Table of contents

• Maintaining During Challenging Moments
• Staying Emotionally Connected 
• Practicing Adaptive Leadership
• Reflective Practices 
• Balancing Adaptability and Equanimity
• Conclusion
• FAQ

Equanimity—often described as inner smoothness or emotional stability—is a cornerstone of effective leadership. The ability to remain calm and composed, especially in challenging situations, is not just a desirable trait; it’s a necessity for those who lead teams, guide discussions, and make critical decisions. Yet, equanimity is often misunderstood. It’s not about being detached or indifferent; rather, it’s about maintaining a balanced state of mind that allows leaders to stay connected, adaptable, and responsive, even under pressure.

In today’s fast-paced environment, where unexpected challenges can arise at any moment, the practice of equanimity helps leaders maintain their composure and provide clear, steady guidance to their teams. This blog explores how equanimity can be cultivated and applied in leadership and facilitation contexts. We’ll delve into strategies for maintaining calm during challenging moments, staying emotionally connected while leading with equanimity, and practicing adaptive leadership. Additionally, we’ll look at the importance of reflective practices in maintaining inner balance and how to harmonize adaptability with equanimity for a resilient leadership style.

Maintaining During Challenging Moments

Equanimity, or inner smoothness, is a foundational quality for effective facilitation. As facilitators, we often face unexpected challenges or moments when things don’t go as planned—technology glitches, difficult group dynamics, or unforeseen questions. In these situations, maintaining equanimity allows us to remain open, flexible, and adaptive, guiding the group smoothly toward the desired outcomes. This inner calm not only benefits the facilitator but also influences the entire group, helping to maintain a productive and positive atmosphere.

While careful planning is essential to successful facilitation, the ability to stay calm and adjust to what emerges in the moment is just as critical. Equanimity provides the mental space needed to assess situations objectively, rather than reacting impulsively. Techniques such as focused breathing, grounding oneself, or engaging in mindful inner dialogue can be invaluable in cultivating this state of calm. These practices help facilitators stay present, manage their own emotional responses, and maintain clarity even when the unexpected happens.

Cultivating equanimity also sets a powerful example for others in the room. When a facilitator remains composed and centered, it encourages participants to do the same. This creates a ripple effect, where the group is more likely to stay engaged and collaborative, even in the face of challenges. In essence, equanimity is not just a personal tool for the facilitator but a guiding force that shapes the overall energy and effectiveness of the session.

Staying Emotionally Connected 

Equanimity is often mistaken for indifference, but they are fundamentally different. While equanimity involves maintaining emotional stability and calm, it also requires staying deeply connected to those you’re leading. This balance is crucial—staying calm under pressure doesn’t mean detaching from the emotions and needs of your team. On the contrary, it means being fully present, empathetic, and responsive, while managing your own emotional landscape.

As a facilitator or leader, maintaining this connection builds trust and credibility. It shows your team that you are not only capable of handling stress but also attuned to their experiences and concerns. Demonstrating calmness without disconnecting from your team creates an environment where others feel supported and valued, even in challenging situations. This connection is vital in fostering a sense of security and cohesion within the group, making it easier to navigate difficult conversations or high-pressure moments.

Moreover, staying emotionally connected while practicing equanimity allows leaders to be more effective in guiding their teams through challenges. It enables a leader to respond to team members’ needs in real time, offer support where it’s needed, and adjust strategies as necessary. This approach balances the leader’s internal calm with a genuine concern for the well-being of the team, ultimately leading to more effective and compassionate leadership.

Practicing Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive leadership thrives on the foundation of equanimity. In moments of crisis or when unexpected challenges arise, staying calm and emotionally regulated allows leaders to make thoughtful, well-considered decisions. This state of inner balance is essential for navigating the complexities of leadership, where the ability to adapt is often the difference between success and failure. Equanimity helps leaders to remain focused on long-term goals while being flexible enough to pivot when necessary.

Emotional regulation plays a key role in maintaining this balance. By tuning into your inner voice and recognizing early signs of stress or tension, you can take proactive steps to stay grounded. This might involve deep breathing, reflecting on your boundaries, or simply pausing to assess the situation with clarity. These techniques help leaders to process emotions effectively and prevent them from clouding judgment. The ability to remain calm and flexible under pressure not only benefits the leader but also instills confidence in the team, who will look to the leader for guidance during turbulent times.

Adaptive leadership is about more than just reacting to changes; it’s about leading with a calm, steady hand that guides others through uncertainty. Leaders who cultivate equanimity are better equipped to manage crises, inspire their teams, and make decisions that are not only responsive but also aligned with the organization’s long-term vision. This approach to leadership fosters resilience and adaptability, qualities that are increasingly important in today’s ever-changing business environment.

Reflective Practices 

Maintaining equanimity during facilitation isn’t just about staying calm—it’s about creating space for thoughtful reflection. Reflective practices, such as taking a moment to pause, breathe, or repeat what was heard, can significantly enhance the flow of a session. These small, intentional pauses allow both the facilitator and the participants to process information more deeply and engage more meaningfully. Reflection creates a buffer against impulsive reactions, enabling more considered responses and a more thoughtful dialogue.

Incorporating reflective practices into your facilitation style helps to smooth out interactions, making facilitators more approachable and the overall experience more collaborative. By taking time to pause, you create a rhythm that encourages thoughtful contributions rather than hurried reactions. This approach not only helps in managing the session’s energy but also fosters a more inclusive environment where everyone feels heard and valued. Reflection also aids in maintaining focus, ensuring that the session remains aligned with its objectives.

Regularly engaging in reflective practices can also help facilitators build their capacity for equanimity over time. Whether through journaling, meditation, or simply taking a few moments of silence before or after a session, these practices reinforce a state of inner balance that can be drawn upon in challenging moments. By integrating reflection into your facilitation toolkit, you not only enhance your ability to maintain equanimity but also create a more thoughtful, responsive, and effective facilitation style.

Balancing Adaptability and Equanimity

Equanimity and adaptability are two sides of the same coin in effective leadership. Equanimity provides the inner calm and stability needed to navigate the unexpected, while adaptability allows leaders to respond flexibly to changing circumstances. Together, these qualities enable leaders to maintain their vision and guide their teams through challenges with confidence. Balancing these attributes is key to leading effectively in environments where change is constant and unpredictable.

One of the key aspects of balancing these qualities is the ability to remain non-judgmental—both toward yourself and others. By avoiding snap judgments, leaders can stay open to new ideas and approaches, which is crucial for adapting to change. This openness also fosters a more positive and supportive environment, where team members feel encouraged to contribute and innovate. Non-judgmental awareness allows leaders to see situations as they are, without the distortion of preconceived notions or emotional reactions, leading to more effective decision-making.

Incorporating daily mindful practices, such as meditation or reflective journaling, can help strengthen both equanimity and adaptability over time. These practices create a foundation of inner balance that allows leaders to face challenges with clarity and poise, ultimately leading to more effective and resilient leadership. By cultivating these qualities, leaders can navigate the complexities of modern organizational life with greater ease, guiding their teams through both steady progress and turbulent change.

Conclusion

Equanimity is more than just a leadership trait—it’s a powerful tool that, when cultivated, can enhance every aspect of facilitation and leadership. From maintaining calm in the face of challenges to staying emotionally connected with your team, equanimity allows leaders to navigate complexity with grace and resilience. When combined with adaptability, it forms a robust foundation for effective leadership, enabling leaders to respond to change with both steadiness and flexibility.

By integrating reflective practices and mindful approaches into your leadership style, you can strengthen your capacity for equanimity and adaptability. These practices not only help you maintain your own inner balance but also create a more positive and supportive environment for your team. Whether you are leading a small group discussion or steering an organization through a major transition, the ability to remain calm, connected, and adaptive will serve you well.

As you continue to develop your leadership and facilitation skills, remember that equanimity is not about being unflappable; it’s about being present, aware, and responsive in a way that supports both your own well-being and the success of your team. By embracing this approach, you can lead with greater confidence and effectiveness, fostering a culture of calm, focus, and resilience in your organization.

FAQ

Q: How can I maintain equanimity during challenging facilitation moments?
Maintaining equanimity during challenging facilitation moments involves staying calm and adaptive in the face of unexpected challenges. Techniques such as focused breathing, grounding oneself, and mindful inner dialogue can help facilitators stay present and responsive, ensuring a smooth and effective session.

Q: How do I stay emotionally connected while maintaining equanimity?
Staying emotionally connected while maintaining equanimity involves balancing emotional stability with empathy and presence. By being fully engaged with your team while managing your own emotional responses, you can build trust and credibility, creating a supportive environment even in challenging situations.

Q: What role does adaptive leadership play in maintaining equanimity?
Adaptive leadership relies on equanimity to navigate high-pressure situations. By staying calm and emotionally regulated, leaders can make thoughtful decisions and guide their teams through uncertainty, balancing the need for stability with the flexibility to respond to changing circumstances.

Q: How can reflective practices help in maintaining equanimity?
Reflective practices, such as pausing to breathe or repeating what was heard, create space for thoughtful reflection and help maintain equanimity during facilitation. These practices enhance the flow of sessions, foster inclusivity, and allow for deeper engagement with the content and participants.

Q: How can I balance adaptability and equanimity in my leadership style?
Balancing adaptability and equanimity involves maintaining inner calm while being open to change. Non-judgmental awareness, mindfulness practices, and reflective journaling can help strengthen these qualities, enabling leaders to navigate challenges with clarity and poise.

The post Mastering Equanimity in Leadership and Facilitation appeared first on Voltage Control.

Facilitative leadership is not a static set of practices but a dynamic way of leading that requires continuous alignment with purpose and the flexibility to adapt as circumstances change. In this blog post, we will delve into the five key aspects of facilitative leadership, each of which plays a crucial role in creating a cohesive, effective team. By understanding and implementing these principles, leaders can cultivate a more collaborative, purpose-driven culture within their organizations.

Anchoring Leadership in Purpose

At the heart of facilitative leadership lies a deep connection to purpose. Purpose serves as the guiding star for all actions, decisions, and interactions within a team. Without a clear and compelling purpose, leadership can quickly become directionless, leading to confusion and inefficiency. A strong sense of purpose not only grounds the leader but also provides a shared sense of direction for the entire team. Whether it’s the broader mission of the organization or the specific objectives of a project, purpose is what keeps everyone aligned and focused.

A facilitative leader is constantly ensuring that their actions and decisions are in harmony with this core purpose. This alignment is not only essential for personal integrity but also for maintaining the strategic direction of the team. When a leader is deeply grounded in purpose, it resonates throughout their leadership style, creating a ripple effect that strengthens team cohesion and focus. Purpose-driven leadership also helps in making tough decisions, as the leader can always refer back to the “why” behind their actions.

Moreover, purpose serves as a stabilizing force that allows leaders to be more effective in other areas of their role. It enhances their ability to be inclusive, clear, and adaptable, providing a solid foundation from which all other leadership qualities can flourish. In essence, starting with purpose is the first step toward becoming a truly facilitative leader.

Embracing Inclusivity in Critical Conversations

Once purpose is clearly established, the next step in facilitative leadership is inclusivity. True inclusivity goes beyond merely inviting everyone to the table; it involves a thoughtful selection of who needs to be included in specific conversations and decision-making processes. This approach ensures that the right voices are heard and that each participant can contribute meaningfully. Inclusivity in facilitative leadership is about the quality of participation, not just the quantity.

Inclusion is driven by the clarity of purpose—knowing the goals and objectives helps determine who should be involved in a particular discussion. This selective inclusion is not about excluding others but about creating a space where collaboration can thrive. By carefully considering who is essential for the moment, leaders can foster a more focused and effective dialogue, leading to better outcomes.

Inclusive leadership also involves ensuring that every participant feels valued and heard. This means going beyond simply inviting someone to a meeting; it requires creating an environment where individuals feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and where their contributions are genuinely considered in the decision-making process. When done effectively, inclusive leadership not only strengthens team dynamics but also promotes diversity of thought, leading to more innovative solutions.

Prioritizing Clarity in Communication

Clarity in communication is the third pillar of facilitative leadership, and it builds upon the foundations of purpose and inclusivity. In a world where teams are increasingly multicultural and multi-generational, clear communication is essential to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Misunderstandings can arise easily when messages are not conveyed with precision, leading to misaligned goals and ineffective collaboration.

Effective communication in facilitative leadership goes beyond just using the right words; it involves ensuring that the intent behind the message is understood and that it resonates with the audience. When leaders are clear about their purpose and have thoughtfully selected who to include in the conversation, they can then focus on delivering messages that inspire action and engagement. This level of clarity helps in aligning the team and driving them toward a common goal.

Being clear also means anticipating potential areas of confusion and addressing them proactively. Facilitative leaders craft their messages with empathy, taking into account the diverse backgrounds and needs of their team members. By doing so, they minimize the risk of misunderstandings and create a more cohesive team environment. In the end, clarity is the key to unlocking effective collaboration and achieving shared objectives.

Crafting the Right Environment for Collaboration

Once purpose, inclusivity, and clarity have been established, the next step in facilitative leadership is to intentionally craft the environment in which collaboration takes place. This involves selecting the right tools, approaches, and experiences to guide meetings and discussions in a way that maximizes the use of time and talents. A facilitative leader is not just a participant in the process but a strategic architect, designing the experience to ensure that it aligns with the overarching purpose.

Crafted facilitation is about being deliberate in the choices you make as a leader. It’s not just about filling time during a meeting; it’s about making every moment count toward achieving the desired outcomes. This requires a deep understanding of the group’s dynamics, the challenges at hand, and the most effective ways to address them. Whether it’s selecting the right agenda, choosing the best communication tools, or designing activities that foster engagement, every decision should be made with intention.

Moreover, crafting the right environment also involves being mindful of the physical and psychological space in which collaboration occurs. Leaders should consider how the setting—whether it’s a virtual meeting room or an in-person conference space—can impact the energy and effectiveness of the group. Well-crafted facilitation can transform a routine meeting into a powerful collaborative experience that drives real progress.

Mastering Adaptability in Leadership

The final component of facilitative leadership is adaptability, which ties together all the previous elements—purpose, inclusivity, clarity, and crafted facilitation. Adaptability is about being prepared yet flexible, ready to adjust in real-time based on the needs of the moment. In today’s fast-paced, ever-changing environment, the ability to pivot and respond to new information is a critical skill for any leader.

Adaptive leadership is where preparation meets flexibility. It involves being fully present with the people in the room, whether physically or virtually, and responding in ways that best serve the group’s purpose. This might mean changing the direction of a conversation, altering a planned agenda, or finding new ways to engage participants. The key is to remain open to change while keeping the original purpose in mind.

Adaptation is not a sign of weak planning; rather, it is the hallmark of a strong leader who can transcend the plan to achieve the best possible outcomes. By staying adaptable, leaders can navigate unexpected challenges with confidence and creativity, ensuring that their team remains aligned and effective. In essence, adaptability is the glue that holds all the other aspects of facilitative leadership together, enabling leaders to stay relevant and impactful.

Conclusion

Facilitative leadership is more than just a set of techniques; it’s a mindset that requires continuous growth and self-reflection. By grounding your leadership in purpose, embracing inclusivity, prioritizing clarity, crafting intentional experiences, and mastering adaptability, you can create a leadership style that not only drives results but also fosters a positive, collaborative culture within your team. As you continue on your leadership journey, remember that facilitative leadership is about guiding others to success, not by dictating the path but by facilitating a shared vision and collaborative effort.

The principles outlined in this blog post provide a roadmap for leaders who want to make a meaningful impact. Whether you’re leading a small team or an entire organization, these principles can help you create an environment where everyone can contribute their best and where the collective effort leads to extraordinary outcomes.

FAQ: Common Questions About Facilitative Leadership

1. What is facilitative leadership? Facilitative leadership is a leadership approach that focuses on guiding a group toward shared goals through purpose, inclusivity, clarity, intentionality, and adaptability. It emphasizes collaboration, active participation, and the alignment of actions with a clear purpose.
2. How does facilitative leadership differ from traditional leadership? Unlike traditional leadership, which often relies on top-down decision-making, facilitative leadership prioritizes the involvement and engagement of all team members. It seeks to create an environment where everyone’s voice is heard and where the collective input drives decision-making.
3. Why is purpose important in facilitative leadership? Purpose provides direction and clarity for all actions and decisions. It ensures that leaders and their teams remain aligned and focused on achieving their goals. A strong sense of purpose also helps leaders navigate challenges and make decisions that are consistent with their core values.
4. How can I become a more facilitative leader? To become a more facilitative leader, start by clearly defining your purpose and aligning your actions with it. Embrace inclusivity by thoughtfully selecting who needs to be involved in conversations and decision-making processes. Prioritize clarity in your communication, and be intentional in crafting the environment for collaboration. Finally, develop your adaptability by staying open to change and ready to adjust your approach as needed.

The post Why You Should Be A Facilitative Leader appeared first on Voltage Control.

Leadership is multifaceted and the lines often blur between roles, responsibilities, and core competencies. It’s a dynamic blend of vision, communication, and influence. Similar to the word strategy, it’s used more frequently than it is understood. But what if we were to reimagine leadership? In a recent conversation between Brene Brown and Adam Grant, the definition of facilitation became the focus of such a reimagination when Adam asked Brene: if the word ‘leadership’ didn’t exist, what would it be replaced with?

“Facilitation” – Brene Brown

Facilitation isn’t merely an add-on to a leader’s repertoire. It forms the foundation of effective leadership, enabling us to guide teams and entire organizations toward their goals while optimizing the meeting process for the most productive outcomes and fostering a culture of collaboration. Do you know anyone who hasn’t endured a meeting or training session that seemed to last forever with little to no substantial outcomes? It’s a common scenario, a clear indication that skilled facilitation is not an exclusive need of formal leaders. Rather, it is a critical competency that can empower anyone at all levels of an organization (and not just within formal leadership roles). 

The 5 Qualities of Faciliation

In this blog post, we’ll venture into every aspect of facilitation, focusing on five foundational qualities that embody the facilitation mindset – Purposed, Inclusive, Crafted, Clear, and Adaptive. Together, they embody the essence of effective facilitation, providing a roadmap to navigate the often complex terrain of leadership in today’s fast-paced world. As we delve into these qualities, we’ll shed light on the importance of the role of facilitator and how anybody, regardless of title, can step into this role. Keep in mind that these aren’t merely theoretical constructs. They are tangible skills that, when put into practice, can serve as the keys to unlocking transformative change and lasting impact within your teams and organizations.

For those eager to take a deep dive and master these skills, as well as the facilitator role, our Facilitation Certification Program is the ideal launchpad, providing comprehensive guidance and robust support as you embark on this journey of growth. We love training facilitators, and it’s evident in the care and depth we’ve put into this collaborative learning process. 

Purposed: The Guiding Star of Facilitation

Any worthwhile experience begins with purpose. Why are you bringing people together in the first place? It’s the reason behind gathering a team, the goal you hope to achieve. More than just a motivational mantra, purpose serves as an anchor for decision-making and strategy development. Who should be involved? What activities should we engage in? How do we adapt when things don’t go according to plan? All these questions more easily find their answers in the clear light of purpose.

Purpose is often the missing link in many organizational gatherings and business discussions. Without it, teams might find themselves adrift, lacking direction and focus. This makes it all the more crucial for leaders and facilitators to clarify the purpose of their gatherings.

Leadership within an organization can sometimes feel like navigating a ship through foggy waters, particularly when the senior leadership hasn’t clearly articulated the organization’s overarching ‘why’. However, this isn’t an excuse to abandon the quest for purpose. As skilled facilitators, it is our responsibility to create clarity, to guide teams toward common ground and a shared understanding of why they are doing what they’re doing.

In fact, by showing up in our role as leaders and facilitating through our role as leaders, we gradually shift cultures across an organization. This nudging can eventually guide the organization back to a place where its purpose is much clearer.

Voltage Control’s purpose is to develop leaders through a method-agnostic approach to learning and mastering facilitation skills. We anchor in this purpose often to ensure we are staying true to the belief that this approach will create optimal outcomes and best support leaders in their dynamic growth. In fact, if you let go of method-centric facilitation perspectives, it is easier to anchor to your purpose.

Not only does clarifying the purpose give meaning to our work, but it also sets the stage for the other qualities of facilitation to come into play. Purpose also demands a degree of transparency, allowing leaders to acknowledge biases and use them constructively.

While conventional facilitation wisdom advises us to remain unbiased, leaders often need to bring their own perspectives to the table. The key lies in transparency and conscious decision-making. There will be times when leaders should listen, be curious, and abstain from asserting their bias. Conversely, there will be times when leaders’ unique perspectives are needed to guide the team forward. Leaders must be present to purpose in order to attune to how their bias is helping or hindering the progress of the group.

Finally, clarifying the purpose can be a powerful tool for preparation and aligning expectations. When attendees understand the purpose of a meeting or gathering, they can better prepare and engage meaningfully.

Being ‘purposed’ in facilitation allows for insightful preparation, alignment of expectations, and transparency, creating a more cohesive and effective gathering.

Inclusive: The Heart of Facilitation

A common misconception is that being inclusive means involving everyone all the time. However, as Art of Gathering author  Priya Parker brings into focus, optimal inclusion sometimes requires deliberate exclusion. This doesn’t mean permanently sidelining certain individuals but rather knowing when and where their involvement is most beneficial.

Having a clear purpose allows us to be intentional about who should be part of a gathering and at what stage. It’s not about creating a permanent state of exclusivity but recognizing that not every conversation requires every person. Not never, just not right now. Understanding this allows leaders to strategically gather parts of the team, depending on the purpose and desired outcomes of the facilitated moments.

Additionally, inclusivity goes beyond the mere presence of individuals. It’s also about creating a psychologically safe environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas. This nurturing of psychological safety becomes easier when the right people, connected to and committed to the purpose, are involved. It fosters a sense of vulnerability and nudges people to contribute more freely.

Another key factor in inclusivity is patience. Good facilitators should allow participants to express their thoughts and opinions freely, knowing when to let the conversation flow and when to intervene or redirect. The facilitator’s patience often correlates with the depth and quality of the participants’ input. For example, working with an interpreter invites a slower pace, allowing more time for consideration and deepened understanding.

This patience also nurtures an internal focus in facilitators. Instead of focusing only on external progression, excellent facilitators embrace pauses and allow for thoughtful consideration. This fosters better understanding and reduces confusion among the participants. A facilitator who talks incessantly or aimlessly just to fill the silence is usually not deeply anchored in purpose and inclusivity.

Being inclusive in facilitation requires leveraging our purpose to be deliberate about who to involve, creating a psychologically safe environment, and exercising patience to allow for meaningful engagement for all in the room.

Crafted: Designing With Care

A crafted approach requires understanding that everything we do in our professional lives – from our work to our collaborations to our culture – is designed in some way. As such, leaders need to see themselves as the designers of the experiences their teams and coworkers engage in.

Being ‘crafted’ in facilitation is about caring. It shows that you care enough about your purpose and the outcomes you want to achieve that you deliberately design the space and process in which these outcomes can be realized within established time limits. Sadly, we often come across instances where there isn’t enough deliberation or care, sometimes due to the demands and pressures of the organization.

When we talk about care, we must also consider intention. Are we taking the time to be purposeful, to have intent, to be planful? This reflects in the way we craft our facilitated spaces.

A crucial concept we teach in our facilitation certification, from Gamestorming, is the idea of creating temporary worlds. These temporary spaces allow people to have impactful experiences, meet their desired outcomes, and realize their potential for change and growth. And if these temporary worlds are that impactful, then participants want them to become part of their day-to-day worlds.

The crafting process involves considering many elements, from the overall design of the meeting or workshop to the pacing and cadence. Effective meetings are seen as learning experiences, not just as items on an agenda. Furthermore, the design should not be confined to a single approach or methodology. As facilitators, we should remain method agnostic to best serve our participants’ needs and circumstances.

This process also requires careful attention to the amount of work and dialogue expected from the participants. What is reasonable, and what is exhausting? How many activities are too many? These considerations are vital for crafting effective experiences.

A well-crafted facilitation process is akin to a well-designed product. It emphasizes simplicity and focuses on what’s essential rather than overloading with unnecessary features. Such simplicity can be a powerful design technique, provided we understand our purpose, know our audience, and keep them at the forefront of our design decisions.

Being crafted in facilitation involves careful design, clear intention, and an understanding of the people and purpose at hand.

Clear: Concise and Transparent Communication

The notion of being clear aligns with our earlier discussions on creating space and patiently pausing  ensure understanding. After all, all meetings, brainstorming sessions, workshops, and learning experiences need clarity in instruction, setup, and an invitation to achieve optimal outcomes.

The responsibility for clarity lies with us as leaders and facilitators. One simple language shift we recommend is moving from asking, “Did you understand that?” to “Is there anything I might further clarify or better explain?” This subtle shift places the responsibility of understanding back on the facilitator rather than the participants, where it should be.

It’s also beneficial to avoid yes/no questions as they often close off opportunities for further clarity. By framing questions more openly, we can better coalesce toward a shared understanding.

Clarity is also connected to design. It’s about being concise and distilling information down to its essentials. Anything that does not directly serve the purpose can act as a block, preventing participants or team members from understanding the direction and how they can contribute to reaching the goal.

Keeping a ‘clarity journal’ can be a powerful tool for self-improvement. Make a note of instances where your instructions were met with confusion, then reflect on what may have caused the ambiguity. This reflection can help you craft clearer prompts and instructions.

Fostering clarity in a facilitated session involves clear and concise language, real nouns and verbs, and questioning the necessity of every other piece of information. Asking for feedback can further improve clarity, helping identify areas of potential confusion or misunderstanding.

Clarity is not only about our ground rules and prompts but also about the understanding shared in the room. Internal and external facilitators alike must be attuned to situations where participants might not be on the same wavelength, using different metaphors or similar words with different meanings. By pointing these out and helping disambiguate, we enable the group to reach alignment.

Facilitators are witnesses, connected to the group’s purpose and helping the group help itself to become clearer. Clear and concise communication is essential for a facilitator to guide decisions and convey information to the group effectively. This not only involves conveying information but also helping the group understand what they are there to accomplish and how they are expected to participate.

Facilitating with clarity demands intentional communication, distilling information to essentials, actively resolving misunderstandings, and continuous self-reflection. As facilitators, we provide a clear path for understanding and participation, paving the way for effective collaboration and ensuring all voices are valued in the shared pursuit.

Adaptive: Dancing with Change in Facilitation

Having a plan is crucial; however, sticking rigidly to that plan despite shifting dynamics is a recipe for disaster. Being adaptive, serves as a balancing act between having a strategy and knowing when to pivot in service of the purpose. After all, the magic of facilitation often unfolds in its adaptability to what’s happening in the room.

It’s less about discarding the other qualities we’ve discussed and more about holding them with an open hand, ready to modify our approach in line with the changing needs of the group. We shouldn’t see this adaptability as abandoning our carefully laid plans. Instead, we are staying present, attuned to the dynamics of the room, and ready to pivot our approach to serve our purpose effectively.

Leaders should be adept at reading the room, picking up on non-verbal cues, gauging the energy and engagement of the participants. This is a skill, foundational as it may seem, that can be cultivated over a career, enriching your practice and enhancing your adaptive capacity.

Active listening skills are key to facilitating from an adaptive perspective. Active listeners use questions to gain deeper insights into what’s transpiring within the group, empowering everyone to make decisions that best serve the purpose. In moments of conflict, which can emerge as a testament to inclusivity and diversity of perspectives and a safe space, being adaptive equips us with the ability to mediate and guide the group toward resolution and progress.

The adaptive nature of facilitation is also evident in the fine balance it requires; not only does it involve allowing the group adequate time to move at their own pace, but it also entails knowing when to steer them toward the main objective. This interplay between flexibility and firmness, as well as effective time management, may seem like an art, but it’s actually a craft that can be mastered with experience and conscious practice.

Remember, being adaptive doesn’t mean we throw the other four qualities to the wind. In fact, our ability to be adaptive is a testament to how well we’ve anchored in our purpose, fostered inclusivity, crafted our process, and ensured clarity,. Being adaptive allows us to respond dynamically to the realities of the room, enhancing our ability to guide the group toward the shared goal.

The dance of facilitation is one of conscious movement between structure and flexibility, control and release, all the while keeping our gaze fixed on the guiding star of purpose. Embrace this dance, cultivate your adaptive nature, and witness your growth as a transformative leader and facilitator.

Embracing the Qualities: The Path Towards Effective Facilitation

I urge you to actively practice and nurture these qualities. Embrace the challenges and opportunities they present. Seek feedback, learn from your experiences, and continuously strive to learn new facilitation techniques and enhance your facilitation skills. Consider joining a community of practice like our Facilitation Lab as a stepping stone on this journey of growth and improvement.

The journey may be challenging, but the rewards are immense. By cultivating these qualities, you’ll not only become a more experienced facilitator but also a stronger leader, capable of inspiring, guiding, and empowering your team toward achieving common goals.

The path to effective facilitation awaits. Embrace the journey.

FAQ Section

What is facilitation training, and why is it important?
Facilitation training equips individuals with practical facilitation skills to lead meetings, manage diverse groups, and guide discussions toward a successful outcome. It’s essential for leaders in both business and educational settings as it ensures that meetings are productive, inclusive, and goal-oriented.

How can I handle difficult people during facilitation sessions?
Handling difficult people requires strong communication skills, patience, and maintaining a calm, inclusive environment. Facilitators should focus on creating positive reinforcement, setting clear expectations, and steering the conversation to keep the entire meeting on track toward its goals.

What is the role of a professional facilitator in a remote facilitation session?
In remote facilitation, professional facilitators must use online tools and techniques to keep participants engaged. This includes creating a facilitation framework tailored to the virtual environment and using facilitation games to maintain high energy levels and focus on meeting goals.

How can facilitation training improve project management skills?
Facilitation training enhances project management skills by teaching leaders how to manage meetings, set clear objectives, and foster collaboration. Through effective facilitation, project managers can align teams, resolve conflicts, and ensure that projects meet deadlines and goals efficiently.

How does Voltage Control’s facilitation training differ from others?
Voltage Control’s facilitation training offers advanced, hands-on workshop facilitation training, designed to build facilitation muscles through engaging activities and real-world facilitation experiences. Our training develops facilitative leadership, preparing participants for both business and educational settings.

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What is change management?

The sweet spot where change and project management intersect is known as change management. When a company is facing change in any capacity, change management is how company leaders manage the processes, systems, structures, overall morale, and employee responsibilities during a time of transition.

Change is the only thing we know for sure will happen in life and business. Whether a company is planning for change via transformation or is unexpectedly presented with a challenge, having a protocol for change can help companies better adapt to solving problems in a shuffling dynamic.

Firms and companies have carefully created calculated principles for organizational change management to help navigate the rising challenges of transformation in the business landscape–which is unavoidable in today’s world.

Just how important is having a set of principles to use as a structured guideline? A Forbes Insights and PMI survey found that 85% of over 500 executive respondents said change management is critical to success in times of change of any kind, rather than expecting that workers will automatically react to change well in a competitive marketplace.

Compare this to Forbes Insights’ findings that more than one-third (38%) of respondents reported that their employees view change as a significant threat, and it is clear that fear of change is a problem that needs to be planned for and properly addressed.

“The key to change…is to let go of fear.” -Rosanne Cash

Fear of transition can be stifled while also setting up your company up for success by planning for change and creating your own change management plan using the following change management principles.

Six Change Management Principles

(1) Clearly identify the problem

Some change comes when we least expect it, and we must adapt accordingly. When a problem arises, it is crucial to flesh out why and how it came about and what needs to be done in order to solve it.

Some change is planned, like in the case of innovation. It might be the need for a new product, redefining a target audience, or addressing problems within a company dynamic. Whatever the problem, it must be identified and understood before it can be effectively tackled.

(2) Drive new direction with culture

Company culture is the script for how employees interact and work with one another. Change can disrupt the standard workflow and social status quo. Leaders must take culture into account to understand and overcome any resistance born in a time of transition.

Leading with culture also helps to maintain how employees connect and relate to one another, a crucial aspect to sustain during shifts so that everyone in the company is aligned.

(3) Unify top-level leadership

A company is only as reliable as the sum of all of its employees, starting from leadership. All upper-level executives and leaders must form a united front to clearly and effectively communicate the same information to lower-level employees so that the entire company is on the same page and acting congruently.

It is imperative that the corresponding information is shared throughout all levels to find success.

(4) Involve every level

Change shakes the foundation of an entire company; therefore, every employee is affected in some way. Involving mid-level employees as soon as possible opens the door for employees to express their concerns and share any logistical or technical holes they see from the start, working out any glitches.

It also serves as an opportunity for managers and leaders to consider the repercussions and effects the transformation will have on their teams and the customers at large.

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(5) Utilize change agents

Change agents are informal leaders who can help organizational leaders drive and champion change. From influential employees with a reputation of leading by example and earning the trust of others to stakeholders or veteran employees, change agents help to drive the challenging task of getting all employees on board.

Once identified, leaders should incorporate these people as a coalition. Together, they can help spread the unified message, get their teams integrated, and put people at ease.

(6) Define critical behaviors

Even with a clear vision of the problem/change at the executive level, a unified leadership front, and a coalition to help spread the word and integrate new practices, employee behavior won’t automatically change overnight. It is helpful to provide employees with the “why,” “what,” and “how” of change, as well as defined critical behaviors for them to follow immediately–within the first few days of the change.

Old patterns and habits can be hard to break, and new practices must be instilled as soon as possible for a smooth transition. This may mean training and frequent smaller meetings with managers so that they are equipped to communicate details of change and new expectations to employees.

Benefits of Strong Change Management

“The rate of change is not going to slow down any time soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades,” John P. Kotter says in his book Leading Change.

Because change is the only constant, having a robust protocol to follow to ease any size of transition sets companies up for triumph in chaos. A smooth transition internally maintains company morale and efficiency and translates directly to the external business.

According to research from Towers Watson, companies with healthy change management practices are 3.5 times more likely to outperform their competition. Being prepared to face change before it even happens immediately gives businesses a leg up on their peers.

Here are a few ways how:

1. Change management reduces the risk of project failure: Projects are more likely to fail when there is a lack of preparation. If changes are made too quickly without a proper plan for transition, or if not everyone is on board with new changes, the project can fall into chaos. A carefully constructed plan already has in mind any potential risks and is accompanied by analyzed strategies to overcome them.
2. Change management helps to eliminate confusion: A change management plan helps to reduce any trouble that may arise in transition, as each step of the change management process is detailed and outlined from the top down before implementation. This simultaneously tackles the fear of change and eliminates uncertainty about new business protocols–everyone is on the same page and adequately prepared for a shift.
3. Change management aids in maintaining a budget: Whether planned or unexpected, change is expensive! Incorporate a budget as part of your change management plan so that you don’t blindly pay for it later. Assign a cost estimate to each stage of the process. Doing so will provide an overall assessment of the cost of change and help to keep a new project on budget as it evolves.

Embrace Change to Improve Business

When an organization has a solid plan for how to embrace change, it can be used strategically to its advantage in the workplace and industry. A change management protocol can be used as an outline to evaluate and fine-tune an organization’s goals or priorities as well as to analyze how employees can help the company grow; it can be a tool used to expand and improve business overall, a steady progression of forward momentum.

“Change has a bad reputation in our society. But it isn’t all bad–not by any means. In fact, change is necessary in life–to keep us moving, to keep us growing, to keep us interested. Imagine life without change. It will be static, boring, dull,” Dr. Dennis O’Grady says in his article, The Change Game.

Looking for help with change management in your organization?

Please reach out to Voltage Control at hello@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

The post Best Practices for Organizational Change Management appeared first on Voltage Control.

“When we follow our curiosity…and take small steps towards that curiosity, that’s how we create possibilities for ourselves and for others.” -Van Lai-DuMone

In this episode of the Control the Room Podcast, Van Lai-DuMone and I unpack the creative footprint that inspired her to dedicate her life’s work at worksmART to uncover creativity in every organization. Van shares her observations on the creativity disconnect she’s seen unfold in the corporate workforce and how teams can reignite collective creativity in their work. She highlights her go-to creativity strategies that demonstrate trying a “different” approach in the workplace and the significance of discovering creative artifacts for teams. Van and I discuss the transformative impact a strong collaboration flow has on teams when working on projects/ideas as well as when coordinating virtual and in-person events and meetings. We specifically speak to how organizations must prioritize connection in both the virtual & physical landscapes to make a successful shift to hybrid work, and the need for intentionality in daily workplace interactions in order to provide space for real connection in organizations. Listen in to hear Van’s perspective on her journey to living a life in creativity and rediscovering your organization’s creative niche.    

Show Highlights

[10:40] Van’s Career Journey & the Creativity Spark 
[13:26] The Creativity Disconnect in Corporate America
[17:42] Van’s Creative Strategies in the Workplace
[28:41] The Flow Effect
[34:48] Creating Connection in the Virtual & Physical Landscape
[43:09] Van’s Hybrid Work Perspective & Final Thoughts

Links | Resources

Van’s LinkedIn

WorksmART

What If? The Life-Changing Power of Curiosity & Courage

About the Guest

Van Lai-DuMone is the founder of WorksmART, a progressive team and leadership development company, where she invites clients to think with their hands and use right brain creative tools to disrupt traditional training methods. Van’s work proposes that we all innately possess curiosity and creativity, that good ideas can come from any level of an organization, and that all organizations should continuously cultivate idea-sharing in the workplace to foster creativity. Van formerly studied Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and earned her MBA from Pepperdine University. She has over 15 years of corporate and start-up experience with leading companies across industries, including Google, LinkedIn, and Pandora. Her mission is to continue to help workplaces everywhere implement creativity as a pivotal core value.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a change agency that helps enterprises sustain innovation and teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Full Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

Thanks for listening. If you’d like to join us live for a session sometime, you can join our weekly Control the Room facilitation lab. It’s a free event to meet fellow facilitators and explore new techniques so you can apply the things you learn in the podcast in real time with other facilitators. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab.

Douglas Ferguson:

If you’d like to learn more about my new book, Magical Meetings, you can download the Magical Meetings Quick Start Guide, your free PDF reference with some of the most important pieces of advice from the book. Download a copy today at voltagecontrol.com/magical-meetings-quick-guide.

Douglas Ferguson:

Today, I’m with Van Lai-DuMone, founder of worksmART, where she disrupts traditional corporate training with creativity. Her goal is to make crayons a staple office supply, and she is also TEDx speaker and advocate for the veteran community. Welcome to the show Van.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Hello, Douglas. Very nice to see you here today and I’m glad to be here.

Douglas Ferguson:

Excellent. Yeah, it was great to have you. So let’s just hear a little bit about how you got your start, and how did you get this obsession with crayons?

Van Lai-DuMone:

So I got my start, I’m going to go way back to early childhood, I’ve always been really creative. I would never have called myself an artist, I was never professionally trained as artist, I was just always creating things. My mom would buy me a shirt or shoes, I would instantly rip it up with a pair of scissors or color them with paint. And she was not too pleased with that but that’s just how I’ve always been.

Van Lai-DuMone:

In college, I started a small business, I can’t even call it a business, I think I just went to garage sales, bought furniture, strip them and repainted them and sold them to my friends. So creativity is always been a part of my life, but because of my upbringing I followed a very traditional path of going to school, going to college, getting my MBA, and just going into the corporate world.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And I ebbed and flowed between the corporate world and entrepreneurial startup ventures for about 15 years. I think it was because I never felt I was in the right place, I was always looking for where I belonged. So it wasn’t until about six years ago that was working for a large pharmaceutical company. And I really found myself in a place where I’m like, “This is 100% not for me. How did I get here? I need to make a drastic change.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

And it was also the time where my son was born. And between those two things coming to that realization, having him being born, looking at this little child and thinking, “I want him to grow up with a mom that’s doing something she loves.” So I went back to this idea I had several years ago around starting a business, around bringing creativity into the workplace and that’s where worksmART started.

Van Lai-DuMone:

But even back then, it wasn’t called worksmART, it was called Craftivity Events. I was trying to sell workshops into corporations called Weave of Dreams or Follow Your Heart, right? Which I was not doing so well, so I hunger back down, revisited it, really kind of thought about like, “What am I really trying to do in the workplace?” And redeveloped it into what it is now, bringing creativity into team development and leadership training in the corporate environment.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s amazing. And so I guess I’m curious, you told this story about being very creative as a young child, and then you jumped to getting the MBA and then kind of being in the corporate world and clocking in and clocking out and maybe being a little disconnected from the creativity, at least that’s what it seemed like.

Douglas Ferguson:

And so when did the creativity disconnect first started to happen? When did you feel that way in, was it gradual? Was it sudden? Like what was that like?

Van Lai-DuMone:

That’s an interesting question, Douglas, because I don’t really think I’ve thought about that before. And I remember still being very creative in college and even into parts of my career, still painting on the side or do some creative things. But I think it was really getting into the corporate world and starting to climb the ladder of the corporate experience and really being focused on that, that not only was it not creative in the workplace but I stopped being creative in my personal life too.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And that really was where I found the need for creativity. So I think possibly if I had remained creative in my personal life, I may have not needed as much in my professional career, but it’s almost a blessing that I did because it really got me support. I was like, “Wow, if I’m feeling this way, how many other people are feeling this way in about their work?” Where there’s no creativity where creativity is, is limited to the people in marketing or whatever department people consider normally creative, but why can’t people in the accounting department have some creativity there?

Van Lai-DuMone:

Now, maybe people will argue that, maybe you shouldn’t be that creative in accounting, but you know what I mean?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. Well, people have certainly gotten into a lot of trouble with creative accounting-

Van Lai-DuMone:

Yes, that’s true.

Douglas Ferguson:

… practices, but maybe they could be a little playful in how they collaborate and how they communicate with each other, for sure. So this really gets into one of our meeting mantras around embrace the child’s mind. And really big fan of Daniel Coyle’s book, The Culture Code, where he talks about, one of the examples he gave us a Stanford study that looked at this creativity exercise and how kindergartners did such a better than CEOs and then he tried the engineers and designers, and then even a cross-functional group of professionals. Yet, the kindergartners repeatedly did better.

Douglas Ferguson:

And then what you were just telling me really reinforced this argument, because he says that the reason that those groups struggle so much is that they spend so much of their time trying to understand their position as it relates to the group. And so it’s all politics, right? And so, and you talked about climbing the ladder, and I imagine that the more you climb the ladder the more political things get, the more you had to be concerned about navigating those types of things.

Douglas Ferguson:

And it can be all consuming and it can rewire your brain. And so I think that it’s not surprising that it’s hard to keep up even the creativity in your personal life.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Yeah, and that really resonates with what you just said, Douglas, because I feel that as you climb up the corporate ladder and as you get higher up in organizations, you should be taking more risks, but you don’t, it’s almost the opposite.

Van Lai-DuMone:

You stop taking risks and creativity is about taking risks. So you really do lose your creativity or your willingness to be more creative or your willingness to take more risks as the stakes become higher for your career.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s interesting. It’s like we often see that with folks that are maybe about to make tenure or they’re thinking about their legacy or they’re like, it’s only one year until I retired, do I really want to rock the boat here?

Douglas Ferguson:

And if there’s not already a very rich culture of experimentation and curiosity and risk taking, that’s really hard for folks to go out on a limb in those situations.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Absolutely. And I do hear that with some of my clients who will come to a workshop about how to bring creativity in the workplace and we teach them these innovative tools on problem-solving and brainstorming. And they’ll say they love it but I don’t feel like I can bring this in the workplace because I’m afraid it won’t be accepted.

Douglas Ferguson:

So let’s talk about that a little bit, because I hear that often too. What are some of your go-to strategies when you hear that from the participant in one of these workshops, what do you tell them? How do you coach them through navigating that?

Van Lai-DuMone:

Well, sometimes tell me like, just start with yourself, right? I think the more confident you are on the tools, the more likely you are willing to spread the word about it. So rather than bringing some of these tools around creative problem solving to a group to start with, do it on your own. These tools are meant to be done individually or collectively, so try some of the tools just on your own.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And as you see how effective they are, you’re more likely now, and we’re willing to go and tell other people about it. So have the experience for yourself first so that you can have the confidence and competence to go out there and share it. The other thing I tell people is, don’t use the word creative, don’t use the word creative, just go out and say, “We’re going to try something different today.” And here it is.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that, Van. One of the things I think that goes hand in hand with that is I coach people on, don’t tell them the name of the activity because a lot of these activities have like fun, creative names that are meant to be almost like, “Oh, it’s just branding, right? If an activity has a really clever, witty name, you’re going to remember it.”

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, that’s going to get you into trouble when you got a group of naysayers and you’re like, “Okay, we’re going to do how might we’s or whatever,” it’s like just start doing it. Just tell them how to do it and we get them doing it. So they don’t have a name to fight against or whatever, or a thing to like push against.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And that I learned that, I was mentioning, the first iteration of my business was called Craftivity Events and I was trying to force feed workshops to organizations called Weave of Dreams. And now I do the same, I do those Weave of Dreams workshops, but they don’t call that it’s around values, it’s around narrowing values and collaborating on values and seeing how values impact the workplace.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And also the idea of creative artifacts, a lot of my work is around visual arts. We do our workshops and at the end we’ll often do a creative art project as an anchor back to the work we did that day. I no longer call them creative art projects, they’re called creative artifacts now. And all of a sudden companies like, “Ooh, we need artifacts.” They didn’t need the creative art project, they need the creative artifact.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s right. And I think it’s interesting that you mentioned values a second ago, and it’s not just about language, it’s about values. And it’s a bit meta because you were talking about, they were using these tools to focus on creating shared values, but at the end of the day, an executive or any member of a workshop has things they value. And if you can align your language to things they value, or if you can align the work to things they value, they’re going to embrace it a lot more.

Douglas Ferguson:

And so if there are things that they’re afraid of, that they maybe don’t value as much, that’s going to be a hard sell.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Absolutely. And here’s the thing I learned to do as I started working with more clients is, know who you’re talking to. Like exactly what you’re saying, know your clients, so visit their websites. In my proposals, I often am sprinkling in words I found from their website that correlate to what I do, but in their language.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s right, I love that. And so I want to come back to, you mentioned in your work that you do a problem solving type of activities, et cetera. Can you give some examples of like how you’re helping teams going to embark on this creative work and what some of these kind of tools might look like?

Van Lai-DuMone:

Certainly, I mean, it’s hard because a lot of them are visual, but like a common one is from improv the yes, and method where we are talking, when you’re coming up with ideas rather than saying no, but, or what I talk about is like the idea of killing ideas before they have a chance.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So oftentimes in a meeting room, you will ask a question and people, someone will give an answer or someone will give an idea, and the next person says no, but, or yes, but. Either way, whether it’s a no, but, or yes, but, what you do is you’re killing the idea before it has a chance.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So this yes, and principle, as you know is this idea of letting people share their idea and the next person has to say yes, and, an add to the idea. But I think the overall, rather than share like individuals like the overall premise of the work I do in creative problem solving is the concept that you want to give everyone a chance to have their voice heard in a way that makes sense for them.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So again, going back to that conference room, you’re in this meeting room, the lead person asks a question, let’s come up with ideas for X, Y, or Z. And we all know these people too, you have those two or three people who have all the ideas, they’re going to continue to raise their hand and give ideas.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And then you have the rest of us, like me who are actually introverts and I don’t think that way, I can’t come up with ideas off the top of my head. For several reasons, number one, that’s not the way I think. And number two, I don’t want to sound stupid, I want to think about my ideas before I state them out loud.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So with creative problem solving, creative thinking, with visual tools what you’re able to do is give everyone access to ways to share their ideas in a way that makes sense for them. So some examples for that might be okay, so you asked your question, now I’m going to play classical music for 10 minutes. Think about your ideas and write them down.

Van Lai-DuMone:

There’s Legos in front of you, build your ideas, you sketch your idea. So for people who have their ways of thinking to be able to share ideas, rather than just saying, speak them out loud right now.

Douglas Ferguson:

I really liked that. And one of my favorite go-to is just getting people in the small groups to combat some of the like over talkers or people that are having trouble sharing or talking. And one of my favorite prompts that I learned from the awesome and great Keith McCandless is when you come back from a small group activity and you now are in the big group, again, asking the group, “What is something that everybody must hear?”

Van Lai-DuMone:

Oh, I like that. Yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

Right? Because you ask people like, “What did you hear that’s interesting?” Or like, “Anyone want to share anything they heard?” But it was like, “What is something that everyone must hear?” It’s like really provocative from the sense of like, “Oh yeah. The thing Van told me, people need to hear that.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

Right, because you know in those small groups, people have that thought like, “Ooh, that was good. That was good.” I wish people could know this. And so you give them the opportunity to share that.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s really good.

Van Lai-DuMone:

I’m using that one too, Douglas. I’m going to take that one from you.

Douglas Ferguson:

I know. That’s one of the beautiful things about facilitation and creating communities of practice is that we can all share because there’s cool techniques and cool prompts that just kind of work, and just add little nuggets to our toolkit.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Yeah. And that’s why I love that Voltage Control and that community, because I was having a conversation with someone the other day. I have no idea who it was, but they were talking about the communities I built on in this work I thought the beauty…

Van Lai-DuMone:

Oh, you know what it was, there’s a conflict management course I teach and we talk about, people do a survey and it’s about… What am I talking about? This was for your facilitator… What’s the Thursday thing? Facilitator…

Douglas Ferguson:

Oh yeah, facilitation lab.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Okay. For facilitation lab, I did this conflict management course for facilitation lab, and what I had to do before was a survey around what is your go-to conflict resolution style? And there’s five of them, one of them is competitive. And what was so interesting is that this was a group of facilitators, nobody had chosen competitive.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And I thought that was so interesting because it says so much about this community of facilitators, because we are also willing to share and help each other and just share ideas.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s pretty phenomenal. Also, I feel like that’s in the water here in Austin. It’s like, there’s such a sense of helpfulness and just in the ecosystem and the community. And I really appreciate it. I think that it tends to create better results than to be super competitive or super, I don’t know, restrictive or exclusive.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And it’s interesting because I feel like where else do you find that? It’s an interesting dynamic between facilities, even though we all most of us have our own businesses, running our own thing. Yet, everyone is still willing to share and collaborate.

Douglas Ferguson:

I think it’s also a passion for the work and how we elevate, I would say, the practice or the discipline. And the more we share about what we’re learning and what we’re noticing allows us all to elevate it as a form of leadership, because the more people that do it, the better off we are. It’s almost like capitalizing society, right? The more people that do it and they get good at, the more that we can… It’ll raise the GDP.

Van Lai-DuMone:

That’s right, yes. It raises the value for all of us.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s right.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And then on the other side of it too, is that the way I look at it as well is, when I started my business, there was a lot of hoarding, right? “Oh, yes, you want me to do a workshop on how to file your taxes? Sure. I’m going to tell you that out.” I was like, there’s so much like I will do anything anyone wants me to do, I would learn it and try to do it. But as my business grew, and as I saw impact on clients by collaborating, most of the work I do now is through collaboration because really the goal is to bring the highest value to the client, and if I can’t do it, I’m going to bring someone on who can.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s awesome. And so that brings me to a topic that we spoke about earlier and it was this idea of flow. And I want to talk about flow in general, but it also might be interesting to examine it from the perspective of creating flow with a collaborator, because I’ve certainly found collaborators that I can instantly get into the flow with, whereas others it’s been more difficult.

Douglas Ferguson:

And I really treasure the ones where it’s just almost instantaneous, you don’t work with them for a year and you come back together and it’s almost like we just took a coffee break and we came back, right?

Van Lai-DuMone:

Yes. So when I talk about flows, I went on this retreat, or I should say it was a weekend with Cairn Leadership Strategies, they’re based in San Diego. And they take people on weekend, three-day outdoor adventures and there’s leadership topics that we discussed. So it was interesting, so I went on the Black Canyon River canoeing trips, and then our topic was flow, so that just flowed nicely.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And what we talked about was this idea of like, how do you find flow in your life? And for me, it’s always been this idea of, it’s always been accidental for me, so there’s always been this idea of like, “Oh my gosh, how did all these hours pass? I’ve been doing all this work and let the hours just went so quickly and I got a lot accomplished.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

But what I learned in this trip and in their lessons about flow is that you can actually stack these triggers to find your flow. So there apparently is a psychological triggers, social triggers and environmental triggers.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And under each of those categories, there’s things you can do. So what I’ve been trying to do now is like, “Okay, if I want to get in flow, what psychological trigger can I put in place right now?” Something like, I’m going to focus on something that demands all my attention.

Van Lai-DuMone:

A social trigger might be something like it has to be familiar enough for me, or be in a familiar space but make it a little bit challenging. And then environmental flow might be something like create a rich environment, play music in the background. So if I stack those triggers, I’m more likely to get myself into this state of flow.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So we asked about doing that in collaboration with someone, that’s a really interesting topic because it’s that something that just comes naturally and I wonder, and I haven’t tried this, I wonder if you can stat triggers to get into a better collaboration. For those that you’re saying is not as natural.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I think the question then becomes, do we share the same triggers?

Van Lai-DuMone:

That’s right.

Douglas Ferguson:

And do we value the same things? And then that also make me think a little bit about this notion of group flow and how like, when we were having events in person, this notion that we would really think intentionally about the initial conditions or the environment we wanted to create, so that everything was easy and everything flowed. And so how’s the room organized? Do we have round tables or square tables? How many chairs do we have? Do we have chairs? Is there a projector? Where is it located? Do we have music? Where’s the food going to be?

Douglas Ferguson:

All these kind of questions around how we organize the space and how we layout groups and thinking about, even the flow of the event will directly impact how people can go in and out of flow states.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Yeah. So because I didn’t really do, most of you guys do a lot of events. So my events were basically facilitating workshops at corporations at someone’s office. So I didn’t always have complete control over what that looked and felt like, but I tried my best. But you have more experience in that sense, I feel like what I do was learn how to do that virtually.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So you may help me be able to take some of your experience in a live setting, it’d be like, “Okay, so here are all the elements that we want to recreate virtually.” And that’s interesting, so I kind of went to the virtual environment thinking I cannot take what I was doing in-person and just throw that into a virtual environment.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So how do I recreate that same idea of flow, that same feeling of collectiveness and comradery in a virtual environment? And for me over the last year, a little more than year now, what I found around that is first preparation or setting expectations, and setting expectations for what we need the audience to do, keep your camera on, get ready to participate, here might be some pre-work.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And then within the facilitation, making sure those transitions were really smooth, and making sure that we had a many different elements for people to connect, whether that’s, it wasn’t all like, “Okay, throw things in the chat. Okay, here’s seven breakout rooms.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

It was like, “Okay, let’s throw a breakout room here, that makes sense. Now, let’s have people postings for this exercise. Now, let’s have everyone, few people share out loud to the whole group here. And I found that to be really interesting to navigate and try to figure out during this time like what worked, what didn’t work.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And I think in terms of facilitation and when I talk about… or not even facilitation, even when I work with clients who run their own meetings, is this idea of giving people dedicated time and giving, and being really intentional, intentional in this virtual environment, about giving people time to connect, because that’s what I mean… I was at Control the Room live in Austin two years ago and there was the way the room was laid out, there was food where the food and drinks were and the way there was time and space made for connection really made a difference.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And if we’re not doing that in a virtual environment, then we lose out on so much.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s right. We don’t want to make those things victims of a shift in space. All right, like we’re shifted to this virtual space so we can’t lose sight of what are the core kind of principles that we need to live by, and the connection is one of them.

Douglas Ferguson:

As facilitators, we have to establish connection and it’s certainly bubbled up right at the beginning of the pandemic. We held events for facilitators to come, it was almost like group therapy for facilitators which is actually the precursor for a facilitation lab and that came up big time. It was two big themes, one was just like real concern about how do we foster connection and then will it be lost? And then there was a concern around, will we be able to support this digital divide and lack of access kind of thing?

Van Lai-DuMone:

I get that, yeah. And how has that been? What have you seen from what you’ve developed?

Douglas Ferguson:

The lack of access thing is one that has to be handled on a case by case basis, like to your point earlier about knowing your audience and who’s showing up who could be there, who’s being left out, who is being excluded because of circumstances and how do we include them either by sending them devices or providing a space that they can go to, to connect in, or even just like reducing the fidelity.

Douglas Ferguson:

Do we make this a phone call so that they can participate in some way? So I think it’s just designing around those constraints and understanding that they’re there. And then as far as the connection piece, I think it’s everything you were just describing around just making it a focus and being intentional about it.

Douglas Ferguson:

And quite often, that might involve things like energizers, icebreakers, et cetera. And we always advise when you’re doing those things, ideally tie them into the purpose of the intent of the event. So it’s not just, it doesn’t feel like, “Oh, why are we doing this thing? Let’s connect it in to the work that we’re doing, but give time for people to connect and to build some rapport and understanding.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

Yes, I love that point too because I think it is always important to make those connections and those transitions so that they… It just makes sense, so people just think, “I’m just doing this exercise to do this exercise,” but make them meaningful. I think that’s where facilitators can really make a difference is in terms of like building those icebreakers, those energizers.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So that it’s really about creating a way for people to build personal connections to each other, rather than just having fun. And I often talk about team building versus team development, I think it’s the same thing, like team building, let’s have fun together, let’s get together, and whatever might be. Like clearing out virtually like go bowling, or go on a scavenger hunt.

Van Lai-DuMone:

But for me, these energizers, you’re talking about more like team development where like, “How do we have fun together?” But we’re also using the time to get to know each other better and get to know how to work well with each other.

Douglas Ferguson:

I think to me the best way to define the differences about the half-life. So team building exercises have a very short half-life, team development has a much longer half-life, because we’ve actually become more intentional about doing things that are going to have lasting value because we created some deeper connection.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s going to be a lot harder to evaporate or like just pull apart or tease the part. It’s almost like weed in a basket that’s real tight versus the one that’s really loose. Is it going to come apart or is it going to stay together?

Van Lai-DuMone:

That great. There’s an exercise I’ve done in person, I haven’t… But now that I’m like I finally started using mural, and big thanks to you guys too, I kind of like, “Okay, if I’m going to be facilitating facilitation lab and doing, and uses like a a mural,” but there’s an exercise that you do in person that it was yarn.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And have you heard of Climer Cards, making use any pictures you can just like, I just threw a bunch of pictures on the floor and I had people pick a picture that represents something about you outside the work you do. They’d pick a picture up, someone will start with a ball of yarn, and they would say what their picture means. So they had a picture of a farmhouse, I would say, like, “I picked the picture of the farmhouse because I want to live on a farm one day.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

And if that resonated with anyone, they would raise their hand, you hold onto the yarn, throw it to each person who has their hand up. And by the time you’re done, you have this big yarn weaves, it’s a visual representation of all the connections in the room. And it was one of the most powerful exercises I did because you’ve found connections you would never talk about in the workplace.

Van Lai-DuMone:

There was one organization I worked with where this young man, he was probably 22, 23, you picked the picture of a car and said, “I love to restore old classic cars.” And there’s other woman on the other side of the room, late 60’s, like me too. Like where were those who have ever had that connection? And I guarantee you, next time she walks past her desk, they’re having a conversation. Next time he emails her, she’s probably used that email a lot, a little bit faster than she would have before.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s really cool. And so what do you call this?

Van Lai-DuMone:

It was on my Weave of Dreams, I have no idea. No, I don’t.

Douglas Ferguson:

Weave of Dreams.

Van Lai-DuMone:

That isn’t what my Weave of Dreams. Weave of Dreams was around values, that on I don’t know what I called it. I think it was just like connections exercise.

Douglas Ferguson:

Cool, yeah. And I love that the yarn is like, there’s this thing around the connections that were made. So like, even as we moved on and there’s new connections getting made, you can still look back to like, “Oh yeah, I remember this connection now.” You can almost take a photo of it too and you’ve got like these lines, like you’ve got these indicators of like, “Well, the connections are amazing, that’s really cool.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

So speaking of that, I think of mural is now that I’m thinking about that could be a really interesting way to capture it because on mural what you can have are those images, the image that they selected on the mural board. So then you can really just have an artifact of who picked that image and where the connections are.

Douglas Ferguson:

It makes me think like one way to do it is like, if you trapped in a bunch of images into your mural, and so you got, I don’t know, 30 people dropping 30 images, and then you can use their alignment tool. So you could say align left and align top, and now they’re stacked all on top of each other.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Oh, interesting.

Douglas Ferguson:

And then you could like create like a circle of people and you go, “All right, starting with Susan, we’re going to go clockwise. So Susan, do you get the first image?” And you can even put like someone on top of the stack, so they wouldn’t get to see what’s there until you get started.

Douglas Ferguson:

And then they drag it over and then they each drag one, and then you could draw the connections after you… Anyway, that would be kind of fun. The Climer Cards, you mentioned those briefly, were those kind of cool thought starter cards?

Van Lai-DuMone:

Yeah. So Amy Climer, she’s a consultant, she works in the similar work where in bringing creativity into the workplace, and creative thinking, creative problem solving. And she watercolor acrylic painted, I don’t know, these cards, and they’re just like a deck of cards. And on each card there’s just a watercolor picture, whether it’s as a fish or farmhouse, whatever it is.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And it’s just this, they’re so simple you wouldn’t think like, “Well, where are these four?” But you can use them for so many things for storytelling, for activities like this on connection, because with visual images what’s amazing about them is that people read them differently. We all see things through our own perspective, our own lens.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So, a school of fish on a watercolor school of fish and a card to me is might mean something completely different to you. Not mine most likely will mean something completely different to you. So it was a great way to use a visual tool to see other people’s perspectives.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s cool, I love it. So I want to come back to something you mentioned earlier around these kind of pivots and the shifts, and we had to make a big shifts. Gosh, was it 18 months ago now or embarking on what might be another shift with hybrid as people start to think about going back to work and hosting meetings that may or may not include people that are in person and remote?

Douglas Ferguson:

And we’d just released our hybrid work guide which has some thinking in it. I’d love to hear what’s on your mind with regards to having to support this. And when we spoke earlier before the show, you were mentioning that you haven’t had to do much of this yet. But it’s always interesting to hear like how people are processing, what might be coming. And I think other facilitators might find it comforting just to hear some of your perspective on like, “Gosh, what is this going to mean for me?”

Douglas Ferguson:

So what are some of the questions you’re asking yourself right now, as it relates to having to start to maybe hold some hybrid sessions?

Van Lai-DuMone:

Well, it’s interesting because I think this past year has taught me to really embrace ambiguity, and all of us have had to make that shift. So I remember when we first went into lockdown, I’m part of this little consultant group and I remember being on the phone with everyone in Zoom with them saying like, “I’m not doing anything on Zoom, I’m just waiting,” I’m like, “I have no desire to do anything virtually. I’m just going to wait until things go back to normal.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

And about two months into, I’m like, “Okay, maybe I should be doing something differently.” And clients started calling and saying, “Hey, could that workshop we did last year, are we able to do that again this year, but clearly virtually?” And it made me, it forced me to look into it. It forced me to make a shift and just change the way I did things and to think creatively. And to really be like, “Okay, let me create this for them now.”

Van Lai-DuMone:

So like we said before the show, I have no idea what, I had not had experience doing a hybrid facilitation, but what’s interesting is I am not scared of it. I’m really excited because I know we can do it, I know we can do it, there’s tools out there. I know we as facilitators have the mindset to do it.

Van Lai-DuMone:

And I think the experience of redesigning, redeveloping and all that creation we had to deal all the past year built my confidence, whatever that hybrid looks like we’re going to nail this thing and we’re going to make it so amazing and great. So that’s where my mindset is in terms of logistics of how we’re going to do that. No idea, but that’s also exciting to me.

Douglas Ferguson:

No doubt. I think one of the strong messages I wanted to send with a guide was that, this is not a prescriptive guide, this is a set of considerations, as well as some ideas on how to solve some types of things that we’re going to run into.

Douglas Ferguson:

And we even encouraged people to reach out with feedback and with further ideas, because we want it to be a growing, ever expanding guide because we’re going to embark on a journey if you will or time period of experimentation, because there are no right or wrong answers, there are no best practices and we’re going to figure them out as we go.

Van Lai-DuMone:

As we’ve done. And what we were talking about before really plays into that, that this is a community that enjoys sharing and enjoys elevating our profession. So I’m excited to see what that guide is currently and what it becomes.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. Well, I think that lands us to a nice stopping point Van. And I want to thank you for the time today, and I’m excited to hear about all the work you’re doing and creativity, and just the enthusiasm you have for embarking on this next frontier of hybrid. It’s going to be fun times, I’m sure we’ll be comparing notes. And I wanted to give you a moment to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Sure. So I think what we didn’t touch upon is my work around curiosity and it plays into what we just talked about is this idea that like the world is clearly full of unknowns. But when we follow our curiosity, as what if in a forward thinking way, like what if I do X, Y, and Z, and then take small steps towards that curiosity, that’s how we create possibilities for ourselves and for others.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So that is a TEDx talk that I did about just right before we shut down and my TEDx talk is called “What If The Life-Changing Power Of Curiosity And Courage”, so you can go check that out. And I am always on LinkedIn, all day long, that’s my social media platform of choice and of addiction.

Van Lai-DuMone:

So find me on there, I love meeting new people. And then also if you’d like to follow my work and join us for some upcoming events, you can go to my website, worksmartadvantage.com, and join my newsletter called Curious About Creativity.

Douglas Ferguson:

Excellent. Well, I highly encouraged folks to check out the newsletter and any of your upcoming workshops, because not only does Van work with companies and the private workshops, she also periodically offers public workshops.

Douglas Ferguson:

So definitely worth checking out because this is really incredible stuff. And remember, there’s a difference between team building and team development and it’s worth doing, it will pay dividends. So thanks again Van for being on the show, it was a tremendous pleasure chatting with you.

Van Lai-DuMone:

Thanks, Douglas. Really enjoyed it.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

The post Episode 56: Normalize Creativity in the Workplace appeared first on Voltage Control.

What could you do, how great could you be if you weren’t afraid? The greatest prohibitor of growth in both our personal and professional lives is ourselves; we stand in our own way. Why? Most often it’s because we lack confidence in our abilities, or what is referred to as a confidence gap. We stop ourselves from achieving greatness because we don’t think we have what it takes to do so, however, we are often well equipped. Our disbelief in ourselves, therefore, keeps up from moving forward even if we have the skillset to succeed. 

The Confidence Gap

Everybody talks about a skills gap as the reason people do not reach their potential–the “gap” that exists between what an employee can actually do and the skills they need to do their job effectively. In other words, they need more knowledge to perform well on the job. However, I’ve found so often that it’s a confidence gap that prevents people most from making progress. Individuals fear that they do not know enough (even though they do) and are therefore not competent. For example, I hear facilitators say all of the time that they deal with imposter syndrome or the feeling that they are far less competent than other people perceive them to be. They feel that they are ill-equipped to lead a team or they question if they are the right person for the job. What this boils down to is a lack of confidence–disbelief in one’s own skills and know-how of what they’re doing, how they’re leading, how they’re showing up in the facilitation space. 

I also see this confidence gap in companies as a whole. It was evident in a Design Sprint we ran for Favor, the food delivery app. They already knew all of the information we presented them, but until the Design Sprint, they lacked the confidence to do the work. The workshop helped them get comfortable with doing the necessary work on their own. In this case, and in so many others I see, it’s not that people lack the knowledge or skill to do something, it’s that they’re not assured of their capability to execute it. 

It’s important to acknowledge that there are a lot of stereotypes and threats that can damage an individual’s confidence and therefore performance. Notably, statistics show that there is a confidence gap between men and women–disproportionately favoring men. A study by Cornell psychologist David Dunning and the Washington State University psychologist Joyce Ehrlinger showed that women avoid careers in science because they believe themselves to be less competent than men. In the study, women and men scored equally on a science quiz but women underestimated their performance because they thought less of their scientific reasoning abilities than men did. Linda Baker, professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, shares findings in her book Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide that demonstrate how damaging the implications of this confidence divide can be. In studies of business-school students, she found that men negotiate salary four times more than women do, and when women do negotiate they ask for 30% less money.

The Atlantic explored the gender-influenced confidence gap in their article ‘The Confidence Gap’: “Compared with men, women don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions, they predict they’ll do worse on tests, and they generally underestimate their abilities. This disparity stems from factors ranging from upbringing to biology.” It’s important to be aware of underlined factors that affect confidence so that you can help people remove them as roadblocks when necessary. 

Create a Culture of Confidence

Inspiring confidence in others is essential when you’re a leader. Team members that lack confidence do not perform as well and ultimately hold the entire team back. The best way to help people become comfortable with their skills, and thereby gain confidence, is to practice them. If you are leadership looking to help your team build confidence, one approach is to give them moments of practice. You can encourage building and practicing skills by creating groups or cohorts, building community, and/or establishing Slack groups for people to network and learn from each other. One real-world example of this is Cisco’s Change Lab. It’s a community that meets regularly to support and inspire its members. The group maintains momentum on progress and thereby builds confidence in their skills. 

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One way we offer skillset support and help grow confidence in facilitators at Voltage Control is with our weekly Facilitation Lab; it’s our “confidence booster” for the facilitation community. We intentionally create a safe space for facilitators to practice their skills and get comfortable with facilitation so that they can confidently execute their abilities in real-world situations. 

What are different ways you and your team can support one another to practice your craft and build confidence? Let’s look at a few effective ways leadership can instill confidence to get the most out of their team members.

1. Establish agency/authority of confidence in your team

When companies invest in their team, and more importantly transparently demonstrate to them that they are investing in them, it boosts teams’ confidence. Whether it’s investing time, money, or resources, gestures from authority that communicate, “You are worthwhile and I trust you to do this work,” are ultimately saying, “I have confidence in you.” Individuals tend to have more confidence in themselves when they feel supported by leadership. A real-world example is Adobe’s Kickbox program. It’s an initiative to enable employees to take an active role in their company’s innovation process by submitting and validating their own ideas. Team members receive boxes with necessary open-source materials to help them be more individually innovative. Included in the boxes is a credit card with money on it to support individuals’ ideas. Diana Joseph, former Senior Manager of Learning Research at Adobe, now CEO of the Corporate Accelerator Forum, says “the credit card in each Kickbox sends a clear message that the company trusts the employee — to do meaningful things when given the resources and to recognize what’s worth doing in the first place.  In other words, the company trusts you to lead.”

2. Create an intrinsically comfortable environment for people to grow 

While it’s necessary for people to practice their skills in order to get better, many people are afraid to do so. They fear that if they make a mistake it will reflect badly upon their capabilities. The irony is that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The only way to practice and build skills is to get comfortable with failing forward. Doing something is the only way to learn how to do it and failure inevitably accompanies it. When leadership creates a safe environment for people to try and fail, team members are more comfortable taking action. People need to know that leadership believes in them. Establish a foundation of psychological safety in your organization. Let team members know that not only is it okay for them to fail, but it’s encouraged because it’s how they grow. Prioritize growth over perfection. Team members feel supported and safe to build their skills when leadership shows that they value their growth and support its evolution. 

3. Break the Learning loop 

It’s one thing to think about what you want to learn or the skills you want to obtain and another thing entirely to actually experience learning them. The best way to learn is to learn by doing. You can know something cognitively, it can theoretically make sense, but it won’t completely “click” for you until you experience it for yourself. For example, say you want to learn how to throw a baseball. You can read about how to throw a baseball and understand how it works, but you won’t know how to do it until you actually try it for yourself. It’s imperative that you prioritize actionable learning–that is, learning skills by exercising them–to help people build confidence. The more people practice, the more capable they feel to execute, and the more confident they feel in their abilities. The more confident and capable they feel, the more they’ll want to practice to get better, and so on. It’s a loop that feeds into itself. You can help team members break the traditional learning loop by offering hands-on training and opportunities for them to learn by doing the work themselves. 

Overconfidence

While success positively correlates with confidence as much as it does competence, it’s important to consider “overconfidence”. Be wary of resistance to learning with people who are overconfident in their abilities. When someone overtly thinks they are an expert on a subject, they are less likely to welcome in new information: “I know everything there is to know; I’m an expert.” This mindset can actually lead to a decrease in performance. If individuals are blocking themselves from practicing and learning, they are not getting the essential learning-by-doing experience they need to continue growing. Someone may talk the talk, but can they walk the walk? Again, the only way to improve your skillset is to practice using it; do what you know to continue learning instead of just talking about what you know.

Now, overconfidence can also be beneficial if combined with humility and practice. When someone overestimates their abilities, is humble about it, and continues to practice their skill set, they are more likely to believe in themselves and therefore execute well. In this way, their overconfidence lays the way for them to continue learning because they feel that they are already competent to do so. Fear or lack of confidence does not stand in their way.  Their belief in themselves positively correlates with their willingness and capability to learn. 

Put on the training wheels, then take them off

So you’ve invested in your team to show them you have confidence in them, you’ve created a psychologically safe environment for them to grow in, and you’ve provided them with the support and tools they need to learn by doing. Now what? It’s important to keep the “training wheels” on–or offer the support team members need–until they feel they can roll without them. However, there is a delicate balance between offering support and holding peoples’ hands to a fault; there is an element of assistance as well as an element of “set them free”. Remember, the best way to learn is by doing. Offer necessary support along the way but leave room for people to try and fail. 

Get the most out of your team members (and yourself!) by intentionally fostering confidence and exercising your skills as often as you can. 

Practice Makes Competent

We offer an array of resources and opportunities for professionals (of all levels) to practice their skills and grow more confidence in them.

Community/Groups

• Weekly Facilitation Lab: a safe and experimental space for facilitators to learn, network, and evolve.
• Control the Room community: share experiences and learn from/with peers in the facilitation community. 

Resources

• Downloads: free custom tools & templates to run magical meetings. 
• MURAL & Miro templates: use our custom templates to run magical meetings and events.

Online Courses:

• Magical Meetings: learn how to run more effective and engaging meetings.
• Design Thinking Foundations: learn the key foundations in design thinking to better solve problems and seize opportunities.

Live Workshops

• Events calendar: join us for live training workshops and facilitation conferences. 

The post Bridge the Confidence Gap: How to Instill Confidence in Your Team appeared first on Voltage Control.

“As leaders, I think it’s very important to determine ‘what kind of community are you building?’ ‘What kind of space are you providing?’ Leaders then have to decide ‘what kind of communities are we creating [in the organization], what kind of spaces and what kind of empathy do we have for the people on our team?’” -Elizabeth Maloba

Elizabeth Maloba is the Co-Founder of Nahari, an organization built for creating authentic spaces where collaborative learning and collective decision-making unfold. She understands the critical foundation of building community in the ecosystem of an organization and the level of trust needed to thrive when seeking solutions. Elizabeth ultimately believes that community is more than a place, it’s also an identity and ongoing process. Her work leans into the continuous journey of improving team dynamics and a leader’s need to transform conversations. As an expert facilitator with architectural influence, she challenges organizations’ approaches when conflict arises to instill sustainable, implementable resolutions from direct collaboration.  

In this episode of Control the Room, Elizabeth and I discuss the value of experiential methods, the impact the pandemic had on mental health in the workplace, the necessity and personal meaning behind community in organizations, and the benefits having challenging conversations have on cross cross-sectoral collaboration. Listen in to hear Elizabeth unveil the elements behind creating the community you envision for your organization. She also explores how to identify the root of core challenges your organization faces so that your team can build greater solutions together.  

Show Highlights

[1:32] Elizabeth’s Creative Start in Facilitation
[10:25] The Impact in Experiential Methods 
[16:18] The Pandemic’s Impact on Mental Health   
[23:50] Elizabeth’s Take on the Significance of Community 
[29:24] Cross-Sectoral Collaboration & Elizabeth’s Final Thoughts

Links | Resources

Elizabeth’s LinkedIn
Nahari

About the Guest

Elizabeth Maloba is the Co-Founder of Nahari, a change-making organization striving to create authentic spaces for collaborative decision-making & uncovering sustainable solutions to build communal teams. Elizabeth’s true passion is developing long-lasting beneficial relationships to support global development. As a speaker, entrepreneur, and moderator with a career spanning over 20 years in transforming challenges to solutions, she continues her mission to transform conversations by seeking out facilitators leading organizations. Her specialty skills range from facilitation and capacity building to knowledge management and conflict resolution. She is a current committee member of the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife and Friend of City Park, where she is committed to offer contributions towards policy development on all global, continental and national levels. Elizabeth continues her mission at Nahari by building better organizations through the lens of community, starting with one empathetic conversation at a time. 

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a change agency that helps enterprises sustain innovation and teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Full Transcript

Douglas:

Welcome to the Control The Room Podcast. A series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out. All the service of having a truly magical meeting. Thanks for listening. If you’d like to join us live for a session sometime, you can join our weekly Control The Room facilitation lab. It’s a free event to meet fellow facilitators and explore new techniques so you can apply the things you learn in the podcast in real time with other facilitators. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab. If you’d like to learn more about my new book, Magical Meetings, you can download the Magical Meetings quick start guide, a free PDF reference with some of the most important pieces of advice from the book. Download a copy today at voltagecontrol.com/magical-meetings-quick-guide. Today, I’m with Elizabeth Maloba, co-founder of Nahari, where she fosters the development of collaborative approaches to addressing development challenges. Welcome to the show, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth:

Thanks. Thanks. Great to be here finally.

Douglas:

Yeah. Excited to be talking today. So I want to hear a little bit about how you got started in this work around creative change-making.

Elizabeth:

Wow. I always think back and I’m like, “My God, I don’t know how this happened.” Partly because of course I followed the usual career path that everyone does, which is go to school, go to university, get a degree. And the idea was supposed to be that with a degree, in my case, this was a degree in architecture, I would go to the next step, which is the professional career path. And in this case go work at an architectural firm and go up the ranks. But somewhere along the way in college, I worked to pay my way through college. And some of the work I did then was facilitation work. I was working on team building and leadership development, a lot of it based on experiential methods. And I think I enjoyed that a lot, a lot, lot more than I did architecture because I ended up choosing that as my career path rather than architecture. So that’s how I ended up where I am.

Elizabeth:

One of the things I remember very markedly is that I read then the book, The World Is Flat. It had just come out. The first edition of the World Is Flat had just come out. And I remember thinking it would be so exciting to be able to work around the world without necessarily moving from my home city, et cetera. But at that point, internet was not what it is now and so on. And so it was just like, “Oh, such wonderful dreams in this book, but it will never happen.” And the other day I thought about it and thought actually it finally happened.

Douglas:

We’re here.

Elizabeth:

So in my lifetime, it changed.

Douglas:

That’s amazing. I’m really curious how your training in architecture has played a role in your facilitation style, because I specifically think about architectural charrettes and there’s some facilitation type of things that happen in the architectural process. And plus as an architect, learning to be a systems thinker and how things fit together could potentially contribute to the ability to help with linking and connecting people’s thoughts and things and seeing those patterns. So I’m just curious if you’ve ever noticed any of it? And if there’s any specific things you can draw to in your architectural training that have contributed to your facilitation style?

Elizabeth:

That’s actually a really good question because my family, everybody asks, “So why did you take six years of architecture if you’re not going to use it?” And the honest truth is that I think I use it all the time. One big aspect of it, as you say, is the design thinking, systems thinking, creative thinking aspect, where you’re faced with a blank canvas, you have a challenge and you need a solution and what do we do now? And all the bringing together of different aspects to build a comprehensive solution is a big part of architectural training. But I think for me, the other really bigger part is being able to connect with the context. So architecture is very much, so much more about, we spend a lot of time as architects trying to understand the weather patterns, the sun path in the place we are in, the ground that we’re standing on.

Elizabeth:

And things like the slope, the rainfall, the type of soil and geology that we’re working with. And it’s always about understanding the context and then putting up something that works best in that context. And in that sense with conversations, I tell people, “I design conversations.” With conversations and especially with collaborative processes, the contexts are really, really important. And so that ability to understand context and somehow synthesize learnings from that context and use that as a foundation to build a solution, is a very important part that I bring from architecture into my work.

Douglas:

It’s really fascinating this notion of the environment and the conditions you’re talking about and studying the weather and how the position of the sun is going to impact where you might place a window or the structural integrity of something might be impacted by the conditions under which it’s going to need to live and exist. And it was really interesting because I can immediately see the parallels between when we’re thinking about asking a team to come into this environment, and how are we thinking about the initial conditions that they walk into and how we set that up. And even how we maybe even protect them from conditions that we don’t want them to be in. I was just talking with someone the other day about how challenging it could be if the work that they normally do is within earshot. And it can be so tempting to say, “Oh, I need to go deal with that,” versus if you’re in another building or another room far away, those interruptions, distractions don’t happen. So that’s really fascinating to think about how just accounting for the conditions in the environment is so important.

Elizabeth:

I think it’s important as you say, both when we bring them in to work collaboratively to develop the solution, but also when we ask them to go out and implement the solution. So of the things that drew me to this work, as opposed to traditional consulting, where I’m an expert and I give my input, has to do with exactly this need, that the team I’m working with, if it’s a team let’s say in Nairobi is not the same as a team in Berlin, in Germany. And they have different conditions and they have different cultural processes and practices and norms. And how do we make sure that the solution we are building is sustainable within those conditions? How do we make sure that what they do and come up with as a solution can therefore then survive or thrive, actually not survive, but thrive in the context that it’s going to be implemented, because you see so many organizations, I find this especially when it comes to strategic planning, you see so many organizations that pay a lot of money for very expensive experts and get a really glossy looking strategic plan.

Elizabeth:

And then it’s not implementable because for one reason or another, the issues of a context we’re not taken into account or were not properly understood because maybe they were lost in cross-cultural translation. And therefore that thing is actually not implementable in the place that it’s being asked to be implemented. I have a very interesting story around that actually, we had to go and work in Benin, which is in West Africa, in the Sahel, with a friend, a colleague. And we were making this list of things we need. And she insisted she needs a room with a hot shower. And the people in the Sahel said, “Come on, you’re not going to need a hot shower here. Yes, the city you’re going to, there are no hotels really with hot showers, but you’re not going to need it.”

Elizabeth:

And she said, “No, I must have a hot shower. I don’t take cold showers.” And we go to the Sahel and it was that time of year when it’s so hot that nobody opens the hot water tap. So she didn’t use it and she said, “From now on, I’m going to be very careful what I say, because the context, the context.”

Douglas:

That’s amazing. I love that story. Also, it pays to unlearn a bit and be curious about what the locals or what the folks on the ground are telling you. If they’re saying it’s not necessary, it’s like maybe there’s something to what I’m hearing.

Elizabeth:

Oh, yes, definitely. You always have to figure out what assumptions am I bringing? And as a facilitator, this I’m getting more and more aware of, what assumptions am I bringing? What norms am I bringing into this space? How am I affecting the outcome in this space? Because we like to think of ourselves as neutral and we market the practice of facilitation as a neutral surface, but actually we are not. We are a very powerful force in that room. And we have to be careful what we then do with the power that we have.

Douglas:

I completely agree with that. I think the notion of being neutral comes from this perspective of not necessarily being biased toward an outcome.

Elizabeth:

Mm-hmm.

Douglas:

We don’t have to support it and we haven’t been living and breathing it for a year or years. So we maybe don’t have that baggage, but you’re right, we wield a lot of power and it’s important to think about, are we unwillingly biasing the group by just the dynamic we’re creating?

Elizabeth:

Mm-hmm.

Douglas:

So you mentioned experiential methods and how you were drawn to that. And so I’d love to hear a little bit more about what that means to you and how that surfaces in your work?

Elizabeth:

Wow. I think it’s been some time since experiential methods featured in my work, but I started out there. In those days, outward bound was the main thing and leadership. So yeah, it was outward bound, it was national outdoor leadership school. It’s the tuff that I see Bear Grylls doing now on TV and I’m like, “Been there, done that.” But what I loved about it then was that we learned by doing. And not by doing experimental things. It wasn’t something that was put on a table and you had to try it out, no I’m sorry, you had to get 22 kilometers from point A to point B with a map and a compass and a group of 10 people that you somehow had to lead and manage and someone. And then we would have a debrief about how that went, how did it go for you as a leader? How did that go for the team as a team and so on?

Elizabeth:

And that was much more effective at team building and translating learning within a team than situations where we sat down in a room and said, “These are the dynamics of a good team. And this is how you should have good interpersonal relations.” It’s different from when you have to walk 20 kilometers and you’re exhausted and you have to carry 60 kilograms, and there’s a person on your team who’s decided they’re not carrying the 60 kilograms and they’re not walking any more kilometers. And how do you then get there as a team at the end of the day? And when we debrief, then we have to talk. It’s very different in terms of improving team dynamics from the very theoretical exercises that come without experiential work.

Elizabeth:

So in that sense, I don’t do much team team development now, but when I’m working on team dynamics, I really try and give them a real challenge to solve that means that they have to then apply, bring their best strengths, bring their skills, and use their interpersonal relations skills in a very pragmatic way, as opposed to a theoretical discussion about what would be an ideal interpersonal relationship exchange, for example.

Douglas:

Yeah, that makes me think about this. We often talk about you can’t live in the conceptual all the time, and at some point you have to make it concrete. And making that jump from the conceptual to the concrete is very difficult. And so, it sounds like this experiential stuff that you’re talking about, the outward bound stuff is totally concrete, they’re in it, you can’t get much more physical than that. They’ve got a 60 kilogram pack on and they’re just sweating it out. And it’s interesting to think about what are some of the parallels or some of the analogous moves that you can make in the conference room that allow people to embody stuff, allow people to really experience it more than just think it.

Elizabeth:

One of the methodologies that I found that work is actually getting people to move around. So body movements. Another thing I find is trying to get rid of all the formality in the room. So as much as possible, and that’s normally not so easy. And also depending on the cultural setting, is sometimes not possible. When I work with diplomatic circles, then it’s really problematic because there are protocols. And those have to be, in some cases enforced, otherwise there could be a diplomatic incident. But try as much as possible to get rid of a hierarchy and try as much as possible to get people to do practical things and work on real challenges that that need solutions. And then they can bring their creativity to that problem and that challenge.

Elizabeth:

I have a friend who put it really nicely, she said, “Listen, I can tell you the swimming pool is warm. I can tell you that the water is 22 degrees Celsius. I can tell you it’s three meters deep at deepest point, but you will not know how that feels like until you’re actually thrown in at the deep end and it’s above your head and it’s warm. Or maybe it’s cold.” The experience of it is not describable. So if you’re dealing with crisis preparation or crisis planning, people can describe very perfectly that there will be a pandemic. And the pandemic is a really good example. The World Health Organization had a pandemic as one of the top seven challenges that would face the world within a certain timeline. They weren’t sure so they thought it would be a flu virus rather than a Corona. Yes, so two different things, but basically they had this as a threat. But describing it was not the same as what we’re going through living through it.

Elizabeth:

So long as it was a nice theoretical construct, there were nice theoretical constructs about how the World Health Organization was going to respond to a pandemic. But when it practically happened, then we saw what happened. Then we saw countries closing their borders. We saw everybody running into nationalism, protectionism, and so on. And suddenly we realize, “Okay, so this is really what happens when it’s real, as opposed to a nice theoretical discussion of what happens if we have a pandemic.”

Douglas:

Yeah. And speaking of the pandemic, in the pre-show chat we were talking a bit about mental health and how folks are still, I would say, navigating trauma and trying to understand it. And I’m a firm believer that as we start to open back up more, people are starting to shift that shift. And those changes and behaviors are going to expose that trauma a bit more because people are going to go through a transition of being in hunker down mode versus like, “Oh, everything’s quote unquote, back to normal. And so now I’ve got to reconcile this trauma that I’ve been shoving down.” And it sounds like you had had some experiences with that with some friends talking about just mental health. And I’m just curious to hear your thoughts on what you’re noticing, and also maybe how you think that might play out in the business setting to you?

Elizabeth:

So on one hand, what I’m noticing is that, we were actually just having a conversation and then I noticed, “Oh my God, I’m so privileged. I live in a house with other people.” I have a family so I live in a house with other people. So I don’t just have all my conversations online via digital means, I can talk to real people, whether we love together or fight together or whatever it is, but they’re real people in my space who I can talk to. And some of my friends and some of facilitators I work with around the world, they live alone. And in extreme lockdown, it was them, and if they’re really lucky, their pet cat, dog, fish, that’s it. And all their conversations were on digital platforms. And I think that was hard in its own way. It was hard in its own way, in so many ways for them.

Elizabeth:

But then last week, I think I was in a different conversation and we were talking about how the children learning from home went. And I was saying how I enjoyed it a lot. And a friend of mine said, “Yeah, Elizabeth, you’re not a good example, keep quiet.” I said, “Why?” She said, “Because the conversations in your house are not how conversations in most other households go. Many households are not safe spaces and they’re spaces of violence and they’re spaces where children are just told, ‘Sit down, shut up. Don’t talk. Why are you speaking now?’ Et cetera. And it’s not a constant engaging of curiosity between parents and children about what are you doing? And can I find out more about it?” And so this discussion was then that this is definitely, there’s going to be a big trend of people who really want to go back to offices.

Elizabeth:

And I’ve had this among a lot of people who say, “I used to think, I want to work from home. I used to think I’d love to be self-employed and be my own boss and make an office space at home. But the pandemic has taught me that I need an office. I need to escape this place that is my house for various reasons.” And that is a whole other area of mental health and trauma related issues to explore, because I think people then are coming to terms or being forced to come to terms with what kind of environment do they have in their houses? And why do I need to escape my house to go to work? But I think the bigger thing, especially in my context, is that people don’t talk about it. They’re not comfortable talking about it. They’re not comfortable admitting that they need help or that they sought help.

Elizabeth:

And there’s still a very big community of people who think you can push through it or power through it, or be strong through it. I’m like, “It’s an illness. You need help. And if the help is tablets, then the help is tablets, but you need help. You can’t recover from a tumor by soldiering through it. In the same way, you can’t recover from mental health challenges by soldiering through them. You have to get the help that you need from the specialist that gives it.” So I think more and more, this conversation is gaining traction and people are starting to talk about it. But especially in my context, in Kenya, let me say that especially, it’s still not something that people are so comfortable admitting and putting out there that they’re doing or they’re going through.

Douglas:

Yeah. I think people struggle with that many ways, across many locations, there are certainly folks in all sorts of contexts that feel uncomfortable sharing that. And it feels like a private thing and a lot of people suffer in silence. And so I think that leadership can play a big role in remaining curious, and really listening, employees and teammates and collaborators might not be completely forthright about what’s going on, but listening to their preferences and tuning in to what they’re asking for might shed some light on their needs at the very least. And I think it’s really important. To your point, some people are craving to be in office, while others are wanting to avoid it like the plague. And so we have to think about how we support things and also be willing to make some hard decisions around who we can support and who might have to look elsewhere to find the ideal situation.

Douglas:

There’s a lot of talk of people shifting jobs during this time. And I think it’s probably inevitable because that’s a big shift for a lot of folks. And they’re going to have to think about what that means for them and their family and how they take care of themselves. I think it’s a big deal. And I think as leaders, we just need to listen and pay attention.

Elizabeth:

I think also as leaders, I keep saying, well, the pandemic obviously made it obvious that we need a sense of community, but as leaders, I think it’s very important to determine so what is your community? What is the sense of community? When I was being told, “Your house is not the standard house.” My house didn’t become like that by… It’s by design, it’s intentional. So then is the question, what kind of community are you building? What kind of space are you providing? Not just in terms of physical office space and furniture and furnishings and fittings, but also in terms of communication and collaboration.

Elizabeth:

I remember being in a conversation with a business leader somewhere, and they were telling me about a team member and I asked, “But doesn’t so-and-so have three toddlers?” And they said, “Yes.” And I said, “Okay, so why were you calling them at X, Y, Z hour?” And they looked at me blankly like, “What’s wrong?” I said, “This is toddler primetime. This is bedtime, bath time, nap time crashing all into one. And this is the moment you want to have a call with them. It’s not going to work because they have three toddlers. We have to be cognizant of that.”

Elizabeth:

Or I had to have a call with someone else and I knew she was a new mum. And so I had the flexibility to say, “Listen, I know you’re a new mum. I know that babies are unpredictable. If we need to start 30 minutes later or two hours later, just let me know and we’ll figure it out because I’ve been there, I know this. And there’s no point in me trying to force you to be in a call if your baby’s crying.” But leaders then have to decide what kind of communities are we creating, what kind of spaces and what kind of empathy do we have for the people on our team?

Douglas:

So I want to take that community piece and run with that for a moment because I love just the notion of communities. And I’ve done a little bit of community building myself, but I’m always in awe of people that are really great at it. And so I want to hear a little bit about your approach and what community means to you and what you think is critical for sustaining and nurturing community?

Elizabeth:

I think I’ve went around about my work for so many years without the awareness of community, because I just didn’t think about it. It was there, it worked, it supported what I was doing, and so I wasn’t thinking much about it. One of my first moments of awareness came about in the conversation, not between me actually, but between my son and my dad. And they were talking about the name of the tribe. And as children tend to ask, my son asked, “Grandpa, what does Luhya mean?” And straight off the top of my head I was like, “I’m sure it doesn’t have meaning, it’s a name.” And then my dad says, “Wait, this is what it means.” And it turned out that it’s not only an identity, it’s a place, it’s a process, it’s something that happened in my cultural community where people came together and had conversations of all kinds. And there were different roles for different people in that space. And it made it work. And somehow they made meaning together. And somehow they found a way out of different challenges together.

Elizabeth:

And after this conversation, I started thinking actually, “So what is my community? What is my Luhya?” The exact question they ask in my tribe is, “From what Luyha do you come from?” And it’s exactly the same thing. What Luhya do I come from? What Luhya am I creating? What’s the identity of this space? What’s the space that we use to meet, because it’s also a space, which is in this sense, normally a very big open space with a fire, so it’s warm, with food, so nobody’s hungry. Sharing of food, so nobody’s hungry. And depending on the day and the circumstance and how it went, there might be a story, there might be music, there might be exchange or information like, “This happened,” or, “I met so-and-so and they said hello to you.” And they were kind of like, I would say the facilitators of the space where the elders, and we had elders always in this space. And the elders have special roles in this space.

Elizabeth:

And I call them superpowers because I’ve been in such a space and we could be discussing, I don’t know, the ingredients for making a meal with my grandma and straight from the ingredients she would immediately pick the most difficult challenge someone was facing, like, “Why did you drop out of school?” And you would be like, “Okay, this conversation just got complex fast.” And everybody else in this place has to figure one, “Do I need to be in this conversation? Two, if I’m in this conversation, why am I here? Is it as a listener? Is it to provide a counterpoint to whatever is going to be discussed, et cetera. And when is it my turn to speak? And when is it not my turn to speak?” But the person who actually had the power, superpower to dynamically transform that conversation was always the eldest, was always the grandparents, grandmothers, grandfathers, sometimes aunties and uncles. So there’s the space for elders and I see facilitators a lot as elders. And then how do we use those superpowers to transform those conversations in that way?

Douglas:

That’s pretty awesome. I love this idea. And it brings me back to some of my family gatherings as a child. And I remember definitely my grandmother would, without apology, would go right to the issue and sometimes catch you off guard. I feel like that was an art form. Didn’t wait for that perfect moment. It was almost like the opposite of what a perfect moment might be just because, in a way that’s the moment because you’re not expecting it and you got to be raw and you got to be real and authentic.

Elizabeth:

Mm-hmm. And it’s here and it’s like, “Okay, you can escape if you want to. You can stand up and get out of the circle, but then you’re getting out of a circle.”

Douglas:

Yeah, that’s a very obvious sign, you can’t just slip away. That’s amazing.

Elizabeth:

So in organizations, but also in cross sectoral collaboration and so on, I keep thinking, “We need this kind of spaces and we need more elders and we need more people who can put it on the spot and get people to be authentic in the conversation and to address the issue that’s on the table. Sometimes to bring the hidden cards onto the table.” You have this conversation, people are like, “This is driven by interest in values.” And you’re like, “Okay, wait, let’s put the interests and values on the table.” And then it becomes interesting because some people don’t want to show their interest or show their values.

Douglas:

So it’s interesting that you mentioned cross sector because I wanted to bring that up and hear a little bit about your thoughts around, what are some of the challenges or some of the considerations that you take into that work? Because I can imagine there’s some unique needs when you bring together cross sector groups, or are you just doing work that’s at that intersection?

Elizabeth:

So one of the big things about cross-sectoral work is that it usually doesn’t happen because the parties want to work together, it happens because they find themselves in a circumstance that forces them to work together. So, say for example, we have a large water resource and it’s sitting in a certain community. Then you find that the community representatives, et cetera, who you would put in civil society who have the interests of what the community wants to do with that resource, but then you find maybe you have a public sector agency that wants to do, I don’t know, hydroelectric power out of the same resource, and maybe another one that wants to do irrigation. And this has happened in my country out of the same resource. And then you find that you have some private sector interests that maybe want to, I don’t know, bottling plants that want to do soft drinks or something, and it’s the same resource.

Elizabeth:

And so of necessity, now we must sit around the table and talk to each other. And the biggest thing I have found across all those conversations is, first of all, we’re here, not because we chose to be here, but because we must be here. And second of all, we don’t trust each other. So if you talk to the public sector, they’ll tell you a lot of things about the private sector being fragmented. They’ll tell you a lot of things about the private sector being driven by greed, a lot of things about the private sector having profits as their main interest and that not being a good thing. If you talk to the civil society, which kind of represents the people, then again, there’ll be a lot of conversation about private sector greed, private sector profit maximization, which is not a good thing and not of interest in this conversation and so on.

Elizabeth:

But there’ll also be issues around state control, around privacy and protection of rights, especially in relationships with the state. And then when you go to the private sector, again, they will have the issues around state control, privacy, and protection around the state, but they will have other issues which are around waste, corruption, et cetera, that they bring to the table in relation to government. So the trust is almost, many times at the beginning, at zero. And then you’ve got to fudge it together, patch it together, make a quilt, right?

Douglas:

Yeah.

Elizabeth:

Bring different things together and sew it together. And this takes time. It requires time. But as I said, then it also requires elders and authentic conversations. People who can find a way to get some honest truths on the table. But it’s not just elders roles that are there, there are other roles. I was in a conversation with some friends of mine, they said, “Sometimes you have to be the hotelier, the host. All you’re doing is providing the space and the food and making sure everyone’s comfortable. Sometimes you have to be the postman, taking messages between one group and another behind the scenes and making sure things work.’ So there are different roles that need to be played, but they need to happen for this to take place successfully. So it’s a lot of work, it’s not easy.

Douglas:

What do you think is the first starting point to building those relationships and helping people get to that understanding so they can have those deeper conversations? What are some of your early moves to start sowing the seeds to stitch those things together?

Elizabeth:

Yeah, as I said, a lot of my conversations with my friends we found out that the work we do behind the scenes as postman, just having conversations one-on-one with Douglas and then, okay, have another one-on-one conversation with someone else. And you’re taking the message from Douglas to this person, bringing the message from that person to that Douglas, so that by the time we sit around the table, they’re not so shocked when this comes out from the other person, but they also maybe have warmed up to it and are ready to have the conversation. So don’t go into the round table quilt without the one-on-one conversations before, and without the shuttle services before, having conversations with the other people. The other thing I found a lot that works is yes, the hospitality, it matters. Where are we? How do people feel? Are they comfortable? Is it a safe space in that sense, physically, emotionally?

Elizabeth:

So one of the big things actually with digital conversations then has been, is this a safe digital way? Nobody’s going to hack into it? Issue number one. Issue number two, nobody’s going to record it and start distributing the recording without my permission? Because if we’re going to have an authentic conversation, then I don’t really want it being played out on somebody’s social media accounts. So what’s a safe digital space versus what’s not a safe digital space, has been a big conversation. And then translation. A lot of things get lost in translation. You and I both speak English, but it’s not the same English. And it’s marked when you’re in a room with different countries, but sometimes it’s also marked when you’re in a room with different sectors. So impact for a business person, a private sector person is not the same as impact for a government employee, is not the same as impact for a civil society.

Elizabeth:

So in a conversation, you will have this thing and everyone says, “We want to have impact.” And if you don’t unpack what impact is, you’re going to leave that room with three different understandings of impact.

Douglas:

Yeah. I’ve tun into that all the time. People will use jargon. They’ll shorten language and metaphor, or they’ll use maybe trite language. Impact, I would say, is a very overused word. And so even in our company where everyone understands each other and where we’re going and they’re working a lot together, if someone says something like impact, there’s a high chance that there’s a lot of different interpretations of what that might mean. That unpacking is so critical.

Elizabeth:

So those would be my tips and thoughts around, how do you get this started? And then try and go for the easier things to achieve , succeed at those, and then people, over time, relationships build, successes build, and people are a bit more confident and are willing to take bigger risks, but don’t get, any way mostly, you will never get them to take a big risk at the beginning. Everybody will stay out. You can already tell when it’s not going to work because it’s too big a risk was everybody’s like, “I can’t do that.”

Douglas:

Awesome, incredible. Well, I think that actually brings us to a good stopping point. It has been great chatting with you today about, not only cross sector and how to approach some of these kind of groups where they might not fully understand each other and the stitching some of that together through hospitality and just common understanding and the mental health experiential methods, and even just how the background in architecture has influenced your style. So that’s all been really fascinating to chat. It’s been great having you. I want to give you just a moment to share a final thought with our listeners. Anything you want to leave them with?

Elizabeth:

Yes. One thing I always tell people is, cross-sectoral, and not just cross-sectoral, collaboration is not a default thing, and it’s not always the solution. And I know this is counter intuitive because I am a facilitator and so I should be saying, this is the thing. No, collaboration is not the default thing and not the only way to do this. And there are situations when it’s not the thing to do. And so don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have a collaborative solution all the time. And especially because it takes a lot of time and energy and investment to do collaborative stuff, you really have to know when do you need it. And sometimes you just don’t need it. If there’s a fire and I need to get you out of the house as quickly as possible, it’s no longer about getting consensus and buy in. It’s, “Can we get out now?” So you need to know when it’s useful and when, okay in this situation, something else needs to be done and not necessarily this intervention.

Douglas:

Excellent. Well, again, it’s been a super pleasure having you today, Elizabeth, thanks for joining the show.

Elizabeth:

Thanks, Douglas.

Douglas:

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

The post Episode 50: An Empathetic Leader Builds Better Organizations appeared first on Voltage Control.

“I think leadership is really the art of correction, not perfection. We are going to get it wrong. Right? The question is: ‘How do you recover in those moments? Can you recover with grace, with curiosity? ‘”-Robin Anselmi

Robin Anselmi is the Chief Executive Officer at Conversant, a consulting agency that specializes in having high-quality conversations with team organizations and ultimately sets them up for success to achieve their biggest goals. She believes in the power of a grounded, connected leader to set the standard in growing together. Robin continues her mission at Conversant to reinforce the importance of human connection within organizations and striving towards innovation. As she encourages leaders to personify staying present, Robin reminds us to create the culture and strategy that works best for our own organization. The foundation resides in the quality of your team’s honest, authentic conversations.  

In this episode of Control the Room, Robin and I discuss the impact of presence in leaders leading to team innovation, the ongoing balance in assumptions, the leader’s unique challenge of correction instead of perfection, and the magnitude of a connected leader in its organization. Listen in to hear how Robin reveals the importance of human connection leading to authentic conversations, and the significance of a leader listening while remaining grounded in presence.

Show Highlights

[0:55] Robin’s Start in Key Company Conversations 
[6:12] The Impact of Presence to Lead to Innovation
[12:47] The Assumptions Take 
[15:52] The Art of Correction, Not Perfection 
[18:24] The Importance of a Leader’s Non-Defensive Approach
[23:11] A Complex World Requires a Connected Leader
[24:27] A Conversation on the Workforce Future Forward & Robin’s Final Thoughts 

Links | Resources

Robin’s LinkedIn
Conversant
Love: The Next Leadership Skill

About the Guest

Robin Anselmi is the Chief Executive Officer at Conversant. Her passion centers in helping organizations and leaders navigate quality communication and conversation while uncovering collaborative solutions. Over a decade, she has worked with and coached a wide range of Fortune 1000 companies and Global Philanthropic organizations. While remaining grounded in human connection, she is out to change the world one impactful conversation at a time. Robin is continuously inspired through her work in financial services, where she discovered a client’s impactful results ties directly to the importance of remaining well connected in what matters most for an organization’s employees and customers. With her early career start in engineering and manufacturing, Robin quickly developed a love for design. From there, she realized her true appreciation for the design in human connection and conversation. Robin continues her mission at Conversant by empowering leaders and reminding them that conversation is the most powerful skill set a leader can truly have. 

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a change agency that helps enterprises sustain innovation and teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Full Transcript

Douglas:

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

Douglas:

Today I’m with Robin Anselmi, chief executive officer at Conversant, where she brings together the power and joy of authentic human connection to organizations worldwide. Robin has worked extensively with clients in financial services, healthcare and technology. Welcome to the show, Robin.

Robin Anselmi:

Thanks, Douglas. It’s great to be here.

Douglas:

So let’s get started with a little backstory. I’m really curious how you got your start helping companies have better conversations.

Robin Anselmi:

Well, I actually started my career as an engineer, which is always so weird to people. So I was an engineer in manufacturing for about a decade, making optical fiber. And everybody always says, “Well, how did you get from that to this?” I took a stop through financial services as an analyst. And along the way, I started to see that I was really interested in the interactions between human beings. And what did that lead to? And how did that actually cause more joy and greater results in organizations? And actually, they’re all related because as an engineer, it was the design of equipment. And how did the equipment work? As an analyst, it was the design of processes. And how did the processes work?

Robin Anselmi:

And this work really is about the design of human connection because there is a design. There’s a design to conversations that turn out well, and there’s a design to conversations that don’t. And if you actually start to understand the design of what brings people together to actually produce more than you might imagine, you can create that magic, quote, unquote, regardless of the circumstances. So too often, I think people think, “Well, you’ve got to be that charismatic leader.” I don’t think that’s true. I think if you understand the design of it, you can actually cause those surprising results with people by bringing them together in a way that honors and taps into that power and joy that comes out when people get together to make a meaningful contribution together.

Douglas:

That’s really interesting. I often talk to people about this notion of systems theory, or thinking of the world or the work from the perspective of systems, so I really want to hear your perspective on that, considering that to me, that’s what you’re talking about when you talked about there’s a design of equipment, there’s a design of processes. And then there’s the design of these interactions or these connections. To me, it’s considering the systems and the implications to the whole and these kinds of things.

Robin Anselmi:

Well, totally, because if you think about it, each human being is a complex system unto itself. And now you’re going to put a whole bunch of us together in a conference room and ask us to do stuff together. Of course, there’s going to be complexity in that. And too often, we try to solve it like it’s a complicated problem, like there is a best practice out there. There’s not. Often, it’s sample size of one. Each interaction is its own unique one. And can you actually be present to what’s happening for the other person? Can you be present to what’s happening for you, and the strategy and the culture that you’re all operating inside of? And too often, we sort of lose sight of all that. We just want to go down the path of: What’s the best practice?

Robin Anselmi:

I’m not saying there’s not places for best practices. Absolutely, there are. But really, so much of human interaction is being present to the other and what’s actually happening right now in this moment, particularly in these days with things changing so rapidly.

Douglas:

You just hit on something that’s very near and dear to my heart, which is the dangers of importing best practices. And I’m sure this shows up in your work all the time. I know it does ours because people always want us to train them or show them something tactics that’ll get the job done. And at the end of the day, we definitely need to get the tactics because we need repeatable things that we can do and make progress. The danger though is people always want to look external and say, “Well, what the right way to do this?” And so often, we need to curate something. We need to look very closely at the dynamics and put in something that’s best suited.

Douglas:

It reminds me of the strategy doing work where their analogy is taking people in a river rafting, river rafting guides. And it’s like, “We certainly haven’t gone down this river. And the river’s … Well, maybe I have gone down this river, but it’s certainly not behaving exactly like it did yesterday. So I’m not telling you exactly how we’re going to do this, but you trust me because I’ve gone down a river before, or I’ve climbed a mountain before, and so I might be a little bit helpful.” But we’ve still got to respond to some emergent qualities and understand what’s happening, so I don’t know. I get excited whenever someone’s preaching the dangers of best practices.

Robin Anselmi:

Well, I think tips and tricks are only going to take you so far. Right? So I always say, “Do I have some tips and tricks? Sure.” We all have them. We all have a few. And holy moly, can they get you into a lot of trouble because you can sort of start to rely on them so heavily. And to your river rafting example, maybe the current’s going way faster today than it normally does, and so that tip and trick is just not actually going to work for you in this situation. It’s why I think the number one job of leaders is to be present, to be present to what’s happening, to be present for themselves. So notice how they’re feeling the moment because actually, our bodies are telling us things all the time, and we’re just trying to sort of ignore it. And are we actually present to the other person? And are we legitimizing their experience in the conversations that they’re having with us?

Douglas:

I love that you threw out the word presence because literally, the word that was going through my mind was complacency. And that’s what the best practices can make us complacent. Right? We expect them to work and our brains shut off. But if we’re present and we’re really paying attention, that’s also kind of core to a lot of the principles and facilitation, inquiry versus advocacy. Right? We can’t really be in inquiry mode unless we’re present, curious, and our brain is fully functioning. We can’t active listen unless we’re really tuned in. And so that was awesome because I was literally thinking the problem is complacency, and then you went straight into presence.

Robin Anselmi:

One of the things we say is that people fast pass match, so they fast pass match things that they know from what’s happened, which again, as human beings, we need that. If I have to stop every time to think about how a doorknob works, I would never get out of my house. Right? So I need to be able to fast pass match on how a doorknob works. The challenge is that we fast pass match with people. You’re different than you were a year ago, five years ago. Right? But yet, we often treat each other like we’re the exact same person. And there are new things that you care about. There are new things that you worry about. And that’s going to show up in the way that we work together.

Robin Anselmi:

And too often, we skip past that. And so even the tips and tricks of, well, I know how Douglas is going to respond to this, no, I don’t. I don’t know who Douglas is today. Can I actually be really, in the spirit of inquiry, be really curious about what’s on his mind today?

Douglas:

That is such a beautiful concept of just not trying to anticipate. One of the things that I see so often as one of the, I’d say main issues of meetings is that people spend so much time thinking about what they’re going to say, or preparing their response, or their amazing rebuttal, or contribution, and they miss all of that awesomeness that they could be picking up on in the middle there.

Robin Anselmi:

Well, because that’s not actually listening. That’s waiting, so that’s somebody waiting their turn, as opposed to really listening and being in the conversation, and trusting that when we get to the pause, I’ll have something worthwhile to contribute. And if I don’t, somebody else will, and we’ll be smarter. We really genuinely will be smarter together without being able to predict. I think too often, to your point on that, people are driving to an outcome, so they’re actually not present because they’re trying to get something to happen. I’m trying to get you to see the world the way I see the world, as opposed to finding a new world view together, new solutions.

Robin Anselmi:

I read this thing, this quote, just today about the innovation and collaboration actually require us to sort of get into the messiness with each other. That’s not exactly the quote, it’s paraphrasing. But it does require that because I have to let go to really innovate or to collaborate, I have to let go of all of the ways that I see the world, or at least hold them loosely, and see the way you see the world. Otherwise, we’re just going to keep coming up with the answers that I came up with yesterday. Okay, that’s not innovation. 

Douglas:

That’s right. I love to tell people, if we don’t get into that exploration zone, where we’re looking at the intersections where ideas collide and can create new emergent permutations, then we’re just going to have the ordinary solutions. And what we’re always striving for are the novel solutions. Everyone wants the novel solutions, but we won’t get there unless we allow that to happen.

Robin Anselmi:

Because it’s really uncomfortable. I think this is the thing that people want it to be rainbows and unicorns and fun and happy, happy, glitter, joy. Right? It’s actually not. It’s really, really uncomfortable because I have to actually be willing to say, “Wow, my way of doing this, or my way of seeing this, there might be a better way. There might be another alternative. The way I’ve been doing it might not be sufficient for the future.” Right? And so that’s actually really uncomfortable for folks because you have to let go of the known and be willing to go into a place of uncertainty, and also a willingness that, oh, maybe that thing that I thought was the bee’s knees just isn’t.

Douglas:

That brings up two thoughts. One is that can be really disorienting and difficult for a leader because especially if you’ve been relied on and looked upon and expected to have the vision, and then now we’re at a point where we’re having a conversation, and now someone’s pushing things a little bit in a direction that might conflict with parts of your vision. Is that something you need to hold steadfast to, so that we stay true to the vision? Or is that something we’ve got to let go of? And I think that is very difficult because sometimes you do need to stay the course because, no, that’s actually going to steer us away from our values, and that’s something we need to hold onto.

Douglas:

But I think that’s something that leaders should spend a lot of time meditating and thinking about, so when they’re confronted with that moment, they don’t just react, they know. If you’ve thought about it enough and you’ve really decided what’s germane to the success, then you’re prepared to hold steadfast versus actually let go of something.

Robin Anselmi:

One of the distinctions we make for people that I find is helpful is really pulling apart the difference between purpose, you might say vision. What’s the why, the outcomes? What do you want the what to be? And then the methods. Right? Often, leaders, we get really tied up around the methods. Can I be a little more agnostic about the how, provided that it’s moving in the direction of sort of purpose or vision, going to create the outcomes I’m looking for? I would add sort of values, sort of corporate values or ethics around that to sort of guide the decisions that we’re making. But can I free us to actually think about different ways of doing it? And you’re right. There’s such a challenge around the places where it pushes the boundary on the vision. Is it taking us off course, or is it taking us in a better course? And I think that’s the job of leadership on an ongoing basis.

Robin Anselmi:

And when I say leadership, I don’t mean in a single person. I mean from an organizational standpoint to be able to say, “Where do we want to go together? And how do you make decisions about changing course?” I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that one.

Douglas:

Absolutely not. But most fun work is not easy and requires some thought. And I think that’s actually why it’s going to be hard for computers to completely replace us.

Robin Anselmi:

I hope so, anyway.

Douglas:

So I’m going to come back to something you said earlier, which is fascinating, which is this notion that these, I think it also alludes to, or ties back to the thinking fast or thinking slow, and the system one, system two, around there’s some moments where we really need to rely on instincts and patterns and assumptions. And if we weren’t able to assume that the fellow drivers on the road were going to stop at the red light, it would be really strange, or would take a lot longer to get from point A to point B because we’d be very anxious going through every intersection. Right? But the trick is when, what’s the boundary around assumptions that are safe for us to carry, and which ones we need to kind of be a little more cognizant of.

Robin Anselmi:

It’s so interesting. I think for leaders, this is an ever evolving question about making their implicit thinking explicit to people as often as possible. Right? And so the rules of the road, there’s a lot that’s already been made explicit, and we all know that it was made explicit because we all have a license in our pocket that says we took that class, or we passed that test. But in organizational life, I think there are way fewer things that are actually quite that explicit, but I think we assume that it is. And so I think actually pausing to make sure that we’re on the same page is a worthy investment of time. Right? Because you’re going to have to have those conversations at some point.

Robin Anselmi:

Do you want to have them in the beginning, before things have gotten messy, and everyone’s off track and pissed off and annoyed at each other? Or do you want to have it later when sort of everything’s gone to hell in a hand basket? So you’re going to have to really get to the point of clarity and testing it. I think language is tricky because we live in language, we work in language, it’s how work gets done today is in sort of conversations. We say the conversations are the work, and people assume really quickly what each other means by certain words. Right now, strategy’s one of those words that drives me a little crazy because everybody will say, “Well, we need a strategy. Or are we aligned on the strategy?” But if you stop and ask five people what they mean by strategy, you will get 12 answers about what that actually means.

Robin Anselmi:

And so I think you’re right. I don’t think it’s a simple straightforward thing around here’s the things about you can assume to be true, and here’s the things you can’t. I think that’s a constant exploration between people. And adding to the mix that we’re now sort of hybrid, so we’ve got people in person and people virtual. Add into the mix multi generational workforces, where there’s different levels of assumptions around what work norms are. I think there’s just going to be a lot of places for us to keep being explicit about our thinking on things, and not assuming that they’re going to stop at the red light.

Douglas:

Yeah. The multi generational thing is a fascinating one because you’ve also got these elements of what’s acceptable from equity and from expectations around just language. I look at … This even comes up when we’re working with clients that may have younger workforce. And when I watch how sensitive they are to certain moves and certain language, and how vocal they are about it, it’s quite a bit different. And I see a lot of folks that have been in the workforce a bit longer, where norms were different, and even turns of phrase and business jargon, that now is offensive to a younger workforce, and especially when you’re looking at M&A where two cultures are just being forced together pretty quickly. That’s kind of tough to navigate, and definitely not easy because even when you’ve got folks that have the best of intentions, people can find actions very offensive.

Robin Anselmi:

I think leadership is really the art of correction, not perfection. We are going to get it wrong. Right? The question is: How do you recover in those moments? Can you recover with grace, with curiosity? Back to your point earlier, right? And it’s hard because if I say something that’s someone else finds offensive, I immediately get defensive about that, as opposed to: Can I just get curious about, oh, that’s interesting, can you say more about that? Can you say, “What am I not seeing in that, so that I can understand it better?” And I think that’s hard for leaders to do, and it’s such a critical skill to really understand another’s point of view and the way they see the world, and the way the world occurs to them. I’m never going to full understand what it’s like to be you, or you, me. But I can be curious about it and really see, okay, and apologize and do better.

Douglas:

I love that Maya Angelou quote, it’s like, “Do as good as you know. And when you know better, do better.”

Robin Anselmi:

Do better. That’s right. Know better, do better. That’s right.

Douglas:

And I love what you just said about this notion of not perfection.

Robin Anselmi:

But correction.

Douglas:

It’s about correction.

Robin Anselmi:

Yeah, correction.

Douglas:

I’m a big fan of the notion of continuous improvement.

Robin Anselmi:

That’s right.

Douglas:

Always being curious about how we can move toward a better.

Robin Anselmi:

A better.

Douglas:

And definitely, the curiosity piece. But I want to come back to something that you were saying about that as well, which is not being defensive. And that’s something I learned, because I had some moments just navigating a lot of this as a public figure and running public workshops, and being in front of folks, which had some moments that were surprising because I do my best to support people. And I’ve considered myself an ally. And it’s like, “Whoa. Right? I’m the target? How’s this?” And I quickly realized that’s the worst reaction that anyone could possibly have because what people don’t want to have is an ally trying to be a victim because me not being understood, my intentions being misinterpreted, pales in comparison to how they’ve been victimized. Right?

Douglas:

And so when you mention not being defensive, and also having that humility truly struck a chord is how important that is, and I learned the lesson personally. And then also, I think another little adjacent thing that might be fun to unpack with you is this notion earlier when you talked about the charismatic leader. And I would say charismatic leaders probably struggle with that the most because their identity is about being this charismatic, loved, worshiped individual. I men, worship might be a bit overkill, but you get the idea.

Robin Anselmi:

No, but hero, hero. They probably … The hero.

Douglas:

Yeah, the hero. Yeah. And so you compare that to leaders that are maybe entrepreneurial leaders, or facilitative leaders, or servant leaders. I think all of those have a little bit more humility in the mix. And it might be, if you’re following that path, it might be easier to respond and employ some of these skills.

Robin Anselmi:

Well, I want to comment on a couple of things you said. So number one, that defensiveness that you said, welcome to the human race because that’s actually just programmed into us. Right? So it’s not your own personal dysfunction. All of us when confronted have a natural reaction to defend ourselves. It’s actually just hardwired into the way that our brains work. Right? And so if you think about it from an evolution standpoint, it makes a lot of sense about why we would need to do that, to protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe, and that we can’t distinguish between physical threat and social threat, so that’s sort of the normal.

Robin Anselmi:

Goes back to my thing earlier about being present. Can I actually just be present to what’s happening? And that this thing that just got said didn’t actually harm me. Right? It might’ve harmed my ego, it might’ve hurt my feelings, but it didn’t actually harm me. Can I just take a breath and get connected to: Okay, what about that is upsetting to me? Because most of the time, it’s something as you said, in the scheme of things, probably not the right thing to be centered on, so that’s one, so welcome to the human race because we all are going to be defensive.

Robin Anselmi:

The distinction we make is between superior leadership and connected leadership. So superior leaders are the ones who think they have to have all the answers. Right? And there is a model for that. There are places actually where superior leadership is necessary. I kid a lot and say, “If the fire alarm goes off in an office building, I’d like there to be somebody who knows the way out of the building. And yes, I’m just going to follow them.” I don’t want to have to have a whole conversation about what’s the right way out of a fire. But in today’s world where things are moving so fast, we need more connected leaders because it’s really hard for a single person to see the whole view, to see the whole elephant. Back to systems, a single person really can’t understand all of the interactions and all of the interplay of what’s going to happen.

Robin Anselmi:

So leaders who are connected, connected to people, so connected and connecting people, connected and connecting to strategy and to culture and to current circumstances, are the ones who are going to be successful in these more complex systems because that superior leader, hero leader model, yes, quite charismatic. But that’s a hard row to hoe, to have all of those people who are going to be able to … You’re going to be able to know everything that they know and make the best decisions. I’m not sure that model is going to last much longer in most of our organizations. There’s just too much complexity.

Douglas:

The thing I think about is situation, time and place. To me, there’s situations where a hero leader might be needed, like the fire alarm example you were talking about. And I think those examples will still be there. In fact, someone was just talking with me about the vaccine rollout here in the US, how chain of command is kind of helpful when you’re trying to execute something very specific and with some rules. And we know what we want to do, and we figured it out, and we’re just going to go do it.

Douglas:

Now there might be moments within that, there might need to be some freedom, some flexibility for folks to flex and move around some of the things. But at some of the points, we’re going to need, and so it makes me think of the Cynefin Model, and how in a complex world, the superior leader’s going to be very ineffective. In a simple, obvious world, maybe we do need someone to step up and say, “Run this checklist.”

Robin Anselmi:

Totally.

Douglas:

And maybe in the complicated, maybe there’s something in between.

Robin Anselmi:

Totally. In the simple world, a superior leader is great. Right? Do this, here’s the answers. Goes back to your thing earlier about best practices. There are knowable answers and you can have somebody that knows them and just moves everybody in that direction, absolutely. Even in a complicated world. Right? There are lots of answers, having somebody that can sort of sort those and come up with smart answers, move us forward, great. I just think more and more, what we’re seeing in organizations is much more complexity, things that are much less predictable, much less likely to be known or knowable, that you’ve got to be willing to be in a place where the strategies are emergent. And to have strategies that are emergent, you have to be really listening to the people in the system, which I think to your point, is a whole lot harder for that hero leader to do.

Douglas:

So let’s talk about something that’s emerging right now, that companies are faced with. This is a complex issue that we’re having to solve for, and I think it might be kind of fun to unpack it from that perspective around: How can we best have these conversations? And what are some of the wrinkles that we’re going to need to consider? What makes it so complex? And that’s the back to the office, so one of the things that came up in the pre show chat was just around the gender equity issues that are going to unfold with kind of expecting employees to come back.

Robin Anselmi:

Well, I think going back to sort of complicated or simple models, the office as it stood before was a way of making sure people were doing their job, so there was a lot of sort of oversight, supervision. I think the last year has proven that we don’t need that to the same degree. And so I think it’s going to require organizations redefining the purpose of the office. So why? Why do we want people to gather? What’s the purpose of that? And I do think there are going to be some equity issues around that. I strongly believe that the organizations that are going to be the most successful going forward in hiring and retaining talent are going to have to have some sort of flexibility. They’re not going to be an all or neither. There’s going to be some sort of hybrid model, where there’s X number of days a week or something because you’ve got so much diversity in terms of what people want, in terms of being back in the office or not.

Robin Anselmi:

And there’s been some recent articles and reports that are guessing that there may be some gender equity issues about that, around who chooses to come back to office versus who doesn’t, and whether or not you’ll see that more women choose not to come back to the office. And what does that do? Do we suddenly recreate the boys’ clubs of days past? Well, I hope most of them are days past, of people in the office. And is there a different level of connection, or knowledge, or perceptions about people who are together in that space and opportunities for them? And what’s that going to do for folks who make different choices about where they’re going to be located?

Douglas:

Yeah. There’s quite a few layers there because there are folks that have now shifted their patterns, their needs, and demands from their family may have shifted. Also, there are people who have invested in home office setups. There are people that are still working on the kitchen counter. So I think we have to anticipate a diverse set of needs.

Robin Anselmi:

Well, you’re going to have people that are longing, can’t wait to get back to the office, are so tired of being, feeling isolated, or to your point, they don’t have the space that they’d love to have to work. You have others who hope to never go back to an office. Right? And so I think it’s going to be a challenge for organizations to legitimize both points of view to find answers because honestly, in the past, it was really easy to say, “Oh, you can’t do this job from home.”

Robin Anselmi:

Back to your tips and tricks, you could kind of rely on the, well, that’s just not how it’s done here. There are very few places where that’s not how it was done in the last year, year and a half. Right? And so it’s going to be a lot harder to just rely on that’s the policy, or that’s just the way we do it. You’re going to have a lot more people that are going to be challenging that. And so I think really looking at: What’s the vision for the space? What’s the organization’s values? How does space actually enhance the values? How is it a physical representation of the things that an organization says they care about? May require us to rethink how we’re using that space too.

Douglas:

Yeah. It’s not only individual contributors. Leaders, executives have now got a taste of what it’s like and what’s possible, so they can no longer deny or convince themselves that it doesn’t work because they’ve now seen it work, and they know it’s possible. And their behavior’s going to change. And I was talking to a senior executive from a very large financial institution just last week. And he was telling me how not having to commute essentially two and a half hours a day changed his life tremendously. He could decide whether he wanted to spend more time working, he could spend more time with the family. That was now discretionary time for him that he could use to improve his career, improve his family life. And I don’t think that’s going to be something he’s going to give up easily. And this is someone that has political power within the organization. It’s not just someone who’s just at the mercy of the whims of the deciders. So I think we’re going to see some really interesting models unfold as people start to wrangle some of these issues and lay out policies.

Douglas:

And it also comes down to how we support our people from a mental and social wellbeing. There’s a lot of trauma that people have experienced that they’re going to have to confront because we’re still in the mode of, we’re still in the fight. We’re not in recovery yet. And so as soon as things shift and we start to think about how we … What does post … I don’t even know if post pandemic even makes sense because I think it might be something, it might be a new way of life taking vaccines every quarter, or every other quarter, or something. But we’ll see how it all unfolds. But I do think that we might see a shift where people start to acknowledge that, oh, wow, I did go through something traumatic, and I need to work through this. And I think leaders are going to have to think about how to have those conversations.

Robin Anselmi:

Well, we were saying pre show about one of my colleagues, Kell Delaney, has said, “We are not the same people that we were in January of 2020.” None of us are. We all have different things that we think about and consider. We have different … Well, all of us have different habits, whether or not those are all good can be left to debate. But we do, we all have different ways of being in the world, and certainly different ways of working. And if we think we’re just flipping a switch to go back, or just take that forward, I think that’s short sighted. I don’t think that’s how it’s going to work out. And to your point, I think you’re going to have people at varying sort of stages in their thinking about how they want to work and what that’s going to look like.

Douglas:

This is something we also talked about a little earlier, this concept of leaders becoming leaders because they were really good at a thing. They were the best at the thing. And then they become leaders, they’re not necessarily trained in how to have good meetings. They’re not trained in how to have good conversations, don’t necessarily understand coaching models. Also, typically, they might have been a supervisor before they were even promoted into becoming an official leader. So there might’ve been kind of their job as a supervisor would’ve been more focused on the task. And now that they’re responsibilities have grown, and they’re expected to have these conversations, it can be pretty disorienting. And how do we begin to have performance conversations, conversations about wellbeing and equity?

Robin Anselmi:

Well, and I think from earlier, a lot of leaders sort of do come up in a superior leader mindset, like as a manager, I’m supposed to have the answers. The coaching models, all of them, really are based in: Well, what if I don’t have to have the answers? What if we have to have the answers? What would the answers look like if we crafted them together? And so I honestly think if managers could let go of just one thing, which is that they have to be the one that knows the answer, it would make all the difference. That if it really is, no, we get to work out the answers together as human beings, and really find ones that work, inside of constraints. All organizations are going to have some level of constraints. This isn’t anarchy where you get to do whatever the hell you want, and I get to do whatever the hell I want.

Robin Anselmi:

But if we have a shared purpose and we know what the outcomes are that we’re driving to, can we get creative about what would work for you and what would work for me? And I think if leaders could really let go of, it has to be my way, or I have to have the answer, we could all get smarter together about how to solve those problems.

Douglas:

That’s also very liberating as a leader.

Robin Anselmi:

It is.

Douglas:

It’s exhausting.

Robin Anselmi:

It’s exhausting to think I have to know everything.

Douglas:

And stressful to have all the answers.

Robin Anselmi:

That’s right. That’s right.

Douglas:

And most of the time, I don’t know, if your experience was anything like mine, it was super anxiety provoking too because I kind of felt like it was expected. It wasn’t like I wanted to do it. I felt like that’s what everyone was hoping, so that I would show up as the CTO and know all the CTO things.

Robin Anselmi:

Can you just fix this?

Douglas:

The minute … Yeah. Right. And the minute that I found the liberty in asking, “What do you think we should do?”

Robin Anselmi:

Shocking.

Douglas:

Right? An employee comes to you needing, wanting your advice, and just asking them, “What do you think we should do?” Because a lot of times they know what they would do in your absence. They’re maybe assuming that you want to be involved, or they’re afraid they’re going to get it wrong. Just turning it back on them and giving them the opportunity to just say it empowers them to go with their gut. And then next time, they might not even stop to answer you, so then that’s one less thing that you’re pulled out of or pulled into.

Robin Anselmi:

Absolutely. Whenever the stress gets high, I think as human beings, we tend to contract. So when stress goes up, we tend to sort of pull in closer. The reality is if you actually expand the conversations in those moments, so if under stress, we actually went to more people, asked somebody else for help, the vast majority of the time, we actually really will get smarter together because to your point, somebody else will see it different than I do. So I’m stuck in my own thinking as a leader. I’m worried, I have all this stress. I’m worried about getting it right. If I go and ask somebody else, they don’t have that same stress in that moment, so they might actually be a whole lot smarter than me about what could be possible.

Douglas:

I love that. It makes me think of this notion that I personally have always found. It’s often easier, especially if you’re in the moment of writer’s block, or you just kind of creative block, if you got inspiration flowing, it’s a lot easier to filter. I can say, “That doesn’t meet the values. That’s off vision.” And helping guide and direct things that are kind of coming at you, versus having to create it all. And so to your point, in that moment of tension, if the instinct is to clam up, then the only inspiration you got is what’s inside, versus opening it up and letting the stuff flow at you. And then you can kind of just filter and curate.

Robin Anselmi:

And find, back to the innovation conversation, find that new answer that you might not have ever dreamed of on your own.

Douglas:

Yeah, or even look. You can be looking out for interesting combinations. What if I put this and this together?

Robin Anselmi:

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.

Douglas:

That’s cool.

Robin Anselmi:

Yeah, really great.

Douglas:

Awesome. Well, I think that takes us to an interesting place to kind of hit the pause button on this conversation, and want to just give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Robin Anselmi:

Yeah. For me, I think it really is that there is power and joy in human connection and that if we spend too much time at work in the bulk of our lives to not be able to tap into that joy, and that you can find it if you actually expand the conversations. And if you want to find out more or get some inspirations, if you go to conversant.com, you can subscribe to our newsletter. And we send out some monthly tips and information and videos, just to help inspire folks to find that power and joy in their work.

Douglas:

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Robin. This has been a pleasure chatting. And I hope people do check out Conversant, and looking forward to talking to you again sometime soon.

Robin Anselmi:

Thanks for having me, Douglas. This was super fun.

Douglas:

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

The post Episode 48: A Leader’s Power in Presence appeared first on Voltage Control.

Have you ever stopped to think about the world’s work culture–really thought about it? We’re so used to the way things are, that it’s easy to forget that our workhorse mentality isn’t how it always used to be. That is, not until the Industrial Revolution. It wasn’t until this transitional era to new manufacturing processes that work culture evolved to meaning more hours equated to more work, and therefore more money; i.e. time is money. 

Stanley Gen. McChrystal tells the eye-opening origin story of this mental construct in his phenomenal book, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement For a Complex World, which he wrote to help leaders make their teams more adaptable, unified, and successful in the wake of change. In the book, McChrystal tells the story of Fredrick Taylor, an integral player during the industrial revolution for his contributions to improve industrial efficiency. It was Taylor who began the seeming correlation between time and money creating success. He used to go into factories and use stopwatches to figure out the fastest way to do something “reductionist”. The pressure we feel to work more hours to achieve success is ingrained in us, and it’s running us down. Our society operates on this mental construct. We’re still dealing with the aftershock of the Industrial Revolution, but it’s not the best way to get things done. We aren’t our best when we’re overworked or doing the same thing day in and day out. 

However, there is a crack in the matrix. We are ushering in a new era. An era where the quality of work due to great work-life balance and sound mental health is far more important. An era where leadership looks more like coaching and less than dictatorship. Leaders are beginning to understand the importance of possessing excellent facilitation skills to bring out the best in their employees. 

Companies are transitioning their business, from tip to tail, to align with the evolving digital age; instead of command and control, leadership is focused on helping employees adapt to a changing environment. Leaders are learning to cultivate new energy, innovation, and unity amongst their teams. In other words, facilitation is a SUPER critical skill to learn if you want your business to operate at top performance. 

This is a call to bring out the inner facilitator in everyone: we need people that help us humans be human because the computers (that are slowly taking over) are going to do everything else. 

I started to think about all of the leaders across industries outside of facilitation and what makes them great. These leaders, from the military to sports to mental health, possess traits of great facilitators. They realize we are operating in a new paradigm and we need to step into that with new perspectives and new approaches. These leaders are curious and experiment towards better outcomes. They include. They motivate. The ignite.

Let’s look at 49’s coach Bill Walsch as an example. Bill was amazing at helping folks realize they CAN do it.

“The four most powerful words are: I believe in you.” – Bill Walsch

He taught his teams that if you go into the game assuming you will lose or assuming you have already lost, then you won’t play a good game. This is especially noteworthy because this approach helped Walsch turn the worst team in the league into the best. He always coached from the perspective that the team can always turn things around. “The ability to help the people around me self-actualize their goals,” he said, “underlines the single aspect of my abilities and the label that I value most — teacher.” He also focused heavily on improvement. “I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving — obsessing, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude. I knew if I did that, winning would take care of itself.”

Walsch’s effective leadership approach is that of a facilitator, guiding his team to cultivate each individual’s best performance so that they thrive when they come together as a whole. He understands the power of a coach mentality–one that encourage’s each player’s development while simultaneously facilitating problem-solving admist change. This is what expert coaching, no matter the industry, looks like:

“For members of your team, you determine what their inner voice says. The leader, at least a good one, teaches the team how to talk to themselves. An effective leader has a profound influence on what that inner voice will say.”

Yes, Walsch is a coach by title. But he also represents the next set of bosses. Rather than traditional bosses, they are going to be coaches. Group coaching is #3 on Forbe’s list of top 5 leadership development trends for 2020. “In this new decade, everyone needs to be a leader who actively engages their people. Awareness of this will see leadership development pushed down through the organization, and coaching will become a standard part of every manager’s experience.”

This shift is critical. Knowledge work is like playing a game. While there are rules and procedures, ultimately we are “playing” against humans that are cunning and attempting different things. We need leaders to help us play the game.

Now consider a factory, where things are predictable. They work the same way every single day. Leaders and managers can simply run a checklist and prescribe a “best way of doing things”. That’s not the case when we are a complex adaptive system. This is where we find ourselves these days. Knowledge work that we engage in and even the shifting landscape requires us to learn and adapt, meaning we can’t simply just do what we did yesterday. This requires a leadership style that nurtures. Like a gardener. 

While leaders who coach may impart wisdom, much of what they do is about removing barriers, whether physical or mental. Let’s be front runners in this transition and boost up folks to shine so that we may all do our best. Ready to get started? At Voltage Control, we help enterprises scale change. We facilitate and coach large diverse groups toward shared understanding and transform cultures to sustain innovation. If you have a project that is having trouble getting traction or will require input from lots of people, let us coach you through the process. Contact us today. 

The post Lessons from how non-business leaders lead appeared first on Voltage Control.

Meetings become derailed all the time. It doesn’t matter how perfectly crafted your agenda is, how talented or productive your team members are, or how many years of experience you have facilitating. People get distracted. People get off-task. The question is – how do you steer your meeting back in the right direction?

Here are three effective methods for getting a meeting back on the right track once it has already started to derail.

Reference Visible Resources & Allow for Self-Correction

One of the best ways to steer a meeting back on track in the early stages of derailment is to reference meeting resources that the participants can see. Physical reminders of the task or topic at hand and how long they have left to work with it will usually result in participants steering themselves and their peers back on track.

Physically pointing at an agenda is an excellent go-to. Your agenda should be posted where all of your participants can reference it at any time; when a conversation begins veering off-track, politely point at the activity or discussion in the agenda your meeting is currently focusing on and verbally remind your team what the current timeframe is scheduled for. If they are getting distracted with a matter that will be tackled later on in the meeting, you can also point out that timeframe on the agenda and assure them that there will be time later on to delve into that content.

Timers are a wonderful resource for keeping your team on track during a discussion or activity. The gentle pressure of a time limit manifested as a visual countdown encourages participation, discourages distractions, and cuts back on tangents, sidebars, and other divergences that can derail your meeting. If your team does get off track under the presence of a timer, reference it as you did the agenda. Point to the timer, remind them of the goal they need to reach by the end of the countdown, and let them know how much time they have left. It looks like we have about 5 more minutes left before we have to move on to our next activity. Let’s be sure we’ve accomplished our current task before time is up.

In addition to a posted agenda and a visible timer, having notes about the work that has already been accomplished during your meeting can be an incredibly helpful resource. Have a designated notetaker keep track of discussion points, discoveries, completed tasks, and other key moments and takeaways during the course of your meeting. If a discussion gets caught in a loop or becomes repetitive, reference these notes; according to our meeting notes here, we already discussed _____. How can we approach the topic at hand in a new way? The notes can also be referenced if the meeting is suddenly derailed by a digression; according to our notes, we were discussing ____. Can we save this for later and circle back to what we were discussing before?

Directly Address Team Members

Sometimes the most effective course of action is to be direct. If you’re able to identify a single team member (or maybe just a few) who seems to be off track, you can address them specifically.

The key is to never assume that there isn’t a connection between the topic at hand and what the participant is saying just because you’re not seeing one. Perhaps there’s something you missed or don’t understand about the subject that is preventing you from seeing the connection, or perhaps the participant isn’t communicating their thoughts clearly. Allow them the opportunity to either clarify their thoughts or self-correct their departure from the topic at hand by addressing them with a question. I’m afraid I may be having a hard time putting two-and-two together here. Can you help me understand how this is related to what we were discussing/working on?

If you have a small handful of participants derailing the meeting, it may be helpful to use the refocusing of attention to another participant entirely to aid in the transition back to the subject that the room should be handling. Acknowledge the detour and then ask a team member who hasn’t yet spoken to the original topic at hand for their thoughts. Before we move on from our original discussion I would like to make sure we’ve gathered everyone’s thoughts. _____, what do you think about [original subject]?

If a team member seems particularly concerned with a subject that you were not intending to handle in the meeting, it may be helpful to offer them a later time to discuss their thoughts with you. It can be hard to put an important issue on the backburner without assurance that it will be handled in the future. If a divergence seems important to tackle at some point but is not in service of the meeting’s goal, acknowledge the issue’s significance and ask the participant to schedule time with you after the meeting. That does seem important to discuss, but I want to make sure we stay on task with the limited amount of time we have today. After this meeting, can we schedule a separate time to talk about this?

Ask the Group

If your entire team is having trouble staying on track despite attempts at redirection, it may be a symptom of an ineffective agenda or an unmet need. When in doubt, the best thing to do is simply point out the derailment and ask why it’s happening. It seems like we’re having a tough time staying on topic. Can someone help me understand why that is?

It may be that your agenda’s scheduled discussions and activities don’t serve the meeting’s end goal as well as you thought, and your team is having trouble simultaneously doing meaningful work and working towards this goal. Alternatively, maybe there’s an issue you didn’t account for while creating your agenda that needs to be handled before the topic at hand can be effectively targeted. In scenarios such as these, it is best to be flexible with your agenda and allow your team to help adjust the plan to better serve the work that needs to be done.

Another possibility is that your team has so much swimming around in their minds that it’s difficult to compartmentalize or distinguish their thoughts on one discussion point from their thoughts on another. If your team needs to clear their heads, it is time for a break. If they are running out of fuel, it is time for lunch or a snack (or perhaps some coffee). They know best what they need to unwind and refresh – ask them what you can do to help them more easily focus on the topic at hand.

Need an expert facilitator for your next meeting, gathering or workshop? Let’s talk.

Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you want to talk or for a consultation.

The post 3 Ways to Get Your Meeting Back on Track appeared first on Voltage Control.