In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, Douglas Ferguson interviews Marco Monterzino, a human-centered designer and innovation facilitator. Marco shares his journey from luxury product design to facilitation, emphasising the significance of ritual, adaptability, and purpose in both fields. They discuss how design thinking and frameworks like the hero’s journey inform facilitation, and how rituals shape user experiences. Marco also explores building organisational resilience, the evolving nature of purpose, and the importance of cultivating equanimity. The episode concludes with insights on blending facilitation and education to foster resilient, innovative teams and communities.

Show Highlights

[00:01:45] Marco’s Entry into Luxury Design
[00:08:21] Rituals and Product Design
[00:15:49] Gaining Confidence and Structure as a Facilitator
[00:23:59] Workshops as Human Gatherings
[00:31:14] Bridging Facilitation and Education
[00:35:17] Final Thought: The Equanimity Hack

Links | Resources

Marco on LinkedIn

About the Guest

Marco Monterzino is a Human-centered Designer and Certified Innovation Facilitator at Monterzino Design, where he helps senior leadership teams discover their organisational resilience.

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson (00:05):
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 to 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.

(00:38):
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 realtime 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.

(00:58):
Today I’m with Marco Monterzino, human-centered designer and Certified Innovation Facilitator at Monterzino Design, where he helps senior leadership teams discover their organizational resilience. Welcome to the show, Marco.

Marco Monterzino (01:14):
Thanks for having me, Douglas. Great to see you.

Douglas Ferguson (01:16):
I just want to say it’s so wonderful having you on the show today. You’ve been such a great collaborator, and the work you’re doing at Facilitation Lab Europe is so wonderful. We really appreciate everything you’re doing there. And we’ve got some cool stuff that we’re working on that we might be launching next year. So always a pleasure to chat with you, and it’s so wonderful having you on the show today.

Marco Monterzino (01:37):
Thanks. Look, it’s been an incredible experience and so supportive of my own journey. So yeah, thanks for setting it up really.

Douglas Ferguson (01:46):
You began your career designing luxury objects, like lighters and fountain pens. What first drew you into that world? And what did you learn from working in such a rarefied space?

Marco Monterzino (01:56):
So that’s a great question, Douglas. I would say I more or less stumbled upon this market. It’s something that I was introduced to by the college I studied at. So Central Saint Martins College in London is a college that has a very strong network in a very specific niche of the market, which is the high end luxury market. Really because they are active in the intersection of art, fashion and design. So that’s the kind of network that I got introduced to.

(02:31):
I also have to say, as a child growing up, I really enjoyed collecting lighters and fountain pens, but really not the lighters that cost you half a yearly salary. So these are things that I just encountered along my journey and I really enjoyed discovering. Especially I would say the whole experience of creating these items, luxury items, high end items is connecting to a notion that the French call savoir faire, which is basically craftsmanship.

(03:11):
So having a chance to immerse myself in companies that have these workshops where they make bespoke diamond-encrusted accessories for gentlemen, for ladies, it was really super, super precious. And opened up my mind as a designer because I could see how … This was my first experience in connecting the practice of designing to the practice portfolio manufacturing, and this was a very specific type of manufacturing. It’s very little industrial production, just a little bit of C&C milling, digital manufacturing, which was then all finished by hand, encrusted by hand, engraved by hand. So the range of possibilities was really endless.

Douglas Ferguson (04:04):
I recall that your big project was the Diva. And I playfully suggested From Diva to Facilitator as your alumni story title, but that felt a little off to you. Tell us about the origins in the name Diva, and what was there for you as you were working on that project?

Marco Monterzino (04:19):
Yeah, thank you. That’s a great memory actually to recall. So I had been given this assignment to work with a young audience for a luxury brand called Stephane Tissot Dupont based in Paris. They started being known for travel case design. They created these travel cases that people use for traveling on the great liners of Cunard, that heritage. When I went to visit the factory, the workshops, the atelier actually how they call it, it was really super feeling the weight of these objects and hearing the sound of the lids as they came open. I was introduced to a whole new universe. I never really could see how you could design into that level of detail.

(05:08):
Now, the concept actually came because I was struggling with coming up with an idea for something in that market. It’s really not my market, I hardly could empathize with the user. And that’s my first job as a designer, understanding what a user needs. So one day I was just walking around in Lugano, on this Italian border with Switzerland. Actually, it was the Swiss border with Italy. And I saw … Sometimes you start observing, and I’m the kind of person sometimes, a bit awkwardly stops and starts staring at something as if I was invisible. I was super mesmerized by something that I was observing. And this scene was a guy and a girl who was basically, they didn’t know each other and they crossed paths on the shore of this lake. She asked him if he had a lighter. And the way this interplay happened was really beautiful because the light was just right, there was a gust of wind, and their hands gently touched each other as they were exchanging this moment, this gesture.

(06:28):
And for me, that moment was where I was, “Oh, wow, that’s really beautiful. What if I could design a physical object, a tool like a lighter, that could really represent and enhance this ritual of giving fire?” The elegance of an open gesture like that. So the idea was what if a person like me could, in a dream, be able to treat a woman like a diva, like you see in the great films of the Hollywood era. So that’s how the name came about, just thinking of a lighter that was dedicated, it was an homage to the user. A lady who’s treated like a diva by a gentleman. The divas are in this dream scenario that I lost myself into.

(07:38):
That landed really well Stephane Tissot Dupont, the creative director really liked it and said, “We can manufacture this.” And in fact, I think they didn’t end up manufacturing that specific design unfortunately, as it often goes with product innovation. But they built the idea of something that could be operated with an open gesture in other collections. One for 007 is operating that way, then they have another one that is a bit more sporty and leverages the strength of the hand. Because the whole idea was to offer a lighter, rather than in your fist like many would, on the open palm of a hand, as if your hand was a surface rather than your hand holding onto something.

Douglas Ferguson (08:21):
That story immediately drew me to the idea of ritual, and I think you even invoked that word yourself. This idea of passing the flame has become a thing of the past because people are moving away from smoking due to health concerns or picked up vaping instead. Are there other human-to-human rituals that we’ve lost that we could amplify with design or objects?

Marco Monterzino (08:44):
Look, it’s a very interesting space, that one, I think for all forms of industrial design especially because that was where I asked myself this kind of question. The idea of a ritual really is at the root of many products that we use. If you think about simple rituals like how we use our handsets, there’s lots of little rituals in there. A lot of little gestures, a lot of thoughtless acts, a lot of cultural norms we can play with.

(09:17):
Now of the top of my head, I wouldn’t be able to pull in a specific ritual that I have in mind. But if you think about the usual rituals of, for instance the tea ceremony or many other cultural rituals, really are about the process being just as important as the outcome. Because the outcome, at the end of the day, might be drink a cup of tea. But what if the pleasure and the value of the experience is throughout the process from the beginning to the end? Yeah, how you prepare the mug, how you select and appreciate the blend, how you embody a certain posture rather than another one. In certain cultures, like in Japan, there’s a lot of very sophisticated detail that goes into these things. So I think ritual is everything in product design and it’s a great place to start a design process from my experience.

Douglas Ferguson (10:18):
At what point did you realize objects, though beautiful, didn’t quite align with your own values? And how did that spark your pivot toward utilitarian design?

Marco Monterzino (10:28):
Now, it didn’t come without its pains. You can imagine, I was very excited to be in such a market. It made me feel extremely fortunate. I didn’t see myself designing a fountain pen for Montblanc or helping Stephane Tissot Dupont launch a new lighter. It was something that it was completely foreign to me. But I don’t know, I just felt by doing other bits of work, the purpose part of it was really driving me.

(11:03):
When designing these beautiful objects, you’re often designing items that end up being collected. They might not even be used as much. These brands are really keen to make sure that their products are not seen as collectibles, but unfortunately quite often that’s the way it goes, especially with the more customized and expensive pieces. So being on the other end of the spectrum, so solving real life problems, everyday problems, really addressing something that you might observe in real life, like how can we make packaging not end up in our seas, that sort of problem. How can we help people behave in a different way when it comes to sustainability? These are issues that I’ve dealt with very, very regularly.

(11:55):
It’s the other end of the spectrum. Very, very fast-moving goods, packaging. Not glamorous at all, not massaging my ego as much as a designer, but definitely giving me a sense of purpose and I’m having an impact here. Which I have to say, I wasn’t feeling as much when I was designing the other products. And that is not to say that you can’t have a sense of purpose when designing those other products. If you’re a watchmaker, I think there’s a lot of purpose there. But just it didn’t really click with me. I felt I needed something more grounded. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson (12:36):
Can you share the moment when you first sensed that facilitation, not just product design, might be the real work you were meant to do?

Marco Monterzino (12:44):
I think I mentioned earlier, product innovation, that’s when my shift happened. That’s the first moment I encountered the … I understood the skill behind design. The mindset was transferable, I could use it outside of designing stuff. I could use it to help an R&D team come up with a product without designing the product, just coming up with 10, 20 ideas. So it was incremental in my experience. I went from designing hands-on, to a degree like a craftsman. Designers are, to a degree, craftspeople. They apply their ability to understand manufacturing and form. I went from that place to a place where I could generate lots of ideas for organizations.

(13:44):
And then that turned into we’re not solving product innovation problems now, but when working with a large fast-moving goods company, like Proctor & Gamble or Pepsi, PepsiCo, we might need to really think about, say structural problems for a smaller organization like a startup or a scale-up. And that’s when I could see that holding that hand in understanding how they could discover their product. So their very first product, it was all product-based at the beginning for me, could be done through the same process that I used for designing the product itself. So understanding the what problem is, reframing it, coming up with solutions, and then prototyping and testing solutions to a degree whenever it really fits.

(14:40):
And that’s when I actually started doing design sprints because I overheard at Makerversity, a lovely coworking space I was based at in London, I overheard that my friends in the neighboring office or set of desks were able to sell this product like hot cakes. I was like, “Wow, what’s the secret here?” And the secret was, it was very clear. For the first time I was able to hear people talk about the design process like something that was bite-sized and that could be seen as very tangible because you got from big problem to a user-validated solution at the end.

(15:25):
So that’s where I could see that there was something on the horizon around facilitation. But by no means, I didn’t have the experience or the methodology I could lean on. It was all I was winging it big time. And sometimes, as you do when you’re winging it, sometimes it goes really well and some other times it doesn’t go just quite as well. So yeah, that’s actually how I came about you guys and it was very much to address that need for structure, that need for a sense of also confidence. Because if I was winging it and it was a sunny day and everything was going well, I was completely confident and bold. But if things were not working out, or the client was potentially pushing back, or things were not really, yeah, working out, I would be losing my confidence. You can’t lose your confidence as a facilitator, it’s a key feature of the work we do. We have to guide and lead in a confident way.

(16:30):
So having methods, the readings, especially the first reading, the Art of Gathering, super clear. It was a big light bulb that went off in my head. It clarified my role. I was gathering people, I wasn’t just running workshops. So there was a lot more thought that had to go into it.

Douglas Ferguson (16:53):
That confidence is really key. You talk about when everything’s sunny and goes well, it’s easy to follow the playbook, run the recipe. But then what happens where there’s a perturbation in the system or something goes unexpected? We have to be unflappable. We have to be resilient. That’s why we have our competency of adaptive. If we’re not adaptive facilitators, when we’re met with adversity it’s going to be really hard to respond.

Marco Monterzino (17:25):
Definitely, definitely. Look, one thing that really got me thinking about this topic was when, I think you brought it up on Circle, on the live community, the Facilitation Lab community. You brought up the topic or the notion of equanimity, which was an entirely novel term for me. The English language is not my first language and I had not come across this word before. So I looked it up. I was like, “Oh, I need a bit of this.” It was this inner smoothness was really extremely tantalizing. It was like, “Yeah, I need more than a bit of that. I need to have control of that.”

(18:11):
So yeah, that planted a little seed somewhere in the back of my head. And then through experience, I was able to actually craft for myself something that could ground me when things were not working out quite the way I was hoping.

Douglas Ferguson (18:30):
So tell me more about that?

Marco Monterzino (18:31):
Well, this is something that I refer to as my, I don’t know, it’s a mantra for me. Something that I go to to find my footing. And I found myself and I still find myself quite regularly … Maybe it’s because it’s I’m a creative, I’m a designer, emotions have a strong grip on my psyche. So whenever there’s some emotion that’s making me feel less confident because maybe I’m experiencing an emotion called fear, then as soon as I realize that’s going on I go, “Okay.” I just take a breath and then I just repeat within myself quietly, “I’m here to serve you.” Because at the end of the day, all the work that I do as a consultant, as a human-centered designer is to serve people.

(19:22):
And then it’s like pressing autofocus on a very blurred image. Things go blurry, blurry, blurry, and then I go, “I’m here to serve you,” and everything is crystal clear and instantly I have my confidence back. Instantly, every time. Super reliable.

Douglas Ferguson (19:39):
Nice. There’s a reason purpose is first and adaptive is last. If we’re not starting with purpose and anchoring the other competencies along the way, it’s going to be really difficult to get to adaptive.

Marco Monterzino (19:51):
Totally, totally. And I would say that adaptability is a key feature of purpose. Because I can see my purpose as a business evolving over time, and I can see that you guys possibly have the same. Depending on how you evolve, your purpose has to evolve. Depending on how the market evolves, your purpose has to evolve. Depending on how the learning that I take on along the way informs me with new knowledge, my purpose has to evolve. And that piece where I’m constantly iterating my purpose is the adaptability, the ability to keep that purpose, the driving purpose fresh on my mind. I don’t know how it is for you guys, but that’s definitely the case with me.

Douglas Ferguson (20:39):
Yeah, that echoes true. I want to come back to the journey we’re talking about there. At Untapped Innovation, you saw design embedded in R&D and fueled by frameworks like the Hero’s Journey. How did that experience shape your view of design as facilitation?

Marco Monterzino (20:54):
So yeah, I would say one thing that I came across when working with Untapped was I would label it as a wealth of experience. They had a huge amount of experience, they’d been working with lots of large organizations, companies, multinational companies. One of the methodologies we were using that I encountered was the Hero’s Journey. Because ultimately, one of these human-centered design 101 methodologies is you put the user at the center and you design the whole narrative of whatever you’re innovating upon around it. So that was super, super powerful.

(21:35):
Just a quick example, a quick memory, anecdote. I was brought in to work with a manufacturer of a product that has been … Well, I’ll just say it. I was brought in to work on a tobacco harm reduction project with a large organization that needed to address the fact that their products were harming people. So I remember how having that perspective that put the user at the center, and also having that perspective as a designer to think about the user as a person who is engaging in rituals, especially when it comes to consuming drinks or having other experiences. That became the core aspect of how we generated ideas. So we generated ideas about how we can reduce harm by making the experience of, for instance consuming tobacco, while physically less harmful, but also a lot more about the ritual. A lot more about the quality of the experience, rather than just the consumption and going through packets of cigarettes. So that was powerful.

Douglas Ferguson (22:59):
Yeah, that reminds me of some advice I’ve heard in the past about quitting cigarettes and how important it is to not leave the rituals behind. A lot of times, people smoke when they’re having coffee. A lot of times people will take their smokes breaks. That will be the only time they go outside and take a break from work. There’s some people that even argue it’s the deep breathing that is the relaxing part because nicotine’s a stimulant, it actually raises the blood pressure. So if there’s any argument to it feeling relaxing or stress relieving, it’s the deep breathing that you’re doing when you’re inhaling deeply and exhaling, which people don’t normally do. So this group encouraged folks to, “Hey, keep your coffee ritual. Keep your afternoon and mid-morning breaks. Go outside and breathe.”

(23:47):
I find that interesting reminder of that story while listening to you around designing around those rituals. It kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier with the lighters and the other human exchanges.

Marco Monterzino (23:59):
Yeah. Look, we could connect this with also the practice of seeing workshops as gatherings. For me, it’s the same matter, or it was the same transition. Because why should we suddenly treat a workshop as a situation where there’s one person talking at a group, and there is no structure, and there is no ritual to it. It doesn’t feel like something that belongs to our culture, something that belongs to our human nature.

(24:35):
When you say if we look at it as a gathering, wow. We start thinking about a big circle of people with a blazing fire in the middle. It can become something I think quite natural and quite … There’s a lot of references from our culture itself. So when you are running a workshop, you should think about how the most important thing is the relational quality of it, especially at the beginning. Clarifying purpose of course, keeping things on track, but also making sure that people connect because that’s why you’re bringing them together. And it’s not about getting people through as many design thinking exercises as possible to get to an outcome that is designed by committee. But rather, getting people excited about being together. Able to give shape, to contribute with their logs to the big fire, and to make it bigger and better, and make it memorable.

(25:30):
So yeah, I think making experiences whatever they are human is one of the key learnings of human-centered design, and at least one of those that I really keep close to my heart.

Douglas Ferguson (25:40):
Love that. And also, in your work you’ve described facilitation as “helping organizations access their own resilience.” Could you share an example where you saw that resilience come alive in a powerful way?

Marco Monterzino (25:53):
Right. So this one is covered by a certain amount of confidentiality, but I think I want to share, I would say, the essence of it. Which is there’s been, due to geopolitical changes on the landscape, there’s been a need for certain technologies to be employed in the defense sector. And a lot of innovation, because we’ve gone through a lot of periods of extensive peace which has been I think something we took for granted. And unfortunately, we’re looking at a picture that is a lot less clear and a lot less certain as we speak.

(26:32):
But anyway, these companies were required to help their countries to be resilient in a time where there was disruption. Or these companies themselves were going through a change of purpose that was potentially going to push away a number of their workforce. Or these companies were experiencing a disruption in how they saw themselves and that takes a lot of intentional structure. You can’t do those sort of things just organically. You can, but it takes longer, it’s a lot riskier, and you might risk losing a lot of your people along the way.

(27:17):
Well, if you do it in a very structured way, in a very fair way, in a very transparent way, in a very intentional way, in a way that is designed, then you have basically the equivalent of a well-operating device. You’re basically taking charge of that process. And I think facilitation does that brilliantly because it comes into a place where there is need to be able to spring back to shape after disruption, and I’m giving this example, but it could be other examples. Even simply an organization needing to change management. So there’s a new CEO and maybe with the CEO, a whole new group of executives come into the organization. I’ve been involved in a couple of these larger structures. That’s a huge disruption that then poses the question how do we then connect with the workforce? And how do we enable the workforce to be taken on to a journey?

(28:21):
Because sometimes I’m asked, “Marco, can you help us roll out a new strategy?” And of course what I hear is, “Can you help us enable the work to themselves lead parts of their strategy and meet those goals one-by-one?” And that’s what we do basically, and I think that’s where I see facilitation being, let’s say, a skill or a role or a responsibility that is conducive to resilience. Because it makes disruptions, it turns disruptions into fuel, rather than into things that stop your motion and stop your progress. You take the disruption as an opportunity to redesign, as an opportunity to come up with new solutions, and as an opportunity to refresh. And yeah, facilitation can definitely do that.

Douglas Ferguson (29:11):
Yeah. It’s sort of reframing. Because what might seem like a disruption, or if you look at it through the lens of a disruption is something that is destructive versus looking at disruption as something that is as signal, as a force. But how can we harness that force and utilize it? Because it is showing that people are passionate and there’s energy there. So if we’re able to harness it, if we’re able to redirect it in ways that help us in pursuit of our goal, wow, that’s super effective.

Marco Monterzino (29:42):
Yeah. The notion of resilience has gone through phases. It’s been a buzzword during the big eras of disruption around COVID and I think people grew tired of it. And now I think there it’s come back up with new disruptions and new challenges. I can see that it’s a word that attracts a lot more interest now and I’m glad to see that. But I think there’s been a big argument that resilience is not enough. So what if resilience is not the point?

(30:14):
I can’t remember what was the author, maybe someone will be able to let us know who was the author of this piece of writing. But there was a book that described the 2.0 version of resilience is being this anti-fragility, the anti-fragile type of system. And I don’t like the word itself because I find it a bit difficult to pronounce, it’s a bit long, where resilience to me flows nicely. But I think when I think of resilience, I think of resilience as something that is really fed by challenge. So at the end of the day, it’s something that is anti-fragile. It’s really fueled by all of the challenges that we have coming towards us.

Douglas Ferguson (30:57):
Are you think about Nassim Taleb’s book?

Marco Monterzino (30:59):
That’s the one.

Douglas Ferguson (31:00):
Yeah, great read. And yeah, that word can be a little bit challenging for folks, but I think that might have been its goal. Let’s put something out there that catches people’s attention.

Marco Monterzino (31:12):
I think so. Yeah, definitely.

Douglas Ferguson (31:14):
Well, let’s look ahead. You’re starting to bridge facilitation and education. Thinking about lecturing and other pursuits that are in that world of academia, what excites you most about teaching as a natural extension of facilitation?

Marco Monterzino (31:28):
So the two worlds are very intertwined, aren’t they? Teaching and facilitating. Now that I’ve discovered what facilitation is, which is this soft skill, the mother of all soft skills, I understand or I see teaching in a completely new light. I realize that people who are teaching are facilitating a gathering, a class is a gathering. There is a purpose, which is let’s learn about that subject, that topic, and by the end of the session we will be at the end of that chapter or whatever it might be. So I think there’s a quality which is a natural extension of the more commercial facilitation practice.

(32:11):
And then the other aspect is I have been myself asked a number of times, “Marco, can you help us train our own people so that we can empower our workforce with human-centered design, with collaboration skills, with workshop design, with facilitation?” And that I think took that part of my brain or gave me an opportunity to grow into a new aspect of my practice. Which is to be able to not only perform the craft of facilitation, but also being able to communicate it and to be able to take other people, a journey where you have to make the right space for learning, you have to create the right conversations among peers so that learning can happen. You have to stand back and really not be at the front of the room as much. You’re there enabling this mysterious phenomenon, which is how do people learn stuff.

(33:19):
But yeah, it’s something that I’ve come across as a request, an ask. People ask me, “Can you do that for us?” And I’m like, “Yes, let’s do some experiential learning.” Which is basically taking people through the experience. And then I came across you guys, and you talk about practice, practice playgrounds, which is a brilliant way to experience methodologies and to basically understand that like playing an instrument really well, like finger-picking on a guitar. You might be born with it, but you don’t have to be born with it. You can just spend many, many hours every week practicing, practicing, practicing, and then you get the hang of it. And then you get better, and better, and better. And facilitation is the same, learning these kind of skills is the same. I find it exciting to hold space for that sort of thing because find it made it useful for me, and so I believe it can be useful to others.

Douglas Ferguson (34:15):
And if you look a few years down the road, how do you hope your work, whether in consulting, education or facilitation will contribute to building more resilient organizations and communities?

Marco Monterzino (34:25):
If I blur my eyes and I try to see beyond the horizon, I think I see myself doing a blend of the two worlds. I think that’s where I might be able to keep myself fresh. And also, learn, pick up new things and cross-pollinate. So I think my ambition is to continue on this journey that I’m on. I’m not keen to, let’s say change everything, but I’m keen to continue making small changes as I go forward. And I think these two spaces, the learning and the consulting space to me, there’s a tradition. Lots of designers do that, lots of people in the consulting space also teach, and I see the point. And I think that’s a good ambition to work towards.

Douglas Ferguson (35:17):
And as we come to a close today, I’d love to invite you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Marco Monterzino (35:22):
Okay. So my final thought for the listeners is as an invite as much as a small challenge. I invite you all to craft your own equanimity hack, something that you can tap into when you might lose your confidence. Because as you know because you are maybe already working as a facilitator or maybe it’s something you will discover as you start working as a facilitator, being able to keep that wind in your sails no matter what is crucial in this practice. So craft yourself a little hack to tap into your equanimity and rekindle your confidence. That’s my final thought.

Douglas Ferguson (36:12):
So important. Thanks for coming on the show, Marco. It’s been great chatting.

Marco Monterzino (36:16):
Thank you, Douglas, for having me. It was lovely.

Douglas Ferguson (36:18):
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 Rituals in Design Enhance Facilitation and Organisational Resilience? appeared first on Voltage Control.

As November settles in, teams naturally shift into long-view mode. It’s the season for pruning, strengthening roots, and harvesting insights from the year so we can plant smarter in the next one. That rhythm is tailor-made for the kind of thinking AI transformation actually requires—systems thinking. Because while AI can accelerate what works, it can also amplify what doesn’t. If you adopt it as a series of isolated tools, you risk scaling the very patterns you’re trying to change.

This month, we invite you to step back and see the whole. AI transformation is not a tool swap; it’s a chance to redesign roles, rituals, rules, and boundaries across your organization. When you map the system together—actors, relationships, flows, and incentives—you uncover bottlenecks before they appear, create better decision pathways, and frame experiments that compound learning rather than stall in governance fog.

Our Activity of the Month is Systems Mapping, inspired by the session Erik Skogsberg and Dirk Van Onsem led at the Facilitation Lab Summit 2024. If you’ve never mapped a system with your team, this is the perfect time to try. If you’re already mapping, this is the perfect time to revisit your map, stress-test your future state, and align on experiments that everyone can rally around.

Below, you’ll find a practical, seven-part guide to approach AI with a systems lens—complete with an activity you can run in 60–90 minutes, ways to anticipate tomorrow’s bottlenecks today, and facilitation moves that turn digital transformation teams into conveners of clarity. Let’s get you set to map before you move.

See The Whole To Change The Parts

AI adoption tends to enter organizations as a noun—a new platform, pilot, or policy. But sustainable transformation lives in the verbs—how we decide, coordinate, hand off, learn, and adapt across the system. If you focus on “the tool” you’ll optimize pockets of work. If you focus on “the work,” you’ll redesign the moves that matter most—especially the moves between people and teams where friction and value compound. Verbs over nouns is the mental shift that keeps AI from amplifying yesterday’s patterns.

That shift is only possible when you broaden your container. Instead of asking what AI can do for one role or function, ask what becomes possible across roles, rituals, rules, and boundaries. Where are decisions waiting on a single person? Which incentives reward local wins at the expense of system outcomes? Which rules were written for old constraints that no longer apply? Seeing those dynamics is what lets AI actually change the system, not just accelerate it.

It helps to imagine your organization as an ecosystem, not an org chart. Ecosystems thrive through flows—of information, decisions, value, trust. When we talk about AI adoption, we’re really talking about ecosystem gardening, not gadget shopping. It’s the work of cultivating healthy relationships, pruning outdated norms, improving the soil of incentives, and introducing new capabilities with intention.

Most important, a systems view honors human needs. Change lands well when people feel safe, skilled, and significant. If fear is present, judgment narrows and teams retreat to what they can control. That’s why a facilitative stance matters. Check-ins, working agreements, and visual artifacts create a shared field of view. They lower the waterline of uncertainty so teams can engage, learn, and own the change together.

Make It Visible Together

Systems are invisible until you draw them. The fastest way to move from assumptions to alignment is to make your work visible—actors, relationships, dependencies, decision points, and feedback loops. When it’s out on the board, you can collectively see where latency piles up, where incentives subtly pull teams apart, and where a small change could unlock major flow.

We love Miro as a base container for this work because it supports both divergence and convergence in one place. You can invite many perspectives, surface assumptions quickly, then converge on the parts that matter for your next move. With Miro’s AI features, you can even bring in an “extra lens” to help spot patterns—emerging loops, clusters, or contradictions—that the group can then interpret, validate, and refine.

A critical step is asking whose voices are missing from the container. If you’re mapping a process without someone who lives its pain points, you’ll miss essential nuance. If you’re designing decision rules without folks who actually carry them out, you’ll create elegant bottlenecks. Make your invitations explicit: who co-owns this map, what benefits and responsibilities come with participation, and how the artifact will be used beyond the workshop.

Finally, remember that maps are prototypes. The goal isn’t a perfect diagram, it’s collective insight. A good systems map gives you enough clarity to move, learn, and iterate. Hold it lightly. Update it as you test, so your shared understanding grows. When the map changes, that’s not rework; it’s progress.

Activity Of The Month: Systems Mapping

If you run just one session this month, make it a 60–90 minute systems mapping workshop. This is a practical, low-lift way to transform big conversations about AI into concrete decisions and experiments. Our facilitation team has been running versions of this for years, and the moves are straightforward to adapt to your context.

Start by clarifying purpose and boundaries. In 10 minutes, align on what system you’re mapping and where it starts and ends for this session. Then list actors—teams, roles, customers, partners, tools, policies—who impact or are impacted by this system. In the next 20–30 minutes, map flows: how work actually moves today. Surface handoffs, delays, and decisions. Highlight where information waits, where approvals stack up, and where “ghost rules” create drag.

In 20 minutes, annotate the map with friction points and incentives. Where are people rewarded for local optimization? Where are norms or policies written for constraints that no longer exist? Where does trust have to be rebuilt for a new move to stick? As you talk, capture opportunities for AI to help at the system level: better triage at handoffs, improved decision support at key thresholds, smart routing to reduce latency, or lightweight automation where waste is predictable.

Close by harvesting experiments and decision rules. Choose 2–3 experiments you can run within 30–45 days. For each, name the owner, success signal, consent threshold, and a safety check or ethical red line. Define how you’ll make the decision to scale, reverse, or sunset. This small governance layer keeps learning fast and trust high. For more background and inspiration, watch the Activity of the Month video and revisit Erik Skogsberg and Dirk Van Onsem’s 2024 Facilitation Lab Summit talk on systems mapping:

Find Tomorrow’s Bottlenecks Today

The most valuable maps don’t just describe today; they help you see around corners. As AI introduces new capabilities, bottlenecks move. You may reduce time on a task and inadvertently flood a downstream team. You may open access to information and discover that decision rights—not data—are your new constraint. Mapping lets you anticipate those shifts so you’re not surprised when your pilot meets friction.

One powerful move is to run a premortem on your future state. Sketch the improved flow you want with AI in place. Then ask, “It’s three months from now and the pilot failed—what happened?” Look specifically at four areas: data access, decision latency, policy gates, and trust. Where will approvals slow you down? Where is risk-threshold clarity missing? What new handoffs appear that weren’t there before? This is how you “pre-mortem the future” so the future doesn’t mortem your pilot.

This is also where governance benefits from a reframing. Many teams get stuck because governance shows up as a heavy brake. Try treating governance as choreography—the roles, rules, and rhythms that keep you moving responsibly. Define consent thresholds for experiments, decision rights for scaling, safety checks for sensitive data, and clear reversibility criteria so decisions can be unmade with minimal cost. When governance clarifies motion, momentum follows.

Finally, watch for latency loops that quietly drain energy. When decisions repeatedly wait on one person, consider role-based or rule-based approaches that preserve accountability without creating single points of failure. When a policy meant to protect inadvertently blocks benign learning, craft lightweight “sandbox” zones with clear boundaries. Each constraint you make explicit lowers the cognitive load on your team and raises your chance of compounding wins.

From Commanders To Conveners

Digital transformation teams are increasingly being asked to lead AI strategy and enablement. The temptation is to become the owner of the answers—publish standards, pick platforms, roll out roadmaps. But in complex environments, invitations beat mandates. The most effective transformation teams act as conveners of clarity, not commanders of compliance.

Being a convener means you design the spaces where cross-functional sensemaking happens. You set cadence, craft agendas that surface trade-offs, and make the work visible. Decision logs, journey maps, and systems maps become the living artifacts that align stories when memories diverge after the meeting. Instead of “big announcement” heroics, you build trust through reliable rituals and transparent artifacts that anyone can reference.

Co-ownership is key. Ask yourself: who needs to co-create and co-own the map for it to matter? Which leaders and operators must be present for decisions to stick? Spell out the benefits and responsibilities of participation in plain language. This sense of authorship is what turns alignment into commitment. When people see themselves in the work, they carry it forward without extra push.

This stance also transforms your messaging. Rather than “Here’s the tool we’re rolling out,” try “Here’s what we want to get better at doing together, and here are the experiments we’ll run to learn how.” Verbs over nouns. Process over prescriptions. In our experience, the more your team is asked for answers they can’t hold alone, the clearer the signal that it’s time to convene the system.

Incentives, Norms, and Skill Building

Many AI “adoptions” stall because the organization’s incentives are tuned for local optimization. A team gets rewarded for shipping more tickets, so they resist a change that would slow their queue to speed value end-to-end. Or a policy written for old constraints blocks safe experimentation under new constraints. Systems mapping helps you spot these misalignments so you can adjust rules and rewards to fit the era you’re actually in.

When you identify friction on the map, treat it as a design clue, not a personal failure. Ask, “What agreement, norm, or slight boundary change would unclog this without shifting the burden somewhere else?” That last part matters. A superficial fix often moves the problem downstream. The systems view helps you see those second- and third-order effects before you pull a lever.

Skill-building belongs inside the work, not outside of it. Instead of one-off trainings, create peer-led practice circles that meet regularly. Turn early adopters into coaches without anointing them gatekeepers by pairing them with peers and rotating roles. Use check-ins to surface where people feel unsafe or unskilled, then scaffold practice moves into your routines. When people feel safe, skilled, and significant, they try new things. That’s the engine of transformation.

Finally, clarify decision-making patterns so experiments don’t stall. Define when consent is sufficient, when advice is required, and when a higher threshold is needed. Make decisions visible and, where possible, reversible. The goal is not reckless speed; it’s responsible velocity—the discipline to go fast where it’s safe and slow where it’s wise, with clarity everyone can trust.

Cadence, Artifacts, and the Power of Visible Agreements

Cadence builds trust. Sporadic heroics and big-bang announcements breed resistance; steady, predictable rhythms build reliability. Think weekly mapping huddles, biweekly experiment reviews, and monthly retros that refine working agreements. This isn’t ceremony for ceremony’s sake. It’s the social choreography that turns insight into practice and practice into capability.

Artifacts align stories when memories diverge. After a workshop, each person carries a slightly different recollection of what was decided. A living map, a simple decision log, and a one-page experiment sheet reduce rework and confusion. Ask, “Which artifact would most reduce rework this month?” Then keep it live—visible, updated, and used—rather than letting it become a static prop.

Co-own your artifacts to strengthen buy-in. If the transformation team is the sole author, artifacts can feel like compliance documents. When leaders and operators co-create, artifacts become references people trust. Make sure each artifact lives where the work lives, not tucked into an obscure folder. Visibility is an invitation.

And let’s talk cadence that sustains momentum without fatigue. Use check-ins to tune pace and focus. If your rituals are creating drag, prune them. If they’re building clarity and confidence, strengthen the roots. This is the season to ask: what cadence serves our goals, and what can we let go of to protect energy and attention for the work that matters most?

November Harvest and Your Next Move

November is a natural time to harvest insights and prune scope so new growth can thrive. Look across your meetings, decision rules, and flows. What will you sunset to make space for better practices? Which rules were written for constraints that AI has lifted? Which norms reward silo wins over system outcomes? Retire rituals gracefully. Name what you’re letting go of and why. That story helps people release the old to welcome the new.

Use your map to make smart trade-offs explicit. When you reduce scope, show the dependencies you’re preserving and the risks you’re accepting. When you create a sandbox for safe learning, document the boundaries and the reversibility. Transparency compounds trust. The more clearly you visualize trade-offs, the more confidently your team can move.

As you look ahead, ask a few focusing questions: What cadence will sustain momentum without fatigue? Where are skills uneven across roles, and how might peer-led practice close the gap without creating gatekeepers? How will we connect AI use cases to our purpose and values so participants carry a clear story back to their teams? Those stories are how change scales.

Call to action: Run a 60–90 minute systems mapping session before the month ends. Clarify your purpose and boundaries. List actors. Map flows, handoffs, and decision points. Identify friction and incentives. Harvest two or three experiments with clear decision rights and safety checks. Watch our Activity of the Month video to guide your session, and revisit our write-up on facilitating change by mapping systems. Then share your map and learnings with your broader org to build momentum. If you want a partner, Voltage Control can facilitate your first mapping session or coach your team to lead its own. Let’s map before we move—so your AI transformation amplifies what you value most and your system is ready for what’s next.

Resources:

Facilitating Change by Mapping Systems

Summit talk video

Activity of the Month Video Systems Mapping

Ready to convene clarity? Reach out to schedule a mapping clinic, join an upcoming facilitation certification, or bring Voltage Control in to help your digital transformation team lead with a systems lens.

The post Map Before You Move appeared first on Voltage Control.

In this Facilitation Lab Podcast episode, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Grace Losada, Vice President of Learning and Development at Change Enthusiasm Global. Grace shares how her early experiences in peer counseling, athletics, and performance arts shaped her facilitation style. The conversation explores creating safe, engaging environments for learning, the importance of shared language, and the art of scaling intimacy in large groups. Grace offers insights on embracing mistakes, fostering connection, and designing impactful experiences, emphasizing playfulness and agency. The episode highlights facilitation as both an art and a science, rooted in intentionality, collaboration, and authentic human connection.

Show Highlights

[00:04:27] The DJ Turned Facilitator Story
[00:08:15] Beyond Psychological Safety: The Role of Enthusiasm
[00:16:52] Team Dynamics and Nonverbal Communication
[00:21:18] Advice to Her Teen Self
[00:24:02] Discovering Facilitation as a Discipline
[00:32:09] Designing for Impact in Large Groups
[00:37:38] Scaling Intimacy in Large Venues
[00:42:32] Connection as the Ultimate Outcome

Links | Resources

Grace on LinkedIn

About the Guest

Leveraging a background in learning and psychology, Dr. Grace Losada has served as an executive leader in start-up and high growth organizations at the intersection of business and social enterprise.  Well before the pandemic, she successfully built and led multi-functional national teams, both face to face and virtual, through rapid growth and change.  At the center of Grace’s work is creating professional environments that support the development of individuals and teams so people and business can thrive. 

Born and raised in Asia, Grace attended an international school that gave her a love of travel, a global perspective, and a dedication to inclusive development of people. She is grateful every day to live in sunny San Diego.

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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 Grace Losada, at Change Enthusiasm Global, where she serves as vice president of learning and development, supporting individuals and enterprise clients to navigate change in a more human way. Welcome to the show, Grace.

Grace Losada:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Douglas Ferguson:

So great to have you. I’ve been looking forward to chatting. I really enjoyed interviewing you for the alumni story and seeing that get published. So I know it’s going to be a great conversation today.

Grace Losada:

Looking forward to it.

Douglas Ferguson:

So you’ve shared that your facilitation roots trace back to high school, specifically to a retreat in Hawaii where friends nudged you into a pure counseling program. When you revisited that first immersive weekend, what was the moment you realized a well-held container could transform how people show up with one another?

Grace Losada:

Yeah. It was such a powerful experience. And I wish I could remember the name of the organization who embedded in our high school and helped us get this program off the ground. Because I feel like I tell this story sometimes and I want to give them credit, and I can’t remember the name of the organization and I feel terrible. So if they’re listening out there, remind me. But I went to a few different high schools, but in this particular instance, it was a small private high school where we got to do a lot of really cool creative things, just by the nature of our size. And also, I’m going to give credit to my headmaster. His name was Pieper Toyama, and he was just a gifted educator. And this peer counseling program was set up between our high school and a rival high school in the area where we had some bad blood, to be perfectly honest.

And so they set it up so that the sophomores, juniors and seniors got trained in this particular protocol. And then we put on an event for the seventh, eighth and ninth graders. And it was an overnight event, which I think is always risky when you’re dealing with middle and high schoolers. And we all camped out in a gym for two days and had really meaningful conversations about the nature of life and where all these young people about to launch. And certainly, because of the nature of the relationship in the high schools, we also talked a lot about human relationship and what that was like for us, and what we wanted to create going forward in the world. It was just a mindblower for me. I’ve never been exposed to something of that depth at that age, and they put the kids in charge. That was the thing that was just so incredible when I look back on it.

But there were just these moments of closeness and connection that were so emotional and heartfelt, and powerful and transformative. That’s the word I really want to say. It was transformative and you could just feel it happening. And people were laughing and crying and hugging, and we were a bunch of teenagers. It was great. It was truly, truly amazing. I’m so grateful for that experience. And I didn’t really know the impact at the time. I knew I was feeling something, I was experiencing something. I had no idea that that was going to be kind of a harbinger of things to come in my life, but it certainly was. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Let’s talk about the DJ turned lead facilitator twist.

Grace Losada:

So again, I was reluctant to join this group. I had no interest. It just didn’t occur to me. But a couple of my friends were like, “No, no, no, you got to do this. We’re going to all do this. Let’s go do this together.” And so I joined the group. And still not really seeing myself as any kind of a facilitator, or leader or… I just was a kid who was into theater and soccer and whatever. And not a great student, by the way, and just didn’t see myself in that capacity. And so I show up at this thing and we’re having all these conversations and we’re setting up roles for the event. So most people were going to be facilitators, and then there were a couple of roles that I would call more like production and logistics. And there was one role that was the DJ for the event, and you got to put together all the music and lead that effort. And I thought, “Oh, that sounds fun. I’ll do that.” And I raised my hand for it.

And the adults in charge, kind of pulled me aside and they were like, “Well, if we think that maybe we could really leverage your talents in another way that was just more powerful, are you open to that?” And I was like, “All right, sure. Yeah.” I was again, along for the ride. So they did not give me the DJ role. They put me in a facilitator role. And again, I think that they saw something in me at that time, that I didn’t really see in myself yet. And that’s again, the mark of a good educator. That’s hopefully, what we’re doing for young people when we’re educating, is we’re pulling things out of them that were going to help blossom and grow. And they did that for me for sure.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I was curious how that experience shaped the way you spot and cultivate leadership in others?

Grace Losada:

Oh, that’s a great question. Well, I guess I’m probably having these thoughts for the first time, because I don’t know that I ever really thought about that, but it absolutely did upon reflection. Because what I know that I have done with young people and adults that I’ve worked with in terms of leadership development, is most often trying to create the container, I guess I’ll call it. We’re creating the conditions and the container for something to occur, and then we have to let go. We let go of the reins. So when I work with people, specifically around leadership, which is a big part of what I do, you’re looking for these flashes of insight and beauty in the way that they’re relating to others, in the way that they’re reflecting vulnerably, in the way that they’re willing to share. And then you want to pull that thread.

So the best way I know to do that is to create an environment, to create a container, to create the conditions where people feel not only safe, but we talk a lot about psychological safety, and that’s super, super important. But it’s a step beyond that, because I need people to not just feel safe, but to actually feel excited and engaged in whatever the moment is bringing. And to take risks and to reach and to quite literally, grow in real time and watch that transformation happen right in front of you. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever experienced as a professional. And really, the thing that’s kind of cool about it is it’s almost effortless if you’ve set up the environment, because people take it on themselves. They drive their own ship, so to speak.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that. And coming back to your point around it needs to be more than just safety, I think you missed a great opportunity to point out that it has to be enthusiastic.

Grace Losada:

Yeah. Well, right. And I should be talking about that. Change Enthusiasm Global, if nothing, we are enthusiastic. And I think that that’s just, it’s a symptom. It’s a marker of great engagement. When you’ve got people sort of on the edge of their seats because they’re so into whatever it is that you’re discussing or doing, the enthusiasm just starts to flow, and then you know, then you know you’ve got them.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. So let’s talk about Parker School. Am I understanding, they champion student voice and you help recreate retreats for younger students?

Grace Losada:

That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. That school again, was just it was ahead of its time. And our headmaster was ahead of its time and very, very gifted. So another example of just empowering students, you had the opportunity to create not all, but some of your own courses. So being that it was a small school, they had sort of the core curriculum that was offered. And then if you wanted to do something that was slightly out of the box or unique, et cetera, you were empowered to design your own course. And you would find somebody on the faculty who would champion the work that you wanted to do, and you could put that whole thing together. And so, I remember one I wanted to do was photography, and I created the whole course and found a sponsor. And I did a photography course that I actually wrote that went on my transcript.

And so they were just very good about putting us in the driver’s seat. And I think for this particular peer counseling program, the idea of putting a bunch of teenagers in charge of some younger teenagers or pre-teens, that’s a really risky thing to do. You’ve got to have a lot of confidence in your ability to create that container. You’ve got to have a lot of confidence in your ability to create the condition, so that that goes well, because it could very easily go poorly. And you could easily put kids in a situation where real damage is done psychologically and relationally, and so forth, but they were just masterful. So another kind of pain point, right? So I mentioned we had 10th, 11th, and 12th graders in charge of seventh, eighth, and ninth graders. And mind you, in these schools, seventh and eighth was middle school and ninth was high school.

And so the freshmen were like, “What in the heck? You’re putting me back in middle school?” And so we were starting with a loaded situation, where people were already kind of like, “Oh.” But it worked, it just worked. And it was brilliant that they did that in the end, because it gave the freshmen this opportunity for what I guess I’ll call, like a transitional leadership. Because they were the oldest of the bunch. They were in a different sort of category in terms of their grade at school, but maybe they weren’t quite ready to lead because they were just getting their feet wet. And it gave them this sort of transitional leadership opportunity that I think initially, they felt like, “Oh, I’m being pushed back into middle school.” But then they quickly realized the ability that they had in that role to sort of stretch their own leadership wings, which was really cool.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s really neat, this idea of almost passing the torch and these ritualistic moments where people are priming for the next evolution of themselves.

Grace Losada:

Yeah, absolutely. The whole program really was essentially like a social emotional learning program. We talk a lot about that now in education. This was back in the early ’90s. And I think it was maybe just beginning to be a conversation around those things. None of those labels, I don’t remember any of those labels being put on what we were doing. But as I grew in my own career and went into the psychology and science of learning, I started to understand the wisdom and what they had set up for us and really appreciate them.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s powerful stuff. Speaking of foundational experiences, I’m always really fascinated by the influences folks have throughout their life that kind of shape who they are today, and what makes for great facilitation skills and just all the resources and experiences you bring into the work. And for you, early on, you balanced outrigger canoeing, and soccer, and dance, and theater, even playing some notable roles on stage. So I’m curious, how did the rhythm of athletics and the presence of performance train your facilitation muscles around timing, energy and reading the room?

Grace Losada:

Yeah, that’s such a good question. And again, one that I wasn’t aware of what was happening at the time. But upon reflection, I just think, “Oh, that was the recipe.” So I often talk about performance when I talk about facilitation, because I think when we think about facilitation, we think about clearing the way for participants to drive. And that’s really, really important. And I think that sometimes we forget because we’re so focused on clearing the way as a facilitator, there’s one way of thinking that maybe what we need to do is sort of fade into the background, be almost unseen as this thing starts to happen in the room with the participants. And there’s some truth to that, but I also really feel that none of it starts to happen unless the facilitator has the ability to model the energy and enthusiasm that we’re looking for in the event, in the exploration. Whatever the topic is, whatever the assignment is that we’re working on collectively, the facilitator sets that tone, at least initially.

And at some point, maybe they’re passing the baton to certain people in the room, but that’s sort of phase two. In the beginning, another thing that I’ll say a lot of times is no one’s going to learn from you if they’re not paying attention. And how do we get people to pay attention? Well, in the beginning, we kind of have to entertain them. We have to sort of pique their interest. And there should be the ability, I believe, of the facilitator to stand in front of a group of people well, to take up space and energy, and then also retreat and become smaller and be in command of that. It can’t be accidental. It’s got to be purposeful. And you learn a lot of those skills in theater and performance. So I was a dancer and I was an actress, and I loved those things, and I have absolutely brought them into my facilitation.

And when I am working with people who are learning facilitation skills, I bring that up right away. I recently led a development for a group where that was pretty much all we did. We called it a day of play and learning, and we took on different personas and they had to deliver content that they were used to delivering that they already understood really well, but they had to do it now in some kind of crazy character, and start to feel what that was to stretch and where were those points of authenticity, even when you were emulating something ridiculous, like Austin Powers. And just to really play with that and have fun with it. And it opens the door also to laughter, which is a huge connector for people.

And then when I think about the sports aspect, primarily, I did do a couple of sports early on that were individuals. I was on the swim team at one point, and I think I was just a very kinesthetic kid. I was very active, and so that was always a part of my life. But when I really got into it, was when I started to play team sports. And so it was the outrigger canoeing and soccer. These were sports where you have to be really in tune with your team and coordinated. And if you’re not pulling together in the same way with the same end goal in mind and with a certain rhythm, you won’t be successful.

So I think you learn to communicate with human beings in ways that are sometimes free of language. So you can’t always stop and sort of consult when you’re on the soccer field, or certainly not in an outrigger canoe boat. So if people don’t know what that looks like, it’s a six-man canoe and you’re all lined up front to back, straight down the row, and you have the steersman calling out the stroke changes, but you can’t hear each other. There’s no conversation. You’ve got to be in tune with each other.

And that one’s even really interesting, because you really can’t see each other either. You can see the person who is right in front of you, but that’s it. And so you’re not even picking up on body language. You’re picking up on energy. And again, you become successful in that space through solid human connection and being able to read each other and take unspoken cues towards a goal, while pulling together towards a goal. And I definitely learned so much about the dynamics of a team, because here’s the other thing, especially at that age too, right? We are still learning how to be good human beings. Well, I guess the whole life, we are trying our whole lives. But it’s high school. There’s squabbles. You don’t love everybody on the team, and that persists today, but you still have to work together. You still have to find a way to put all of those things aside and find a way to pull together. And I think sports are a tremendous way to do that.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, absolutely.

Grace Losada:

Another thing that happens too in sports, I think, is that even though you have a designated position, so you’ve got a position in the boat, you’ve got a position on the soccer field, your defense or your offense, or whatever the case may be, but the reality is, when the game gets going, you’re trading positions. And you are filling in where you are needed, and you are looking at the gestalt, the whole picture, to understand where the detail lies and where the opportunity is. And I think that’s a great metaphor for life too. I think the people who really are successful in broader scheme of things, they’ve kind of figured that part out. They’ve figured out how to look at the big picture, and also understand how the minutia fits into that and feeds it.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. An ability to move from high levels of granularity, to low levels of granularity, and even specificity sometimes, because we have to make decisions on really quick information. Some of it feels almost like intuition. And it’s really fascinating when they do those studies around, like baseball players, for instance. They’ll ask them, “What are you doing when you hit a home run?” And they’ll say all these things. And then you put a high speed camera in place and they’re not doing any of the things they think they’re doing. They’re just in a moment, right?

Grace Losada:

Yeah, yeah. It’s the difference between an expert and a novice. When we’re just learning something in the beginning, it’s not automatic yet. And so we’re being conscious about all of our choices. And the more you do it and the more sort of expert you become, oftentimes, the worse you are at being an instructor or teacher or mentor to someone, because now, all of these things that you’re doing are unconscious. It’s all automatic. And you have to really stop and reflect and think deeply. And sometimes you’re going to get it wrong about, “What am I doing? How did I get from point A to point B? What would be the roadmap I would give to someone?” And we’ve oftentimes put that way back in our mind somewhere, because now, it’s just automatic and we’re looking at different things.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. I’ve often heard that referred to as the curse of knowledge. Once we get really good at something, it’s hard to remember what it was like to not know that thing or not be able to do it.

Grace Losada:

Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.

Douglas Ferguson:

So another question about the past, and then we’ll get to kind of what’s happening right now. But I’m really curious, if you could sit beside your teen self after that first retreat, what short principle or reminder would you whisper into her ear?

Grace Losada:

I think it would be something about dreaming big. Because again, I think one of the things that when I… And maybe this is universal. This is probably not just me. I think it’s got to do with where we are developmentally. Right? But when I reflect back on all of these different elements that we’ve been talking about, the common thread for me was just not really being aware yet of my own agency and power as a human being. I don’t know if other people would say this, but when I look back on who I was at that stage in my life, I would characterize myself as a floater. I would sort of just like, wherever the wind took me in, I was just in the moment. And I wasn’t future oriented. I wasn’t really thinking about any of these experiences as being foundational or something that I would build upon in my life going forward.

I just didn’t have that awareness. And I wasn’t talking about that stuff at home with my parents. Some kids are. Some kids are really, and parents are really focused on kind of like, “You’re building your future,” and all this kind of stuff. I wasn’t getting any of those messages. My parents are not that style either. They’re very sort of in the moment as well. And I think I didn’t have an awareness that whatever I kind of dreamed, I could build it. I could do that, as we all can. And I might whisper that. And I think it’s a hard thing. It’s like the sliding doors principle. Right? Because on the one hand, maybe I would have made different choices and there would have been some different and new opportunities that would have come up in my life, and things that I would have created intentionally. On the other hand, it’s been a pretty good ride.

So I don’t know. Do I want to mess with it? I don’t know. But I think that there was definitely a lack of awareness on my part of like, the agency and power I had as a human being to create my reality. And that’s a belief that I’ve developed over time, that we all have that ability to create our reality to an extent, obviously. We can’t control certain outside forces, but I just didn’t have that awareness at all, and I think that would have been a helpful awareness for me to have from a younger age.

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. So switching things up a bit, and you can talk about the present day, or at least leading up to it, you described joining Change Enthusiasm Global as the moment you realized facilitation is a distinct discipline. And I’m kind of curious, what assumptions you held about facilitation that was most productively challenged in that process?

Grace Losada:

I don’t know if it was an assumption, maybe it was. Yeah. Okay, it was. I guess it was an assumption that these things just happened, these magic moments with groups of people where they’re coming together with an intention, but it’s just sort of happening. And I probably did know because I was designing things as a facilitator without calling it that, designing experiences for people. And so I did know that there were certain things that I learned you could do to create one type of experience versus another, et cetera. If you’re looking to have a creative exchange, if you’re looking to have a problem solving exchange, there’s so many different reasons that we come together. I just didn’t know that it was a field of study. I just didn’t know that it was a whole profession. And of course, it is. Why wouldn’t it be, right? If there’s something like this that’s so powerful, why wouldn’t there be people out there who are thinking about and documenting and creating a common language around this phenomenon, this study, this professional ability? But I just didn’t realize that.

And I think anytime that you start to organize your thinking in that way, so it’s like, “Okay, now, I get it.” This is a whole field and there’s structured ways to think about this and approach this. And my goodness, the role of the producer blew my mind. And I sort of had had producers, I suppose, in a certain way, in different events and experiences, but there were no labels on any of these things. And so when we don’t have labels, we don’t have the clarity to understand really what it is that we’re talking about.

So it was like all of a sudden, everything came into focus. “Oh, that’s what we’ve all been doing this whole time. I get it. Yes, okay.” And now, because I have language and a structured way of thinking about it, I can be even more intentional about the choices that I’m making as I’m doing this work. And it just all of a sudden, rockets you forward in terms of the sophistication of what it is that you’re doing.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. I love how much of a force multiplier that can be.

Grace Losada:

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve really felt it deeply. And also, there have been moments where I’ve kind of wanted to laugh about certain things and go back and thank people who have been a part of the journey. There was a woman that I worked with for a long time who, again, I didn’t call her a producer. She probably wouldn’t have used that label herself. I don’t remember what we said, but she sort of made sure that everything that needed to happen, happened. And then I was facilitating in this recurring learning experience that we were… It was an onboarding process for a company that I was with. And at the time that we were doing that, I was in graduate school. So I was being flooded with new thinking and ideas all the time, and I would get excited about those ideas and I’d want to bring them into the experience.

And so this was a recurring learning experience that was designed to be the same way every time. And every time I would show up and I would be like, “Karina, I’ve got this new idea and we’re going to do this whole new thing.” And she’s very much a very structured, organized thinker. I loved partnering with her because I would be out there with these wild ideas and she would help me narrow in and actually make it happen. And I know I sent her into a panic every time I would show up and be like, “I’ve got this new idea.” And she would kind of groan. But to her credit, she’d go along with it and it was a great partnership.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that. In fact, I was curious to hear more about the producer-facilitator partnership. I was recalling in your alumni story, you had mentioned following the keynote with a learning session for hundreds, complete with streamers, lights and personal storytelling. And so I’m curious, it seemed like that experience taught you a bit about the producer-facilitator partnership. And so I’m curious about that, and what practices are now non-negotiable when you design at scale?

Grace Losada:

Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah. And that was a new aha again. As you said, there was a keynote. I think the keynote was for about 600 people. And then we were following that with a learning experience, an interactive learning experience for about four… Well, what was supposed to be about 400 people, ended up being almost everybody stayed for the learning experience, and that credit goes to Cassandra for her keynote. But as we were planning this and we were up against the wire because this invitation to create this experience came late in the game. So we didn’t have a lot of time to plan. And of course, we’re going to be delivering this in person together, but the entire team was remote. And we were given a producer by the company that we were serving in this situation.

And this was someone I had never met before, and they were producing the entire week long event for this organization and we were one piece of that. So we started talking, and initially, it’s just kind of the basics. Here’s a handful of visuals we want to share. Here’s some moments where we want to have some music and talking about microphones, and who’s going up and who’s going down, and just some real basics. And then I started to get the feeling that this gentleman I was working with, he was pretty gifted at what he was doing. And so then, I started bringing forward some really more theatrical, I’m going to say, ideas. And that’s a little maybe out of the wheelhouse of what you would typically see in corporate learning event, but he was right there with me. And then he started bringing in ideas and they were so good.

And what we ended up with was this experience that was very dramatic, very emotion… I don’t want to call it emotional, but it elicited a lot of emotion from the audience and got them involved and engaged in a way that was really important for the learning. I wanted them to feel personally connected to some of the stories that were being told and go on an emotional journey with the facilitators. I think we largely achieved it because of what the production team brought to the experience. If we hadn’t had the element of music and lighting and so forth, that really became almost like another member of the facilitation team where all of those elements in the room, we still would have gotten somewhere with the team, but it would not have been nearly as impactful. And so I look for that now, especially when I’m doing something on a bigger scale.

Because you’ve got to be able, I think, when you’ve got… The more people you have in the room, it’s like you almost have to have these things choreographed in an even stronger way to have the impact. It’s like, the more bodies that are in the room, the more things have the potential to be diluted. And if you really want to have the impact, you’re going to have to keep upping the ante, but you’ve got to have a producer who fully understands that and can work with you on timing. Timing is big and visual impact is big. We’re visual creatures. So yeah, gosh, that was a lot of fun. I’ll remember that forever. And it set a new standard for me, in terms of how I’m thinking when I’m thinking about designing for large groups.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s a different ball game when you got way more folks and way more things that you’re thinking about, what could go wrong or what attentions could shift. And it’s such a big wave that could happen.

Grace Losada:

Yeah, yeah. And everything does go wrong, by the way. Everything does go wrong. And I think that’s another beautiful part though of facilitation. And I think it’s a point where you can see a facilitator sort of level up when they… There’s this point where I think facilitators stop fearing that the mistakes and the errors and the things that go wrong, and instead, start noticing them as opportunities. And comfortably leveraging those things to propel the learning, whether it’s as simple as bringing human fallibility into the room and just acknowledging that these things happen, and what that does to people’s willingness to take risks and be wrong and show their vulnerability or maybe something more profound too. But I think that’s a really important lesson for facilitators. And I also think it’s one that you can talk about ahead of time, but it’s not until you really have the experience that you start to truly trust that.

A phrase that I use all the time is trust the process. And just know that whatever happens, it’s going to be okay. And that’s usually my final message when I’m working with a group of facilitators. And we’ve done everything we can to prepare, and then it’s time to release and just go do the thing. And the last thing I try and always remind people is, listen, trust the process. You’re not going to do something so wrong here that it’s going to sabotage the whole thing. In fact, it’s going to be beautiful. And just know that and just trust it. And magical things happen in these settings and I really enjoy watching that. And in that respect too, I feel as a facilitator, if we’re tuned into that, we never stop learning either, which is part of the appeal to me of facilitation. We get to continue learning and making new connections throughout this process, even though we’re sort of there supposedly setting up the learning for others. I think that part is magical.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. I think similarly, you mentioned building a shared language for your facilitation team at Change Enthusiasm Global. What rituals, artifacts, or even debrief habits are helping keep that language alive across different clients and contexts?

Grace Losada:

That’s a great question. I think a lot of it is about repetition, deciding what’s really important. What are those things that need to be centrally held, and making sure that we’re attending to that over and over again, and we’re saying it over and over again. And I think also, there’s something about it that needs to be playful, so that that language… I’m trying to remember who I learned this from, but there’s this point when you’re being repetitive about something, there’s this point where it becomes a little obnoxious. And then if you keep going, it becomes fun again. And it’s funny, and you can be a little self-deprecating about it. And it’s like, “Yeah, I know I’ve said this 15,000 times and here we go, 15,001, because it’s that important.” And so I think I try and have fun with it, but it’s really about repetition.

There’s an educator, his name is escaping me right now. It’ll come to me. When I first read about in the world of K-12, he was promoting this idea of doing classroom walks. And so what he meant by that was getting together a group of educators and walking through the school building and observing in classrooms and having conversation about that. And the whole point of doing it from his point of view, was to create this common language. Because one of the challenges that you can have in education is you have three people conduct an observation in a classroom, and they come out and tell a story of three very different classrooms, even though they just looked at the same thing. And it’s because they don’t have a common language about how they want to talk what’s important, what are we going to talk about about this space?

And so just doing it over and over and over again, and doing it together and building that language together, and how powerful that is. And I think you have to be willing to allow the language to evolve as well, in that you’ll begin in one place and you’re on this hopefully, lengthy journey of learning. And as you do that, if your language isn’t evolving, you might be doing something wrong because that’s awfully static. Right? And so, I think you’ve got to be willing to allow the voice of the group to come alive and add to what you’re talking about and maybe take away too, when sometimes you realize that, wow, now we have a new awareness that so shifts our paradigm that we’re going to release this part of it, and because now, we kind of see that we want to go in this new direction. And that’s a co-creation. That has to happen collectively. You can start it, but then it becomes something that the group owns, I think, and it should own.

Douglas Ferguson:

So let’s take that ownership and intimacy to another level. You were wrestling with the question, how do we scale intimacy? When we spoke about the alumni story and as you envision ballrooms, maybe even stadiums, what designs, principles guide you to ensure that a massive venue feels like a small, brave space?

Grace Losada:

Yeah. I think I’ll be learning about this for a while, but where I am right now, I mean, I think we can think about it metaphorically like, just life and humankind. There are things that are happening on a global and on a national scale that we’re all experiencing. And yet, in our day-to-day lives, our relationships are much more intimate and direct, and we’re being impacted by what’s happening in our broader context. But still, our day-to-day reality is much smaller than that. If we were to draw circles around like, “What do I experience every day?” And then there’s these rings of context expanding from there, it’s kind of the same thing I’m thinking, when we’re designing for these large groups, is we have to be aware that there are certain things that are going to be experienced by all in this broader context in the space, again, whether it’s a ballroom or even a stadium. You could think about it in concerts too. Right? Everybody’s watching the band play, but they’re also having an intimate experience with whoever is sitting in the seats right around them.

And so being able to be mindful of what those things are, what elements are at play, and how can you impact them through design. Are there things that you can do through design that impact both the broader context and what’s happening in the little space? So yeah, in this instance, the event that we were talking about, we’re in this huge ballroom and there are certain things that everybody is experiencing, but then everybody is also organized into tables. And I think it was 10 tops in this particular environment. There were 10 people at each table. Those people are having an intimate experience. They’re having a unique experience in the room that’s going to be impacted by what everybody else is experiencing, but it’s also going to have elements that only occur at that table because of who is at that table.

And so really thinking about how we set up in a learning experience like that will have usually, moments where we ask people specifically to turn to your neighbor or discuss as a table or that type of a thing, and being really intentional about how we set those moments up. There’s also something to be said also about creating little allegiances and little teams within the team. So we had, again, in this particular experience, people were sitting in the room according to the division that they belonged in the company, and we decided to sort of lean into that. There were some things that the company wanted us to lean into with respect to that, to create a sense of camaraderie and connection on those teams, that was an opportunity to deepen the connection for those teams. And so there were certain things at play that we could pull on that were already in place within the organization, but then that was where we brought in certain color and team names. And we set up these moments of celebration that were specific to the team.

We had talked about there was an energy around and a desire initially, for us to put a lot of competition into the room, which is one way that you can do things. But I think that I tried to resist that a little bit because it can also backfire. And I felt like what this particular organization was trying to accomplish, might not be what they really needed. And instead, what they maybe needed was to celebrate together. And so we leaned into that a little bit, and it worked, and it was really powerful. Some of the intimate conversations that we were asking people to have were pretty emotionally laden. And those were quiet conversations that happened in small groups, and people kept that confidentiality. We talked about that part and set that up. And then we had these slightly larger experiences where people were still affiliated with a smaller group, but they were celebrating together in a way that was not diminishing to any other group, but still was uplifting for the group that they were a part of. And we had a lot of fun with that.

Douglas Ferguson:

So last question before we wrap up. When you imagine someone leaving your largest future events years from now, not recalling every bullet point, but remembering how they felt, what do you hope they say they carry forward in their work, their teams, and their lives?

Grace Losada:

I think it’s connection. I think it’s just about building connection. I believe that as social creatures, we are at our best when we are well-connected to each other, and disconnection is the thing that drives most of our challenges. And so if we’re promoting one thing, I hope we’re promoting connection, human connection.

I went to a concert several years ago, some people listening probably went to the same one. It was a Coldplay concert and I don’t remember the name of the album. I’m not good at this stuff, but it might have just been Colors, that might have been the name of the album, Colors. When you walked into the stadium, you got this wristband that sort of looked like a watch. It was white and there was no face on it. There was no numbers or anything, but it sort of looked like a watch and you were instructed to put this on. And so then, we’re all in the concert, and at some point, these watches start lighting up in colors that are forming patterns and just amazing beauty in tandem with the music. And also, sort of geographically, somehow they know where you are in the stadium because there’ll be waves of colors going through. And it was so powerful. I’ve never forgotten that.

And it’s something that I try and think about, as I’m designing experiences for people, just the power of that moment, how these little… First of all, it was unexpected. Maybe some people knew what was coming. I sure didn’t. And the wristband was white. And so when it all of a sudden, lit up in color, I had no idea that was going to happen. It was beautiful. So visually, it was stunning and it was a connector. It connected everybody. The entire stadium was going, “Oh, wow,” all at the same time. And we’re watching the colors flow through our bodies essentially. It’s connected to our bodies through, and it was the most powerful thing. That’s probably one of the things that that band, Coldplay, is known for, is that they’re good at eliciting emotion and a sense of connection in their audiences. And boy, did that work. That was really cool.

Douglas Ferguson:

Super cool.

Grace Losada:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, we had to come to a close, so I want to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Grace Losada:

Oh, goodness. It’s just to have fun. Just play with this. It’s hard to make a wrong move. I think just have fun with it and recognize that if you have the opportunity to do this work, as in you’re functioning as a facilitator, or even participate as a participant in an experience that’s being facilitated by someone, what an incredible experience. What a wonderful way to learn, to create, to grow, to develop. I just think it’s a unique gift that we have. And not necessarily the way that things are always structured. There’s a lot of times where it’s a stand and deliver or a top down, or this is what it is, and it’s just a forced delivery. And so when we have the opportunity to create experiences in a more creative way that gives the power and the agency to the people in the room, it’s just beautiful. It’s magical. And just have fun with that. And I think the more fun you have with it, the better it goes. And I mean, that’s certainly my goal.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s lovely, Grace. It’s been such a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks for coming on.

Grace Losada:

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Douglas Ferguson:

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 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. 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.”

The post The Best Practices for Creating Safe and Engaging Learning Environments appeared first on Voltage Control.

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.

Subscribe to Podcast

Engage Control The Room

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. 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 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.

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.

Table of contents

• Essential Role of Meeting Facilitation in Blockchain
  • Facilitation for Global Collaboration
• Case Study: Cardano Constitutional Convention
• Meeting Facilitation for Web3, Blockchain, and Crypto Companies

Web3 continues to be one of the fastest growing sectors, with cryptocurrency and blockchain organizations expanding their footprint and exploring integrations to sectors both inside and outside of tech. Since these organizations operate through a unique combination of technological innovation and human collaboration, they can benefit greatly from implementing effective meeting facilitation.

Essential Role of Meeting Facilitation in Blockchain

Web3 organizations are not immune to the stereotypical unproductive meeting that plagues the corporate landscape. Through proper meeting facilitation, meeting culture can be changed for the better, which allows the organization and its individual participants to develop sustainable habits and best practices for optimal efficiency and beneficial collaboration.

Benefits of successful meeting facilitation for blockchain and Web3 companies can include:

• Better Decision-Making: Facilitators can help networks identify and overcome obstacles to shape the best possible decision-making process.
• Improved Transparency: Facilitation can help make communication clearer, allowing community members to better understand what’s happening across the organization. 
• Increased Engagement: Blockchain networks are reliant on community participation, and great facilitation can improve that participation and build lasting engagement.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency are driving forces for innovation in the tech world and beyond. Web3 organizations deserve the efficient outcomes that proper meeting facilitation delivers, and trained facilitators are able to help these groups maximize efficiency when it comes to the collaboration of their stakeholders and network participants.

Facilitation for Global Collaboration

There is an inherently global makeup to Web3 organizations, as many blockchain networks and cryptocurrency providers have participants and stakeholders scattered around the world. Since Web3 is not constrained by geographical bounds, its global talent pool can participate in virtual and hybrid meetings which require dedicated facilitation for global collaboration and diverse perspectives.

Facilitators are experts at designing processes that allow for maximum collaboration between different perspectives, and, above all, they are able to nimbly adapt to the needs of a given goal, event, or group of participants. Voltage Control Certified Facilitator Caterina Rodriguez explained, “If you have intentional design and purposeful structure, you can make [meaningful] conversations happen at a global scale.”

Rodriguez was one member of the global team of facilitators who partnered with blockchain network Cardano for their governance development project, which led to the approval of their constitution and their eventual transition to fully decentralized governance.

Case Study: Cardano Constitutional Convention

Cardano solidified itself as a leader in Web3 when the blockchain network drafted, revised, and certified an on-chain governance document that reflects their decentralized structure. The process required the input of stakeholders and network members who were stationed around the globe, so Cardano partnered with Voltage Control to ensure successful facilitation.

In the months leading up to the Cardano Constitutional Convention, facilitators led Community Workshops in dozens of countries around the world, with participants reviewing and revising sections of the governance document draft. While some workshops were facilitated remotely, facilitators frequently traveled to conduct these day-long sessions in person, ensuring an optimal meeting environment.

Facilitators worked closely with workshops hosts from each location to plan an in-person, hybrid, or remote event. They balanced unique cultural considerations, including language barriers and local requirements, while keeping the participants focused on the topics at hand and working toward a common goal.

After dozens of Community Workshops and Delegate Synthesis Workshops, the community gathered for the keystone event at the Cardano Constitutional Convention on December 4 to December 6, 2024. The event was run simultaneously at two locations connected by video link, Nairobi, Kenya, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, with additional remote participants joining from around the world. 

“The live Argentina-Kenya link was a milestone in global gatherings. I have personally never seen something like that happen where both locations were live and participating,” explained Certified Facilitator Reshma Khan. Attendees were enthusiastic participants, embracing the opportunity to connect and collaborate with one another for this important event.

The three-day event relied heavily on the skills of the facilitators to keep the final revision and drafting process for the constitution on track, with over 400 participants contributing to the final document. Ultimately, the participants produced a constitution that would later be ratified on-chain with 85% approval, and Cardano became the first blockchain network to have created decentralized on-chain governance.

Read the whole case study of Cardano here.

Meeting Facilitation for Web3, Blockchain, and Crypto Companies

Web3, blockchain, and cryptocurrency organizations can reap the benefits of successful meeting facilitation, including increased transparency, higher engagement, and improved decision-making. Facilitation can provide the key to optimal process design and network structure, as evidenced by the successful facilitation of Cardano’s constitutional creation process.

Voltage Control has partnered with countless top tech organizations to deliver tailored Facilitation Training Programs at the organizational level. Today, leaders in Web3 are joining that list, leveraging the program’s impact of sustainable facilitation practices and transformative change. Web3 organizations that partner with Voltage Control for facilitation certification can count on being at the forefront of the latest in facilitation techniques, best practices, and methodologies.

On an individual level, professionals from blockchain, cryptocurrency, and decentralized finance (DeFi) organizations are also increasingly joining the personal Facilitation Certification program from Voltage Control, with recent cohort members including CEOs, product managers, consultants, team leads, and beyond.

To learn more about how Voltage Control can partner with your team, contact us today.

The post Meeting Facilitation for Blockchain and Crypto appeared first on Voltage Control.

Table of contents

• Participation Challenge in DAOs
• Token-Based Governance in DAOs
  • Role of Tokenomics
  • Alternative DAO Governance Models
• How to Improve Member Participation in DAOs
  • Transparency
  • Incentives
  • Events
• Case Study: Cardano Constitutional Convention
  • Certified Facilitators with Web3 and DAO Experience

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) rely on the active participation and engagement of their members in order to operate successfully, but facilitating a high level of community participation can be a challenge. As experienced facilitators, we’ve gathered the unique insights needed in order to effectively build community and activate long-term engagement from members. 

These takeaways also come from decentralized communities that may not qualify as true DAOs, such as blockchain ecosystems like Cardano, which recently celebrated a successful constitutional creation process thanks to their active participation in their community.

Participation Challenge in DAOs

As fully autonomous organizations without centralized authorities, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) use blockchain smart contracts to operate in an automated, decentralized manner. In order to make critical decisions and plan for the future, DAOs must rely on the active participation and collective effort of their members—and getting members to participate can be an ongoing challenge.

The participation challenge in DAOs crops up when it comes to essential functions like voting on proposals, staking, delegation, and discussions, with active community participation needed in order for the DAO or cryptocurrency to have successful operations and governance. 

DAOs can suffer from the “free rider problem,” where community members who do not actively participate in governance and operations still benefit from efficient operations and growth. The free rider problem can compound with voter apathy and uninformed voting, which involves token holders voting blindly. 

Token-Based Governance in DAOs

The most common form of DAO governance is token-based, involving the issuance of digital tokens which represent voting power, and those token holders become the participants in DAO operations, decision-making, and governance. For decentralized organizations, these tokens are more than just digital assets—they are the lifeblood of the blockchain. 

Role of Tokenomics

For cryptocurrency DAOs with token-based governance models, tokenomics encompasses the economic framework of a token system on the blockchain, including token distribution and token utility. Effective tokenomics is closely tied to active participation of community members and overall success of the DAO or cryptocurrency.

To improve engagement and facilitate community participation, DAOs can review the state of their tokenomics, including these crucial factors:

• Token Distribution: DAOs disseminate tokens through mechanisms like Initial Coin Offerings, mining, and airdrops but should prioritize fair and equitable allocation to prevent a concentration of power in one group.
• Token Supply: The supply and demand of tokens in DAOs has a significant impact on its market value and should be managed with proper future modeling in mind.
• Token Utility: The specific functions of a token are unique to that DAO, often representing cryptocurrency, voting power, or ownership stakes.
• Incentives: DAOs should have effective mechanisms to encourage active participation and engagement from token holders.

In a tokenized blockchain network, tokens are representation. Effective tokenomics promotes a shared sense of responsibility and supports a decentralized distribution of power. There’s no one recipe for success when it comes to managing the token economy in a blockchain, but, by prioritizing its effectiveness, stakeholders can build a community of active participants.

For some blockchain systems, active participation is tied closely to the consensus mechanisms in their Proof of Stake (PoS) models. Delegation can be implemented to create a representative system, with the option of liquid democracy allowing for fully flexible delegation of voting power.

Alternative DAO Governance Models

Not all DAOs use token-based governance models, with reputation-based governance models and hybrid models offering alternative options. Reputation-based governance models utilize blockchain mechanisms to calculate the contributions of members, and that calculation determines the voting power of the members. Hybrid governance combines aspects of both token-based and reputation-based governance.

Reputation-based governance is used successfully by DeFi DAO Colony. The members of Colony who are most active and engaged have the most voting power through their reputation, which cannot be bought or sold. While this type of DAO governance supports an engaged community, DAOs that use reputation systems may still benefit from facilitation techniques that encourage active community participation on all levels.

Additionally, many entities in the Web3 space utilize a decentralized organizational framework without meeting the true definition of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, and those groups may also struggle to overcome the same participation problems as DAOs.

How to Improve Member Participation in DAOs

Any member of a DAO can help spark increased community participation and overcome voter apathy by focusing on a few key pillars of the organization.

Transparency

DAOs are inherently dispersed and decentralized, which can make it challenging to ensure transparent, clear communication channels. That communication and transparency is necessary, though, to keep members aware of current and upcoming proposals and other important voting opportunities.

Members may have different levels of understanding when it comes to the structure and operations of the DAO, so increased transparency provides the opportunity to educate these members. Knowledgeable members have a better understanding of the “skin in the game” they have as a part of the organization.

Incentives

Tokens can be offered as a useful incentive mechanism for DAOs, although these “tokenomics” need to be thoughtfully planned and implemented in order to ensure appropriate utility, supply, security, and engagement. 

Examples of common token-based incentives and DAO functions include:

• Reward Structures: Community members can earn more tokens as a reward for their voting, engagement, proposals, and other types of participation.
• Token-based Voting: Tokens give users voting rights, which can take the form of a one-person, one-vote system or a vote-per-token system.
• Staking Mechanisms: Token holders can stake their tokens with the network or a designated delegate, which provides more stability for the network and is important to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithms.
• Asset Access: Tokens may grant users access to exclusive tools, products, or other digital assets.
• Revenue Sharing: Distribution of profit may be determined partially or wholly by tokens, contributions, or other metrics.

Alternatively, DAOs can use reputation-based incentives to encourage active community participation from DAO members. Reputation mechanisms offer a measurement of a member’s expertise, influence, or engagement within the blockchain.

Events

The automated nature of smart contracts and blockchain technology allows for streamlined, 24/7 operations for many DAOs. By implementing dedicated remote, hybrid, and in-person events, DAOs can increase member participation and generate excitement. These events may take the form of collaborative sessions like town halls and workshops, large gatherings like summits, and informal networking opportunities for interest groups.

In order to optimize participation at DAO and Web3 events, organizations can partner with certified facilitators, such as alumni from Voltage Control. This type of dedicated facilitation can be particularly helpful for collaborative exercises like developing governance documents, which was recently demonstrated by the work of Cardano and Voltage Control to develop Cardano’s governing constitution.

Case Study: Cardano Constitutional Convention

In December 2024, Voltage Control facilitated the Cardano Constitutional Convention as a simultaneous in-person event in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Nairobi, Kenya, with additional remote participants from around the world. Facilitators had to assist the blockchain’s members as they came together from differing backgrounds and opinions in order to finalize the most important document for the future of their network—which they did successfully, with the Cardano Constitution eventually receiving 85% on-chain approval.

The event came after two years of development and six months of facilitated workshops around the world in order to draft the blockchain’s governing document, which would be the first of its kind. Those global workshops, which included both in-person and remote Community Workshops and Delegate Synthesis Workshops, provided invaluable feedback on the constitution delivered on a line-by-line basis. 

Certified facilitators ensured that these day-long workshops did not get stuck or become adversarial, allowing participants to be heard and feel like empowered decision-makers in a decentralized organization. Facilitators had to be highly adaptable based on the needs of each workshop’s attendees, adjusting to cultural norms and local demands while making the one-day event successful.

At the Cardano Constitutional Convention, the facilitators were more important than ever, serving as an essential liaison between the two locations and remote attendees while providing the support to keep the process of drafting a finalized constitution moving forward. In total, 450 attendees and 63 elected delegates representing 50 countries partook in the three-day event—and it was a huge success.

Cardano Co-founder Charles Hoskinson identified how participants built strong connections with one another, explaining, “They’ve made lifelong friends and those delegates that went to the Constitutional Convention, they’re still talking to each other.” 

These connections encourage continued engagement with the Cardano project, and this monumental event only marks the beginning of the community’s journey. In February 2025, the Cardano Constitution had been ratified on-chain with an 85% approval rate, well above the required 75% approval rate. Cardano became the first truly decentralized blockchain with a community-run governance model, made possible by its engaged, active community of participants.

Certified Facilitators with Web3 and DAO Experience

DAOs commonly face the challenges of voter apathy and waning community participation, but these organizations don’t have to tackle these obstacles alone. By partnering with facilitators like the team at Voltage Control, DAOs can design and implement actionable plans for events and projects that result in an engaged, enthusiastic membership.

Every DAO and Web3 organization is unique in its build and operation, but all of these organizations are founded on the participation of community members, often with those participants spread around the globe. DAOs can hugely benefit from partnering with a professional facilitation team like Voltage Control to achieve active community participation and collaborative success. 

All facilitators at the Cardano Constitutional Convention had obtained their Facilitation Certification from Voltage Control. The Facilitation Certification program is aligned with International Association of Facilitators (IAF) competencies, and it builds the foundational facilitation skills needed to successfully transform meetings, drive change, and inspire innovation, skills which have become instrumental when it comes to DAO operations and facilitation.

To work with Voltage Control on your Web3 or DAO project, contact our team today. To learn more about the facilitation of Cardano’s constitution, read our complete case study here.

The post Facilitating Active Community Participation in DAOs appeared first on Voltage Control.

Summer pulls us toward lighter rhythms: vacations, spontaneity, curious explorations. As September arrives, it can feel like the calendar snaps back to “serious mode.” Our invitation this month is to resist the false choice. Play is not the opposite of work; it’s the fuel for it. When we integrate play with our facilitation practice, we open space for emergence, loosening our grip on pre‑baked outcomes and discovering what a group can create together.

In the conversations we’ve been having with Douglas and Erik, we returned again and again to this idea: when we reduce the stakes just enough for people to experiment, they discover sharper insights, stronger patterns, and more humane ways of working together. This month we’ll show you how to bring that spirit into your meetings—on paper, in Miro, and in the room or on Zoom.

Play as a Path to Growth (Not a Detour)

When kids play, they aren’t optimizing for perfect outcomes. They’re exploring. They re‑arrange the blocks, try a new angle, and—without judgment—see what emerges. As facilitators and leaders, we can borrow that stance. “Holding things loosely” doesn’t mean abandoning rigor; it means allowing discovery to shape the rigor we apply next.

Play widens the field of possible moves. It invites risk that feels safe enough for participation. In practice, that could look like a sketch‑before‑you‑speak prompt, a two‑minute “pass‑a‑move” energizer, or a quick remix of a trusted game to match the moment. These low‑friction moves unlock momentum for high‑stakes conversations later.

If your organization is wrestling with adoption of product operations, AI, or cross‑functional rituals, consider how a dose of play lowers resistance. People step in when it’s okay to try, learn, and change course—together. Serious outcomes often begin with serious play.

Try this prompt: “For the next 5 minutes, we’re just exploring. What’s one tiny experiment we could try this week that might move us closer to our goal?”

Make It Tactile—Even (Especially) in Digital Spaces

We love pen‑and‑paper warmups because they unlock the hands‑mind connection. But the same tactility is possible in digital tools. In Miro, modularize ideas into stickies and small clusters. Treat them like physical objects: drag, rotate, recolor, label, regroup. The more granular the ideas, the more freedom you have to sort and recombine.

Tactility also comes from simple constraints. Use dot voting to reveal energy. Add quick icons or imagery to turn abstract notions into visible metaphors. With the newest AI helpers, you can vary the representations rapidly—generate a handful of visual framings, then let the group react.

The goal is not decoration; it’s grip. When people can literally “get a handle” on ideas, they move faster and see relationships they’d otherwise miss.

Micro‑move: Break big notions into single‑idea stickies; name thematic clusters only after you’ve moved the pieces around.

Try Squiggle Birds from Gamestorming 2.0

This month, we’re spotlighting Squiggle Birds, a delightfully low‑stakes way to turn doodles into creatures—and hesitation into momentum. It’s pure play that sneaks in real practice: pattern recognition, sense‑making, and visual confidence.

Purpose: Warm up creative muscles, lower inhibition, and prime teams for sketching/ideation.

Time: 6–12 minutes

Materials: Paper + pen/marker (or Miro with a simple template)

Steps (analog):

1. Ask everyone to draw 6–9 fast squiggles, each in its own little space. No thinking—just lines.
2. Choose a squiggle and add a tiny triangle beak, a dot for an eye, and a couple of stick legs.
3. Repeat with more squiggles. Optional: add feathers, environment, or names.
4. Gallery walk: hold up your favorites; share what made a squiggle “turn into” a bird.

Steps (Miro):

1. Provide a frame with scattered freehand lines (or have folks draw with the pen tool).
2. Add beaks/eyes/legs with simple shapes and the pen tool. Duplicate to go faster.
3. Use quick groups/clusters to notice patterns (“tiny birds,” “long‑neck birds,” etc.).
4. Zoom out and reflect: what helped your brain see “birdness” in noise?

Debrief Questions:

• What changed once you added a single detail (beak/eye/legs)?
• Where else do small cues help your team make shared meaning fast?
• How can we keep this looseness as we shift into today’s core work?

Facilitator tip: Seed it before you need it. Introduce Squiggle Birds early so your group expects playful sketching later.

Remix with Purpose — Altitude as a Closer

One theme we’re modeling this month is purposeful remixing: once you understand the core of a method, you can repurpose it to fit the moment. Altitude (from Gamestorming) is often used to set perspective at the start of a session—sea level (ground truth), plane (systems view), satellite (strategy/vision). We’re experimenting with it as a closer.

Invite participants to check out at a chosen “altitude” and say why: “I’m at sea level—grounded with two next steps.” or “I’m in the stratosphere—my imagination’s buzzing.” This reinterpretation honors the game’s essence (perspective‑taking) while helping groups reflect and integrate.

The meta‑lesson: play with the plays. When facilitators remix openly, they license groups to do the same—adapting rituals to local realities while keeping purpose intact.

Callout: If someone later reads the book and asks why you used Altitude differently, celebrate the curiosity—and share your purpose for the remix.

When a Dance Break Re‑Wired the Room

During the Cardano Constitutional Convention (see our recent case study), visa restrictions created a hybrid dynamic: a large in‑person gathering in Buenos Aires and a parallel hub in Nairobi. Tensions surfaced in Nairobi as remote participants felt peripheral to decisions. Our facilitator on the ground, Reshma Khan, hosted an impromptu dance party—music chosen for cultural resonance and belonging.

The result? Smiles, connection, renewed energy—and a subtle but vital re‑balancing of power. The Buenos Aires room noticed the joy and, soon after, spun up its own music moment. Two separate rooms, one shared vibe. A playful move revealed a serious truth: sometimes you have to meet emotion with motion.

Takeaway for leaders: play is a strategic lever, not a garnish. When used purposefully, it brings people back into the circle and restores the conditions for productive work.

Do this tomorrow: Add a 90‑second “pass‑a‑move” in your next long meeting. Let each person invent a stretch and pass it around.

Turning Play into Practice

Play can’t be the whole meeting. After you loosen the room, translate energy into clarity. Three moves help:

1. Granular artifacts. Convert ideas into single‑idea stickies or short statements. (If it’s two sentences, it’s two stickies.)
2. Visible sorting. Cluster by patterns the group names together. Title clusters last.
3. Proportionate commitment. Use dot voting, Fist‑to‑Five, or Impact/Effort to move from “fun” to “focus.”

Rotate through these moves quickly and you’ll feel the gear‑shift: from open, generative play to intentional, shared next steps. That rhythm—open → converge—is the practice.

Script: “We just opened up—great range. Now let’s converge. One idea per sticky, then we’ll cluster and vote.”

Normalize Play So It Doesn’t Backfire

Play works best when it’s part of the culture, not a surprise cameo. If you introduce a playful activity once, and it lands awkwardly, people may reject the approach. Normalize it.

• Set expectations early. Tell teams, “We’ll regularly use short playful warmups to build creative confidence.”
• Model the stance. Show your own willingness to experiment and remix. Narrate your purpose.
• Connect to outcomes. Always link the play to the work: “We doodled to loosen judgment so we can sketch product ideas now.”

When play is practiced, it becomes a trusted pathway to clarity and momentum. It’s not “fun for fun’s sake”; it’s how we work.

Leader’s nudge: Play gives permission. Purpose gives direction. Use both.

Bonus Moves & Micro‑Practices

• Music as momentum. Pair playlists to activities (tempo for time‑boxed sprints; thematic songs for laugh‑and‑learn moments).
• Parallel sketching. In design sprints, have everyone sketch at the same time; then reveal. Social energy multiplies courage.
• AI accents. Use Miro’s AI to generate quick frames or variations; let the group choose and edit. Keep it light, keep it human.
• The Classic Stretch‑and‑Share. Ubiquitous in 2020—and still great. It shifts gears in minutes.

Community Spotlight: Gamestorming 2.0 Launch (Giveaways!)

Gamestorming has been a cornerstone of our certification for years. With 2.0 out now, we’re celebrating across September and October (and likely into November) with distributed launch‑party vibes at our monthly labs. We’ll be practicing Squiggle Birds, Event Horizon, Hidden Variables, and our Altitude‑as‑Closer remix—and giving away books.

Share back: Post your birds and insights in the Hub. What did one small detail change about what everyone could “see”?

A Call to Practice (and Play)

Play isn’t a seasonal fling; it’s a stance. As you move into fall, keep summer’s looseness and combine it with deliberate practice. Let doodles become birds. Let sticky clusters become decisions. Let movement re‑set a room. And let small remixes become your signature as a facilitator and leader.

Call to Action:

• Join this month’s Facilitation Lab to practice Squiggle Birds and more.
• Bring a LabMate (or find one at our LabMate Matchup) and commit to one playful practice each week.
• Share your remix of a favorite game in the Hub—what did you change and why?

Perfectly practicing play won’t make things perfect. It will make them possible. And that’s how real work moves.

The post Bridging Play & Practice appeared first on Voltage Control.

Table of contents

• Inside the Cardano Constitutional Convention
• Types of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Events in 2025
• How to Plan a Blockchain or Crypto Conference
  • 1. Build an exciting agenda.
  • 2. Select the right facilitators.
  • 3. Develop networking opportunities.
  • 4. Create a comfortable environment. 
  • 5. Identify the latest blockchain trends and topics.
  • 6. Invite the right people.
  • 7. Test your technology.
  • 8. Follow up with attendees.
• Event Facilitation for Blockchain and Crypto Conferences in 2025

Blockchain ecosystem Cardano recently made headlines when the network successfully completed a ground-breaking transition into a decentralized and distributed network governed by its community—and the facilitation team from Voltage Control was thrilled to be an essential part of this process.

Over the course of two years, concluded by five months of workshops leading to the Cardano Constitutional Convention, Voltage Control worked with the Cardano community to facilitate a collaborative approach to drafting, editing, and ratifying the Cardano Constitution. No other blockchain ecosystem or cryptocurrency provider has embraced decentralization this thoroughly and with such success.

By reviewing the process behind the Cardano Constitutional Convention, leaders in Web3 can learn how to successfully organize and facilitate a blockchain conference.

Inside the Cardano Constitutional Convention

By the end of the two year facilitation process, the community from Cardano had created a governance document that was ratified on-chain with 85% approval. Over 1,400 community members took part in 63 Community Workshops in 50 different countries leading up to the Constitutional Convention, with additional Delegate Synthesis Workshops facilitated simultaneously. 

Finally, the Cardano Constitutional Convention took place from December 4 to December 6, 2024, in Nairobi, Kenya, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, with additional remote attendees from around the globe. Facilitators from Voltage Control were there every step of the way, from traveling to attend workshops around the world to designing the final summit, leveraging their facilitation skills in participatory decision-making to ensure a successful process. 

Get exclusive insight into the Cardano Constitutional Convention and its supporting events by reading our case study, available here.

Going forward, international Web3 conferences and events will continue to grow in importance, serving as collaborative opportunities for advancing the industry while building in-person connections in the community. At the same time, blockchain networks will host meetings, workshops, and summits to make critical decisions and drive their communities forward.

As the facilitation team for this first-of-its-kind process, we saw the power of in-person events for Web3. In this article, we gathered our best insights and tips on how to facilitate a successful blockchain conference, workshop, or other event in 2025 and beyond.

Types of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Events in 2025

Blockchain events can range in size from just a few participants to thousands of attendees, hosted online, in-person, or hybridly. These conferences and events may be internal and related to one blockchain ecosystem, like the Cardano Constitutional Convention, or open to the broader blockchain and cryptocurrency community, like Consensus 2025.

Events that are specific to one blockchain community can include:

• Ecosystem Development – Participants collaborate on key decision-making for topics like governance and planning.
• Community Workshops – Participants gather based on location, role, or interest to network, collaborate on a project, learn, or otherwise work together.
• Annual Meetings – The entire network is invited to build connections and catch up on the latest developments in the community.

Alternatively, events that apply to the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry more broadly can include:

• Large-Scale Conventions – Attendees travel from around the world for multi-day conventions.
• Interest Group Conferences – Web3 professionals gather based on a shared interest or unique background, such as the annual ETHWomen conference for women in blockchain.
• Industry-Specific Conferences – The central focus of these events is the intersection of blockchain and another specialized industry, such as cybersecurity or DeFi.
• Regional Events – The state of Web3 in a particular region, country, or continent is explored through a local convention, like at the Blockchain Africa Conference. 

Facilitation goes hand-in-hand with event planning for these events, particularly when collaboration or decision-making is an element of the agenda.

How to Plan a Blockchain or Crypto Conference

In 2025, every blockchain event will have unique needs and obstacles when it comes to planning a successful event. Below we outline eight key tips to keep in mind when developing your event.

1. Build an exciting agenda.

The right agenda will have attendees buzzing well before the event kicks off. Before you finalize your agenda, identify your goals for the conference alongside the goals of those who will attend, taking time to ensure alignment. By getting into the headspace of the average conference passholder, you can adjust the blockchain conference design to ensure harmony, achieve goals, and drive up attendance to less popular sessions.

For larger events, consider the different session types to create a schedule that will excite your attendees. Blockchain conference session types can include:

• Panel discussions
• Lectures
• Networking opportunities
• Interactive workshops
• Expos
• Q&A sessions
• Hackathons

For smaller events, such as community workshops and member meetings, work with a facilitator to design an agenda that features the right pacing, breaks, and engagement. 

2. Select the right facilitators.

As the Cardano community prepared to start the process of creating a governing document, they saw the task before them was monumental—and they knew they needed the support of an expert facilitation team. Cardano partnered with the team of Certified Facilitators from Voltage Control to design and facilitate the constitutional development process, working together to facilitate 63 community workshops in 50 countries as well as the Constitutional Convention that took place in December 2024.

At larger conferences, facilitators can appear at Q&A sessions, collaborative workshops, and panel discussions, and they can also provide behind-the-scenes support for the event hosts. Private summits and collaborative events, like the Cardano Constitutional Convention, also often need the support of professional facilitators to ensure smooth, successful decision-making processes.

Read more about how Voltage Control worked with Cardano to facilitate the development of the first community-run blockchain governance model in our comprehensive case study.

3. Develop networking opportunities.

At any Web3 conference, many attendees will eagerly network with one another, discussing the latest in the booming industry and building lasting connections with peers. To encourage these interactions, blockchain conferences can host dedicated networking events, with those sessions offering an area to mingle and meet, sometimes accompanied by a theme or refreshments.

The most common type of networking session is certainly the happy hour. However, hosts and facilitators can revamp the classic happy hour in favor of group activities, breakfast events, lunch and learn sessions, and more. A local facilitator can help plan an appropriate networking event based on the makeup of your attendees and local cultural expectations.

For smaller events, networking can still be facilitated through dedicated time for introductions and collaborative tasks. Participants can also network through shared downtime like a hosted lunch and a dedicated digital channel to connect before or after the event, such as a Slack channel.

4. Create a comfortable environment. 

People of all backgrounds, hailing from all around the globe, take part in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and the broader Web3 industry. These diverse perspectives can be a powerful force for innovation—but this can also present a challenge for the hosts planning blockchain conferences. 

Consider cultural differences as well as accessibility and translation needs. By planning ahead, you can develop an inclusive environment where all attendees feel welcome and safe, allowing them to fully focus on the topics at hand. 

For hybrid and remote events, consider how to bridge the digital divide for virtual attendees, as they may feel less engaged when attending through a screen. To create multiple touch points, you can offer additional opportunities for facetime and leverage supporting software such as Slack and Mentimeter. Experienced facilitators can help attendees foster connections and build meaningful relationships in a comfortable, welcoming environment.

5. Identify the latest blockchain trends and topics.

No matter the focus of your event, your attendees will be tapped into the latest buzz from the ever-developing world of Web3, and, by adding these topics to your schedule, you can increase attendance and excitement for your event. Nimble hosts may add or adjust sessions as new topics crop up before the event.

Trending topics related to blockchain, cryptocurrency, and Web3 may include:

• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Blockchain-enabled business models
• Sustainability
• Internet of Things (IoT) integration

Facilitators should make note of how any trending topics could affect the conversation, especially if facilitating any collaborative workshops or decision-making processes.

6. Invite the right people.

For closed events, like an annual summit for a specific blockchain’s members, plan ahead to get invitations out in a timely manner and follow up with regular reminders and drip campaigns to establish clear communication. Consider how hybrid and remote attendance options can integrate into in-person events to maximize the number of potential attendees.

For the Cardano Constitutional Convention, hosts prioritized having the in-person sessions for the event in Argentina and Kenya. These locations made the event more accessible to stakeholders in Africa and South America while also emphasizing the growing importance of those communities in the blockchain industry.

For large blockchain conferences and cryptocurrency conferences, hosts should create and implement an event marketing plan that identifies the ideal audience and outlines a plan to reach those potential attendees. Meet your audience where they are with targeted advertisements, email marketing, and supporting content that generates buzz for your event.

7. Test your technology.

Web3 leads the way when it comes to online innovation and smart software solutions, so it only makes sense for a blockchain conference or cryptocurrency conference to leverage technology effectively. For workshop sessions, work with your facilitators to select the right software and tools for accurate note-taking and collaboration.

If your event has remote attendees in addition to an in-person event, consider how you can make those virtual attendees feel fully engaged and appreciated. To accomplish this, your blockchain conference may offer virtual networking events, recordings, and interactive sessions like live Q&A panels.

8. Follow up with attendees.

Your last touchpoint should not be when your attendees walk out the door. The immersive digital world has set high expectations for consumers, with the onus on the provider to follow up with the individual. For blockchain conferences, this means that event hosts should develop a clear follow-up plan to continue to engage with attendees after the event. 

This post-conference communication plan can feature:

• Recap emails
• Satisfaction surveys
• Event highlights shared on social media and blog posts
• Exclusive community channels
• Speaker information
• Videos and recordings

Event Facilitation for Blockchain and Crypto Conferences in 2025

The rapid ascension of Web3 has created an expanded community of developers, investors, professionals, and enthusiasts stationed around the world, many of whom will take part in Web3 events like blockchain conferences, cryptocurrency conferences, workshops, and summits. With the right facilitation and preparation, these events can serve as launching pads for continued growth and innovation.

The recent Cardano Constitutional Convention stands as a blueprint for a successful blockchain conference, demonstrating how global collaboration can work with thousands of participants coming together to define the future of Cardano governance. To get the full download on the event, including an exclusive look at the agenda, read the case study from Voltage Control.

Our facilitators from Voltage Control were alumni from our Facilitation Certification Program. They came equipped with the facilitation skills, techniques, and methodologies in order to help the Cardano community succeed. We’re experts in the unique needs of facilitation for blockchain conferences and events.

Are you planning a workshop, conference, or event for blockchain, cryptocurrency, or Web3? Contact Voltage Control to explore how our experienced facilitators can work with you to design a successful event.

The post How to Facilitate a Blockchain Conference appeared first on Voltage Control.