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

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

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

Varsha on Linkedin

IdeaCompass on Instagram

About the Guest

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

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

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

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

True. I agree.

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit?

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

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

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

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

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

Varsha:

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

Douglas:

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

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

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

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

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

What Are Competencies (And Why Should We Care?)

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

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

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

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

Building with Competencies—The Foundation of Our Certification

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

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

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

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

Purpose – The Compass of Great Facilitation

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

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

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

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

Inclusive – Designing for Belonging and Bravery

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

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

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

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

Clarity – Making the Invisible Visible

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

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

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

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

Crafted – Intentionally Designing the Experience

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

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

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

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

Adaptive – The Pinnacle of Facilitator Growth

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

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

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

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

Reflective Growth – The Portfolio as a Practice

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

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

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

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

A Call to Practice with Purpose

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

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

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

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

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

At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, we explored the theme of Practice—not as something passive or theoretical, but as a verb. A doing. A commitment to growth. Whether you joined us in Austin or from across the globe, the summit invited all of us to sharpen our skills, embrace experimentation, and reflect on what it means to truly be in practice as facilitators.

We’re grateful to the eight incredible facilitators who led sessions across two days of hands-on learning, connection, and transformation. Each brought their unique lens to the craft of facilitation, offering tools, stories, and experiences we can carry forward in our own work. Here’s a look back at what we practiced together:

Skye Idehen-Osunde

The Safety Net: Building Credibility and Psychological Safety in Workshops

Skye opened the summit with energy and intention, guiding us through a powerful session focused on building trust and psychological safety. Through interactive exercises and honest conversation, she invited us to reflect on how we show up as facilitators and what it means to earn credibility in the spaces we hold. Skye reminded us that safety doesn’t happen by chance—it’s something we cultivate through consistency, care, and courage.

Her session offered practical techniques to design workshops that center psychological safety from the start. We explored how body language, tone, facilitation structure, and group norms can either foster or fracture trust. Most importantly, Skye reminded us that psychological safety is a moving target—something that requires continuous attention and repair. Her tools helped us feel more equipped to meet that challenge with compassion and clarity.

Alyssa Coughlin

Change Through Stories: Capturing Hearts and Aligning Minds

Alyssa took us deep into the world of storytelling as a facilitation tool for change. With warmth and clarity, she helped us understand why stories are more than just communication—they’re bridges. In any change process, people are looking for meaning, for belonging, and for their role in what’s unfolding. Alyssa showed us how compelling stories can align teams and move them forward together.

Participants explored the anatomy of a story that truly sticks: one that centers emotion, includes relatable characters, and speaks directly to the “what’s in it for me.” Using real-world examples and structured frameworks, Alyssa led us through exercises that helped us articulate narratives with clarity and resonance. By the end of the session, we had a clearer sense of how storytelling can transform resistance into connection.

Kathy Ditmore

Mapping Your Change Journey

Kathy’s session brought structure and insight to the often messy work of navigating change. Through the lens of facilitation, she unpacked how to guide teams through transitions using clarity, empathy, and smart design. We worked through frameworks that helped us identify project misalignment, engage the right stakeholders, and create shared understanding—especially in moments when change feels stuck or overwhelming.

One of the standout moments of her session was a group pre-mortem exercise that helped us uncover potential pitfalls before they derail a change effort. Kathy also shared practical strategies for rescuing projects that have gone off track, including how to uncover root causes and recalibrate purpose. Her guidance was both strategic and human-centered, reminding us that successful change is a journey—and we, as facilitators, are its guides.

Dom Michalec

Facilitating Transformation: How Small Changes Change Everything

Dom invited us to rethink how we approach transformation by zooming in on behavior design. Drawing from Stanford research and his own facilitation practice, he shared how small, specific changes can lead to profound results. Through real-life stories and a mix of theory and application, we explored how habit formation can be a powerful lever for sustained change.

Participants learned how to apply models like B=MAP (Behavior = Motivation, Ability, Prompt) to their own facilitation goals and client work. Dom’s energetic and relatable style made it easy to see how we might bring these insights into everyday practice—whether we’re helping teams adopt new behaviors or individuals cultivate lasting habits. His session left us feeling like we had gained a new superpower: the ability to shape change one small step at a time.

Dr. Karyn Edwards, PCC

The Secrets of Applying Executive Coaching to Facilitation

Dr. Karyn’s session was a masterclass in blending facilitation and coaching. She introduced us to the principles of non-directive coaching and demonstrated how these techniques can unlock greater participation and agency in group settings. By stepping back from the role of “expert,” facilitators can empower participants to discover their own insights and solutions—leading to deeper engagement and more lasting outcomes.

We experienced firsthand how asking the right kinds of questions, listening with intention, and creating reflective space can transform a group’s dynamic. Through practice and discussion, Dr. Karyn helped us develop personalized strategies for bringing coaching mindsets into our facilitation work. Her session reinforced a powerful message: that facilitation isn’t about steering—it’s about holding space for others to steer themselves.

JJ Rogers

Radical Acts of Delight

JJ reminded us that facilitation can—and should—include joy. Her session, focused on delight as a design strategy, was a breath of fresh air. We explored how small moments of surprise, humor, and care can build trust, deepen engagement, and make sessions more memorable. Through interactive exercises, she invited us to intentionally design for delight, not just as a “nice to have” but as a core component of impact.

Participants reflected on their own facilitation style and considered where delight shows up—or where it’s missing. JJ offered a toolkit of strategies that anyone can adapt, regardless of content or audience. From playful warm-ups to sensory design, her session was a reminder that joy is not frivolous—it’s transformative. And sometimes, the most radical thing we can do as facilitators is invite people to feel good while they learn.

Caterina Rodriguez

Enhancing Facilitation Through Nonverbal Communication

Caterina’s session offered a fresh look at something often overlooked in facilitation: nonverbal communication. Through movement, observation, and structured practice, we explored how our facial expressions, gestures, posture, and tone shape the way participants feel in our sessions. Caterina helped us build awareness of our own nonverbal cues and decode those of others, all while maintaining a culturally sensitive lens.

We also examined how cultural norms influence body language and how misinterpretation can impact trust and inclusion. Caterina’s practical exercises helped us fine-tune our presence, improve our “nonverbal listening,” and build deeper connection with our groups. Her message was clear: when words fall short, our bodies still speak—and as facilitators, we need to be fluent in that language too.

Elena Farden

Consent as Ceremony: Learnings from Nurturing Safe Connections in Indigenous Play Parties

Elena brought the summit to a meaningful close with a deeply reflective session that blended facilitation, culture, and intimacy. Drawing from her experience facilitating Indigenous play parties, she introduced a ceremonial approach to consent—one rooted in gratitude, sovereignty, and sacredness. Her framing helped us reimagine how we create consent-based spaces, not just in intimate contexts, but in all group settings.

Participants explored practices for nurturing trust and honoring autonomy, from how we open a session to how we invite participation. Elena’s teachings emphasized slowing down, listening deeply, and treating facilitation as a form of care. Her session reminded us that facilitation is not just about process—it’s about presence. And sometimes, the most powerful thing we can practice is reverence.

Facilitation Lab Summit 2025 was a celebration of the art of practice—a place to experiment, reflect, connect, and grow. Whether you left with a new toolkit, a powerful story, or a shift in mindset, we hope this year’s summit reminded you that facilitation is not about perfection—it’s about showing up again and again with curiosity and care.

You can read full recaps of each session on our blog. And if you’re looking to keep your practice going, join us at our weekly Facilitation Lab meetups—where the learning never stops.

The post Facilitation Lab Summit 2025 Recap appeared first on Voltage Control.

What does it mean to truly practice together? At Voltage Control, we believe that facilitation isn’t just a skill that can be mastered in isolation; it’s a collective pursuit. That’s why we call our community Facilitation Lab. The word “Lab” is no accident—it’s a nod to experimentation, mutual support, and a safe space where learning happens in real time. In a lab, things might fizzle, spark, or explode, but you’re never alone when it does. That shared commitment to exploration builds the kind of trust that enables deep, transformational growth.

Collective practice is about more than polishing facilitation techniques—it’s about building the muscle to adapt, to hold space, and to grow alongside others. It’s a culture of curiosity where people show up, not just to get it right, but to try it out. Facilitators at every stage—from aspiring to seasoned—gather at our meetups not to show off but to get better, together. And in that space, there’s freedom to stretch boundaries, push comfort zones, and play with new tools in ways you rarely get to do in client sessions or corporate meetings.

There’s a kind of magic that happens when you practice with peers who are also committed to learning. Vulnerability becomes a strength. Reflection becomes a shared act. And you stop thinking of practice as preparation for “the real thing”—because this is the real thing. The community becomes your classroom. Over time, those shared experiences build a library of insight that we draw from in moments of challenge and growth.

What Collective Practice Really Means

When we say “collective practice,” we’re not just referring to a group setting. We mean engaging in an active, live environment where each person is simultaneously learning and contributing to others’ learning. In our Practice Playgrounds, you might be leading a breakout as the facilitator one moment, and embodying a skeptical participant the next. That fluidity is part of the learning. You’re always one pivot away from a new perspective.

This kind of environment creates space for not only skill development but self-awareness. We’ve seen it function as a sort of litmus test—who’s willing to show up in public and practice with a bit of edge? Who’s ready to explore the less comfortable, more emergent aspects of facilitation? It reveals who’s confident, who’s adaptable, and who’s curious enough to keep going. And that’s often the truest mark of a great facilitator: curiosity and humility.

Collective practice also flips the script on expertise. You might enter a session thinking you’re there to help someone else, only to realize halfway through that your biggest insight came from playing the role of participant. There’s a particular kind of empathy that forms when you experience both sides of the room. It sharpens your ability to read group energy, respond in the moment, and build workshops that meet people where they are.

It’s also worth noting that the rhythm of collective practice builds endurance. The more you participate, the more facilitation feels like a natural, fluid way of being rather than something you have to prep for or put on. It’s less of a performance and more of a practice in presence.

The Rise of Participant Practice

A fascinating thread that’s emerged recently in our Labs is the idea of participant practice. That is, how can someone get better at facilitation—even if they’re never “in charge” of the meeting? In one North America session, we heard from someone discovering the magic of facilitation while stuck in a non-leadership role. Her story sparked a reflection: How do we show up as excellent meeting participants?

Being a “magical meeting participant” isn’t about taking over. It’s about modeling curiosity, asking great questions, and supporting the flow of the session. It means noticing dynamics and finding ways to offer subtle assists—like that personal trainer who doesn’t lift the bar for you but gives just enough support to help you make the rep. That type of contribution can shift the mood of the room and unlock more productive conversations.

Leaders who adopt this mindset can shift their organizational culture, not by commanding the room but by creating space for others to step up. It’s a form of facilitation through participation—activating others by how you show up. It’s how cultures of collaboration are born. In many cases, it’s the seed of a long-term transformation.

The idea of participant practice also acknowledges that facilitation isn’t always about holding the marker. Sometimes it’s about holding the energy. The ability to sense when to lean in or hold back is a powerful form of emotional intelligence. And we’ve seen firsthand how those who embody this ethos gain influence and trust far beyond their title.

Cultivating Feedback Culture

At the heart of collective practice is feedback. Not the kind that’s buried in performance reviews, but real-time, practical, human feedback. Our go-to tool for this is the classic Plus/Delta—what worked and what could be improved. But the magic isn’t in the tool; it’s in the culture that surrounds it. The questions invite honesty, but the environment makes that honesty land with care.

In our redesigned Practice Playground format, we now offer additional practice roles—not just as facilitators, but as openers and closers too. And even though those segments aren’t formally debriefed, participants still crave that feedback. We’ve seen people linger after the session to exchange thoughts, ask questions, and reflect together. These spontaneous sidebars often become some of the richest parts of the experience.

What’s remarkable is how this feedback culture fuels a loop of continuous improvement. Participants leave with insights they can immediately apply, and facilitators walk away with a clearer sense of how they landed. And because it’s all framed as practice—not performance—feedback isn’t threatening. It’s welcomed. When people know they’re in a space that celebrates iteration, they’re more likely to take risks and stretch themselves.

We’ve even seen cases where someone who received tough but caring feedback one week returns the next with a dramatically improved approach. That kind of resilience, powered by community, is what makes collective practice so special.

Global Collective Practice

Between mid-April and mid-May, we launched one of our largest experiments in collective practice to date. In collaboration with Jake Knapp and his new book Click, we facilitated over 70 workshops around the world. Each event focused on practicing the Differentiators activity—a tool from the new Foundation Sprint—and the results were electrifying.

This global sprint wasn’t just about showcasing a new method. It was a real-time prototype of how distributed practice can build shared momentum. From San Francisco to Amsterdam, Austin to Toronto, facilitators and participants rolled up their sleeves and tried it together. People shared photos, stories, and lessons on social media. New faces joined the community. It clicked. And that shared momentum continues to ripple out.

We also saw the power of iteration in action. The original Easy Brew case study evolved with each city. In North America, we trimmed it down and added fictional competitors to reduce cognitive overload. Varsha expanded the options in Amsterdam with two new case studies. This layering of improvements is what collective practice looks like in action.

What started as a celebratory launch transformed into a collaborative design process. Each facilitator added their own touch, and together we shaped something more refined than any one of us could have created alone. That’s the hallmark of a thriving practice culture—distributed ownership and creative contribution.

Practicing Belonging

One of the simplest but most effective ways to warm up a room for collective practice is through connection—and the Common Denominator activity delivers every time. It’s fast, fun, and reveals shared traits you might not expect. We break people into small groups, task them with finding commonalities, and see who can find the most.

At first glance, it feels like a game. But look deeper, and you’ll see the scaffolding of collaboration forming. The activity builds pattern recognition, sparks laughter, and sets the tone for open, curious engagement. You’d be surprised how fast strangers feel like a team when they discover they’ve all traveled to the same country or have the same weird food habit.

We’ve run Common Denominator at regional Labs, at SXSW, and even as a delay tactic when sessions needed a time buffer. It’s versatile and always delivers. It also provides a fascinating window into group dynamics: which teams optimize for speed and strategy, and which ones go deep on nuance and connection? Both reveal something valuable.

We’ve noticed that how a group approaches Common Denominator often mirrors how they collaborate. Are they focused on getting the “right answers” or on getting to know one another? Are they competing or co-creating? These moments of play hold deep insight into how we work together.

Designed for Real Growth

Over the last year we’ve been listening to feedback and iterating on our process and have developed a V2 of the Practice Playground format. Version 2 drops the open space section where participants brainstorm growth edges. Instead, we come prepared with a specific method—like Differentiators from the Foundation Sprint—to practice. This small shift has had a huge impact.

It turns out that anchoring the session around a shared activity frees up cognitive load and allows more time for role play. Rather than trying to translate personal growth goals into facilitation challenges on the spot, participants can inject their challenges into the method itself.

We also added new framing: before jumping into practice, each group discusses where and how this method might show up in their work. What’s likely to go wrong? Where are the edge cases? This primes the group with scenarios to role-play, making the experience richer and more grounded.

The feedback? Overwhelmingly positive. People want more time to practice. More clarity. More structure. V2 delivers that, while still leaving room for creativity and self-discovery. And because the practice is live and iterative, even those new to the method can contribute meaningfully.

This format also reduces the cognitive overhead for facilitators leading the session. With a shared focus and clear agenda, it’s easier to guide the group and spot emergent learning moments. We’re seeing more confidence from new facilitators and deeper engagement from returning ones.

Graceful Authority & the Invitation to Practice

What emerges from this kind of ongoing, public practice is something we call graceful authority. It’s not command-and-control. It’s not about being the expert in the room. It’s authority earned through presence, empathy, and adaptability. You’re trusted not because you always know the answer, but because you’re willing to explore it with others.

Facilitators who thrive in collective practice spaces don’t posture. They co-create. They get better not in secret, but in public. And that’s the kind of leadership we need more of—in our organizations, our communities, and our world. In many ways, this is the future of leadership: collaborative, emergent, and shared.

So here’s your invitation: come practice with us. Join an upcoming Facilitation Lab meetup. Try Common Denominator with your team. Bring a method to your next meeting and let others try it on for size. The point isn’t perfection. It’s progress—together.

Whether you’re new to facilitation or a seasoned guide, there’s room to grow. And there’s no better way to do it than in community.

That’s the power of collective practice.

The post The Power of Collective Practice appeared first on Voltage Control.

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

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

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

Bahaa’s Ted Talk

Bahaa on LinkedIn

Bahaa on the web

JoyMob on Instagram

JoyMob Events

About the Guest

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

About Voltage Control

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

Subscribe to Podcast

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Voltage Control on the Web
Contact Voltage Control

Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-hmm.

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

I love it.

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-hmm.

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

The juice boxes.

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-hmm.

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Right. There’s that.

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Oh, yeah.

Bahaa Chmait:

Or at least you roll your eyes.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s a useful tool.

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

That need for results or perfection or…

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Mm-hmm.

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

What’s your percentages on those three answers?

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Was that the first JoyMob that you ever did?

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes.

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Bahaa Chmait:

Yeah, Douglas. Woo-hoo.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

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

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

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

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About the Guest

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

About Voltage Control

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

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Voltage Control on the Web
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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Thank you, Douglas. Thank you for having me.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimotrov:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, absolutely. Joy can certainly unlock creativity.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

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

The other way for me is by giving them the freedom to explore topics. Sometimes we assign to each other a techniques or create a prelude about this or maybe explore if we can do this and that activity or let’s test this other thing out. I like to establish this culture of experimentation. Very recently, for example, with my team, without receiving it as a task from somewhere, we just decided to go a little bit deeper into signals of change and observing and collecting signals of change.

We started just as a team on a Friday afternoon kind of setting up some time, silent collaboration time I call it. We get on a Teams call for an hour, we don’t speak. It’s silent collaboration time, but we are together on that call. Everyone researches signals the first half an hour, and the second half an hour we kind of share. This we did purely for experimentation purposes because we didn’t have a specific objective in a sense that, “Oh, we need to collect X amount of signals in order to create an observatory in order to publish a thought leadership piece or anything like that.”

We were, “Okay, let’s just see if this can be part of our day-to-day, if we can get into the habit of collecting signals and let’s see where this would lead us towards.” We have been doing this for more than six months now, and now we are to the point where we have to reflect back and see, “Okay, what did we learn? Is this something that we want to continue doing in the future? How can we create an output out of this?” I’ve always been transparent to my team members that if you have the time you join, if you don’t this time, but we do this as a team and maybe we can also fail. Maybe we do it for some time and we realize, “Oh, actually we cannot benefit, and that’s fine.” In the meantime, we have learned a practice and that probably would become part of what we do also outside of work. Yeah, that’s another experimentation, I think, is also very important.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that was one of my questions. What experiments are you most excited about trying next? Whether it’s tools or formats or audiences?

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

At the moment, obviously, AI is big topic, so experimenting with technology and how that can influence what we do as facilitators, as storytellers is where I see a lot of potential for doing things differently. The other day I was thinking also, if we project ourselves in the future, what would a workshop be from a facilitator point of view if I need to facilitate between humans and maybe AI agents? Would I do the same activities? Would I base myself on the same methodological foundation? If I need to facilitate between AI and humans, what would that look like? I don’t have the answers yet, but it’s just I’m reflecting on those questions going forward. I think in order to have an answer, we need to be the first ones to experiment with these tools and to learn about these tools and to be prepared to understand how they work.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. We were running a workshop at South by Southwest, and it was focused on AI teammates. Really, this curiosity of, rather than using AI as a tool, so many of us default to it’s a one-on-one thing where, “I need this result, I’m going to ask it to do this thing,” versus bringing it into the collaboration context and having the team react to it or having it react to things the team’s generating and back and forth. It was really quite fun. People started to consider what was possible from a whole new lens.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Absolutely. I think for the moment, we also have experimented a lot with AI as a supporting tool, as you say, as a helpful assistant, maybe in the preparation of the workshop mainly. I really want to push ourselves a little bit more to see, “Okay, what would that mean if AI is actually a participant?” We have tried out a few things, but I still think there is a lot of potential there to explore and to understand how that would work.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I love that. It comes back to what you were saying earlier about the importance of being a generalist and how that role has a lot of value, and I’d argue with AI becoming more and more prominent and getting specialized in certain things and able to do certain specialized tasks or have specialized knowledge, this generalist that can question and draw things together across these different perspectives is going to be even more and more valuable.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Yeah, I think so. I think, really, I’m very much thinking about would I have a role in the future? Because we have experimented with AI, building agendas, building activities, brainstorming, the whole concept. I’m like, “Okay, AI can do this.” Then as a facilitator, what is the value that I would bring in a future when maybe I would have an agent that would do these tasks for me? Maybe I don’t even need to analyze the objectives. Maybe I don’t even need to, for sure, I won’t need to script the agenda. Probably an AI agent would even schedule the initial calls with my clients. I don’t know. For sure, a lot of these tasks will be outsourced to my agent. That would probably have also already my knowledge.

The agent will probably already, also, will be already fed with my experience. Then would that mean that I would just go and facilitate face-to-face? Would that even be a need anymore? Maybe there will be a virtual assistant on a video that would be do the talking. I don’t know. I’m definitely curious about how that vision of the future would look like. I do think that there is a lot of truth in what you’re saying, that it’ll be more important to have a generalist knowledge in order to create connections between the worlds. Because all the specialization seems that can be outsourced to an AI. The true human creativity I think is really in making unexpected connections. I don’t know, I still have to live and see.

Douglas Ferguson:

I think that’s what the future is about, is we will see what unfolds.

Ralitsa Dimitrova:

Exactly.

Douglas Ferguson:

Let’s leave our listeners with a final thought. Would you like to share an insight or something that’s found helpful in your career?

Ralitsa Dimitrova::

I think maybe this last topic that we touched upon makes me think about the fact that we live in so exciting times. I think it’s really, we have the chance nowadays to redefine how we do work and really to redefine what work means for humans and even further define the foundations of human and AI collaboration. I think I would like to leave the listeners with this inspiration to think about what that future collaboration between humans and AI could look like. As facilitators, how can we shape that and what would our role be? More than an insight, it’s actually a question, but I think it’s also part of our job as facilitators to ask the questions.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, let’s facilitate our future.

Ralitsa Dimitrova::

I like that.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, thank you so much for being on the show and this amazing conversation. It’s been so much fun. I really appreciate it, Ralitsa.

Ralitsa Dimitrova::

Thank you so much, Douglas. Thanks again for the invitation. I hope this was insightful for the listeners.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

The post Why Did the Facilitator Bring Legos to the Meeting? To Build Connections! appeared first on Voltage Control.

“The power of facilitation is to bring all the voices to the table, and as you may have heard this saying, “nothing for us without us,” and I love that, it resonates so much.”-Alexis Scranton

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Alexis Scranton from Aligned Impact Solutions. Alexis shares her journey from teaching kindergarten and third grade to training teachers on national reform projects, which led her to specialize in facilitating corporate social responsibility and social impact initiatives. The discussion highlights the importance of inclusivity in decision-making, the differences between facilitating adult learning and teaching children, and the role of effective questioning in overcoming resistance. Alexis emphasizes creating environments where all voices are heard, fostering collaboration, and drawing out collective wisdom for impactful outcomes.

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About the Guest

Alexis Scranton, is a dynamic facilitator, strategist, and change-maker dedicated to building capacity at all levels of an organization—from executives to frontline professionals. With a background in global education and leadership development, Alexis has spent her career teaching, training, and coaching across the U.S., South Korea, Malaysia, and Brunei. Her experience spans both traditional and nontraditional learning environments, working with students, educators, and leaders to develop skills, foster innovation, and implement strategic initiatives. In addition, she has managed programs and strategic partnerships that support professional growth and organizational transformation, equipping teams with the tools they need to succeed.

Through her work, she helps leaders and teams navigate complex challenges, align their visions to drive meaningful outcomes. Recognizing the power of facilitation in fostering engagement and strategic clarity, Alexis pursued certification through Voltage Control and has since engaged in ongoing professional learning, exploring a variety of facilitation methods and approaches. She specializes in bringing clarity to complexity, guiding groups toward a shared vision and transformative action, while ensuring that diverse voices are heard in decision-making processes.

The organizations Alexis works with—whether in education, government, nonprofits, or corporate sectors—are united by a common mission: contributing to positive peace, creating lasting impact, and driving change in their communities. 

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 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 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.
Today I’m with Alexis Scranton at Aligned Impact Solutions, where she helps corporate social responsibility and social impact leaders avoid costly problems around stakeholder misalignment, community engagement, and private-public partnerships. Through facilitation of collaborative and inclusive dialogues, she guides teams toward clarity, alignment, and strategy.
Welcome to the show, Alexis.

Alexis Scranton:
Hi. Thank you, Douglas. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, of course. It’s so great to have you. As usual, I’d love to hear a little bit about how you got started. Your career began in education, teaching kindergarten and third grade, if I recall correctly. Can you tell us a little bit about that moment you first realized that facilitation might be your true calling?

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, wow. Well, after teaching elementary school, I actually moved into training teachers on several different national reform projects. I think that’s when, although I may not have had the name for it at the time, recognition of the need for facilitation probably first emerged.

Douglas Ferguson:
What did that feel like? Do you remember some of those early moments around what you were noticing or feeling at the time?

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah. Being that, again, these were in other countries and these were major reform projects where you’re talking about big system-level changes. There are a lot of different stakeholders involved, from the teachers themselves all the way up to district-level educators and other stakeholders. With any change, I’m sure you know, there’s a lot of resistance and a lot of emotion that comes along with that. I started to recognize the importance of being inclusive of everyone’s voice, the need for everyone’s input in order to have that buy-in.
I worked a lot with teachers one-on-one in a coaching space, but even in coaching, it is very similar in a lot of ways to facilitation. In order for the teachers to be excited and willing to make these changes being asked of them in the classroom, I really had to engage with them. Again, have their voices be heard, include, and consider their opinions and their voices. That’s, again, when I started to realize, not really understanding facilitation as it separate field necessarily, but the importance of inclusiveness in decision making.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, it’s easy to start cuing in on the dynamics, especially if you’re responsible for helping groups make progress. It’s easy to start noticing some of those things. Often, we’ll talk to folks that have been in facilitation for a while and starting to learn new things. You’ll hear things like, “Wow! It’s amazing to have vocabulary to put toward these things I’ve been noticing for years.”

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, yeah, definitely. Even in education itself, you can use that same approach. There’s different ways people go about teaching, but really the best way to have people to learn is, again, taking that same participatory approach, have people engaged in their learning. Even in that way as I was facilitating learning and training, again not knowing facilitation as a field of its own, or not having the language necessarily, but being able to still apply those concepts, apply it to education and learning.

Douglas Ferguson:
You mentioned reform earlier. I’m really curious to hear a little bit more about that, especially for our listeners that maybe haven’t been in those spaces with teachers, and superintendents, and school district issues. What are some of the things that they were facing? You mentioned systems change. Help our listeners understand a little bit more about the kinds of things they were dealing with. Was this things that were coming from outside policy that they had to just react to, or were there things they were want to change? What was the nature of some of this stuff?

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah. Well, it all initiated at the national level. The countries where I work, you have the ministries of education wanting to make changes for one reason or another. But often time, we’ll directly relate it to the teaching pedagogy, the way in which the teachers were teaching. I doubt that they had a lot of say-so in the initiatives being started, but they were definitely frontline and impacted probably the most by these initiatives. Then right after then, probably those people that were over the teachers, so your coaches or your school-level administrators also responsible for ensuring these changes are happening, they’re accountable for them. It’s impacting all levels, but the teachers, again, I don’t believe they probably had a lot of input into the decision being made.

Douglas Ferguson:
In your work making it more inclusive and facilitative, were you able to at least bubble up their input? So that, even though they didn’t have a say whether or not the change would happen, were they able to influence how it rolled out or some of the nuances?

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah. In these situations, I wasn’t fully in a facilitative space as we know it, but I was able to … Again, the concepts of the inclusive voices and so forth really came about more in a coaching setting. Then also, in our training workshops. Again, as a coach who my role was to support the teachers in implementing these changes within their classrooms, but I can’t force them. I didn’t have necessarily a title or position of power, so to speak. It was more of the, I don’t know, I’m forgetting the term that I’m looking for, but just being able to influence them to make these changes.
In order to do that, you’ve really got to have their buy-in, their belief in the changes, the belief that it’s possible, support with the changes. As a coach, although it wasn’t formal group facilitation, it is understanding their needs, understanding the barriers, understanding from their perspective how I can best support and be of service to help them implement these changes that were thrusted upon them. Same thing with the school-level administrators as well. Again, they were also having to make changes and were responsible for overseeing the changes, so really had to support them as well.
Then I also led a lot of training workshops in order to teach these new skills to the teachers. Again, in that way, really being inclusive of their voices, understanding the dynamics of their working environment. I worked across different schools, so there’s a lot of differences when you move from school to school. Really understanding, again, their strengths and their barriers, and just what they needed. I was able to semi-facilitate in that way, in that manner.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. Well, it sounds like there was some natural tendencies, just to be curious about the needs, and not force things upon people. Even the one-on-one coaching probably had a direct impact in the success in the classroom, because once you understood the fears, the goals, the desires, the values, then you were able to address those in the classroom and reinforce some of that stuff so that people didn’t feel so, maybe helpless, as they were navigating these changes.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah, 100%. I would say it all has to do with the teacher in the classroom. That is the most effective, the most important, if I dare to say role, is not going to happen without the teacher doing it in his or her classroom. Yes, 100% what you just said.

Douglas Ferguson:
I’m curious, how did this work with adults differ from the work you were doing teaching younger adults, children, K-through-12 I think it was?

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, yeah. Well, I initially started out teaching just elementary school. I did later move into adult education. Yeah, totally different.
Teaching adults and teaching children. In some ways, teaching children is a lot easier, especially the little ones. They’re a lot more enthusiastic, and open, and receptive. Whereas again, adults can have a little more pushback and more resistance to things, especially if it’s a top-down approach that is being forced on them without their say-so. When you’re teaching adults and when you’re teaching children, usually the objective is different, depending. With children, it’s usually you’re teaching and they’re learning for the sake of learning. Whereas with adults, oftentimes they’re learning in order to gain a new skill and apply that new skill. It’s just different approaches, different outcomes. You’ve got to really make it applicable to their real life situation and immediate application to the workplace.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, that real life application is so critical. I’ve seen, so many times, where folks just aren’t connected to the purpose or that layer of outcome that’s coming next. Often, I’ve seen them get labeled as the troublemaker or the difficult person. Man, as soon as you label them as such, of course that’s all they’re going to ever be. Whereas if we take the time to, like you say, really get into articulating why are we even here, how are we connecting that to these real world needs.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah, definitely, the why. Why am I here? Why am I spending my time learning this and how can I use it?

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah.

Alexis Scranton:
It’s not to say children don’t have the same inquiries, because we know you hear children all the time, “When am I ever going to need to know this? When will I ever use this?” But it’s definitely primary for adult learners.
I’ll say something that’s the same probably amongst in both though, is that need for the social aspect of learning. That’s one thing I really appreciated with going through my certification with Voltage Control is just the combination of some asynchronous, because we all living busy lives and need to have a bit of control over when and how we’re learning. But the social aspect is critical, especially even more I think once everybody got thrusted online with COVID. I think people crave it even moreso now.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s so easy to point to how different it is, and yet I think at the end of the day, we’re still humans.

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:
We’re still doing the same things we were doing, we just have more nuanced maybe approaches. I think maybe one thing to consider is that kids are more likely just to say why out of the gate. Whereas adults might just be confused about the why, and then not even ask or just be there in their state of confusion and get disgruntled, or whatever. Does that fit with your observations? Were kids more likely to vocalize the why when it wasn’t clear?

Alexis Scranton:
To ask why, “Why do we have to do this?” Not as much. I think children are … It’s a bit of a social construct. They go to school and know they have to go to school to learn all the things they need to learn. It’s just an expectation that, “I’m here just to learn for the sake of learning.”
I won’t say that they’re necessarily more inquisitive, adults are inquisitive, but it’s different. Whereas again, adults, especially if they’re not self-selecting to take a course. Again, if they’re in they’re work environment and they’re being mandated to attend, you’ve got to really, really hone in on why, “Why I am being asked to be here, my precious time being used to learn this thing. Why is it necessary? How is it going to make a difference?” In these situations, “How is it going to make a difference for me as a teacher? How was it going to make a difference for my students?” Again, “Show me how I can take what I’m learning and apply it right away.”

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. One thing I’ve noticed, especially with groups that are not sure, they’ve been mandated to do it, is not only attempting to explain it to them, but just again, some dialogue around why the group thinks it’s important. Because I think nuance amongst the group, it’s one thing to hear it from me, it’s another thing to hear it from one of their coworkers.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah, I agree. That’s why what I really strive for with facilitation and doing this work is for any initiative that is going to be implemented, the hope and the desire would be that all stakeholders that are going to be impacted in any way have a seat at the table, have a voice. Because it’s much easier to … People support what they help to create. When they have a say-so in the creation of whatever this initiative might be, one, they understand what the problem is and why we’re even surfacing that the need to create a solution by way of an initiative. But they could bring different perspectives that aren’t always understood and seen when it’s being given top-down.
When they have that voice, then again, there’s the buy-in created. It’s like, “Okay, now I understand why we need to address this, and I’m offering up my opinions as far as solutions as to how we might address this. My day-to-day life, work life and circumstances are being considered, so that you’re not asking me to do things that are impractical.” Just all these things are considered and included. I think, I don’t think, I know, the research shows that it actually helps to make different strategic initiatives much more impactful. That is the power of facilitation is just to bring all the voices to the table.
You may have heard this phrase or this saying, “Nothing for us without us.” I love that. I just love that. It resonates so much.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. It’s bringing to mind a comment you made in your alumni story about when facilitating, just experiencing a sense of connection and momentum. This idea of with us maybe creates that momentum. Tell me a little bit more about this connection and momentum you feel when facilitating.

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, yeah. Definitely. Again, it just gets everybody on board. If you tell me, “Alexis, you’ve got to do this thing,” and I didn’t understand why, and I had no say-so, and this thing you’re asking me to do, I feel like it’s putting me out of my way. You’re not considering A, B, and C, these other components. Again, there can be this resistance, even if it’s passive resistance, that happens a lot.
But when you come to me and say, “Hey, there is either a problem or there’s some change we want to make, would love your input. I would love your perspective, would love to hear what you think is causing the problem.” Or, “Would love to hear your perspective on how we might create this solution.” Just include the voice. Automatically, I’m more excited, I’m more bought in, and I see my ideas included. It’s just natural, there’s going to be more momentum, more excitement around it, and more success.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve certainly witnessed it. It’s making me also think about, you talked about how coaching played a big part in your evolution into this facilitation work. There’s actually a talk at the Facilitation Lab Summit this year around how coaching skills can be directly applied to facilitation and vice versa. Almost this idea of coaching is one-to-one, whereas facilitation is one-to-many, but we might use the same tools and techniques, and maybe even the same questions.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s a great point and a great comparison. It is, because if you think about what coaching gives. For those who may not be familiar, coaching, you’re asking questions with the belief that the person being coached has the inherited wisdom. They have all the answers within, you’re really just asking questions to draw it out of them, to help them come to their own realizations, draw their own conclusions. It’s the same thing when you’re working with the group and you’re facilitating a group, you’re really just drawing out that collective wisdom. You’re asking questions, you may be making some comparisons to make sure those are realized. But it’s not you imparting any knowledge, or wisdom, or expertise. Same thing with coaching.
It’s a skill that has to be developed. Because a lot of times, people want to just jump in with the answers and solutions, but you have to very much contain that and allow the people to get to that space. When they do, it is so much more rewarding for them. Yeah, whether it’s an entire group or whether it’s the individual, again, back to that buy-in, it’s like, “Wow, these are my ideas that I can up with, I believe in them, and I’m excited to now move forward with them.” Yeah, it is. Yeah, you’re right. It’s just like coaching.

Douglas Ferguson:
I love that point around the importance of questioning. I’m curious, what are some of your go-to questions to pull that stuff out of people?

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, wow. Well, it really depends, but something … Let’s see. Maybe just, “Tell me more about that,” just to get people to elaborate and expand.

Douglas Ferguson:
Great one.

Alexis Scranton:
Another question I do like to ask though, once we’ve gotten near a point of resolve and decision making. I do like to ask on a scale of one-to-10 for example, how committed they are to this decision. How committed are they to implementing this decision? That says a lot, because although they may have come up with the ideas, if I’m getting a low number, now I can dig a little deeper and ask, “Okay, well, what is it that you need that will bring that number up closer to a 10?” That says a lot about what other supports or just whatever it is that has them causing the hesitancy around that.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, I love this idea of asking for ranges, many ways to present that. Then also, pointing the group toward the ones that need some further guidance or further dialogue to get their number up. Rather than just saying, “Hey, we’ve got a majority here, there’s 50% support. We’re good, let’s move on.” No, let’s pause and see what it could take to elevate some of the folks that aren’t in support, and then we’ll have a more robust decision. I love that, that range and then helping work with those that are lower, just how might they elevate their score.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah, definitely. One thing I’ve learned about consensus is that it doesn’t necessarily mean everybody in the room is 100%, “I’m excited about this, ready to go.” But it does mean that, “I’m willing to move forward. I’m willing to move forward with this and I don’t see a reason to stop the group’s progress.” To your point, is how do we get everybody to that point where they feel good about moving forward.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. You also brought up a really interesting point. As your asking questions, and connecting with folks, and drawing out this wisdom from the crowd, taking time to point out differences and comparisons, or maybe what’s a pocket that might need attention and helping the group focus there. Very important.
I even talk about the importance of the facilitator doing live synthesis. How are we recognizing what’s happening, replaying it back to the group so the group can keep going? We’re stoking that flame, if you will.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah. Well, one of the things … Clarity is the keyword. I’ve recently just started my own practice, I’m excited to say. My tagline I’ve come up with is really just, “Clarity, alignment, and strategy.” This is all done through collaboration, but the first thing I really think facilitation helps groups with is to just get really clear, to your point. Because you just have so many things floating around, and ideas, and a dialogue, and often times things can get muddled or feel chaotic. Having a facilitator first brings clarity to the group.

Douglas Ferguson:
Absolutely. You just mentioned starting your practice and how clarity is so important. Earlier, you were talking about the importance of acknowledging the answer within. As the facilitator, our jobs are extract that or expose it. It’s making me remember a story that you shared in your alumni story about the vision board you put together that helped guide your self-reflection and provide your clarity on what was maybe already there, and exposed this, vision, this desire, this goal that you had. What was that process like on creating this vision board? What advice might you have to others that are in this journey of not really quite sure about what to do next? What was that like and how might others follow in your footsteps to find that clarity?

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah. It’s funny that you mentioned that process. It just made me think about clarity, but the a-ha moment when a person comes to the realization of whatever the thing is, but that’s very similar to teaching. A lot of teachers, you’ll hear them say, “Oh, they just light up when they see the look on a child’s face when they have the a-ha moment.” When they’ve realized they can do whatever the thing is they set out to do. There are some similarity there, just as to what one thing that’s really fulfilling and similar in both of those roles.
But to answer your question, yeah, I had moved. During COVID, I moved out of the education sector. Had always really been directly in education some way or another. I moved into a more corporate space, although still supporting educators. I didn’t stray too far. But as I moved up, and over, and around about within the corporate sector, I started to move further and further away from working directly with educators, and in schools, and with students. For a time, I started to feel a bit dissatisfied, like something was missing and was desiring that. But then, I also had this really big desire to move beyond just education. I wanted to really be able to do work that I felt was making an impact on society at large. Yes, education is critical and important, but then so are other causes. I wanted to be able to do something that would take me into all of these spaces.
I started a period of reflection trying to figure out what this thing was. What was this skill that was going to allow me to work to support what I like to call positive peace? I didn’t make that up, but just supporting organizations that are contributing to positive peace. Eventually, I discovered the world of facilitation. I don’t remember exactly just how, I couldn’t tell you. But the journey just consisted of reading a couple books, doing a lot of introspection, a lot of reflection over my past experiences and those things that brought me the most fulfillment and the most joy, where I felt the most competent and the most confident. I started to see the path and I started to see the connections. Then whenever I did discover facilitation, I saw the overlap. I saw how a lot of my skills would be useful as a facilitator. That just led me down this journey.
Then I moved on, I found Voltage Control and went through the certification course. At that time, I was working in partnerships, that was my role, so was really seeing the need for facilitation within that role. Especially for internal. Internal, again, the clarity and the alignment that we needed internally, and was able to utilize a lot of the skills that I learned at facilitation in that role. Then, as I say, the rest is just history. It’s just been on that path since then.

Douglas Ferguson:
What would you say is the biggest shift you’ve experienced professionally since you’ve fully embraced facilitation?

Alexis Scranton:
The biggest shift would probably be just in how I identify with my profession. I don’t know if this is true for all professions, but definitely as an educator, that just becomes a big part of your identity. I’m an educator, that’s just who I am. I still feel like I’m an educator and still want to support people in that way, but it is a shift. It is a shift from identifying myself as solely and purely an educator, to transitioning to facilitation. Then, helping others to understand what that means and the power that facilitation holds.

Douglas Ferguson:
Amazing. I’m reminded of a time that you were telling me about where you were facilitating a meeting for your organization’s executive team. If I remember, it was an opportunity to really step up into a new stage, so to speak. I’m just really curious, what was going through your mind leading up to that big facilitation moment? How did you prepare yourself, both mentally and just logistically for the challenge?

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, I’m sure I was very nervous. It was the executive leadership team, so you’re talking about your C-suite members. But at the same time, these were my colleagues. In the space where I was working, it didn’t feel very hierarchal. It was very flat and everybody was just friendly, called me by my first name. Although I was nervous, but I just reminded myself, “These are nice, supportive people.”
But furthermore, the reason. Again, I was in partnerships. We were considering several different partnerships at the time. It was my responsibility to present the key points to them, but then we also had to come to alignment and consensus as to whether or not we were going to move forward with these partnerships. That’s where I saw, “Okay, this is a time to shine. This is the space where I can bring forward these skills I’ve been learning and really make a difference.” And help, again, bring that alignment amongst the team and decide how we’ll move forward. These partnerships were going to help impact students beyond just the schools we were currently in, but just help us have a broader reach.
How did I prepare? Well, I again was either going through or had just completed the Voltage Control certification, I had a lot of resources and books at my fingertips that I utilized, and was really just constantly thinking about what the objective was. What was I trying to accomplish, what was the end goal? Just like with teaching, you start with the end in mind and work backwards. And decision how I would structure the conversation to guide them through to ultimately, again, reach a consensus about how we would move forward.
I also had to consider logistically, this team, I worked remotely, but for this particular meeting, the entire team, they were in the room together in another state from me and I was online. That was interesting, but not too bad of a challenge. Just considering the logistics. But it made it easy because they were in the room together, so they were able to converse with one another, and pair up, and do all the things, and just had to look at my face on the screen. It was very rewarding. We got a lot of positive feedback after that, and invited to facilitate in other spaces. And we did, we gained consensus as the goal was to do. It gave us some direction to move forward with.

Douglas Ferguson:
Wow! You really stepped into a challenge there, having to facilitate for the team for the first time, it’s a step-up in maybe the level of stakes in the meeting you’re facilitating, and you had to do it remote while they were in the room.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah, yeah. But it was fun! It was good. I think what maybe would have been more challenge is if … Actually, I think some of them may have been online. I’m getting them mixed up now, because I’ve done a few things. I think the most challenging was a meeting I had to facilitate, and there were some people in the room together and some people were virtual. Now that, that’s complex. But having them all in the room together, not as bad.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yes, yes. You just had to make sure you maintained their attention. When folks are distributed across different environments, you really have to think carefully about how you’re ensuring that everyone still has a level playing field.

Alexis Scranton:
Definitely, definitely. It’s all about the participatory approach. How am I going to make sure everyone has space to participate, make sure their voices are included, their ideas are included? I love it. It really, as I sat down and was planning this session, and all of the sessions, I just kept flashing back to, “Wow! This just feels like when I was teaching, having to sit down and lesson plan.” You have all your resources and ideas. When I was a little girl, that’s when I knew I wanted to be a teacher because I used to love playing school. But it wasn’t just the part where you stand in front of your dolls and teddy bears, it was the planning part, and being creative with how you would plan the lesson. For me, I love it. I feel like I was just in my zone. It was just more confirmation, “Yeah, I’m doing the right thing. This is where I should be,” because it was just joyful.

Douglas Ferguson:
That’s so sweet. I’d love to hear more about the 10X Is Easier Than 2X.

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a book that we were required or encouraged to read at work, which I did. It has been a while now, so forgive me if I’m forgetting some of the key things. A major point of that book was a lot of times … A couple things. One, a lot of times in our lives, we’re trying to do more. We’re 10X-ing. Or, excuse me, we’re 2X-ing, we’re doubling the work. We’re doubling and we’re just making these incremental changes. Which then, we often times end up maybe feeling overwhelmed, or exhausted, or just making progress, but nothing overwhelming, nothing major.
When you 10X, you’re really doing a lot less. That’s why they say 10X is easier than 2X, because when you 10X, you’re eliminating 80% of the stuff. It’s focused on what is the 20%? Whatever it is I’m trying to do, what is the 20% that I need to focus on that is going to make the biggest impact? It also went through the process by which you do that for yourself. That’s what, when I told you earlier, I sat down and I went through my professional history, and I wrote down all of those experiences that had been most impactful to me, I got that activity from that book. That was a part of me trying to 10X my life professionally. How do I let go of all the things that aren’t necessarily bringing me the most joy, or all the things that aren’t helping me to make the most impact? And just focus on the 20% that will make the biggest leaps and bounds.
That book was really profound for me, I really appreciated it. It was actually written for entrepreneurs, which I wasn’t at the time, but I was definitely striving to be one. Yeah, it just helped me to 10X my life in a lot of ways. I think that’s probably what AI is going to be doing for a lot of folks. Just really helping them to just 10X their life, getting rid of the tedious things that don’t bring them joy that they have to get done. Let AI do it so you can just focus on the innovation and the creativity, and those things to maximize your impact.

Douglas Ferguson:
As we look into the future, you’ve spoken about positive peace being a guiding concept in your facilitation, and I would imagine in your practice. I’m curious to hear more about where you’re imagining things will go. Maybe explain a little bit more for our listeners, positive peace and where you’re going with it.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah. We hear peace and we usually think of peace of just being the absence of violence, the absence of turmoil and chaos. But the idea of positive peace is really it encompasses the institutions and the structures that help to create and sustain peaceful societies. That’s what I mean when I say positive peace.
What that looks like for me is, in my facilitation practice, I want to support organizations whose missions help to contribute to a more just and positive social environment. That could be a number of things, but they’re mission-oriented essentially. A lot of times, people hear that, “Oh, mission-oriented,” and your mind may automatically go to nonprofits. Yes, nonprofits are one entity, one sort of entity in the space of making social impact and contribution, but there are actual for-profit enterprises that are doing the same. I worked for one. Our mission was to eradicate illiteracy. Although for-profit, the mission is still there. I want to support any entity, again, that’s helping to support positive peace and helping to sustain a more peaceful society.
As far as the for-profit entities, I also just want to highlight you have the corporate social responsibilities. A lot of these big companies, as you probably may know, contribute millions of dollars towards community initiatives, community engagement, really giving back to the community. I’ve been doing a lot of research in that space. I’m really impressed, it makes me feel better about spending my money with a lot of companies, to know the good work that they’re doing. I strive to also support these corporate social responsibility initiatives too, and the work that they’re doing for communities.

Douglas Ferguson:
Impressive. It’s important to have a vision and stick to your values, so I commend you for that. We need more people doing that kind of stuff in the world.
As we come to an end, I just have another question, and then ask you to leave our listeners with a final thought. My last question is if we fast-forward five years, what impact would you like your facilitation work to have? Both personally and for the organizations you support.

Alexis Scranton:
Oh, wow. Well, I would like to say that my facilitation has helped these organizations to fulfill their missions. I would say that is the mission that I’m on, to help them fulfill their missions. That really just looks like, again, whatever these social impact initiatives are and these community engagement and partnerships, they’re more successful. They are able to, again, be more inclusive all of the voices that would be involved and impacted, and therefore make more meaningful programs and meaningful initiatives that see success and sustainability.
For myself personally, I hope to continue to build my competence, and just continue to grow in my love for facilitation and my understanding of just how profound it can be. Yeah, I’m just wanting to enjoy it more and more.

Douglas Ferguson:
Well, I’m hoping that’s the case. As we come to a close, I’d like to invite you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Alexis Scranton:
Yeah, just a final thought about facilitation. That it is really about unlocking the collective intelligence of the people to drive real lasting impact. Again, nothing for us without us. Any time one is planning to create anything for a group of people, be sure to have their voices included in the decision making.

Douglas Ferguson:
Thank you so much, Alexis. It’s been so great talking with you today. I hope to talk to you again sometime soon.

Alexis Scranton:
Likewise! I’ll come back anytime. Thank you for inviting me.

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

The post How Can Inclusive Facilitation Transform Decision-Making in Organizations? appeared first on Voltage Control.

“It’s most costly in the wasted human energy and time that goes into things that people in the end don’t care about. That is what’s the most frustrating to me, seeing people pour their energy with the hope that it’s going to pay off, and then in the end, when people shrug, it’s just so demoralizing.”- Jake Knapp

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Jake Knapp, co-founder and general partner at Character Capital, and a former Google employee instrumental in developing Gmail and Google Meet. The episode delves into Jake’s extensive experience in product development, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and market differentiation. Jake shares insights from his early coding and game development days, highlighting the value of iterative testing and customer feedback. They discuss the “foundation sprint” and “magic lenses” techniques for refining product ideas and making informed decisions. The episode underscores the necessity of clarity and alignment in successful product development.

Show Highlights

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About the Guest

Jake Knapp cofounder and general partner at Character Capital and a New York Times bestselling author. Previously, he helped build Gmail and Microsoft Encarta, cofounded Google Meet, and was a partner at Google Ventures.

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our facilitation lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab. And if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com. Today I’m with Jake Knapp, co-founder and general partner at Character Capital and a New York Times bestselling author. Previously, he helped build Gmail and Microsoft Encarta, co-founded Google Meet and was a partner at Google Ventures. Welcome to the show, Jake

Jake Knapp:

Douglas, thank you so much for having me on. Great to see you as always, and pleasure to be here.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s so good to be in conversation with you again. I want to start off with the first story in the book, and as someone who spent countless hours on a Commodore 64 at a young age that story really resonated with me, and so I just thought it’d be a fun way to kind of open up the podcast to you.

Jake Knapp:

Well, yeah, I started with the Commodore 64 as well, although I could never quite make anything happen on it that I wanted to. When you remember the cassette tape drive, I mean, that seems wild today that the data was stored.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I mean, I even remember coding with a go-to command and just the thought of that makes my brain hurt nowadays.

Jake Knapp:

If you’re listening to this and you’re wondering when we say cassette, what we’re talking about, it’s literally the kinds of cassettes that you’d make, like a mixtape on, an audio cassette. But the story at the beginning of the book is about when I was in middle and then high school and got into coding and making computer games on the Mac computer, and this is the black and white Mac. If you think of the first Macintosh computers, that’s what it looked like. And I spent just ages working on this game.

It was a castle adventure kind of thing. Go in the castle, you get a sword, fighting monsters. And I was trying to do this first person perspective, but it wasn’t like it was rendered by code, I was hand drawing the artwork for each view that you had. So if you turn left, then all of a sudden I had to draw that screen too. And as you move through the castle, I just couldn’t get very far. And anyway, I’ve finally felt like, okay, it’s ready to show to people.

I’ve been working on it for, I don’t know, a year and a half or something, and I bring it to school and on a floppy disk, and I show it to my friend Ian. And I didn’t tell him where it came from, and he’s just starts playing it, and he’s like, “I don’t know.” And my other friend comes in and he’s like, “Matt, do you want to turn on this game Jake found?” And Matt starts playing it and he’s like, “Yeah, you guys want to go play basketball?” And I was just like, “Oh my God.” I’m.

Douglas Ferguson:

Crushed.

Jake Knapp:

I’m crushed. I’ve spent so long working on it, and my hope was, “Oh, I won’t tell him.” And they’ll be like, “Whoa, what’s this cool game? Where’d this come from?” So the thing that happened though was I was just dead set on making something that my friends would play. And so I went back home and I started trying different games, but this time I thought, I can’t wait a year and a half every time before I show them, or I’m going to be graduated from high school before this gets done.

So I would just make the beginning of the game and to try out the mechanics a little bit. So I’d spend about a week on it and I’d come back and I’d show it to my friends and see what happened. And I tried all different kinds of games and finally I hit on this one. It was a mouse going through a maze, and each maze was really fast. You could get through it in like a few seconds. And in fact, there was a timer that would count down. So it was very fast-paced. And I got a bunch of sound effects from Ren & Stimpy and The Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-Head, all the stuff that I was watching and enjoying at the time.

All these little sound effects that would play and kind of make fun of you as you went along. And finally, my friends, they started to get into that and it clicked. I remember watching them play and lean forward and get into it and talk trash to each other. So that experience, yeah, it was the genesis of the way I think about products to this day. You’ve got to find something that clicks with your customer and above all else, that is the most important thing.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I’m really curious, with that lesson learned so early on, were you able to avoid making stuff that didn’t click or did you still run into those moments where you thought you had it figured out only for other people to show you otherwise?

Jake Knapp:

Right. That sounds like it should be the origin story of… And then I went on and created blizzard, but that’s Minecraft. But that is not what happened. I went to work at Microsoft, actually, was the first big software company I’d worked at. I worked at Oakley, the sunglasses company briefly beforehand on their website, their online store. But when I got to Microsoft, I was like, “Okay, now I’m building software and this is a continuation. This is my dream to make things that people love.”

And I was working on the encyclopedia. And in the early days that I was there, so 2000, 2001, 2002, I mean, this was still a product that people really did love and we would work on it and build a new version of the encyclopedia each year and launch it. And there were a lot of really enthusiastic fans of that product. Kids used it to study and it was really cool. But Wikipedia came out right around that time and started to just explode and so it was pretty evident a couple years in that the internet was changing the way people looked for information.

And we, with our CD ROMs that you had to swap in and out of the drive were not on the fast track to long future. So yeah, the thing is, it took us a year to make a product and put it out in the world. And I kept thinking, “I’ve got a new idea, this is going to change the game.” And it would take us a year before it got out there and you know, it wasn’t moving the needle and it wasn’t moving the needle. And this is a thing that can happen far too easily, especially if you’re in a large organization, especially if you’ve had success in the past, but it also happens to startup founders.

So I mean, if we fast way, way, way forward to today, I’m an investor with a fund called Character Capital and we invest in early stage startup founders, and it can happen to them. It can happen to folks who are just getting started just in that garage phase, so to speak, that you can have this idea and be convinced that once you get it right and get it out to people then it’s all going to work and you can talk yourself into just as I did in high school, just as I did at Microsoft, spending a year, a year and a half building something that in the end people see it and they’re like, “Ah.”

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s also making me think about how you can make something that clicks, but then the market can shift and it can unclick. And so it’s about being just super conscious of how things are evolving, what’s new, what’s fresh.

Jake Knapp:

That’s right. And a big part of the message of the new book is getting in touch with your customer and getting really crisp about what your belief is, about what the customer needs, what the customer’s problem is, how you can solve it in a special way, get really crisp about that. Put it into the form of a hypothesis, and then test that hypothesis. And you always have to test your hypothesis about the customer because it does change.

The world is constantly changing people’s expectations, their hopes, the solutions available to them, they’re always changing. And that first started to become clear to me at Microsoft as I was working on Encarta. And when I went to go work at Google in the mid two 2000s it was reinforced for me because we were building products there that really were on that edge of changing the way people did things. I worked on the Gmail team and then co-founded the product that became Google Meet.

And as we were doing these new things you’d find that something that you tested one week and it didn’t make sense to people and they’d never try it, and if you kept at it and tried to make it clearer and clearer, and as the world changed and people got more used to new things, hey, you know what, a couple of months later, maybe they were open to it, maybe you got it right and their world changed. And getting that intersection right requires a constant awareness of and experimentation with your customers.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I’m thinking about the Foundation Sprint and even the book itself, Click, what was the moment that sparked for you that this is necessary? Because there was a lot of talk of know, is Jake going to do Design Sprint version two? Is it going to be like a newer, bigger, better Design Sprint or whatnot? But you went to the thing before. And so what was the moment that you said, “Okay, I need to go figure this out and write this book because that’s what’s needed next.”?

Jake Knapp:

Well, it’s probably overdue for there to be a Design Sprint 2.0 book because I’ve learned things, Douglas, you’ve learned things. It’s been a while that we’ve been running these and we know there are improvements over what’s in the book, but at the end of the day it’s a lot of work to write a book. Having done it a couple of times I wouldn’t do it unless I knew that there was something that is just driving me crazy to not share it with people. That’s getting a little ahead though.

To go back to that moment when I realized something was missing. So I had worked at Google and created the Design Sprint in around 2010. I ran the first one in 2010, and it was starting to think about it in 2009 based on some experiences with Google Meet and with Gmail where I’d run these one week prototype sessions and then tested it with people at the end of the week and saw how powerful that was. Created the Design Sprint, started to formalize it, went to go work at Google Ventures, started running these with founders and startups and did that for five years, wrote the Sprint book.

I left Google and then together with my co-author John Zeratsky and our friend Eli Blee-Goldman, we founded this venture fund Character Capital, and we started working with early stage founders. And at Google Ventures we had gotten further and further away from the early stage as our reputation grew and as we were able to invest more money in later stage companies, that was always the strategy with Google Ventures, was to put a lot of money to work. But that means later stage companies and those companies don’t have what for me is really the heart of it, the cherry on top.

The most fun part is the earliest moments when you’re shaping the direction, you’re trying to figure out if you can find product market fit in the first place. So with Character Capital, we fast-forward to 2020, 20 21, and I’m starting to work with early stage founders. Again, it’s so fun. And I started to notice occasionally we would do a brand sprint with them or just have a conversation a sideline conversation in the Design Sprint and started to realize that there were some really basic fundamental things that all founders think about and have some sense of, but rarely have made crisp.

And let me be specific about what those are. It’s rare that on the founding team, every person on the founding team, let’s say there’s three people in an early stage startup, it’s rare that all three people will say the same thing if you say who’s your target customer, but they’ll all define it in the exact same way. It’s rare that they’ll all three tell you what the customer’s problem is that they’re trying to solve. It’s rare that they’ll have an immediate list of here’s our top three to five competitors and this is the one who’s the most important.

It’s rare that they’ll be able to quickly rattle off for you, here’s our advantage that we have, the insight, the special capability that the competition doesn’t have. And they all have a general sense of those things, but it’s rare that all of that is super crisp. And unfortunately it’s also rare that they’re really crisp about their differentiation. What’s going to make our solution so much better than those alternatives, those competitors, the ways people are doing things today? What’s going to make our solution so much better that it’s going to make the alternatives look like junk and people will switch to ours?

So they may have thought about differentiation in terms of industry or technology, but it’s rare to have this crisp vision of the customer perception that we’re trying to create. And so it just came up from these conversations, and I remember starting to think we don’t have a good tool for getting at this. The brand Sprint was actually almost the closest tool that we had. And the brand Sprint is all around figuring out how do you want to express yourself through visuals, through language? How do you compare yourself?

You think about car brands and are they more friendly or more of an authority or whatever. And so it’s not the right tool. And so that was the genesis of this first notion that there’s something missing before the Design Sprint. People need to get crisp about what their hypothesis is. And if you look at the teams who have had the best Design Sprints that we’ve worked with, they had clarity about their hypothesis, and it made the results of their sprint better because they knew what they needed to get at, they knew what they needed to assess when they prototyped and tested.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s making me think about how you mentioned that even the simple stuff is not easy, these seemingly obvious basics that teams consistently struggle with. And so I’m curious, why do you think they find them so challenging?

Jake Knapp:

I think it’s hard because it’s like you’re a fish and there’s water all around you, or we don’t think about the air we’re breathing. It’s just there are so many things to do when you’re starting a company. There’s so many things to figure out. You’ve got to think about incorporating your company and making payroll and all of these millions of things. Can we get the domain name that we need? And there’s just a million things. You’re trying to talk to customers, you’re trying to get customers, you’re trying to build something.

And so of course you thought about what you’re doing, you thought about who your customer is and what kind of thing you’re building, but it’s that difference between being at the 100-foot level and being at the one-foot level and being really specifically crisp about it. I think people talk about it and then they move forward doing those first early steps of a project. And if you’re in a large company, the same thing happens. You start off and you say, “Oh, I think this would be an interesting opportunity for us to go after.” And pretty soon you’re building your team.

The engineers are chomping at the bit to write code. You don’t want to slow them down, you’re writing a PRD. And in all of this we have a lot to do. We have to create big documents, we have to create lines and lines and lines of code. We’ve got to do all this stuff that the simple kernel gets obscured. And something that I believe is true about the most successful products that we’ve ever seen in the world is that they have clarity about that simple kernel and they don’t lose that clarity. And so the thing that they set out to do in the beginning is, we’re going to solve this problem for people in a radically differentiated way.

It’s so different from what anyone else has seen before. It’s a cliche to talk about the iPhone, but it’s a clear example of this. So much easier to use, so much more powerful than the products that had come before. And they set out to do that and then that’s what they build and that’s what they talk about when the product comes out. And great products, great solutions do that. And it is actually hard to keep clarity about the simple basics of what you’re offering and to nail it in the right way. And so yeah, I think, I think it’s just true that it’s difficult.

Douglas Ferguson:

Let’s talk about differentiation. What are some of the mistakes that startups make when trying to differentiate? And how can the two-by-two and clearer project principles help them?

Jake Knapp:

The biggest mistake, I think, is just that we don’t realize how hard it is to stand out in the market and to make a compelling case to people that they should spend any time even thinking about what you’re doing. And so I think the more we go along in life and we have the experience of creating things and offering them out into the world, the more we’ll get the experience of that not going the way we hope. Sometimes just as that happened to me in high school and it happened with Encarta and I’ve seen it happen with all kinds of things over and over again.

Quite often we come up with what we think is going to be a lovely idea, something people get really excited about, we show it to them and they shrug. And it’s not that people hate us, it’s just that there’s so much going on in everyone’s life. And we have limited time, we have limited energy so to spend the calories even thinking about adding something new into your work world, your life, whatever, it’s something we don’t want to do. We don’t want to do it unless it’s really compelling and really catchy and really just, gosh, I’d be crazy not to try this thing.

So even to listen to the sales pitch is a lot. Even to look at your marketing page is a lot to ask. And then you get past that to try the thing that’s a lot. Gosh, this untrusted thing from the startup I’ve never heard of, I’m going to sign up for it, oof, that’s tough. Even if you’re talking about early adopters, tough to get them to make that step. There’s so many things being offered all the time. And then to get people to truly adopt it, that’s tough too.

So I think the mistake that we all tend to make about differentiation is to undervalue just how fantastic something has to sound to penetrate through our natural armor against trying anything new, against listening to any new pitch, against all of the constant messages and shouting that’s coming at us all the time from our inbox, from the news, from wherever you go, everybody’s trying to grab your attention. And to get through that it’s just got to be really, really special. And you should not stop experimenting with your differentiation until you’re extremely confident that I’ve got a message now that’s getting through the noise and people are excited about it.

Douglas Ferguson:

Do you ever find that startups will claim a differentiator that their competitor might claim or put them in a bucket that a competitor would never say or the market would never perceive them in that way just because it’s an ideal way of looking at it? And if so, what are your tips for helping them break out of that way of thinking and being more authentic maybe?

Jake Knapp:

I think it’s quite common that if we set out to differentiate ourselves, our products ourselves, you know, individually or whatever, and we say, this is what makes me special, that we might not actually have the right viewpoint on what we’re offering. Let’s use the example of speed. You might think that, gosh, the way our product delivers something it’s really fast and that’s going to catch customers attention, but we might find that when we actually offer it to customers, when we run experiments that they’re not moved by that. That doesn’t matter to them.

They’re like, “Well, the alternative is already fast enough.” I’m not excited enough to change my approach by speed. And actually, I’ll give you a concrete example of this. So we worked with a company called Orbital Materials. They’re in our portfolio. It’s a startup who was founded by a guy from DeepMind who had worked on this really cool project where they developed an AI to analyze X-rays for trying to detect breast cancer. And they were able to beat radiologists at diagnosing breast cancer from X-rays.

And so this guy’s a great mind and a great computer scientist, and he thought, “I would love to apply AI to designing molecules so that we can find replacements for jet fuel and cobalt.” And things that are hard to develop today, or rare, expensive. If we could design molecules, he thinks we can solve a lot of problems that the world either faces now or is going to face very soon in terms of shortages of items or high costs items. So he starts off this company, builds an amazing team of chemists and computer scientists. And then to make this business actually work, to make this vision actually work, they’ve got to be able to work with the chemical manufacturers.

And so to go and set up a pilot program to get a design partner who will work with you as you’re designing these chemicals and hopefully finding some that work and actually be willing to say, “Okay, now we’re going to go through and manufacture some of these and see if they scale,” he’s got to make the case to these companies who have been coming up with their products in the traditional way, which takes years of trial and error through traditional chemistry. They’ve been doing it that way for 100 years.

And the promise that this new way of doing things is faster or higher tech or smarter, which on the surface, if you listen to the story, the way I tell it seems, yeah, well this new way has got to be faster, it must be smart and high-tech, but if you’re a chemical manufacturer and you’ve been doing it a hundred years the same way and it’s working for you, well that doesn’t sound. The old way of doing things I don’t have to change anything to make it keep working that way, it’s reliable, I trust it. So how do you reframe the world and make this new way of doing things sound appealing?

And so they had to try a bunch of different differentiators before they hit on this is the thing that’s actually compelling to people. And it was that they were going to be able to produce higher quality products and that those products would actually be more reliable. That it would be a more reliable development chain. And then they had to prove those two points. But they had to first hit on where’s the sort of the in the armor? Where’s the gap where we might be able to penetrate through the defenses that we all have against new stuff?

And they thought those are the spots they first identified as being vulnerable and then they had to say, “Okay, now we’ve got to prove that we can do that.” And then guess what? Like that ends up shaping the product that you build because first and foremost, you’re now trying to develop a product that will deliver on that promise of reliability, that will deliver on that promise of higher quality products. So that’s why I think what it looks like in real life is that we often, our first guess what we think might be compelling isn’t compelling, and we have to keep experimenting and tweaking until we find the thing that breaks through.

Douglas Ferguson:

You first introduced the idea of work alone together in the book Sprint, and it makes a strong comeback and click. And so I’m curious, why do you think this technique continues to resonate and proves so effective for teams, especially compared to our default methods or brainstorming and the ways that people typically approach these challenges?

Jake Knapp:

Well, you’ve experienced it. You’ve done this work alone together thing I know a lot and it is a surprisingly simple and powerful shift when you have a group of people. There’s some fantastic magic that happens when you have a group of people together trying to solve a problem. You’ve got different viewpoints, you’ve got the sense of perhaps inspiration people will get from one another, you’ve got also a little hint of competition that Douglas is in here and he’s going to come up with some good ideas, I need to bring my A game if I’m going to have anything worthwhile to contribute.

It’s different for me being on my own now with no one watching. Now Douglas is watching I’ve got to do a bit better. And all of those elements are really healthy, but they actually get watered down and messed up by the unfettered group brainstorm. Everyone can talk, anything goes conversation that we will default into as just as humans. We’ll all default into just talking our way through a problem. And that talking our way through our problem is subject to people who are really great at making a sales pitch for their idea. Their ideas will tend to be overvalued.

Folks who are introverted or for whatever reason, just maybe don’t think well when other people are talking, and I put myself in both of those categories, they’re not going to do as well in the environment of a group brainstorm. And then we have all kinds of cognitive biases that come in. So like the last idea that somebody said well that’s going to have recency bias helping it out, or the more somebody pitches their idea, we’re going to start to have confirmation bias. We’re going to associate ideas with people rather than with the merits of the idea itself.

And we’re going to be limited to the verbal, the audio only description of the idea and not the content of the idea. So when we work alone together, I mean, simply what happens is you say, okay, everybody be quiet, here’s the prompt, here’s the question that we’re trying to answer first and now I want you to spend some time thinking about it quietly writing down your solution or your answer. It could be an answer on a sticky note, it could be a back of the napkin style sketch of something or a detailed solution as we do in Design Sprints.

And then we’re going to review all of those, but they’re going to be anonymous and we’re going to look at them in silence, and then we know we’re going to vote on those and then the decider’s going to choose and maybe she or he is going to say, “Hey, there’s a bunch of votes here and a bunch of votes there, but I like this one. Could somebody tell me why? What I’m missing here.” And so then maybe the kind of conversation you have at that point is so much richer, the contribution, everybody’s been able to contribute, they haven’t had to sales pitch and think at the same time, there’s more detail.

Just everything about it is better. And I know I don’t have to sell you on this because I think you’ve been doing this and modifying it and finding your own new ways to apply it, but it’s super powerful. For me, honestly, it goes back to writing code and procedural thinking, trying to break down a function into what are the steps that need to happen to make it work. And when you run a request, the computer, the processor, it’s got to do some work. Our brains are the same way. So it’s also partly about creating space where the brain can process and then return something back to you.

And it just makes so much sense and works so much better than the traditional group brainstorm. So yeah, I work alone together. I found myself coming to the point in the new book, which I have a finished copy of right here. I found myself coming to the point where I was like, “Gosh, you know what? I’m going to have to reintroduce that idea because I can’t assume that everybody else is already sold on that. And I got a little more into it in Qlik and drew some cartoons and tried to really drive the point home of why it makes such a difference.

Douglas Ferguson:

The decider role also came back for round two.

Jake Knapp:

Yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

How can facilitators engage the decider? That’s something I’ve always been really curious about, ensuring that the decider’s voice is influential without overpowering others, and how do we guide them toward making clear decisions?

Jake Knapp:

Yeah, if you’re facilitating the decider is your best friend. I mean, not that you have to cozy up to them in some way, but just that the decider makes it so much easier to navigate through a problem with a group of people because at any point that you need to, you can flip to the decider and say, “Hey, can you tell us which of these options is the best?” Or “Can you narrow this down now to a field of three where we can zero in on.” Whatever.

You’ve got a lot of possibility with a decider to snap out of what becomes an open-ended conversation or an open-ended debate at any point, the decider is your key to moving on to the next level, unlocking the door to the next room that you have to pass through to solve a problem. And in the structures that I set up, whether it’s the Design Sprint or now the Foundation Sprint, I’m very intentionally setting the decider as the lock opener into the next room as we go from one batch of activities to the next and to the next and to the next.

And if you’re a facilitator and you’re either running a Foundation Sprint or crafting your own structure, I think that’s the first, the simplest thing is just to use the decider when you’re at a point when it would be otherwise hard to make progress they make the call, they move things along. And you can call on them even before your process is ready for it if you need to break a tie or to tell us, “Do you feel like we should spend three more minutes talking about this or have we heard enough?”

I mean, anything goes. The thing about the decider is that the method has to create enough space for everyone to contribute that it doesn’t just become a decider monologue going all the way through. And so for me, it’s a balancing act between now if I think about a small startup and we think about, hey, there might be three, five, 10 people in this early stage startup, the CEO’s usually the decider, although not always, depends on the content of the sprint, but the CEO’s voice is incredibly important here. We don’t want to make a decision that subverts the CEO, what she wants.

We shouldn’t have the group’s decision, a democracy subvert what the CEO wants to have happen because it’s her company, her role to make those decisions. But at the same time, we should provide her with as many tools as possible to make the best decision possible. And that means getting something good from everybody that she can evaluate and getting some sense of the group’s evaluation of those options. So as we talked through the work alone together structure, it’s everybody comes up with their own proposal in silence, everybody reviews and votes in silence.

Sometimes even people will write down their decision or their proposal on a sticky note in silence, and then the decider makes the call and she’s encouraged to draw out those conversations. As the facilitator, you can intercede there and when you see that maybe the decider hasn’t paid enough attention to this stuff, you can slow things down or speed them up, and I think that’s one of the key powers of the facilitator. But the structure itself also should always elevate competing opinions for the decider, should always give pause to the decider before she makes a decision.

But you also have to be really careful as a facilitator that you don’t let that methodology overwhelm the decider’s intuition. At the end of the day, the most important thing about the way that I work with teams, the Foundation Sprint where you’re creating a hypothesis or the Design Sprint where you’re testing that hypothesis, is that we need the decider’s intuition to get great. It may not be great in the beginning, but we need it to get to the place where it’s great because the deciders ultimately are predictor of what’s going to work.

They’re going to make a prediction and we’re going to follow executing on that prediction, and then we’re going to hope it comes true in the end. There’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. So in these sprints we’re trying to zero in and identify the decider’s intuition. We’re trying to tune it and give it every advantage of the team, but ultimately the deciders forming the hypothesis and then the decider saying, “This is the form of solution, I think will prove that hypothesis.”

And every time we run an experiment and test with customers we’re showing, well, here’s what the world said. It said, “You’re wrong.” And when that happens that’s a powerful moment for the decider to get better, for their intuition to improve and improve and improve. The success of our product ultimately will be the result of how well we can inform and improve our decider’s intuition or how strong it is to begin with and how much we can isolate and clarify it. So anyway, that’s a lot, but as a facilitator, that’s what I see my job is doing.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love the callback to the swords and sorcery games and the decider unlocking the next room.

Jake Knapp:

It’s a quest. It’s always a quest.

Douglas Ferguson:

That it is. Maybe there’s another book title in the future.

Jake Knapp:

It could be. It could be a good one. I like that word. I always a big fan of a tribe called Quest and so the word quest is just always a special.

Douglas Ferguson:

So let’s talk about magic lenses for a moment. You talk about it being an activity or a way to explore conflicting opinions, which I think is really important when we’re bringing groups together and harnessing the power of diversity. So how can facilitators burst guide teams through this process?

Jake Knapp:

Magic lenses is an activity that if I do say so myself, I’m really proud of it. I think that for the past, I suppose 15 years, you could kind of boil down what I’ve been doing with Design Sprints and now the Foundation Sprint, you can boil it all down to helping people make decisions about things that are hard to decide on. And part of that is time boxing, so you accelerate those decisions, but part of it also is evaluating multiple paths, making sure we’ve clarified what those paths are and identifying them in a Design Sprint that’s sketching different solutions that we might prototype and build in a Foundation Sprint.

On day two of the Foundation Sprint, it’s about identifying the approaches that we might take to solving this problem. So not the specific solution, but like are we building a plugin for somebody else’s software? Are we building standalone software? Are we building a dashboard? Are we building a chatbot? There’s all these different broad paths that we might take and then in a Design Sprint we’ll get really detailed on, okay, what’s the form of that thing look like? And making a choice like this, when I thought about it for these early stage founders, it’s you have the opportunity to pre pivot.

Often you’re a founder and you start building something, it’s just not working out, and like me showing my friend Ian, this computer game, I realize I’ve got to go in a different direction. I’ve got to pivot. Well, if you could have that moment of thinking, so what are my other options? If you could do that first, you might either have more conviction about the path you’re already on or you might say, “Gosh, this other one, when I evaluated in the context of my differentiation and everything I’ve been thinking about with the basics of my project, I actually think I have a better shot at this other path I’m going to pre pivot.”

Anyway, that’s a huge decision to make. And even though in a Foundation Sprint we’re only forming a hypothesis, we’re going to experiment right away with a Design Sprint and if I haven’t made it clear already, the idea is you run this two-day Foundation Sprint and then you go right away into five-day Design Sprints to test it, to run the experiments. But even if it’s just a week at a time experiment it’s still a big decision. We want it to be very carefully considered. So the idea with magic lenses is to use two by two charts, that old business school, standby to plot out different viewpoints on our options.

So let’s say we’ve got three different options for how we might approach this problem, option A, option B, option C, we’re going to look at those through the customer lens. What solves the customer’s problem in the best way possible? And plot that out on a two by two. Think of the two factors that for us are most important for the customer solution. And which of these is the easiest to use and solves their problem in the best way? And that’d be in the top right. Maybe option A is in the top right there. And then we think about the money lens. Well, we’re going to need to turn this into a business.

So which of these has the highest long-term value to a customer? What do we suspect people would pay for the most? Which has the largest possible audience of customers? And now maybe option B is in the top right. And option A in this one maybe it’s in the top right quadrant, but it’s not pegged right into the corner there and option C is somewhere in the mix. And now we look at growth. Not only what are the most potential customers, but what do we think is the easiest to adopt? And now we look at the pragmatic view, which of these is the easiest to build, the fastest to build?

We look at our differentiation. If our differentiators are reliability and high quality, which of these approaches best delivers on those factors? And then there are always other lenses particular to a company. So people can create their own two by two charts. What happens if we’ve color coded option A, option B and option C? You can imagine these charts side by side by side, we zoom out on those and we look at where the colors are, you can often see a pattern often the same option is in the top right in every chart. That actually happens a good amount of the time and you think, well “Gosh, clearly we can feel good about pursuing that option.”

Sometimes it’s a mix. And that’s actually helpful too, because if we’re feeling conflicted about proceeding on our project, it might be that it’s because it’s just not clearly as good at growth as it is at the pragmatic view or as it is at differentiation. And so now we know growth is going to be a challenge, but maybe we still have conviction. Maybe when it’s mixed we’ll say one of these lenses is truly the most important. And even though we don’t have consensus among all the lenses, this one is so important. That’s the way that we’re going to make this decision. For us, it’s all about the customer.

We’re just going to deliver the thing that is best for the customer and trust that the rest of it will work itself out. Any of those is a viable way to move through magic lenses, make a decision on an approach and graduate to having your founding hypothesis. If you’re the facilitator helping teams to move through that is a really special moment. There is just mechanics of getting people through plotting charts, and we can talk about that if you like. It helps to do one axis at a time and to have the decider or one person who’s an expert on each domain talk about those charts.

But what’s really special about this activity is that you make a very complex situation, visual. You capture it in a way that the brain can parse, whereas when all of these factors are in our heads, it’s very hard to have clarity about what’s going on through all these different lenses. As a facilitator, your guidance to the decider about what you see, about where you think they should give a little bit of extra care, if it’s consensus, it’s easy, but when there’s not consensus deciding, okay, is it the best idea here if I have the whole team vote on which lens is most important?

Will that give the decider the sort of pause that they need to consider this? How do I make sure that the democracy of the team doesn’t outweigh the intuition of the decider? And this is an area where your judgment, your expertise, your experience, your gauge of human nature and interaction and what’s going on all become really important. It’s a very powerful moment. And it’s just potentially, I think, a super tool that you can use not only in the Foundation Sprint, but in any situation where people face a complex decision. And the stakes are pretty high for getting that decision right.

Douglas Ferguson:

You have a gift for simplifying complex decisions, whether it’s exploring these conflicting opinions or selecting what to prototype into these clear step-by-step recipes.

Jake Knapp:

Well, thank you.

Douglas Ferguson:

I’m super curious, what’s your secret for turning these tough, abstract decisions into straightforward processes anybody can follow?

Jake Knapp:

I was talking to my son, Luke, recently about, you know, life and careers and work and he was talking about there’s a piece of advice that folks sometimes give which is follow your bliss, and I am actually a bit of a skeptic of that advice. I think that following what’s completely your bliss is telling a startup founder to like, “Well just build whatever like sounds fun to you.” And that could work out you. There are certainly examples where that does work out, but it really only works out if there’s a market for your bliss.

And so I told him, I thought perhaps a different way of thinking about it is, you should be aware of your bliss, you should make time for your bliss to plug another book of mine. Your bliss may be a hobby, but you must find a way to become obsessed with the thing that you do. If you can become obsessed with it, if there’s enough interest and excitement that you can really, for the long haul, dig into this thing and be obsessed with getting it right, then that’s I think a more likely predictor of both your satisfaction and happiness as an individual and that your work will find a market of people, an audience of people.

That it’ll matter to people. And for better or for worse, I became obsessed with the beginnings of projects and those decisions that people made and I just can’t stop thinking about it. And it drives me nuts when I’m in a conversation and we start to make a decision and sometimes it’s me who’s screwing it up, but I can tell that in some way we’re screwing up the way where we’re processing it. We’re taking too long, we’re not considering enough options. It just feels like, “Oh man, something’s going wrong here.”

Maybe I’m not naturally even like the most decisive or naturally the most analytical or rational person, part of this has just been trying to decode what’s going on in my own brain and try to make those meetings and those moments go right. And I would have thought that I’d be done with it by now, but it just seems like I still am uncovering parts where I’m like, “Oh, I want to fix that too.” So I’m just obsessive and gosh, if it’s helpful for folks that’s fabulous because I at this point can’t stop.

Douglas Ferguson:

Amazing. I’ve got a few rapid fire ones here to end on, so here we go. Beyond the example in the book, have you ever used a funny or memorable eject lever message to carve out focus for a good emergency?

Jake Knapp:

I have migraine headaches and I don’t have them very bad compared to a lot of people who have them, but if you have migraines, you might know that there’s a pre migraine part and a post migraine part, they affect your whole body and your whole brain in a way that goes beyond the headache. And in fact, for me, often there is no headache. I’m really lucky in that way. There’s often no headache, but there’s still a mental fog that happens and body aches and I mean, it’s wild.

I may have overplayed the effect of the mental fog at times to buy myself time to think something through, to list out my options, analyze them, to perhaps work with folks. And that’s an eject lever that I have used from decisions in the past might, if you are talking to me and I need to make a decision about something and I say that I have a migraine now when I would need to get back to you in a couple of days, it might just be that I need time to think. And actually, now that I say it, I don’t know why I’m not just honest about that.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. Just you can never confirm nor deny that you have a migraine. Amazing. Well, okay, this is a fun one. So you compare differentiation to pizza toppings, and if the founding hypothesis were a pizza, what are some essential ingredients that always belong and what are some questionable toppings that teams insist on including?

Jake Knapp:

Yeah. Well, I talk about it because differentiation is something that if you get it right, it’s still probably not going to be the thing for everybody. Not everybody agrees on the perfect pizza. So we talk about the iPhone as this product that’s such a huge success story. And yet lots of people choose not to get an iPhone, they get something else. And so pepperoni pizza is not for everybody. Some folks are like, “I need a different flavor.” And so part of differentiation is getting the ingredients right.

And when we talk about the founding hypothesis it’s if we solve this problem for this customer with this approach, then they’re going to choose it over this competitor because we’re going to be different in these ways. So you’ve got some variables there. The customer, the problem, the approach you’re taking, the competitors and the differentiators, and each of those ingredients they are important, but you might be wrong about them. So when you form your founding hypothesis, you might be sure that your customers have this problem.

And then you might start talking to customers and realize, “Man, the people we’re talking to, actually, they’re not the right people at all.” And so that’s almost like the cheese. That’s the thing that seems the most basic, well, who’s the customer? And you start talking to people and you’re like, “Oh man, these people are lactose intolerant.” Or these people they like feta, whatever. You’re off base with this thing that you wouldn’t even considering it. You’re just like, “Everybody loves mozzarella.” And well man, maybe they don’t or maybe your mozzarella is not good enough or whatever.

And so any one of those, actually, I can think of examples with any one where we’ve seen startups go out and realize, oh, the customer is right, but the problem, this is not a problem that’s a big enough deal for them. It’s not painful enough for them to warrant trying something new or we have the competition wrong. We thought it was this and actually it’s just that they’re doing nothing. They’re not aware of all these solutions that exist because they just really don’t care, again, which could be back to the problem’s not that important. The differentiators is one that I always harp on because it’s so commonly missed and it’s something you have to work at to get right. But any one of those things could be a bit off, which is why we test. That’s why we experiment.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s why it’s a hypothesis.

Jake Knapp:

That’s why it’s a hypothesis. Exactly.

Douglas Ferguson:

If you could wave a magic wand and instantly grant every facilitator or startup founder one essential insight from Qlik, what would it be?

Jake Knapp:

I think that the most essential insight is you cannot take for granted the basics of your business, of your strategy, of what you’re doing. In a startup, in a big project, in any organization, even in things that we do in our lives, we very quickly become blind to the simple core underlying things. And we can very quickly forget that the most important thing for a startup for a big project is that in the end that people care about it, that it clicks, that it does the thing we hope it will do for people.

And it’s worth taking time to reexamine those basic obvious things, get them really crisp. And so if you’re a facilitator, you should never hesitate to ask the dumb questions. And this book is full of dumb questions that I was embarrassed to ask. And so I wrote a book and created a framework to help me ask those dumb questions. And there’s this set of dumb questions, but there are a lot of dumb questions out there that if you’re a facilitator you’re actually in a really special and unique situation where you can ask those.

You’re coming in as an outsider and you can say, “Hey, look, I know nothing. So could you explain that acronym you just used? Could you tell me why we’re doing this thing?” You can ask those almost rude basic questions. And I promise you, 80 to 100% of the people on the team who should know the answer to it, they’re going to thank you for asking those, for clarifying the basics. You should never be shy about asking the simplest questions. And it’s always wise to rewind and get those basic questions nailed first. The assumptions we make are often where we fail.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s such a gift to a team when you can shine a light on some of those things that maybe they’ve been afraid to bring up because it’s like, “I think we’re supposed to have this figured out, but I don’t know if I want to admit that we’re so far off base here.”

Jake Knapp:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And there are just far too many situations where those oversights, not through any malice on anybody’s part or even really malpractice, it’s just our human nature that we’re like, “Okay, good, we know what we’re doing, let’s go.” And those oversights end up being the thing that makes it fail in the end. And what’s a bummer about that, I mean, sure, from a Machiavellian perspective as an investor or a capitalist perspective, I guess, I’m just hoping that if we get those things right, your business is more likely to succeed and if I’ve invested in your business, then I’m going to make money in the end so I’m very self-interested in getting this stuff right.

But it’s most costly in the wasted human energy and time that goes into things that people in the end don’t care about. And that is what’s the most frustrating to me, is seeing people pour their energy with the hope that it’s going to pay off. I’m putting all of this time in, but in the end it’s going to be worth it because we’re going to solve this problem for customers, and then in the end when people shrug, it’s just so demoralizing. You’ve lost all that effort. You can’t 100% solve that, but if we get the basics right and we experiment to prove to ourselves to every extent possible that they’re right we have a chance of saving a lot of human effort, and that is very worthwhile.

Douglas Ferguson:

Very well said, sir. And I think that brings us to our end. And I just want to say thanks for the conversation, Jake. It’s always a pleasure being with you, and I look forward to our next time.

Jake Knapp:

Always a pleasure to speak to you as well, Douglas. And listeners, if you made it this far, check out the clickbook.com and see what you think of the book. We’d love to hear what you think after giving it a read.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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“You can talk the talk all you want, but the group is going to know if you’re not walking the walk. As the facilitator, you have to be the one that’s ready to lead in what you’re asking them to do.”- Caterina Rodriguez

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Caterina Rodriguez (Cat), a facilitator consultant and strategic leader at ADL. Cat shares her journey from anti-bias education to organizational effectiveness, emphasizing the importance of authentic connections in facilitation. She discusses the challenges of adopting a new facilitation style and highlights the transformative power of collaborative group experiences. Cat stresses the need for facilitators to embrace uncertainty and model genuine engagement, advocating for a method-agnostic approach. The episode underscores the value of building trust and fostering inclusive, change-ready cultures within organizations.

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About the Guest

Caterina Rodriguez is a facilitator, consultant, and strategic leader dedicated to helping organizations build inclusive, change-ready cultures. With a background in program and learning design, facilitation, and organizational change, Caterina specializes in designing experiences that foster collaboration, co-creation, and meaningful outcomes. As the Director of Strategic Initiatives & Continuous Learning at ADL, she leads learning and capacity-building initiatives to strengthen organizational effectiveness. In her consulting work, Caterina designs and facilitates experiences that foster collaboration, co-creation, and strategic alignment to help teams navigate complexity and drive lasting impact. From guiding executive teams through complex change to developing large-scale programs, facilitating high-stakes conversations, and equipping teams with facilitation tools and leadership skills, Caterina enables organizations to build capacity for alignment, collaboration, and long-term success.

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas 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 Caterina Rodriguez, a facilitator, consultant, and strategic leader dedicated to helping organizations build inclusive change ready cultures. Cat serves as the director of strategic initiatives and continuous learning at ADL, where she leads learning and capacity building initiatives to strengthen organizational effectiveness.

In her consulting work, Cat specializes in designing and facilitating experiences that foster collaboration, co-creation, and strategic alignment, helping teams navigate complexity and drive lasting change. Welcome to the show, Cat.

Caterina Rodriguez:

Thanks so much for having me, Douglas. Excited to be here.

Douglas Ferguson:

So great to have you. To get started, let’s hear a little bit about how you started your facilitation journey.

Caterina Rodriguez:

Yeah, so I’ll go back to right as I started working after I graduated grad school, and I had just started as a program manager at ADL. And I was in charge of both managing some of our anti-bias education programs locally, but I also would sometimes go out and facilitate them myself.

And that was the first time that I had ever facilitated, not presented, or given a training or a talk, where the majority of the program was actually focused on creating discussions, walking the groups through really interactive activities. And I remember getting onboarded to deliver these programs, and it blew my mind a little bit. I had never, not just not facilitated, I had never been in a session that was facilitated up to that point. Every experience I had had, had been very much kind of the talking at you, presenting at you style,

Douglas Ferguson:

What blew your mind the most?

Caterina Rodriguez:

Honestly, seeing the difference in the amount of engagement from participants, and the fact that by the end of the session, they had done just as much, if not actually a whole lot more talking than I had, and something inside of me clicked. I just went, that felt right. It wasn’t, I’m here to teach you what I know, but rather all of a sudden I kind of noticed this shift of, I’m here to help you uncover what you already know and what you’ve experienced, and then start to become a little bit more aware of, okay, then how do I continue growing from where I’m currently at?

And so all of a sudden it became less about me and more about the group that I was working with. And that felt super right, because I had never thought about learning being this co-creative process, versus the more traditional style of learning, which is more, there’s one or two people, right? They hold some kind of expertise, and you just get all the knowledge that you need from them.

But I think when it comes to anything like whether it’s, you know, anti-bias education at the time, or now a lot more, you know, learning and development or organizational effectiveness work that I do, a lot of that is really around the messiness of people. And so it’s really not nearly as effective to talk at people about that messiness rather than actually helping them explore that messiness, if that makes sense.

Douglas Ferguson:

It does. I want to come back to your point about it feeling right. When did you first notice that feeling? Was it when you were in the training, and learning these techniques, and how they were going to structure the time with students? Or was it when you were facilitating it for the first time? Or like when did you notice that?

Caterina Rodriguez:

Yeah, so during the onboarding when I was getting trained, I think it was just a whole lot of anxiety. So that was definitely not the moment that it felt right. It was just a totally new approach to me. So I was absorbing. And we had tons of space to practice, but I think that always an onboarding always feels kind of like, okay, well this is artificial, so of course it’s going to go in a nice way.

For me, it clicked the first time that I actually got out into the field, where I was working through my agenda with the students, and all of a sudden I noticed that it became a group conversation, and things were starting to surface that weren’t necessarily directly related to the question I asked, but rather things were building up and up and up and people were responding to what other people were saying, and digging a little bit deeper and asking questions of each other. And so for me, it was the first time that I actually got out on the field and worked with the group.

I’m painting a very idyllic picture. It did not go perfectly right at all, but just the drastic shift in experiencing that was really wild. And so after that first time I was hooked. I was super hungry to really start to take facilitation more of as a craft versus just, you know, this is just a particular style in which I deliver this specific program for this specific organization. And so I started to, kind of, start to pay attention to facilitation is something more than just how to do something, but rather a whole, you know, mindset shift, approach shift, externally. I hadn’t quite yet, because now in my current role, I’m fully internal at the time, right? I was still associating facilitation with this is how I work with external stakeholders. And it hadn’t quite sunk in that this is just in general an approach to working with people regardless of whether they’re on my team, outside of the organization, so on and so forth.

So yeah, I would say the first time I went out in the field was when it clicked, but it was also when I very quickly realized I had a whole lot more to learn and practice.

Douglas Ferguson:

Coming back to those feelings of anxiety during the training and prep, how much of this new way of working, or the mystery of like approaching training in this way, how much did that have an impact in the anxiety or the uncertainty?

Caterina Rodriguez:

I mean a whole lot, honestly. It really leans into all the skills that, I think traditionally they’re called soft skills, when honestly they’re just leadership skills, right? And so the unfamiliarity with facilitation as a style, as an approach, as a practice was a big part of it. Because it was two things that I was learning. It was the content and the kind of the subject matter piece of the programs while at the same time learning how to deliver it in an entirely different way.

And for me, the subject matter, that’s easy, right? You study, you learn it, you’re good. But learning an entirely different way to engage groups, that takes time to craft and to kind of find your authentic voice. Because that was another piece too, that because it was so new to me and I was immediately implementing it on the ground at the same time, I was still looking at some of the other facilitators I was working with because we always did it in a co-facilitation pair. And so, I was trying to pull from the best things that I was noticing, but I hadn’t quite found my own authentic facilitation style and voice. I was still mimicking for a long time.

Douglas Ferguson:

What helped you move past the mimicking? Were there steps that led to something that felt more authentic?

Caterina Rodriguez:

Yeah, honestly, a lot of trial and error, and this is going to sound really funny, trial and error with actual groups of participants. So one of the things that, you know, I’ll come back to that I so appreciate now about voltage controls or community of practice, but I didn’t have that back then. There were no spaces to practice, to unpack, to ask questions of facilitation as a practice.

I just got out there a lot in my role as a program manager. I didn’t necessarily have to be out in the field facilitating that much. We had a core group of independent contractors that we would deploy, but I liked getting out there. And so I would co-facilitate quite a bit.

And it was through a lot of trial and error and feeling and seeing the reactions of the groups to me, that kind of started to cue me in on that I wasn’t bringing my authentic self into it. And that is a very hard realization, all of a sudden, to notice that the group you’re working with is kind of almost calling your bluff a little bit.

I started to just kind of take a little more risks in terms of just showing up as myself. I wasn’t trying to be as gentle as maybe the facilitator that comes off as almost like a super caretaker. I wasn’t trying to be the most boisterous, like hilarious comedian in the room. I wasn’t trying to be the most elevated of subject matter experts. I just kind of showed up as Cat, and all of a sudden I started to realize that participants were responding to me entirely differently. They were starting to feel like they were making genuine connections with me. And I noticed that in the work itself, it started to lead to much more interesting conversations, because all of a sudden they noticed that I wasn’t performing. They noticed that I was just there to connect with them and help them connect with each other, if that makes sense.

Douglas Ferguson:

It does. And you know, it’s much easier for people to connect when we’re able to model what connection is like.

Caterina Rodriguez:

Definitely. That is, honestly, the biggest thing in facilitation across the board. Whether it was previously leading anti-bias education programs or now doing a lot of organizational effectiveness work, it is about authentic connection across the board, because that is going to be what kind of… You can say that you’ve designed a container or a space for people to come in and you know, build up that trust and do these things together.

But you can talk the talk all you want. The group is going to know if you’re not walking the walk, essentially. And I do think as the facilitator creating that container, you have to be the one that’s ready to lead in what you’re asking them to do, at the end of the day. So for me, modeling that connection is huge.

Douglas Ferguson:

You know, I was thinking about the comment you made earlier on the shift between anti-bias to org effectiveness, and I’m curious what led to that shift? What gave you the inspiration and confidence and what were the bricks that were laid to get you there?

Caterina Rodriguez:

So I had started to get a little bit involved with helping deliver our Train the Trainer, which is our internal onboarding program when we hire new staff or new independent contractors for our programming. And so I became part of the behind the scenes team that helps people learn about facilitation, and I absolutely loved it.

Quickly thereafter, I shifted from being on our regional team to our national education team, and that’s when I became the director of our anti-bias programs. And half of my job was around the program management piece, but the other half became very quickly a lot of this internal onboarding and capacity building for facilitating our programming. And that was my favorite part of the job. Like, I absolutely adored starting to work more internally to teach people about facilitation and create spaces for them to practice, start to bring to the team new designs and methods that were out there. Or in the anti-bias field, you’re leading really fraught conversations that have only gotten more polarized with time.

Starting to think about how do I help staff and contractors be able to lean into the inevitable conflict and uncertainty that’s going to come up in those spaces, with practices like how do we ask curious questions, how do we reframe, how do we actually throw it back to the group? And use the wisdom of the group, things like that to help the group probe deeper as opposed to constantly having them turn to you. Like you hold all the answers, so what do you think?

I fell in love with teaching people about facilitation. And that part of my portfolio, although it wasn’t my primary role at the time, kept expanding and expanding. So first it started with helping with the Train the Trainer. Then I started leading the Train the Trainer, Covid hit, and I completely redesigned it to be delivered virtually once Covid hit.

And that then kind of stepped me into a completely different echelon of thinking about facilitation, because I’ve been remote since 2018, but there wasn’t a lot of that being done virtually. I was still traveling to help lead Train the Trainers, and then Covid hit and I was like, oh, I now have to reimagine this craft that I absolutely am in love with, into doing it completely virtually. And that’s a whole different beast. That was a really, really fun process to basically have to redesign from the ground up, how do you train people on facilitation, which a lot of people have this concept, oh, you got to be in person and you do the cool things with the sticky notes on the wall, right? To at the time, not just going virtually, but teaching people how to be interactive on Zoom, and how do we do breakouts and this and that. So it took on a whole different technical meeting.

At the same time that I was redesigning this program, I was also having to teach myself a whole lot more about technology than I ever knew. And I’m very much a person that learns by doing. So it’s funny because at the time I look back and think about my biggest anxiety was not even around training facilitators, it was around the virtual piece. And now a majority of the facilitation I do is virtual. And that has started to feel a whole lot more natural to me, because there’s some interesting things around the virtual settings and dynamics that are at play or not at play. But all that to say, I think I started to, the biggest building block was starting to go from helping out with our Train the Trainer to leading it to then redesigning it.

Organically I just started to get more involved in kind of the learning and development side of things. So if someone in our department writes some part of our team released a new piece of content or updated one of our programs or things like that, I would often work with those stakeholders to think about, how do we bring that to our staff in a way that’s engaging and interactive. We don’t just sit them down for a 45-minute PD or professional development session, where we just talk at them and say, here’s the things we updated, or here’s the new information now go do, right? It would be okay, how do we think about you present bite-sized pieces of information and we have an experience, to experience the impact of the thing that we’re going to be asking them to then take to their stakeholders, to the schools, and the campuses, and the community organizations that they partner with on the ground across the regional offices.

So I slowly started to get more involved with the learning and development side of things. And that kind of just continued to grow until last, about almost a year ago now, I really shifted into a fully internal role and stepped away from my program director role where now I sit at this really cool intersection of learning and development program design and organizational effectiveness facilitation. And so it’s fun because I am still housed in my education department with a team that I adore, but I kind of almost act as a consultant to the other departments across the organization, where I basically bring them my expertise on facilitation to help them either deliver information to the organization or recreate their own programs where they’re engaging different stakeholders externally.

It’s been really neat to kind of become this internal, almost like a capability builder, where we’re really trying to help the folks across the organization engage whatever stakeholders they work with in much more effective and interesting ways.

Douglas Ferguson:

What’s been the reception across the organization to this kind of capacity building or even this consultative approach to where you’re providing these abilities? What have you been noticing as far as the reactions and how willing they are to embrace this as an alternative?

Caterina Rodriguez:

I think that at first, people were, no one was ever really resistant. It was more of like, I don’t know what to expect of this. So I think it was just more a little bit of uncertainty and curiosity, and also on my end too. So it’s a brand new role that has never existed, kind of building it as we go kind of deal. And so it also just required a lot of flexibility and nimbleness, to kind of see what comes of it.

As I’ve been working with teams, it’s been really fun because once we’re on the other side of it, they’re like, holy crap, that was really cool and really amazing. And once I’m on the other side of it, I’m like, holy crap, I had no idea that this is what you were doing. We always hear just very high level readouts from different departments. I mean, it’s an organization of I think about 500 people, so it’s not a small one.

And then there’s the other piece too, that in like any good nonprofit setting, we are all probably juggling two to three roles at once. And so, at the end of the day too, anyone is always really happy to get extra capacity or help to do something or help them think about something in a different way. So it’s been really neat.

It’s still a very new role, and we are still very much figuring out how does it show up in different spaces across ADL. But my favorite part of it is that it truly is like this internal consultant. So every project is different. It’s a different puzzle piece to solve, not just because it might be either a different team or different content. Sometimes it’s the same team, but because it’s more about enabling people to do their work better together, it just becomes a whole different beast, right? Like it’s not repetitive, it’s not monotonous. There’s always something new bubbling to the surface to work through or to think about or get curious about.

I would say that that’s been my favorite piece, is just that it is not boring. It’s never the same week to week, which I love. And it’s also one of the things that I love, I think, about consulting as well, is that every project is different because everyone has a different messy human challenge to solve.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. Your point about there not being a lot of pushback and that it was people seeking more clarity or more certainty around what it is. I’d say that most of the time when I see pushback from individuals, it’s because they lack the clarity and certainty of what the thing is.

And so that might, how they show up for you as more curious versus more just blatantly pushing back, I think might be culturally or an impact of the culture there. But I’m just kind of curious what advice you would have for folks wanting to grow or offer up a service like this with inside of their company. Like what were some of the things that were successful or that you would just recommend people will tend to as they’re thinking about setting something like this up?

Caterina Rodriguez:

Yeah, definitely. Once, I’ll take one step back. I think a couple pieces. One is definitely the culture too, is I had been there at the time back then for already seven and a half years. So I’ve also built a ton of trust across the organization. And so I think, having those trusted relationships. Now, fast forwarding to your question about what are some tips or pieces of advice I may have for folks that want to do more of this internally, is first, especially if you’re not new to a place and you don’t have relationships developed, start building those relationships, not just within your team, but outside of them.

So join those optional calls that are hosted by other departments, or come to critical cross-departmental conversations and offer up ideas or offer up hard questions that we need to explore. And I would say probably one of the biggest things in my journey, where I noticed a really different shift in how our own leadership team started to look at the value that I brought to the organization, is when there have been really sticky challenges that have come up internally and there’s disagreement in how to solve for them, or how to move forward.

I went from being reflective and a little quieter and going like, okay, this is how we’re going to do things, regardless of what I think too. I started to become pretty vocal, but I did it in a very solutions oriented way. So I would step into these spaces with my peers or with leaders and say, you know, I’m not so sure about that and here’s why, but I’m curious though what you think about this instead. Or, you know, I don’t know if that would work or not. Honestly, here’s where my head was at instead. And like, let’s explore, you know, where the delta is and why we’re thinking about this differently. And I started to engage in conversations.

I think there’s an interesting balance to strike between just being a “yes” person and being, you know, just completely negative all the time about things that you’re not in a hundred percent alignment with. I guess what I’m trying to say is I really started to practice, I think one of my key mantras for myself and facilitation is commitment over consensus. So I started to unpack conversations and push back and suggest and recommend things, not because I wanted everyone to think the same way as me, or I felt like I should think the same as them, but because I wanted us to understand all the different perspectives where we might have room to learn from each other and then start to create this path forward that made sense for everyone, right?

Everyone may not be a hundred percent in alignment or agreement about everything, but we’re all understanding where we’re at, where we’re headed, why we’re doing it that way. And so now you really lowered the barrier of resistance and you have buy-in for people to commit to those decisions, to that strategic path forward. And so that would be, for me, probably one of the biggest pieces of advice is to start strategically inserting your voice into critical conversations, both inside and outside of your team.

And then the other piece too is just getting curious in your conversations with people. So asking a whole lot more questions than you are, kind of making statements at, or telling people things. I think that also really helped shape the ways in which people expected me to show up, where I think all of a sudden I start entering spaces and people almost expected me to want to probe deeper, have these discussions, or explore and answer questions.

So yeah, I would say build relationships outside of your team, not just inside of your team. Start to build that trust, show up to spaces and use your voice in them, but use it strategically, right? And model the kind of effective curiosity that leads people to start to behave in a way where they’re starting to ask more questions and eventually starting to see, you know, how do we commit, despite the fact that we’re not all agreeing. Because especially in large teams, you very rarely are going to have a hundred percent consensus on sticky challenges.

Douglas Ferguson:

You know, I think that that’s an interesting phenomenon, because you know, consensus means agreement. And we can decide as a group what agreement means for us, and rarely does unanimity serve us well, right? And I think a lot of people hear agreement and they hear consensus and they think unanimity, when really there might be other protocols that might serve us better.

Caterina Rodriguez:

Yeah, no, that’s honestly so true. And it’s been, I think when I work, whether it’s internally or consulting, when I work with groups of people where there’s been some kind of breakdown along the way, oftentimes it’s because people are expecting unanimity in order to move forward. And I think that’s one of the most critical pieces or differentiators of facilitation, is the fact that we are not actually trying to achieve unanimity versus right.

When you do more like a presentation, you know, a speaking engagement kind of deal, or you approach it more in that way of a trainer style of, I have the right way and I’m going to equip you with that one right way. I think that’s when you start to allow for a whole lot more of the gray instead of the black and white. And that’s when you start to see a whole lot more nuance. And I think that’s the biggest piece is that we need to get people outside of the binary thinking of everything is a yes or a no, and realize that oftentimes most things actually lie somewhere in between, and that it’s okay for them to be there.

Douglas Ferguson:

You know, coming back to your model, your advice of building relationships, crafting a perspective, and you know, speaking up, sharing that perspective, as well as being curious. If you think about it, those things all layer on each other pretty well because it’s hard to have a perspective if you haven’t gotten really curious and have a lot of understanding about how things work.

And then also, if you’re building up relationships and trust and getting to know folks through curious questions, then you start to understand their perspectives and you can become an advocate for their perspectives as well. Maybe even elevate them at times. So you know, it’s interesting, those things you laid out all kind of feed into each other, and if you use them together, they’re kind of self-reinforcing versus kind of independent pillars.

Caterina Rodriguez:

A thousand percent. And honestly, when you use them all together too, you start to realize that you become very well aware of people’s motivations in the room, even though they may not know each other. So because you’ve gotten really curious and you’ve built these relationships, and you start to shut them up to these spaces and lead in ways that engage rather than dictate, all of a sudden, I know that this person who constantly pushes back is because they are fearful that any change is going to be at the detriment of our impact with our stakeholders, right? Or I know that this person is consistently quiet and doesn’t engage, not because they’re uninterested, but because oftentimes they feel like they don’t even have the space to think and process. And so they just kind of sit back trying to catch up on everything that’s happened.

And all of a sudden you start to, as you build these relationships, you start to be able to understand a lot of the personalities that come into the space and their motivations behind it. And so you’re able to, it’s kind of like you said, as you build these relationships, as you lean into these spaces more, and you build this trust, all of a sudden I’m able to follow up with even more curiosity, but that’s tailored at helping each other see these different motivations and realizing we’re all actually committed to the same thing. We’re just coming at it from very different places. And none of those places are right or wrong, they just are.

And it’s very similar to in consulting practices where I may only work with a group for a very short period of time, or sometimes it’s like a one and done kind of deal. And even though I may not have the time to build relationships with everyone that’s going to be in the space, because of my experiences and practices internally, I’ve become really attuned to the fact that I’m not making assumptions about anybody. And so I’m going to get really curious, right? If something comes up in the room, if there’s some kind of reaction, or some kind of interesting statement or question or a non-reaction, I’ll get really curious and I’ll dig into it and I’ll ask that question.

Because I think that when people start to see that you are not just trying to take them through a process, but actually you’re taking the time to see them as people, they become a whole lot more willing to enter that space and to engage in that space. I think it honestly is about the fact that a lot of people aren’t used to the practice of being seen in a professional setting, right? It’s like, I’m heard, or I hear you, and that’s it. But to actually see someone and go beyond just kind of the surface level, we’re here to achieve this outcome and this is how we’re going to get there, versus, oh, but you may or may not be ready to completely go all that way because there’s something unresolved here, right?

It forces you to have to see people in their wholeness and not ask them to check themselves at the door, right? I think that’s the other big piece in professional settings is we’re expecting people to leave 75% of themselves at the door. You just bring like your brain with you to professionally engage versus actually know the space is meant for you to step inside of it fully and whatever surfaces is part of the process. I don’t expect you to check your emotions at the door. I don’t expect you to keep your disagreements to yourself. I don’t expect you to keep your fear or anxiety about what might be changing in the space to yourself.

I think when you invite people wholly, you start to see that they’re engaging wholly. But without that invitation, it’s not the norm. It’s not how we’ve created spaces in a professional setting before. And for me, that’s been one of the biggest pieces in being very intentional when I work with groups as a consultant versus internally, because like I said, internally have those relationships built. So when it’s groups that I don’t have those relationships with, how do I off the bat based off of my design, so how I’m designing the experience, how I think about the container I’m building, design becomes a whole lot more intentional there. And the decisions that I make around it before I even step in the door or in the virtual Zoom room.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s all making me think about a comment you made earlier about the mindset shift versus just thinking about facilitation through techniques. And so, that’s making me more curious about that. What do these mindset shifts look like for you? What do you think is most important to acknowledge there?

Caterina Rodriguez:

Yeah, the biggest shift for me was, if I’m stepping into a space as a facilitator, right? Not a trainer, not a speaker, as a facilitator, I don’t have to hold all the answers. And in fact, I shouldn’t be the one holding all the answers.

And that was a huge shift for me for a couple of reasons. I think internally, one, it takes the pressure off. I think there’s a lot of fear around saying to someone, I don’t know, I’m curious what you all think about that instead, right? I almost think that people see that as a kind of failure instead of actually using that as a way to get curious and empower other people to be the experts of their own work or experiences.

So for me, it actually became way less high stakes when I didn’t feel like I had to have all the answers. But the other piece too is, it models for groups, the idea that if I don’t have all the answers, then you know, there’s a reason why we’re here as a group and I can start to rely on the wisdom of the group. I always love to say the wisdom of the group is great. It’s better than just myself.

That’s a big one. A big mindset shift was that, you know, I’m here to be a guide. I’m not here to be the expert. And then another big mindset shift is, you know, the fact that curiosity only leads to more curiosity. I think that, when I first started facilitating, I was very, you know, by the book of the activities or the methods that I was doing, it’s like, okay, so in this part it says, I do this for five minutes and then I ask these three questions and then we move on. It was very prescriptive.

And then as I started to shift in my entire mindset about facilitation, I became way less attentive to the steps and much more attentive to what was happening in the space, what was emerging. And so what that might have looked like is, yeah, I took them through these steps and I’m actually just going to ask him what’s coming up? And then I’m just going to start to riff off of the comments that come up. All of a sudden it becomes way less prescriptive, way less of a performance, and it becomes much more of a conversation.

So I think that’s the other piece too, is that I’m there to have and guide conversations. You know, I’m there to ask questions that help lead them to their own answers. I am there to help them work through the messiness that humans bring into a space versus, you know, my main goal is not to be an expert at what you all are doing.

So that’s kind of the other big shift as a facilitator, is that all of a sudden I, it’s not that I had to be a subject matter expert, it’s that I had to be almost like a gathering expert, if that makes sense. You know, it’s been fun because in my consulting work, there’s been some projects I’ve done where, and groups I’ve worked before. I’m like, I know nothing, absolutely nothing about what you do, but what I do know is people and how people work or don’t work when you bring them together into groups. That’s been another big shift, is shifting away from being a subject matter expert to really being kind of this, almost a human centered gatherer, if that makes sense.

Douglas Ferguson:

It absolutely makes sense. And the shift from technique to people is certainly, I think a growth edge, the maturity moment for facilitators. And some people don’t get out of it, some people stay in that mode of, I’ve got the tool and I’m going to go around looking for opportunities for this tool. And then it typically goes, I’ve got a tool, and then I’ve got a toolkit of tools, and then that longing for more, like how can I be more connected? How can I drive deeper outcomes?

And sometimes I see people coming to those conclusions when the tools fail them, when there’s a great laid plan and things go a little wrong. Or maybe they barely land the plane, but they feel like they were lucky to do so. And then reflecting, they think there’s something more here. So I’m curious, what do you think propelled you on this journey of making this shift from being about the process or the tools to being about the people, or looking for this meta broader, more holistic kind of look?

Caterina Rodriguez:

So I think obviously in addition to kind of just going out there, testing things, some going well, some going not great, learning from it, this is actually really taking me back to before I even got into this space, before I started at ADL, before even I was doing social work operations work, I actually got my start in the theological space. So I was actually training to be a hospital chaplain. And there is nothing certain about theology. There is nothing certain about chaplaincy. In fact, the only certainty is uncertainty, right? And the only ways in which you really engage with people are around big questions that have no answers.

And so it was interesting because it’s almost like there were these two separate sides to me, right? It was like the piece around like what I know and the piece around what I practice. And what I knew I was very comfortable with being in the messy uncertainty, but professionally, that was not the way that I was trained to practice. By the time that I got to ADL and the time that I have been a program manager and all these things, I feel like in professional settings, we’re very much trained to lean into the certainties and keep things as binary as possible.

I remember that at a certain point, right as I was facilitating and like I said, trying things, testing things out, learning from those experiments and refining, I started to also realize that I had kind of compartmentalized that side of myself because it almost felt like the things that I was practicing and the habits that I had formed in my theological practice or in my chaplaincy practice, were almost not at all something of value to my professional career. It was, and I think that actually came about because once I shifted, a lot of people would ask me, oh, so like, do you ever even use that? Like, I’m sure you don’t.

And it’s almost like, you know, people react to something weirdly enough that all of a sudden it makes you start to question, oh, so is that like a weird thing, I guess that’s not relevant, you know, and maybe I should kind of like table that or felt that, you know, it’s almost like you want to hide that part of yourself because it almost makes you an “other.” And it was really interesting that fast forwarding and getting more and more into facilitation, which meant I was getting more and more back into, I am literally choosing to stand in the messiest part of human collaboration as a facilitator.

It started to bring back the, almost the purposeness that I felt, around what was at the heart of chaplaincy, but in a very different way. And so all of a sudden I found it was, it was like a light bulb moment where I was like, that’s, that’s how this connects to this, because I have stood in the uncertainty. In fact, that’s all that I ever used to know.

And that’s where I saw that people needed me most, not me as Cat, but me as like what I brought to the space and how I might have guided them through that moment. And that realization is, I think what really ultimately propelled me from being practice focused to being people focused. And my facilitation is kind of bringing that part of myself back, that I had really hit and then compartmentalize like really deeply in a professional sense.

Douglas Ferguson:

So Cat, I think that takes us to a stopping point, because we’re nearing our end of our time here together. And I’d like to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Caterina Rodriguez:

My final thought, I would say, is to take the time to not just invite people, but expect people. So what I mean by that is if you are a person that works with groups in any way, right? Whether it’s you call yourself a facilitator, you call yourself a manager, you call yourself a cross collaborator, whatever it may be, whether it’s internal or in a consulting capacity, do not invite people into these kinds of spaces unless you’re ready to actually fully engage with people and their wholeness. There’s nothing more frustrating than being told, I want to invite you in, but I don’t want to see or hear you, or I don’t want to see or hear those parts of you.

What I would say is lean into the uncertainty and the messiness of what it means to be human and collaborate humanly. Because when you take the human piece out of it, all you have left is empty process, if that makes sense. And that’s when you get people who are not connecting, who are not committing, who also are just not included. I would tell people that the only certainty of facilitation is uncertainty. The only certainty of working with people is that they’re going to be messy and unpredictable. And as facilitators, we have a very unique opportunity to be able to step into those moments that no one else would, and help make some magic happen.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that. And I think one thing to remind folks of is that in order to do this, you have to have some hard conversations about what makes you as a person uncomfortable.

Caterina Rodriguez:

Oh, yeah. And that all starts with you, right? So if you are not keenly aware of what makes you uncomfortable and how you move through that, you’re not going to be able to do that for other people. It’s kind of almost like the mantra of, you can’t fill someone else’s cup before you fill your own, right? Or else you’re trying to pour from an empty cup or the airplane thing of like before you try and help someone with their own oxygen mask, put it on yourself. It’s the same thing with facilitation. If you have not done the work for yourself, you are not going to be prepared to do it for other people,

Douglas Ferguson:

Or you might dismiss or ignore someone that you know is going to behave in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable or you find challenging. So you just find ways of engineering your process to avoid them.

Caterina Rodriguez:

Yeah, that’s so true. That’s the other thing about, there is such a thing as over-engineering, and it happens often in facilitation. And I think it happens because people are afraid of conflict, they’re afraid of tension, and oftentimes it’s in that conflict and tension that you’ll actually find the right path forward. Thinking about as conflict and tension almost being kind of your responsibility to actually tend to, versus something to ignore or dismiss or try to avoid.

And I think people will not be able to do that unless they see you model it first. I think that’s the other piece too, is as facilitators, we have to, like I said earlier, we truly have to be willing to model, to walk the walk. And so that’s the other piece around facilitation, is that there really is no destination point. It is truly an ongoing growth journey. There is no point in which I say, I’ve learned all the skills, I’ve learned all the methods. Every time that I facilitate, I’m learning something new. I’m taking questions back with me, and I am seeking out more wisdom from others, which is, I think the other piece too, that I want to leave people with is, if you are in this field of facilitation, find a community of facilitators to plug into.

Because there’s that really old proverb that goes, how does it go? It goes, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And facilitation is definitely a craft in which you cannot go far without going together. It takes all types and it takes all kinds. And once groups see that, you embody that, they’ll understand that for themselves, and they’ll be able to start to work with people that think differently and show up differently from them. Don’t just invite people, expect people. Expect them in their messy wholeness.

Douglas Ferguson:

Amazing. Thank you so much, Cat. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I look forward to chatting again sometime soon.

Caterina Rodriguez:

Thank you so much, Douglas. It was awesome to be here. And yeah, look forward to many more chats to come.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

The post The Greatest Shift appeared first on Voltage Control.

I’ve lived in Austin for 25 years, and while I haven’t immersed myself in every SXSW, I’ve managed to participate somewhat every single year I’ve been here. It’s been a big part of my Austin experience. As a musician, I’ve played official showcases, unofficial showcases and even alternative outsider festivals. As a startup founder, I’ve attended VC parties, client activations, networking events, and the beloved Fogo De Chow“meat-ups”, if you know, you know! In recent years, I have mainly been volunteering as a mentor and judge, which has been a wonderful experience in contributing to the ecosystem.

This year, Voltage Control partnered with SXSW to offer our Workshop Design process to all of their workshop facilitators, where we hosted several live sessions in January to help workshop facilitators prepare for their SXSW sessions. With the global success of our Facilitation Lab meetups we also thought it was a great opportunity to bring the meetup to SXSW as an official meetup. Then, just because we had to go all in, we ran a workshop on AI Teammates, to explore team collaboration use cases for generative AI. 

SXSW is always brimming with innovation, creativity, and connection. However, this year through our meetup and workshop we had the opportunity to observe something especially compelling—a deep yearning for genuine, meaningful human-to-human interactions amid all of the passive talks and media consumption. Both of our sessions offered rich insights and genuine connections that we felt were important to share more broadly with the community. Read on for a detailed exploration of the key topics and themes that emerged as we reflected on our SXSW activations.

Creating Meaningful Connections

Our Facilitation Lab meetup sought to elevate interaction beyond the typical exchanges of business cards and superficial networking. As attendees entered, we warmly greeted each person, handing out customized “We Connect” name tags that featured prompts like “Something that’s on my mind right now…” or “I’m curious about…” This simple yet thoughtful intervention quickly transformed initial interactions from polite small talk to engaging conversations rooted in personal interests and genuine curiosity. For instance, one participant humorously noted he spent the entire day with his prompt about ‘remaining grounded under pressure,’ sparking deeper conversations even outside the meetup context. These intentional threshold moments proved pivotal, shifting the energy in the room and setting the tone for sustained and meaningful connections throughout the event.

Erik mentioned to me that he’d forgotten to remove his name badge, and it continued sparking meaningful conversations throughout the day. Inspired by a recent coaching session on the power of silence as a facilitation tool, I chose “Silence” as my own badge prompt. Interestingly—and humorously—some attendees interpreted this as me signaling a need for quiet reflection rather than a conversation starter. Clearly, it’s worth choosing your prompt carefully!

Equally impactful were the interactive posters that posed provocative “How Might We” questions around the room. Participants eagerly engaged with these prompts, leaving behind sticky notes filled with thoughtful observations, authentic vulnerabilities, and creative ideas. These carefully structured, yet simple, tools effectively lowered conversational barriers, inviting authentic exchanges and meaningful reflections.

Notably, we observed attendees continuing their conversations long after the scheduled meetup ended, underscoring the success of our deliberate design in fostering sustained engagement. This experience reinforced for us—and hopefully our attendees—that intentional facilitation of human connection can lead to powerful, lasting interactions that extend far beyond any singular event.

Exploring Loneliness & Vulnerability

One unexpectedly resonant theme from our meetup was loneliness—a timely topic that surfaced repeatedly, even before Michelle Obama’s keynote on the subject. Participants openly shared their experiences of loneliness, highlighting its prevalence and impact across professional settings. Discussions around this theme revealed how critically loneliness intersects with facilitation, community building, and organizational leadership.

Participants emphasized the importance of creating environments where vulnerability is not only permitted but encouraged, seeing it as a catalyst for combating isolation and fostering deeper connections. Many suggested practical strategies, including dedicated moments within events for genuine personal exchange, structured affinity groups, and conscious efforts to normalize sharing vulnerabilities as part of organizational culture.

One compelling nuance that emerged in our discussions was the particular isolation facilitators often experience. While facilitators dedicate themselves to creating inclusive spaces that support and encourage vulnerability among others, attendees openly acknowledged how rarely facilitators themselves receive reciprocal support. This dynamic sparked insightful exchanges around the critical need to intentionally build community and support networks specifically for facilitators—spaces designed to nurture and sustain those whose roles inherently involve emotional labor and continuous support of others. This recognition deepened the collective understanding that addressing loneliness is not only about structured team-building but also about providing consistent, authentic support for those who hold space.

Reimagining the Art of Meetings

Meetings often carry negative connotations—viewed as tedious obligations rather than opportunities for genuine collaboration and innovation. During our meetup, attendees enthusiastically discussed ways to reinvent meetings using facilitation principles. The message was clear: stop “meeting” and start “designing collaboratively,” shifting from passive consumption of content toward active participation.

Innovative ideas emerged, including flipping traditional meeting agendas—prioritizing interactive engagement before addressing routine content—to ensure participant energy and creativity are maximized. A provocative attendee suggestion humorously yet pointedly captured this sentiment: “Any meeting over one hour is a waste of time.” This underscored a shared desire among attendees to prioritize engagement, interactivity, and co-creation in all meeting formats.

Our discussions also highlighted the necessity of making meetings purpose-driven, interactive, and intentional, transforming them from informational sessions into collaborative experiences that actively engage all participants. The clear takeaway for facilitators and business leaders is that intentionality and thoughtful design dramatically improve outcomes, making meetings more impactful and deeply satisfying for everyone involved.

Harnessing Conflict for Growth

One particularly insightful conversation during the meetup revolved around the theme of conflict—often perceived negatively but recognized here as a powerful opportunity for growth and stronger relationships. Attendees expressed the importance of normalizing conflict within teams, treating it not as a failure but as a natural byproduct of diverse perspectives working toward innovation.

To better leverage conflict, participants recommended simulating difficult conversations and scenarios proactively. Such practice not only prepares teams to handle future challenges constructively but also helps establish trust and clear boundaries around how conflicts can be handled effectively. This proactive approach allows teams to feel secure exploring differing opinions, leading to breakthroughs rather than breakdowns.

Further, principles of non-violent communication, depersonalizing disagreements, and establishing trust were frequently suggested as essential facilitation skills. This collective insight reinforced the power of intentional conflict management as a critical facilitation capability, ultimately fostering team cohesion, mutual respect, and collective resilience.

AI as a Dynamic Teammate

At our AI Teammates workshop, the conversation shifted dramatically as participants reconsidered their perceptions of AI—transforming their view from seeing it merely as a utilitarian tool to recognizing its potential as a dynamic teammate. This shift was vividly illustrated when an attendee, deeply familiar with AI in his professional life, experienced an “aha” moment, expressing excitement at recognizing AI’s fuller potential to engage and facilitate.

This cognitive shift emerged through our intentional design. We strategically used persona cards to introduce participants to new perspectives on AI, prompting deeper reflection on roles like historian, synthesizer, challenger, and optimist. Attendees discovered how leveraging AI in these roles could greatly enrich team discussions, sparking creativity and critical reflection.

A particularly powerful moment illustrating this cognitive shift occurred during our AI Teammates workshop. One attendee, who identified himself as deeply embedded professionally in AI technologies, experienced a profound “aha” moment as we explored AI’s collaborative roles. He candidly shared with the group that, despite his extensive use of AI tools, this workshop was the first time he genuinely saw AI’s deeper collaborative potential—not merely as a functional assistant but as an authentic partner in team interactions. Emotionally moved by this realization, he said the experience gave him “goosebumps,” capturing perfectly the transformative possibilities when facilitators intentionally design experiences that prompt meaningful shifts in perspective.

The workshop highlighted how AI, when positioned thoughtfully, could initiate conversations and engage team members who might otherwise hesitate to participate. In essence, AI provided a neutral voice, catalyzing richer dialogue and deeper insights. For teams hesitant about direct engagement, AI offered a safe starting point, a powerful insight into how technology can be a genuine collaborator rather than merely an information tool.

Exploring Practical Applications and Concerns with AI

Participants left our workshop inspired to experiment with new AI tools such as Claude, Perplexity, and Miro Sidekick, seeing firsthand their potential to enhance real-time facilitation. The excitement was palpable as attendees brainstormed practical uses—such as using AI to facilitate deeper reflections, structure conversations, and provide new insights during collaborative sessions.

Yet, despite widespread enthusiasm, participants also candidly discussed concerns around security, privacy, and integration of AI into organizational practices. Attendees from Germany notably highlighted slower regional adoption due to institutional hesitance and rigorous privacy standards. Addressing these concerns became a vital element of our workshop, emphasizing the importance of thoughtful, context-sensitive integration of AI into diverse organizational cultures.

Despite these valid concerns, the workshop’s overwhelming takeaway was excitement about AI’s untapped potential. Attendees saw clear opportunities to enrich their practices through these emerging technologies, feeling empowered and equipped to thoughtfully advocate for and practically implement AI as a meaningful participant in their teams and meetings.

Crossing Thresholds for Transformation

Both our meetup and workshop underscored the critical importance of thoughtfully designed thresholds—both physical entry into spaces and cognitive entry into new ideas. By consciously crafting these moments, we enabled attendees to shift from routine thinking into new possibilities, deeply enhancing their event experience.

Participants expressed gratitude for small yet impactful interventions, such as the persona cards we handed out while attendees were waiting in line for the workshop. Given the unique context of SXSW, where attendees often queue up 45 minutes or more in advance, the cards provided a delightful and unexpected moment of connection and reflection. As participants selected a card that best represented their approach or attitude toward AI, spontaneous conversations quickly blossomed among previously disconnected attendees. People eagerly compared their chosen personas—whether Historian, Synthesizer, Challenger, or Optimist—sparking curiosity, laughter, and immediate bonds. These thoughtfully designed threshold experiences didn’t just occupy waiting time; they actively reshaped the atmosphere, transitioning attendees from passive anticipation to active engagement and collaboration, dramatically influencing their openness, interactions, and reflections throughout the rest of the workshop.

And the big payoff was crossing cognitive thresholds around their use of AI demonstrated facilitation’s power to shift perspectives profoundly. Attendees repeatedly shared that thoughtfully guided experiences allowed them to see familiar tools and interactions in entirely new ways, demonstrating how effective facilitation can lead to significant shifts in understanding and collaboration practices.

Reflect, Experiment, and Engage

Our experiences at SXSW demonstrated the incredible potential at the intersection of human connection, vulnerability, thoughtful facilitation, and AI integration. These moments provided rich insights and clear evidence that intentional facilitation can profoundly reshape organizational culture and interpersonal dynamics.

We invite you—our community of facilitators, leaders, students, and alumni—to embrace and carry these insights into your own practice. Experiment boldly with facilitation techniques, reimagine your meetings for deeper impact, navigate conflict constructively, and thoughtfully explore AI as an active, engaged teammate.

Join us at our upcoming Facilitation Lab events and continue exploring these themes with us. Together, let’s facilitate spaces where human connection, innovation, and meaningful change flourish.

The post Facilitating Human Connection in the AI Era appeared first on Voltage Control.