qualify, and I think that’s because we unlearn play. You know what I mean?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. I think it gets taught out of us in a way, this idea that school is about having the correct answer, but we get kind of built and programmed to do well on the test and to fall in line and be a good student, and all these things.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

There’s a really great book called Orbiting the Giant Hairball that talks about this, and there’s a really amazing section where the author is… I guess one of the things he would do in his spare time, he was a creative director at Hallmark, and so you can imagine the whimsy and creativeness that had to flow through him.

And one of the things he would do is visit children at elementary schools and bring metal sculptures and try to wow them and talk to them about art, and to follow their passion for art. He had this interesting little experiment he would run where he would ask the students which of them were artists.

And he’s like, the kindergartens all raise their hands, but then you get up to the fourth, fifth graders, and no one’s raising their hand, and he’s like… and he would ask the students, “What’s happening here? Are all the artists moving away.”

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah. It’s amazing how we unlearn that, for sure. Kids, you can give them a simple drawing and they’ll come up with 10 different things that it is. And as adults, we look at it and we’re like, “Um, that’s this one thing and only this one thing.” But yeah, I want to encourage and invite everybody to create playlists, and I’m not talking about music playlists, but a play list, a list of things that bring you joy. Dr. Stuart Brown of the National Play Institute says that the opposite of play is not work. It’s depression.

And I think that we have the opportunity to become more playful and give ourselves the opportunity to take play breaks even at work. Some things that are on my playlist are dancing, midday dance parties. I work remote, and so just turning off the camera doing the… and then just turn on some music and just moving the body a little bit. It can be so rejuvenating. Going for a skip down the street, coloring, it’s something that your mind just gets focused into something that’s so simple. Telling dad jokes is the one I sent you this morning, I hope it made you laugh.

Douglas Ferguson:

Oh, yeah.

Bahaa Chmait:

Or at least you roll your eyes.

Douglas Ferguson:

I’m a big fan of dad jokes. Yeah. No, I’m a big fan of dad jokes, so I’m definitely one to carry those around and share them to… much to my wife’s chagrin.

Bahaa Chmait:

I feel like there’s two spectrums, right. There’s the rolling on the floor laughing, and then there’s the eye roll and everything in between, and everyone knows where they kind of fall, especially when it comes to dad jokes. But no matter what, as long as I can get a response out of somebody, I think that’s a win.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s a useful tool.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I think there’s four rules around a playlist that I want to talk about. The first rule of playlists and play is make sure that you lose track of time. If you’re losing track of time, then you’re playing, you’re doing it right. If you lose track of time, you’re totally immersed in the experience. That’s great play. The second is don’t have a goal or an outcome. Just enjoy the experience.

When I’m coloring, it’s not about finishing the project, it’s about just coloring and just doing whatever comes to me or calls to me. Being… The emotional side, being light or silly or energized, having the emotion attached to it. And then the fourth thing is allowing yourself to be curious and self-expressive. I think those are four great elements of play that I want to invite everybody to engage in more.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s interesting. The lack of outcome, I think, is one that many people might struggle with letting go of.

Bahaa Chmait:

That need for results or perfection or…

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, perfection’s certainly a thing. I was thinking more in the lines of, “There has to be a reason why I’m going to do this thing.” It seems like a very societal way of behaving or way of being, right. That we have these objectives. This thing we have to accomplish, so I can imagine that being difficult, at least in my observations of how folks think about meetings, how they think about the way they spend their time.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. When you ask someone that you don’t know if they want to play rock, paper, scissors, I tend to get a few different answers. I get a yes, an enthusiastic yes, I get a no, which is totally fine, and then sometimes I get a, “But for what?” And they want to know, “What’s the outcome? What’s the purpose? Why? Why are we doing this thing? Can it just be playful, or does it have to be something that is more?”

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-hmm.

Bahaa Chmait:

So it’s interesting tapping into what you’re saying.

Douglas Ferguson:

What’s your percentages on those three answers?

Bahaa Chmait:

I would say that for what is a big one. “Why? For what? What are we doing?” They want to understand the parameters around it, but it also depends on context because I’ll ask people-

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. Where you’re at and who you’re running into.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah. Yeah. Are they a complete stranger? Are you at a mingling event or a networking event? Are you at something playful? There’s an experience. We partnered with the local transit authority and the city, and we created these JoyMob’s, so a mob of people spreading joy, and we brought entertainment onto the train cars and the train doors open, and a big loud of laughter just erupts from the train car.

And when people first hop on, they’re like, “What’s happening here?” And they’re like, “I don’t understand. It’s usually this solo, disconnected kind of ride. I’ve just planned to be on my phone, look out the window, put my headphones in.” And we were doing this improv comedy thing, and the audience, even for a two-minute ride, short little skits, we were getting audience suggestions, and they were participating and laughing and making eye contact with each other.

And it was this beautiful experience of connecting versus what pre-programmed your mind to think that the ride is going to be, and then being delightfully surprised, and the facial expressions that people, when they hop on the train, they’re like, “What is happening here?”

Douglas Ferguson:

Was that the first JoyMob that you ever did?

Bahaa Chmait:

The first JoyMob we ever did was dancing in the streets, and it was a silent disco, and it was a traveling silent disco. So, for those that don’t know silent disco, you put music in your headphones, no one can hear the music, except… unless you have the headphones. So, going down the street, we were flash mobbing farmer’s markets. They’re buying food and groceries, and we’re like, “Woo-hoo.” And that’s all you hear. And everybody’s like, “People are crazy.” But [inaudible 00:25:37]-

Douglas Ferguson:

And they’re so… You were just walking down the street just from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Bahaa Chmait:

Joyfully moving our bodies to music, and we were inspired by the music. We gave them prompts in the headphones too. Give a high five to a stranger, dance as if you were Fred Astaire, jump up onto a park bench, or twirl around a light pole.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s fascinating that you had the prompts in there. Most silent discos I’ve been aware of, people are listening to music, and oftentimes they’re hearing different music. So you’ve got maybe five to 10 different tracks. And so people are dancing to different things, and it’s quite unreal to look at because no one’s dancing in the same thing.

Bahaa Chmait:

Everybody’s moving to their own groove, right. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. And so that’s fascinating that you introduced the prompts, then that gave people maybe a little more confidence to go further than they normally would.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah. Again, inviting people into the experience. I’m thinking about the five E’s of experience design. You create excitement in the beginning and really set the tone for what’s going to happen. Then, in the entry, when people were coming, we were welcoming them with a warm welcome. We did a team-building activity, and then we move into the experience. And how do we design the experience so that it’s engaging and it’s not just stale? This was pre-COVID that we did this first one years and years before.

And we found that some people came up to the people with headphones and they said, “What are you doing?” And we said, “We’re dancing.” And they’re like, “Well, can I join in?” And so they took out their headphones and either shared their headphones, again pre-COVID, or they put their phone on speakerphone and just listened with this… the phone next to both of their ears. And they shared a moment of dancing together in this sort of wildly vulnerable state out in the wild, on a street corner, in a park. It was beautiful.

Douglas Ferguson:

So what was going through your mind right before it first started? This is your first one. The anticipating is building. What were you thinking?

Bahaa Chmait:

Fear that no one was going to show up. It was a wildly unique ask of the community. I had a goal, I wanted to see if I could unite the city through dance. I put up some posters, word got out, the media caught wind. They had me on the Live Morning Show. I told them what we were doing, and I said, “I’m going to be dancing here, come join me.” And I thought to myself, I didn’t even have a business or a Facebook or anything set up.

So I was like, “Well, what if no one comes? Will I still honor the thing that I said I was going to do? Will I still be the strange guy dancing in the streets?” And slowly, one by one, eventually 60-something people showed up and this beautiful celebration. And at the end, everybody’s hugging, getting to know each other. They’re asking me what’s next. And that’s when I realized like, “Oh, there’s an opportunity here for more human connection in unique ways than we typically see.”

Douglas Ferguson:

Of those people. How many are you still in touch with? Was this the foundation of building real, lasting relationships?

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I was more connected to the dance community at that time, and it was a lot of wonderful dancers. We met at Ecstatic Dance and would have a beautiful time together. I think that in the law of diffusion of innovation, it’s a bell curve. In the beginning to start a movement, you need the innovators and the early adopters.

So basically, what that means is you need someone that’s willing to go first, and then you need the people who will back that up and be like, “Okay, I’m in. Sign me up. I don’t want to be the first one. But since there’s a movement, since you’re dancing in the streets, since you’re singing on train, since you’re dah, dah, dah, dah, writing love letters and leaving them in public for people to find and brighten up their day, I want to join in.”

And so we had that group right off the bat. It just started building and building and building, and then we reached a tipping point to start reaching some more of the majority, the early and late majority of the people in the bell curve. Does that make sense?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, absolutely. And then I know that through these JoyMob Events, you started to transition into working with companies. So I was curious, how do you translate the spontaneity of these kind of in-person joy experiences into more structured facilitation work, especially in these more buttoned-up situations like corporate teams?

Bahaa Chmait:

Sure. Yeah. It was a challenging transition to move from public activations into the corporate space. I hadn’t worked in corporate spaces before. One big factor, I think, was actually taking Voltage Control certification course because we did a project. And in that project, I started to identify exactly what kind of facilitator I was, what kind of outcomes I wanted to have, how did I actually create these experiences. And I started using those building blocks to create them in the workplace. And I think the biggest thing that helped me leap was giving myself permission.

We don’t give ourselves permission enough to explore, to be brave, to create. I was terrified to go into the corporate space, and slowly but surely, I started doing these little activations with them. “Let’s do a team-building thing here. Let’s do a team-building thing there.” And I came in with the mindset of instead of it being about me, I made it about them. And I was like, “How can I serve the needs that are needed for this environment?” So when I talked to the HR teams, the sales leaders, the sales teams, the team leaders, we’re disconnected, we’re not communicating well.

So I designed an experience for that, and it started to propel and it led me down some very beautiful paths. And you’re right, teams can be buttoned up. And I come in with the energy of having them see me be vulnerable. So if I’m going to invite them into an experience, I’m going to share something about my experience first, just to kind of model that. And like I said, if I know some people in the audience already, or if I know some people on the team, I’ll invite them behind the scenes to share as well, so that someone needs to go first. And through that, we can create some really cool things together, especially in a buttoned-up environment.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. What’s that journey that helps them kind of move step by step and get more comfortable and more vulnerable and more open, and what are folks ready for at that point, right? I think sometimes if folks aren’t ready to step in, how do we create that threshold that makes it easier for them to do so?

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah. Yeah. It can be awkward, right. Especially I think when people hear team building, they think of the old school style with the trust balls and sort of the forced fun, and we talked about this already, that team building it’s needed because you need to support culture. It’s not just about productivity. When you have a positive culture, it leads to productivity.

When you have culture of psychological safety and belonging, I envision a world where belonging is considered a metric and measured as a metric in productivity, so that we make sure that there’s space for it. And if you create a psychologically safe space, people start to move into it. It takes a minute, but they start to ramp up.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. And it can be transformative. So what were some of the most powerful shifts you’ve witnessed in others during or after one of your sessions? Anything that’s given you goosebumps?

Bahaa Chmait:

I think when people come up to me afterwards and they tell me, “I needed that,” and they have this sort of expression on their face like, “I really needed that.”

There’s a moment in every experience that gets designed, especially if it gets designed intentionally where you have feedback, whether it’s the executive leader who was dancing with his daughter and shares that experience, or I think teams have the ability to really be productive when they feel psychologically safe and have a foundation of trust and connection.

And I think that’s what really resonates with me when they come up to me afterwards and communicate that they felt safe enough to be vulnerable. Like I said before, connection moves at the speed of vulnerability. So it’s exciting. It’s exciting.

Douglas Ferguson:

You talked a lot about your TED Talk, and I know that it was… you were really excited about it, and it was kind of a big moment for you and took a lot of work. And so I was curious when you were in that work or even reflecting on it later, what did preparing for it help you understand about your work?

Bahaa Chmait:

You mentioned some great books and movies. There’s one that I’m reading right now called Chopped Wood Carry Water. Have you read it or heard of it?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes.

Bahaa Chmait:

There’s some really great lessons in there where they talk about everything matters, the details matter, the little things matter. So when we were getting coached on our body language and the way we move on stage, the way we take applause or receive applause, the way we speak to the audience, which areas of the audience are we speaking to? The balcony, the lower level, the left, the right. There was so much details, and the whole time I was thinking to myself, “I’m just trying to memorize my lines, man. I’m just trying to memorize my lines and not mess this up.”

But when you focus on the details and you give yourself enough time, I think that was the biggest lesson that I learned, giving myself enough time, giving myself permission to fail in the practice enough times that when I got on stage, it was like second nature. It just felt comfortable. At one point, the audience was laughing at something I said, and then I actually started laughing because they were laughing. And in my head, I thought, how playful is this?

But I was also thinking to myself, “Is this allowed? Am I allowed to be human and laugh with the audience instead of just like, ‘I’m here to deliver a talk?'” So it was a really cool experience, and I think that for anybody who’s willing to be brave enough to do some public speaking or take the plunge, I say, give yourself enough time to fail enough times in practice so that when you’re in front of everybody, you’re just there to have fun and it’s just relaxed and playful.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that. We’re big proponents of practice, as you know, with all the community events focused on practice and really encouraging people to spend the time when the stakes are low so that when we’re called on, we have the confidence to step into those high-stakes moments.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah. And I’m a big fan of the Facilitation Labs and the practice labs that Voltage Control does because of that opportunity and the ability to fail and continue forward. As you know, Chris and I were co-presidents of a global speaker series that celebrated failure, and we’d have speakers go on stage and share their stories of professional failure and the lessons learned.

And it was really interesting as facilitators of that experience to see, “Oh, here’s some areas where we needed to grow and we weren’t excelling as creators of this experience, and here’s some areas where we were growing and the next time we did it, we did it even better.” And yeah, life’s about practice. Jump in, jump in with both feet and see what happens. It’s exciting.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, absolutely. And also, I was even recalling you mentioning wanting to help others find their facilitator voice. So what advice do you have to give someone who feels the pull toward facilitation but isn’t sure where to start?

Bahaa Chmait:

I think about this little acronym, CBA. First, I think getting clarity on exactly what you want. As a facilitator, it can be hard to know exactly where you want to go, but just get clarity on something small. “I want to do this. I want to do that.” And then remove the limiting beliefs that you have around it. And the best way to do that is to practice. Best way to do that is to be around other people who you can fail in front of and feel psychologically safe.

And then, finally, the A is action. Take action. The more you just sit and think about it, the harder it’s going to be to move forward. And sometimes that clarity, sometimes you need to take action and then you get clarity. So just take action, take baby steps, move forward. For me, I didn’t know how to move into the corporate space, so I took the Voltage Control certification, and it gave me the stepping stone.

I was like, “Okay, this is pretty cool. I was in a safe environment. I was in a cohort of people that, some of them were in the corporate speak world, and some of them weren’t in the corporate world.” And I was like, “Oh, there are other people like me that I can connect with and feel this camaraderie with.” So take action. Get clear on what you want, even if it’s just baby steps. You don’t have to have the big end goal in mind. And most of all, remove the limiting beliefs that you have and give yourself permission to just explore.

Douglas Ferguson:

And this might be a similar answer, but I’m curious if we now zoom out a little bit because we were talking specifically about facilitation and facilitation skills.

But if we then more broadly look at communities and your mission of helping spread joy and connection as a part of daily life, what’s one step people might take to move closer to your vision that they’re realizing your dream of communities that have joy and connection?

What’s something that folks might do to have a little more of that? Is it about the playlist, or are there other things that folks might consider?

Bahaa Chmait:

The playlist is great for your mental health. Everyone should make a playlist. What I would say is, think about the dance floor analogy. Think about the first person who needs to go, and like we said before, whether it’s bridging connection with somebody, maybe it’s a colleague, you’re a remote worker, and you’re onboarded and you’ve got a few Zoom, and then what’s the rest of the time? You’re left to kind of connect, reach out, and throw them a dad joke and start building a relationship.

Most people don’t reach out because the other person didn’t reach out. And so if you just hop on the dance floor, get a little bit of bravery, a little bit of courage, some really amazing things happen. And when you send that dad joke to a colleague who’s working remotely as well, I think about 40% of the time, I get a response back. I get the laughing emoji, and then I get, “I needed that. I needed that.” Because everyone’s having a challenging day, it works hard, life’s hard.

So just reach out, bridge the gap. Be the first one to get on that dance floor of life, and people will join you because everybody’s craving connection. We’re in the middle of the loneliness epidemic, according to the World Health Organization. And we’re more connected than ever before through technology, and yet there’s this disconnection that we all have and we all feel. So be the first, or gather up a group of people together and be the first together. But take action.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. And I want to wrap here with an opportunity for you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Bahaa Chmait:

I think that was it, the one I gave you. I think that was it. Be the first one on the dance floor. I imagine a world where loneliness is optional, and I’ll let that sink in because I don’t know too many people who would choose that option. But when we have enough human connection in the world, that loneliness would be optional, that would be a very beautiful world to live in.

So I think be the first one on the dance floor. Go first, reach out, connect with that person you haven’t connected with yet, whether it’s a cousin or a friend [inaudible 00:41:44] talk to in a while, or a parent, or if you’re a remote worker, reach out to your colleagues and just put yourself out there. Be the first one on the dance floor. I guarantee you someone will join you, and you’ll start to create a movement of connection that’s really beautiful.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s been a pleasure having you on the show. Bahaaaa. And thanks so much for joining me.

Bahaa Chmait:

Childhood Trauma coming back. Oh man, it’s been so great talking to you, Douglas. Thanks for spreading joy in the world and creating opportunities for people to connect, whether it’s through the Facilitation Labs and the ability to experience what a supportive environment looks like, or through the regional meetups that you’re supporting right now.

I hope one gets started in Salt Lake City, where I’m at, or just your playful nature. We’ve worked together with some clients on a few different occasions, and I just love the way you show up. Joking, playful, jovial. You allow people to see who you are, and I think that’s really cool.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, thank you for that. And Bahaa, you’re always a pleasure. And again, thank you so much for being here.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, Douglas. Woo-hoo.

Douglas Ferguson:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe and receive updates when new episodes are released.

We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog, or I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics, and collaboration. Voltagecontrol.com.

The post How Can We Combat Loneliness Through Shared Experiences? appeared first on Voltage Control.

“One of the things that really motivates me is seeing the light in people’s eyes when they come into the innovation center and we have them play with Legos or do something fun. Bringing enjoyment into work is something that really motivates me personally.”- Ralitsa Dimitrova

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Ralitsa Dimitrova, who leads the Ignition capability at KPMG Switzerland. Ralitsa shares her journey as a generalist and connector in facilitation, emphasizing the value of adaptability, empathy, and continuous learning. She discusses her career path, starting unexpectedly at Accenture, and highlights the importance of being a generalist in fostering collaboration and innovation. The episode also explores the role of community, storytelling, and creativity in facilitation and touches on future possibilities involving AI in the facilitation process.

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About the Guest

Ralitsa Dimitrova is leading Ignition Switzerland- KPMG’s program and experience hub in Zurich and Geneva focused on accelerating innovation through the Insights Center and the Innovation Lab. Ralitsa has more than 10 years’ consulting experience in the areas of innovation, digital centers of excellence and emerging technologies. She is a certified facilitator in design thinking and futures thinking. She works with multinational clients across industries, supporting them in their strategy through insights-generating sessions, inspirational technology showcases and collaborative workshops. Prior to joining KPMG Switzerland, Ralitsa successfully launched the KPMG Insights Center in Milan, Italy. She started her career at the Accenture Innovation Center Network and later on headed the social media and digital marketing division of a boutique communication agency.

About Voltage Control

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

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Voltage Control on the Web
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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Today I’m with Ralitsa Dimotrov at KPMG Switzerland where she leads the ignition capability, which is a part of a global network of expert business facilitators with more than 20 client experience centers around the world. Welcome to the show, Ralitsa.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Thank you, Douglas. Thank you for having me.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s great to have you. I’m excited to have this conversation. It’s always lovely to be in conversation with our alumni.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the invite.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, of course. You described your journey as a generalist and a dot connector. Can you take us back to that moment at Accenture when your manager helped you see your strength in simplifying complexity?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yes, so that’s actually a great question to start this with because maybe I’ll just step even back in time, actually, in terms of how I ended up joining that company because I think that was really a funny story. Essentially, I did not proactively had set up my mind on, oh, I want to go for a career in consulting. I just watched a video on YouTube. I remember that moment, and there was this video on YouTube where they were shooting from the Accenture Innovation Center in Milan, and they were showing emerging tech and how they work around the client experience and things like that. That first impression was really very positive as a young kind of graduate. I decided to contact the person on the video proactively and just said, “Okay, I mean, what can I do? What can I lose?: I mean, let’s just reach out. It seems like a great place to work.

I always had this passion about technology and about design, and this seems really like the perfect place to merge those passions. That’s already a little bit part of my generalist nature showing up because I didn’t have my mind set up on anything particular. I just saw this looks like a nice place to start my career. I reached out without expectations and it was funny that they actually responded and one thing led to the other and they invited me to visit the Innovation Center, and this ended up to be a first interview.

Then I joined the team and this leads us basically the moment that you already mentioned that where, essentially, I had my first manager and I started having these conversations as part of my career journey on how do I shape my role and myself as a professional? Am I going to be more of a generalist or am I going to specialize? This is where this conversation essentially opened up my mind towards the opportunity of being more of a facilitator rather than specializing in a particular solution or in a particular set of technology or a service. This happened really naturally, just I think from the fact that they very soon noticed that I seemed to be very good in summarizing concepts, in also transforming complex concepts into visuals.

That basically led me to join multiple different projects and really try a lot of different things from different industries, different types of clients, mid-sized, corporates, consumer goods, luxury, fashion, pharma, whatever it is. I really, really saw a wide range of projects and clients and that I think at the end, if we come back to the role as a facilitator, is really, really precious. I really think that it makes a difference, even now as I’m basically I have grown into this role even more. This is something that I constantly go back to in terms of experience from this wide range of sectors and companies.

Douglas Ferguson:

This idea of being a generalist is something that comes up quite often when I talk to facilitators and certainly our alumni. I’d be curious how much that continues to play a part in your career and maybe even others that you noticed come up behind you or around you?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yes, it’s true. It does come up quite often, also, with my current and past team members. Because I think as facilitators we often observe and sometimes in the world that we live in, we are used to or we are made to think that in order to add value and to sell that value to the external world, you need to specialize in something. You need to be really good in one thing. That’s why I think a lot of people are struggling to accept themselves to an extent in the facilitator role. It’s not, I mean, at least from my experience, it doesn’t come that easy because you think, “Oh my God, I need to choose a direction and that direction should be specialized. I need to be able to prove my value to the context that I am in, the company I work for.”

It doesn’t come naturally to the mind that, “Oh, actually my value can be cross. It can be cross-functional, it can be, I actually can be a facilitator.” It does not come as an immediate job description or at least from my experience. I think in the last couple of years, that has shaped a little bit more in terms of a role and maybe now people are also, actively looking for a facilitator role or preparing themselves and kind of training for facilitator role. I think in the past when I started my career, that was not the case, at least in my experience.

Douglas Ferguson:

There’s tons of folks that are leveraging these skills and out there doing great work as generalists, but don’t have a facilitator in their title. Frankly, the titles are all over the place. It can be hard to make that connection that, “Oh, these skills are going to be valuable for me to make a difference in what I do.”

Ralitsa Dimotrov:

Exactly. I think it’s just something that also, maybe comes natural to people and they don’t even realize if there isn’t someone maybe from your friends or colleagues to point you in the direction, “Oh, by the way, you would be a really good facilitator.” Maybe you don’t even think about it. Oh, actually that is a real skill. I can even deep dive into that skill or train even better for that skill. The program for example, that I did with Voltage Control was probably one of the first things also, for myself, that first programs for myself that I really decided I’m going to invest into that skill even though I have been doing it for so long.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s interesting. What do you think this idea of investing in the skills after having done it for so long, what was that like to approach this with some level of curiosity or newness?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I came from the perspective that we can never stop learning and I always have something new to learn. I was amazed, by the way, that there were so many different people and so many, on the program specifically, I met so many people that are similar and I really felt that, “Oh my God, finally I found my crowd. Finally, I found my people,” because before I had no idea. Just in terms of speaking the same language, learning from each other, just having this very easy understanding because, obviously, we all start from a base of let’s say, fundamental skills that we all have. It’s very easy to then build on that, on each other’s experience and exchange because we all have some fundamentals in place. That experience was really amazing in that sense to just meet my group of people and feel kind of a belonging.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that. It’s such a big part of our values and what we are attempting to build and grow. Community is just at the center of so much of what we do. I love that you felt that you found your people, ’cause that’s kind of part of my mission is to bring people together and celebrate the ecosystem and really the reason why we created the summit and all the local meetups and everything. That warms my heart to hear that that was a big thing for you.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, definitely. I think it’s one, to be honest, one of the few networks that I really think is built for facilitators. I really like that.

Douglas Ferguson:

What about with inside the company? Have you found that there’s a growing group of folks that are supporting each other in this kind of community manner?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

I mean, think in my team, we definitely have created a supportive ecosystem for ourselves. Is that part of the larger culture in the organization? Probably not, but maybe I would like to say not just yet because then I really would like to also, at least I’m trying with my team to contribute to an evolution of that corporate environment or culture where collaboration and facilitation becomes actually part of the day-to-day. Because I believe that there can be only benefits to the way, at least consultants because I talk about my work environment, but at least consultants engage with clients and the way they provide professional services, the way they interact with clients. I think there is only benefits to be realized there if facilitation and collaboration becomes part of the culture and becomes part of the day-to-day. That’s why I also take it a little bit also as the mission of myself and my team bring that to the organization that we are working for and to evangelize a little bit even in that regard, the company. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I think it’s infectious when teams start to work in this way and are intentional about making it part of your every day and not just, “Oh, this is a special workshop.” If we really embed it in what we do and how we come together, other teams start to notice and then it starts to just almost infect an organization. I love that you’re at least thinking about doing this locally for your team and at least changing the lives of the folks that are immediately around you.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

I think so, and you know what? I think two things. First, for me, it’s very important for my team to live that culture as a team. Whenever we not only like to preach, “Oh, you need to be more collaborative, you need to use this or that technique to our colleagues,” but also to live it in my small team basically. Every time we try to make a decision or we need to brainstorm something, we use our own techniques on ourselves as facilitators. We test our techniques, we use them also, to brainstorm ideas for the team to kind of collect and bring up ideas bottom up. I always try to first approach my team as a small company within the company, let’s say, and make sure that we follow the culture that we want to create for the organization, so that’s one.

Then I think what you said before, it’s exactly right, that the word basically spreads. Once colleagues have tested, have tried some of our techniques here and there. One of the things that really motivates me is seeing the light in people’s eyes when they come into the innovation center and to the insight center that we have in Zurich, and we have them play with Lego, so we have them kind of do something fun, collaborate, form groups, maybe engage them with some kind of metaphor, add some storytelling, and you can really see how people are having fun while working. Kind of bringing the enjoyment into work is something that really, really motivates me personally, and that’s why I think one of the reasons that why I like facilitation.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, absolutely. Joy can certainly unlock creativity.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Exactly, yes. I think especially in such corporate environments, when you think of the big fours or other big corporates. There is I think to an extent a reputation of, “Oh, this is not a fun place to work. It’s very serious, it’s very professional place, it’s very trusted environment,” but joy does not come to mind when you think of these big corporates. While I think that, actually, there is a lot of space for joy in there and for creativity because we solve problems for clients every day, and these problems are so different, so various from one to the other. Creativity is needed daily. We need to be able to fire creativity through facilitation for sure.

Douglas Ferguson:

I was just thinking about your story about the early days and reaching out to someone who had inspired you. I think that’s really good advice for folks that are just getting their practice started or just getting in their career, reaching out to folks with curiosity and connecting with the community or with folks that are a few steps ahead of you. Was this just a one-time occurrence for you? Is this something that you typically do through your career, just reaching out to others and with curiosity?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yeah, I love reaching out to others. I think, generally, I never had a problem to ask for advice and be inspired by someone. If I saw something, maybe a snippet of the work that someone else has done, I really like to first of all reach out to congratulate them on the great work and second, to also kind of understand more. That, I think, is something that I’ve always done, and I think it can only benefit a person if you make it part of a habit to reach out and to share sometimes. You don’t need to have a specific task that you need to accomplish that you would maybe need help with. Sometimes it’s literally just as you said, just out of curiosity. Maybe that’s something that will come handy in a few months or years time, but in the meantime you have learned something new. Definitely, yeah, that’s something that I’ve always done and I definitely advise people, especially that you’re starting their career to do so. You can only have a no for maybe, yeah, they won’t respond immediately, and so what? You just tried.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, you can really only benefit. I love this framing that you had of saying that it doesn’t have to be transactional, you don’t have to expect something out of it. I think coupled with this point you made, which I want to highlight, which is starting off with some appreciation and gratitude saying, “Hey, thanks for putting this out into the world, I really appreciate it.” They might be thinking about something new they haven’t shared. They might notice something about you. Even just something offhanded or simple that they say might have a profound effect on you, even if they don’t go out of the way and do anything special, just something they say in response could click and be of high value. It’s totally worthwhile to just to put out those questions and put the curiosities out in the world.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Absolutely, and I think it comes back to, again, what I believe is the role of the facilitator and back to the topic of being a generalist, because you are constantly collecting different types of information that maybe you don’t know if that would be useful for you today or tomorrow. I mean, again, going back to connecting the dots, yes, because by reaching out to people, by being curious about different types of information, not only in your professional area but also, outside of it, I think really contributes to a facilitator being able in a workshop, let’s say, on the spot, bring up the right example or bring up the right metaphor or the right association that would make concepts click for people. In order to be able to naturally do that, you just need to absorb a lot of information and just have that huge, let’s say, backlog of information and then just pick up something from it whenever it comes handy, but first, you need to constantly build it and maintain it.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I love that. Having these stories, these examples, this context in your quiver, I think more powerful than having tools, to be honest, because if you’re able to help people connect in and resonate and understand something to have the context for it to go deeper so they can integrate it into their thinking, that’s so much more powerful than maybe a tool or a technique.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yes, I agree. That’s why sometimes you can have the perfect activity set up, the perfect technique, but sometimes there’s just playing with associations and having the right, let’s say, visual in place or the right story as you said in place, just puts a little bit of magic in the whole mix and makes the collaboration even better. I do encourage my team a lot to use storytelling as well. Metaphors, as I said, we have a concept that is called preludes also, which is again, a concept around storytelling of how you introduce, let’s say a session or how you introduce a workshop with some kind of story to it. That’s why it’s called a prelude. Something that comes before the actual core objective or core agenda, but we do use these a lot to reinforce the objectives to make connections between people and to make the mission of the day click for everyone.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that. It’s always important to start with purpose, and if you can do that in a storytelling way that acts as a scene setter, it can actually make it a little more intriguing. Maybe you can decorate it with some details that maybe entice people in some fun ways. I love that.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yes, and I think it also makes it more memorable and the whole experience becomes immediately more memorable.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. The way you open, the way you close and creating the high point throughout the time together definitely are great ways to make things more memorable. Thinking about that beginning and how you make them feel.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I think the way, especially at the beginning, I think, is really key to kickstart the project or the agenda with the right level of motivation and the right level of alignment. For that, I think storytelling helps a lot.

Douglas Ferguson:

Coming back to your generalist point and this idea of collecting lots of information and how that’s really helpful to have on hand and making the most out of your sessions. It also makes me think that there are a couple of things that it impacts your ability to adjust and adapt activities. Rather than just taking it for face value of what does it say in the book or what did I read online, but how do I shift it and change it in ways that make it unique to me or customize it for the group? Then likewise, your ability to notice little things that are happening in the room to synthesize how Susan’s feeling versus Bob is feeling. Then link those things and compare them really fast so that the group can benefit from those insights that are bubbling up that maybe are just under the surface.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Absolutely. I mean, being able to pivot when needed due to dynamics that you observe in the room or just realizing that, “Oh my God, actually there is new information coming which needs to change the agenda in order to, we need to change the objective midway. I don’t know, something happened. There is new information, new stakeholders that are important.” Having this possibility to pivot, I think, and this capacity actually, to remain flexible I think is very important. I think for me personally, I had to learn this because this was something that did not come naturally, for sure. I’m a very much of a perfectionist. I very much prepare. I really want to have the plan ready. I had to kind of, with experience, lean more into, actually it’s okay sometimes to relax a bit, to improvise when necessary and not to be so strict on the planning. That’s definitely important.

Also, what you mentioned about observing the room, reading the room, that I think is something that it’s a little bit, I would say in my opinion, slightly more difficult to learn. You either have it a little bit or not, you can improve for sure, but I think it’s linked to empathy and I think really good facilitators have a lot of empathy, and this capacity to observe and read the little signs of what’s happening across the table with the people and empathize with that and maybe have the right activity in place or the right phrase to bring up the mood, for example, or address challenge or friction in the conversation if you notice it. I think then it comes really handy for facilitator, but first it’s the capacity to observe and empathize with the group.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s certainly important. I want to come back to that point made about the adapting and maybe being a bit more emergent wasn’t natural for you and you had to learn it. What were some of the ways that you practiced or exposed yourself or were able to learn how to be a bit more adaptive?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yeah, so it is just a very simple example. Even with my public speaking skills, I’ve always, initially, I used to have these long scripts. My brain was making me over prepare. I would go around three days before I have a speech to do. I would go around with these papers, read through my scripts, memorize my scripts to the extent that I would start feeling more natural doing it. Then I started saying to myself, “No, this is not natural. This is actually making it much more stressful for yourself. Throw away all the scripts, try with kind of more simplified bullet points kind of list or maybe key messages lists.”

I forced myself to do not write down everything but just key points, try to naturally get more, let’s say, to get used to improvise a little bit my speech. Then I think now I’m at the stage where I probably don’t even need usually the bullet points. I think it was a gradual progression, but yeah, I had to go out of my comfort zone and say, “No, you’re not going to write down your script this time for this presentation. Try something else, try something different.” Then it worked. I saw that actually it comes out even better when I leave myself some space for improvisation and then I took it from there.

Douglas Ferguson:

How did this room for improvisation show up in your facilitation?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

I think I had actually a very kind of a recent example of a workshop where it was a few months ago where we had prepared an amazing agenda, amazing setup, full range of activities, everything with a purpose. Sometimes for a facilitator, when you’ve done this work, there is a part of you saying, “Oh my God, I really want everything to go perfectly so that I can see all my ideas taking place in the room.” You have been preparing maybe for a couple of months to that day and everything should happen on the day. Then midway, the client says, “Oh, by the way, one of the most important stakeholders in the workshop cannot join this part anymore. He can only join till this time,” and without him there is no point that we need to, so what do we do? I’m like, “Oh my God, this is completely rearranging our agenda midway to accommodate this thing that was not clear at the beginning that he couldn’t join that part.”

We had to … And then there, I think it’s very important to have a very strong team, and your co-facilitators are so important to be able to, because if you’re a front facilitator, you need to be able to be present in the moment to calm down the client, maybe to discuss with them, “Okay, let’s arrange rearrange this part,” and be present in the moment. In the meantime, in the back office, you need to very strong team to say, “Okay, let’s take care of this. Let’s move the lunch, let’s move the break. That means that we need to rearrange the room in this way. Let us bring these chairs because that’s a sit-down presentation, it’s not an activity anymore.” All these logistics need to happen in the background and to do that so smoothly that the participants and the client, they don’t notice.

For them, everything is still calm and then they remain in the mood of collaboration, creativity, new information, new insights that they need to think about, focus. In the meantime, everyone is running around trying to fix it. To your question, I think in order to be able to pivot well, team is so important. Having the support on the day and also, just remaining calm and collected, and it is what it is. Don’t get too affectionate towards your ideas, I would say. Don’t fall in love too much in your ideas of facilitate of how things should be. I think that’s important in terms of mindset, just from the beginning.

Douglas Ferguson:

If you fall in love with your ideas, it’s hard to remain in that positive, optimistic, solution-oriented mindset. If you’re too tied in, it’s easy to take it personally and say, “Oh, they don’t value what we’re doing here, or they’re not taking this seriously.” Then once you go down that path, then it’s really hard to think about, “How do I leverage this great team that I have? How do I have keep things smooth?” Because now it’s, “Oh, it’s this negative event,” versus thinking about, “Okay, this is just a curve ball that we have to react to.” I love that this is stuff that you’re positively responding to.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Absolutely, and I think that’s actually what you said brings me to what I have reflected in the past a lot in the facilitator role, and this is the topic of the ego. I don’t know if you’ve observed that as well, but as facilitators, sometimes we need to be careful with our own ego because as you said, if you sense as a facilitator that the people in the room are probably not understanding, not fully grasping the value that you’re trying to bring to them, it happens. It can totally happen. Maybe they just focus on different priorities. I mean, we as facilitators focus on delivering the best experience, having or achieving the objective for them. Maybe that’s just a little part from a broader picture and they focus on completely different objectives. Politics maybe that are happening in the background that maybe we don’t know about. Conflict, things like that.

Sometimes if you don’t manage your ego as facilitator, you can definitely be heard and also, start to think that, “Oh my God, my role is not understood. I don’t bring value,” and kind of undermine yourself in that way. While actually what we do, I think, as facilitators is we voluntary step back sometimes. We need to be mindful of when we reinforce our presence and when we kind of need to step back and we do this, I think, with generosity. I think it’s a great act of generosity when we observe and we understand actually the room maybe needs a bit less at the moment, so I need to step back or allow them to sort themselves or things like that. That’s also, I think, part of great facilitation without that impacting you personally.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes. Well said. I want to talk a little bit about, I think you’ve been doing this long enough and you’ve got a strong team around you, and so it makes me curious how much you’ve started to think about developing those around you or the facilitators that are more junior or the staff members that are just getting curious about facilitation. How are you supporting them? In what ways are you finding that you can make them more successful or help them with their curiosities about what facilitation can do?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yeah, that’s a great question. Something that they really believe into is personal development and learning. We have a very supportive company in that way. When we are willing to explore learning opportunities, we always get support. In terms of courses, in terms of even a couple of days conference or events that my team members join. We are always looking for training on methodologies. For example, if someone from my team members expresses interest in certain methodology, they can freely explore what are the options on the market and come back to us and say, “I found this and that course I want to do this. What do you think?” We would consider it and very often or usually we’ll sponsor it. For that, I think, is very important and it’s one way to keep them curious.

The other way for me is by giving them the freedom to explore topics. Sometimes we assign to each other a techniques or create a prelude about this or maybe explore if we can do this and that activity or let’s test this other thing out. I like to establish this culture of experimentation. Very recently, for example, with my team, without receiving it as a task from somewhere, we just decided to go a little bit deeper into signals of change and observing and collecting signals of change.

We started just as a team on a Friday afternoon kind of setting up some time, silent collaboration time I call it. We get on a Teams call for an hour, we don’t speak. It’s silent collaboration time, but we are together on that call. Everyone researches signals the first half an hour, and the second half an hour we kind of share. This we did purely for experimentation purposes because we didn’t have a specific objective in a sense that, “Oh, we need to collect X amount of signals in order to create an observatory in order to publish a thought leadership piece or anything like that.”

We were, “Okay, let’s just see if this can be part of our day-to-day, if we can get into the habit of collecting signals and let’s see where this would lead us towards.” We have been doing this for more than six months now, and now we are to the point where we have to reflect back and see, “Okay, what did we learn? Is this something that we want to continue doing in the future? How can we create an output out of this?” I’ve always been transparent to my team members that if you have the time you join, if you don’t this time, but we do this as a team and maybe we can also fail. Maybe we do it for some time and we realize, “Oh, actually we cannot benefit, and that’s fine.” In the meantime, we have learned a practice and that probably would become part of what we do also outside of work. Yeah, that’s another experimentation, I think, is also very important.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that was one of my questions. What experiments are you most excited about trying next? Whether it’s tools or formats or audiences?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

At the moment, obviously, AI is big topic, so experimenting with technology and how that can influence what we do as facilitators, as storytellers is where I see a lot of potential for doing things differently. The other day I was thinking also, if we project ourselves in the future, what would a workshop be from a facilitator point of view if I need to facilitate between humans and maybe AI agents? Would I do the same activities? Would I base myself on the same methodological foundation? If I need to facilitate between AI and humans, what would that look like? I don’t have the answers yet, but it’s just I’m reflecting on those questions going forward. I think in order to have an answer, we need to be the first ones to experiment with these tools and to learn about these tools and to be prepared to understand how they work.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. We were running a workshop at South by Southwest, and it was focused on AI teammates. Really, this curiosity of, rather than using AI as a tool, so many of us default to it’s a one-on-one thing where, “I need this result, I’m going to ask it to do this thing,” versus bringing it into the collaboration context and having the team react to it or having it react to things the team’s generating and back and forth. It was really quite fun. People started to consider what was possible from a whole new lens.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Absolutely. I think for the moment, we also have experimented a lot with AI as a supporting tool, as you say, as a helpful assistant, maybe in the preparation of the workshop mainly. I really want to push ourselves a little bit more to see, “Okay, what would that mean if AI is actually a participant?” We have tried out a few things, but I still think there is a lot of potential there to explore and to understand how that would work.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I love that. It comes back to what you were saying earlier about the importance of being a generalist and how that role has a lot of value, and I’d argue with AI becoming more and more prominent and getting specialized in certain things and able to do certain specialized tasks or have specialized knowledge, this generalist that can question and draw things together across these different perspectives is going to be even more and more valuable.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yeah, I think so. I think, really, I’m very much thinking about would I have a role in the future? Because we have experimented with AI, building agendas, building activities, brainstorming, the whole concept. I’m like, “Okay, AI can do this.” Then as a facilitator, what is the value that I would bring in a future when maybe I would have an agent that would do these tasks for me? Maybe I don’t even need to analyze the objectives. Maybe I don’t even need to, for sure, I won’t need to script the agenda. Probably an AI agent would even schedule the initial calls with my clients. I don’t know. For sure, a lot of these tasks will be outsourced to my agent. That would probably have also already my knowledge.

The agent will probably already, also, will be already fed with my experience. Then would that mean that I would just go and facilitate face-to-face? Would that even be a need anymore? Maybe there will be a virtual assistant on a video that would be do the talking. I don’t know. I’m definitely curious about how that vision of the future would look like. I do think that there is a lot of truth in what you’re saying, that it’ll be more important to have a generalist knowledge in order to create connections between the worlds. Because all the specialization seems that can be outsourced to an AI. The true human creativity I think is really in making unexpected connections. I don’t know, I still have to live and see.

Douglas Ferguson:

I think that’s what the future is about, is we will see what unfolds.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Exactly.

Douglas Ferguson:

Let’s leave our listeners with a final thought. Would you like to share an insight or something that’s found helpful in your career?

Ralitsa Dimitrova::

I think maybe this last topic that we touched upon makes me think about the fact that we live in so exciting times. I think it’s really, we have the chance nowadays to redefine how we do work and really to redefine what work means for humans and even further define the foundations of human and AI collaboration. I think I would like to leave the listeners with this inspiration to think about what that future collaboration between humans and AI could look like. As facilitators, how can we shape that and what would our role be? More than an insight, it’s actually a question, but I think it’s also part of our job as facilitators to ask the questions.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, let’s facilitate our future.

Ralitsa Dimitrova::

I like that.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, thank you so much for being on the show and this amazing conversation. It’s been so much fun. I really appreciate it, Ralitsa.

Ralitsa Dimitrova::

Thank you so much, Douglas. Thanks again for the invitation. I hope this was insightful for the listeners.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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