“There is so much humanity in vulnerability. If you’re going to ask others to be vulnerable, you have to be willing to do so yourself and let your walls down to have rich, honest conversations.”- Alyssa Coughlin

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Alyssa Coughlin, Chief of Staff Director for the Data and AI Platform Organization at Autodesk. Alyssa shares her journey into facilitation and leadership, emphasizing the importance of patience, active listening, and storytelling in effective facilitation. She discusses leading through influence rather than positional power, empowering team members, and creating a collaborative environment. Alyssa also highlights techniques for engaging quieter participants and the significance of addressing underlying tensions in group dynamics. The episode concludes with a focus on fostering a culture of collaboration and empowerment.

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About the Guest

Alyssa Coughlin is a seasoned leader with a passion for facilitation, a skill she’s honed throughout her career, from student council to her current role as Chief of Staff at Autodesk. Her journey began in high school, organizing chaotic meetings, and evolved as she realized facilitation was central to her leadership style. After transitioning from pharmaceutical sales to project management in tech, Alyssa embraced facilitation as a critical tool for aligning diverse teams and fostering collaboration. She further developed her skills through Voltage Control’s certification program, where she gained confidence in her ability to create inclusive, engaging, and impactful meetings. Alyssa is now focused on scaling facilitation skills across her organization, empowering others to lead conversations and drive collective success.

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas:

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

Alyssa:

Thanks Douglas, and thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Douglas:

Of course. Thanks for joining. Well, let’s get started by hearing a little bit about how you got into this work. How did you get into being a chief of staff and thinking about facilitation and bringing groups together to make better decisions?

Alyssa:

Yeah, chief of staff is something I kind of stumbled into. At the beginning of my career, I didn’t know about this position or what it entailed. I just knew I had this myriad of skills and they all centered around bringing people together and driving organizations towards common goals and really just kind of being that connective tissue that paves the way for others to succeed. I got here through various positions. I’m actually on my second career. I started as a pharmaceutical sales rep, which is very different, and from there I moved over to the technology space and I did project and program management, and that really morphed into being a chief of staff, and it’s been a really exciting career journey because I finally found the position that if I could have just dreamed it up and picked all of the things I like to do and I’m good at, it would’ve come down to being a chief of staff.

Douglas:

I was thinking about your alumni story and how you depicted this tale of facilitating long before you really thought about it from the perspective of that role or that title. I think I remember you talking about a prom planning committee, is that right?

Alyssa:

Yeah, and student council, and I have just been doing this forever and then didn’t realize it was facilitation until somewhat recently.

Douglas:

When you think back to those early formative days, what do you think were some of the key skills or some of the key ways that you were showing up that made you successful?

Alyssa:

I think being able to read people and read a room and having a high EIQ is invaluable when it comes to facilitation. And so when I was on the prom planning committee or student council, I would see that need and I would lean into it and step in and realize that this group all has the same intentions and they want the same goals, but they don’t really know how to get there. And so I would step in and I would lead that discussion and that conversation and just help drive them to the endpoint without necessarily feeding them the answers. It’s more about discovery and giving them an opportunity to figure out the answers for themselves.

Douglas:

Oh, I love that. So this idea of not feeding them the answers, what’s your favorite go-to technique? I mean, I’m sure you’ve grown a lot and advanced a lot since those days, but I’m sure this not feeding people the answers is still core component of how you show up. And so I’m curious, nowadays, which one of your favorite ways of not feeding the answers, but making it feel productive or inviting?

Alyssa:

Funny enough, I find the simpler the probing questions, the better because they leave a lot of room for interpretation. So if the group is starting to get there, but they’re not quite there, something as simple as, “Say more about that.” Or, “How did you get there?” Make them kind of reflect on what they’ve said so far and what they’ve learned so far, and then drill back into maybe something that deserves more detail that they glossed over or recenter them back on the original conversation. It’s really just corralling almost.

Douglas:

Yeah, I love that. And so much of that is active listening and curiosity

Alyssa:

And come to it with an open mind, even if it’s a topic that you are familiar with. When you’re trying to lead these conversations, just act like you’re unfamiliar with the topic and be like, “Well, that’s interesting. Say more about this.” Or, “Why are we doing it this way?” And sometimes just drilling back to those basics helps reground and recenter the group and helps them move forward in a more cohesive way.

Douglas:

Yeah, absolutely. And I love this idea of even if we know the answer, we don’t necessarily have to provide it as the leader.

Alyssa:

Exactly. And a good leader I think focuses more on teaching. That old adage of give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life. I think leaders really live by that, and it’s so much easier to be like, the answer is ABC, but your group will never learn. Your group will never become self-sufficient and they’ll never be able to grow. And I think a good leader wants their group to actually grow beyond them. You don’t need to know everything to be a good leader or to be a good facilitator. You need to know how to embody the people around you to be their best.

Douglas:

Love that. And so let’s go back to those early formative days. If you could send a message to yourself or go visit with your younger self, what’s one piece of advice you would depart on that you now know, some of this wisdom that you’ve gained through the years?

Alyssa:

I think advice that I would give my younger self is to be more patient in the conversation. And that’s really hard. When we study facilitation, we learn about the power of the pause and the power of just a moment of silence to give others a chance to jump in or to reflect. And so as an extrovert, that’s so hard. I’m like, I’m ready to go. I have the answer. I’m excited about this. But that’s not really how you lead facilitation and that’s not really how you help the group grow. So my advice to my younger self would be just be patient, slow down and let the conversation happen more organically.

Douglas:

So this is a common one, so I find this fascinating. Did you find that that silence was uncomfortable for you or was it just this mindset of we’re going, following the energy and it’s being exciting and let’s move and go and go? Or was it just that anytime silence came up it was uncomfortable or maybe it was a mixture of both? I don’t know. How did it feel?

Alyssa:

I would say it’s a mixture of both. I definitely don’t want to lose the momentum from the conversation. And at the same time, there’s a little bit of an imposter syndrome around that silence. Am I failing if I’m not filling every second of this conversation? And moving past that and learning that, no, I’m not failing. I’m empowering and I am giving the group an opportunity to fill the space with what they see fit. But it’s definitely something that it takes practice, especially when you consider active listening and how your brain is just moving so fast and you’re like, I want to contribute all of these things to this conversation, but I need to slow down for a minute and actually listen to what the rest of the group is saying and allow them to fill some of this space as well, because it’s not a monologue or it’s not me just talking to myself.

Douglas:

You’re right. It’s not a monologue and it requires a group conversation to get past these obvious solutions to get to things that are novel and interesting.

Alyssa:

And I think what’s really important is for whatever the outcome you’re trying to accomplish, to really resonate and to have a lasting impact, it needs to be cultivated by the entire group. It’s not going to be as meaningful. It’s not going to take root if it’s just me or any one person just talking at them. It needs to be a story that we build and we tell and we see ourselves in together and not just about one person.

Douglas:

Yeah. So you mentioned the word story there. How often does story and narrative show up in your facilitation?

Alyssa:

All the time. I think people will resonate with that more. When you think about stuff that you can remember from years and years ago, whether it’s a song or it’s a story or something funny that happened, there’s a personal connection there and that’s what allows it to really stay with you for a long time versus, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, because there wasn’t a story there. That wasn’t important and that didn’t matter to me. And so I think when you are telling a story, you are inviting a sense of belonging and purpose in whatever narrative you’re trying to explain, and it becomes a shared narrative at that point.

Douglas:

Yeah. I’m also curious, we talked a little bit about leadership, it’s come up already. And as someone who’s been drawn to leadership roles from a young age, how has your sense of what leadership is evolved through the years?

Alyssa:

I think I really started to understand my brand of leadership when I transitioned into the technology sector and I was introduced to Scrum and Agile project management. And so one of the foundations of Agile is servant leadership. And the whole concept around a leader paves the way for the team. They remove obstacles, they provide resources, they set everyone else up for success. It’s kind of the mantra, leaders eat last. And so that’s where I had this moment of self-recognition or self-realization and I was like, “Yeah, that’s my leadership brand.” And that’s why I’m passionate about it. I attribute my personal success to the success of my team and those around me. And that’s something that I really love about being a chief of staff is that’s my job. It’s to make my leadership team the best they can be and the more they succeed, the more I succeed.

Douglas:

I love that. This idea of our success is measured through the success of those around us and those that we influence.

Alyssa:

Absolutely. And I think that is so important for facilitators, because how do you measure a successful gathering or successful facilitation? It’s not about how you feel when you walk away from the session. It’s, what was the outcome of the session? What is the sentiment of everyone else who was there? Was it valuable for them? Was it meaningful? Will it last? And I think my brand of leadership just so naturally fed into what makes a successful facilitator.

Douglas:

What advice do you have for folks that maybe aren’t in positional leadership roles and how they might view leadership from this lens? Because I personally feel that there’s a lot of opportunities to lead as an influential leader even if you don’t have this positional power. And so I’m really curious, I’m sure you see a lot of that at your vantage point there at Autodesk, because you get to see a lot of different individuals in a lot of different roles. So what advice do you have for folks that maybe want to be in leadership, but maybe don’t have that position or just don’t feel like they’re a leader?

Alyssa:

Yeah, for those folks the first thing I would say is don’t equate management with leadership. They’re not the same thing at all. You do not need to be a people manager or any position of authority to lead. In fact, leading through influence is the hardest way to do it, and it will be the most pivotal skill set you will develop in your career. To be able to lead up, down, and across is going to be really important. My advice would be don’t doubt yourself. Take up space. You are in that room for a reason and your experience and your contributions are valued. And so share those. And help make room for others, because people will notice that if there’s somebody in the room who is maybe feeling timid about chiming in, make space for them and be like, “Well, what are you thinking?” And people will remember that, people will automatically look at you as somebody who is leading and who is helping to guide the group.

Douglas:

That is such a great tool just to bring others into the conversation.

Alyssa:

Never underestimate the power of that.

Douglas:

What’s some of your favorite ways to A, identify those that might need to be included, and then also just bringing them in subtle but powerful ways?

Alyssa:

Yeah, I think as far as identifying those as a facilitator, there’s definitely a little bit of pre-work. So whenever you go into a meeting or a session, you want to make sure you understand the audience and that you have the right people there. Priya Parker talks about generous exclusion and it’s so important. So if you have somebody there and they’re not speaking up, the first thing you want to do is make sure, is this person set up for success? Are they actually supposed to be in this meeting or this session, or are they set up to just not be able to contribute? And that’s not going to be a good experience for anyone. But beyond that, it’s a lot about reading cues and reading energy, and that’s so much easier in person.

So with Zoom, I always suggest camera’s on because as the facilitator, you can kind of read people, maybe they’re about to say something and then they pause or you can see their face light up or a scowl, and you’ll find clues that they have something to say. Then just gradually invite them in. Don’t put them on the spot, just be like, “Hey, so-and-so, I think you have a lot of expertise in this area. What do you think about that?” Something that kind of builds them up first instead of just putting them directly in the spot and being like, “Hey, you haven’t said anything.” Nobody’s going to respond well to that.

Douglas:

Yeah, I like that. Gradually building folks up.

Alyssa:

Yeah, absolutely. Leaders build up those around them. There’s nothing to accomplish by tearing people down. Even if you think it makes yourself look better, it doesn’t. And people will remember that, especially if it’s the first time you’ve interacted with a group, there’s no second chance at a first impression. And so just remember that when you build up, rising tides, lift all ships. And so it’s important that you are elevating everyone around you, because you don’t actually know their full potential and you don’t know what they could contribute. But if you tear them down and they don’t feel empowered to contribute, then it’s just a loss for everyone.

Douglas:

Speaking of lifting others up, I believe you shared a story about an HR colleague that helped you realize that what you were doing was facilitation and being able to label your skills in that way opened up a career path or those realizations just changed how you approached your career development. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Alyssa:

Yeah, and that’s such a prime example of sometimes you really just need one person to believe in you to get you over that hurdle. So this happened back when I wanted to transition from working in pharmaceuticals to working in tech, and I was really intimidated by this change. I’d had friends tell me, and colleagues that, “You have a transferable skill set. Why don’t you jump into this industry if you’re not really resonating with the industry you’re in right now?” And I was like, “Well, I’m not an engineer. I don’t have this deep technical background. I’m not sure how I can really sell myself to a new industry.” And I had a really good friend who was an HR business partner at the time, and she just helped me kind of build my resume and go through it. And she asked me questions about like, “Well, what do you do all day?”

And as I was explaining what I do, she’s like, “That’s creating a business plan, that’s facilitating, that’s…” All of these different skill sets that hadn’t occurred to me because I was being so literal with everything I was doing. I was like, “Well, I sell drugs in the neuroscience division.” But that’s not what matters, and that’s not what transfers and translates. And so she taught me, and this is a really important skill set for a facilitator, is to know when to zoom out to zoom in. And so she said, “Pull back. Just look at the raw form of everything you’re doing. What is that? How would you describe it?” And I’m like, “Oh, well, this is facilitation.” And she’s like, “Exactly, so put that on your resume.” And so it was just having somebody who could help me get through a moment of doubt and a moment of imposter syndrome. And that’s important in leadership, and that’s important in facilitation is just sometimes everybody needs a little push and a little help.

Douglas:

Absolutely. And that’s so great to know that they were there when you needed them. And then as leaders, we can reciprocate to those in need and step into those moments too.

Alyssa:

Yeah, there are probably so many moments that seem benign or mundane to you that had an impact on somebody else’s life and you don’t know. And so I always try to show up as my best and to bring out the best in others, because you don’t necessarily know when somebody else is having a moment of self-doubt and they just need one person to cheer them on or believe in them for a second, and that’ll get them over that hump.

Douglas:

Yeah, so true. Even folks that seem like they have confidence, there might not be a lot underneath that exterior that we see.

Alyssa:

Totally, yeah. I mean, I work with VPs who in a one-on-one will be like, “I am extremely introverted. I am uncomfortable with these big group conversations, and this is not my natural personality. This is not how I show up at home.” And then they’ll give a presentation and it’s like they’re presenting a daytime talk show or something. I mean, they’re just so confident and they’re so smooth. And so people are complex and they are layers. And so how people show up in one situation or one environment is not their whole personality. And I think it’s really important to remember that and to dig through them and to encourage it, because sometimes you can get stuck in, I’m not a speaker, I’m not a facilitator. And you just need somebody to say, “Well, yeah, you are and you’ve got this.” And remember at the end of the day that everybody’s human and nobody’s perfect, and it’s really unreasonable to expect that. And I think as soon as you break down that need for perfection, you create a more welcoming environment that’s going to be conducive to better conversations.

Douglas:

I’m thinking about how you shared in your transition to project management that a lot of it was navigating conflicting priorities with diverse teams. And so I’m curious, when you think about some of these tough facilitation moments or these challenges that the teams were facing or that you were facing together as you were facilitating and they were trying to figure this stuff out, what comes to mind that might be interesting for folks to hear about? If you can’t name specifics, are there any patterns that you’ve noticed?

Alyssa:

I have. I think it’s human nature to kind of revert back to meeting your own needs first. And so as a facilitator, something that I commonly encounter is having to break down organizational silos. So for example, I used to work in the class action litigation space, project managing those, and that’s a really complex process. You have the data processing team, you have the print formatting team, you have finance, you have all of these teams, and they each have these individual goals and objectives that they need to accomplish.

And so my job as the project manager and as the facilitator was to help them break down their individual silos and their individual goals and remind them at the end of the day, helping people who have been hurt and meeting the needs of our client is our goal across the board. This is what we’re all striving to achieve. And so I think when you remind them of how their part contributes to the whole and how it’s important to have everybody’s part contributing to the whole, you help break down these barriers and move the project forward. But it’s something I still encounter to this day. Different leaders all have their own organizations and they’re all just worried about the success of their organization, but at the end of the day, it’s really the success of Autodesk that matters. And we have a belief, we call it “One Autodesk”, and it’s so important to remember that and to remember that we are separate parts contributing to a bigger whole.

Douglas:

You’ve got the mantra of what you mentioned, and I’m sure that’s effective of just helping people anchor in on this bigger purpose, this bigger why. What are some other ways that you’re aligning folks in these sessions?

Alyssa:

I think one important way to, or an important aspect of alignment is to address any sort of elephant in the room. A lot of times people will not say exactly what they mean and the conversation will just kind of go in circles and the important stuff ends up going left unsaid. And so there’s definitely an aspect of diplomacy, but bravery as well and being able to just prompt that and be like, are we actually talking about what we need to talk about right now? Or are we staying at the surface level and all trying to be friendly, in which case we’re just spinning our wheels and we’re not actually moving forward towards accomplishing our goals. And so kind of knowing when to push the group a little bit to move past those barriers and past those comfort zones versus when to step back and let them sort of do it on their own, there’s definitely an art to it. It’s by no means a science, and a lot of it is just trying. There’s so much reading people in facilitation.

Douglas:

Reading people is so essential and there’s so many signals to watch out for. What are some of your go-to methods for making sure you have your finger on the pulse, so to speak?

Alyssa:

Yeah, well, when you’re in person, there’s obviously body language is really important to keep an eye on, but we live in a hybrid world and myself, and I’m sure many other folks are primarily on video calls and Zoom. And so from there I try to keep an eye on the pace of the conversation. Are people cutting each other off more? Is it getting a little bit more assertive? Is there some hostility starting to bubble underneath the surface? On the flip side of that, has somebody completely shut down? Is somebody who is normally a contributor and who I would expect to contribute to this portion of the conversation remaining silent? And just watch for the tone, watch for, you can even just see a smile.

You can see how people are reacting or are they scowling? But it’s so many subtleties that you want to look out for. There’s very seldom going to be this glaring sign that’s like, “Hey, the group is not on the same page anymore.” If you reach the point where it has escalated to that level, you probably missed a few subtle cues you could have used to rein it in sooner. But I would say just really watch the flow of the conversation, watch how they’re interacting. Is their demeanor changing? Is their voice changing? And when it does, how can you help bring them back?

Douglas:

Yeah. What are some of your go-to approaches to bring it back? I mean, you used the word rein it in, so what does reining it in look like for you?

Alyssa:

Sometimes it means reminding the group of the north star and why we’re here and saying something along, “I hear what you’re saying, however, I’m not sure that that’s going to get us to our north star. And so let’s step back for a moment and possibly look at this from a different angle.” Another way to do it is to ask them to frame it in a different way. Say, “Hey, I don’t really understand what you’re saying right now. Can you frame it from this angle for me? Or how does what you’re saying contribute to the objective of this gathering, meeting, session?” Whatever it may be.

And so by rein it in, what I refer to is step back to step forward and just remind everybody of why they’re there. Try to deescalate, try to recenter and refocus, and then have the group get back on track. And that’s tricky, because sometimes it’s so hard to know when the conversation is going in an important direction that you should allow as a facilitator and when it’s starting to run down a rabbit hole and you need to pull it back in. And so that’s where the active listening really comes in handy. And you need to be completely engaged the entire time.

Douglas:

Yeah, that’s a stylistic thing too. How far do you let things go out into the nether regions before you bring them back in, because that’s where inspiration might hit or innovative ideas might happen. And so I think when folks shut that off too quick, they miss those opportunities.

Alyssa:

Exactly. And I come back to it’s an art, not a science. It’s really hard to know when are you blocking innovation versus when are you blocking unnecessary conflict. And it’s so much easier when you’re working with a group continually. So for me, I work with a senior leadership team all the time. I know them well. I know when they’re starting to go down an avenue that’s not going to be successful versus when they might be starting to figure something out. It’s really, really hard though as a facilitator when you’re jumping into a group you’re not familiar with. And my advice in that situation is to really lean into that naivety and to be like, “I don’t understand this. Could you explain this further?” Or, “How does this accomplish whatever our ultimate goal is?” And there’s nothing wrong with just asking those questions that they may sound uninformed, but they could be helping to prompt the group to pause for a moment just to reflect on are we going towards this path of innovation or is this a fruitless conversation that we should abandon?

Douglas:

Yeah, I like that. And it can often be used as a way to, as the facilitator, you can de-escalate using that approach. You can steer things back toward the purpose or north star, as you were saying earlier, but do it in a way that doesn’t seem confrontational. Saying things like, “Help me connect the dots here.” Because it’s not about them saying it wrong or being confusing. It’s about me, the facilitator, having trouble connecting the dots when probably everybody else in the room felt the same way, but because I’m the one that fell on the sword, now everyone gets the benefit.

Alyssa:

Absolutely, yeah. Facilitators have to be willing to just take the bullet sometimes and be okay with doing it for the better of the group. Yeah, to your point, I mean, you’re probably not the only one who’s thinking that. I guarantee you there’s somebody else in the room who’s like, “Why are we talking about this?” But there’s a group dynamic at play, and as a facilitator, you’re oftentimes seen as this impartial entity. And so it’s not going to be as intrusive if you ask the question as if somebody else in the group were to do so.

Douglas:

And also I think we practice those ways of not being judgmental or not coming across as confrontational. I think even if folks aren’t being confrontational, if they clearly have an opinion on the matter and they just blurt out whatever is on the top of mind, it probably comes across confrontational.

Alyssa:

Absolutely. And in those situations, I try to bring things back to facts. Is this just an objective opinion? Do you just feel some way about this? Or do you have information that the rest of the group could benefit from understanding that has led you to this opinion? And so if you challenge them on that, you’ll oftentimes find your answer whether they were right, and there’s an avenue that you should be pursuing that you missed. Or it’ll kind of allow them to self-check and be like, “Wow, I feel this way because I feel this way, but I don’t have any data I can bring to the group to validate it.”

Douglas:

When you were saying validation and bring it back to facts, it made me think how powerful a prompt along the lines of, how might we measure that?

Alyssa:

Definitely. And my organization, we live in the world of OKRs, which are objectives and key results for anyone who’s not familiar, and they’re a way to measure the success of an organization. And there’s such an easy thing to point work back to. So if a team is kind of going in the wrong direction, it’s like, which OKR are you feeding with this project? Are you moving us towards our common goals that we aligned on and that we agreed on as a group? And yeah, I love that you said that, Douglas. How will you measure success? Is this measurable? Is a great question to ask because it really forces them to pause and think, is there a way for me to know for certain that this is the right thing to do, or is it just a shot in the dark?

Douglas:

Yeah, I love that. I want to talk about vulnerability real quick. And you mentioned that as one of the key parts in the learning experience for you during our certification, and I wanted to see if you could elaborate a bit on how embracing vulnerabilities has helped you grow as a facilitator.

Alyssa:

There is so much humanity in vulnerability. And coming back to what we were saying earlier about facilitation, it’s just not possible if you can’t connect on a human level. I think if you’re going to ask others to be vulnerable, you have to be willing to do so yourself and to let your walls down and to be able to have these rich, honest conversations. And it’s so uncomfortable. You’re opening up a piece of yourself that you’ve probably really tried to protect, and that’s I think, a natural instinct. But learning to talk about things maybe you’re not great at or things that you wish you could do better. It doesn’t have to be a therapy session where you’re like, “Here’s my every insecurity and here’s what led to it.” But being able to show people that you’re willing to give a piece of yourself makes them more prone to giving a piece of themselves in return and then you’re having a more honest conversation.

Douglas:

Yeah. Speaking of the summit, you’re going to be at the summit this year, so what kind of excites you the most about coming down to Austin and being with a bunch of fellow facilitators?

Alyssa:

So much. I love getting to talk to other facilitators and learn from them. Everybody does it a little bit differently and so there’s always so many gold nuggets that I can borrow from other facilitators and share. Some of mine in return this year will be different. I’m excited for a different reason because I’m presenting this year, it is my first time presenting at the Facilitation Summit, and I’m actually going to be talking about some of the stuff we discussed today. We’re going to talk about using storytelling and leveraging that through facilitation to enable change management and how when you want a change to really take root and take effect, you have to tell a story that people can see themselves in and you have to bring them along on the journey with you. That’s where you get that true buy-in. And so we’re going to talk about kind of how do you do that? What are some tips? Coming back to how do you measure it, how do you know if it’s been successful? And how can you seamlessly fold that into just your everyday facilitation?

Douglas:

Love that. Storytelling is so critical. I think so often stories are such a part of getting teams to align, getting ideas to come out, yet folks aren’t spending enough time thinking about how they draw a good story out of people.

Alyssa:

Yeah, you always have to think about the what’s in it for me. So I work with the platform organization at Autodesk and we build all of these cool capabilities and then we take them to product teams and we’re like, “Hey, use this.” And the first, the human response is, “No, why? You haven’t given me a reason. What’s in it for me?” And so to be able to tell that story, to tell the story of why this is a great capability for your use case and how it can unlock new things for your work and make your life easier. Really putting them in the story of your capability or your product really makes it seem like it’s something that they belong to as well. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about some. And whether you’re trying to increase adoption or sell something or start a new idea, it doesn’t really matter. Being able to tell that story will help you be more successful.

Douglas:

So you’ve also mentioned the importance of mentoring others in facilitation at Autodesk. I’m curious, what strategies have worked best when you’ve been developing others around these skills and how do you see facilitation shaping the organization’s culture?

Alyssa:

Yeah, I think not taking for granted the ability to be a storyteller is really important because that is something that comes more naturally to some folks than others. And so we’ve really been focusing on how to be a storyteller and helping our team feel confident in their ability to articulate a story, especially because we have a global team. We have people with different first languages coming from different cultures and different backgrounds, and that can create different insecurities. And so being able to connect through story and be like, well, a story doesn’t necessarily have to know any sort of cultural bounds, it’s something that we can all belong to together.

And so I lead the extended leadership team for my organization and at our summit this past summer, we spent an entire day just focusing on storytelling and talking about all the different ways that that can be an asset in their toolset or career, however you want to phrase it. And it’s not just at work. I’m on the board for the Autodesk Women’s Network, and we’re talking about selling your own skill sets and standing up for yourself, selling your brand and what you can bring to the table in your career. And so there are just so many different ways that being able to be an efficient storyteller can help you not only move your career forward, but also help you bring others along.

Douglas:

That’s a nice segue. I was wanting to hear about, as you think about the next phase of your career, as you move that along, what most excites you about the role of facilitation and how it might play in that work that you do in the future?

Alyssa:

I think now I’m at a phase in my career where I have a decent amount of influence. And so being able to use that position to empower others is really exciting to me. When somebody who’s on the leadership team taps you on the shoulder and says, “I think you would be really great for this. I’m so proud of what you’ve done to date, and I’d love for you to share that with others.” You’re really not only building that next generation of leadership, but you’re holding a hand out to somebody else. Because at some point in my career, there was somebody who did that for me, and it gave me the confidence to kind of lean into that unknown, to be vulnerable and to take a chance.

And so now it’s my turn to do that for others and to hold the door open for those behind me. And so I’m really excited to be at a point, obviously you never are done learning how to facilitate. It’s a lifelong learning process, but I do have enough knowledge and information now that I can start to share that with others. And that’s really exciting for me. I would love for everybody to be able to tell their story and to just create this belonging all the way through our organization.

Douglas:

So as we come to a close, I want to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Alyssa:

I think it’s kind of a silly analogy, but it’s the one that I hold onto. And what I see facilitation and leadership really drilling down to is you’re kind of a collaboration Sherpa. You know the way, you’re guiding the team, but you’re still letting them make the journey on their own, and you’re helping to remove obstacles and roadblocks, and you’re getting them to where they need to go, but you’re not doing it for them. And that’s really what I try to bear in mind as a leader and a facilitator.

Douglas:

It’s been a pleasure having you on the show, Alyssa. Thanks for joining.

Alyssa:

Thank you. I had a great time. I loved this conversation.

Douglas:

I did as well, and I look forward to talking to you again probably at the summit.

Alyssa:

Great. I’ll see you there.

Douglas:

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

The post From Extrovert to Empowerment: The Art of Facilitating Group Dynamics appeared first on Voltage Control.

“I was blown away, absolutely enthralled and fascinated. My granddad turned to me and said, “You’ve got an inquiring mind, don’t ever lose that.” It has essentially formed who I am.”- Dan Walker

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Dan Walker from Collective Imagination Consulting. They discuss Dan’s journey from the legal field to the outdoor industry, driven by his deep curiosity and evolving understanding of justice. Dan shares how his formative experiences shaped his perspectives and how he now helps organizations create pathways toward a more just and joyful society. The conversation highlights the importance of curiosity in both personal and professional contexts, the complexities of justice, and the pivotal role businesses can play in fostering social change. The episode emphasizes a method-agnostic approach to facilitation.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

About the Guest

Dan supports organizations to work in partnership with Community Leaders in the collective work towards a more just and joyful society.

He brings over 10 years of experience from across the public, non-profit and business sectors guiding organizations to do the “institutional soul work” to identify values they hold.  Supporting organizations to work in partnership with Community Leaders to translate those values in to strategy and actions that deliver the highest expression of those values and incrementally build towards a more just and joyful society.  

Dan cares deeply about respecting each person’s human dignity and brilliance, believing that co-creation can better design the systems within which we live.  His human-centred design approach supports clients to embrace these principles and pursue work that aligns with their values and support the transformative change sought.

As a member on the Board of Directors at the Vancouver Foundation, Dan advises the organization on how to better centre community need and develop governance practices that enshrine that commitment within its values and processes.  As a member of the Board of Directors at the Outdoor Diversity Alliance, he supports their mission to foster a more equitable outdoor industry through centering community expertise and catalyzing collective action across the outdoor industry.  

Balancing his love of music and the arts with time on the trails, you’ll usually find him at a local gig or exhibition, or in motion on the land.  In either context, you’re likely to find him with a huge smile on his face!

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Today I’m with Dan Walker from Collective Imagination Consulting, where he supports organizations to co-create pathways toward a more just and joyful society. Welcome to the show, Dan.

Dan Walker:

Really nice to see you, Douglas. Yeah, looking forward to the conversation.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, looking forward to chatting as well. And as usual, let’s get started with how you got your start. And I want to come back to something you mentioned in your alumni story, which was, gosh, I think you were 10 years old in London, your grandfather’s comment about the inquiring mind. Let’s talk about that a little bit.

Dan Walker:

Oh yeah. I mean, it’s a good place to start. It’s always a nice memory. I don’t know, the sun’s rising here too, so I don’t know if there’s a warmth attached to that memory. Yeah, when I was 10, I visited London with my grandparents. It was kind of the first time I’d been on a big trip like that. My grandma and granddad took me and my younger brother around London, and one of the places that we went to was the Tower of London. We went around, we were toured through the exhibits with the beefeaters who spoke to their lives and how things worked and the history. And I was blown away, I was absolutely enthralled and fascinated and obsessed with it.

And I remember coming out of that space and going down the tube, going down the tube close by to get on the underground and go to the next place, and my granddad turning to me and just saying, “You’ve got an inquiring mind. Don’t ever lose that.” And it’s essentially formed who I am. I think I’ve built my identity around this curiosity that I’ve always had. I find the world endlessly fascinating, I find everything endlessly fascinating. My biggest challenge is probably that balance of how do I say no to some things when literally whatever people are into, I just find it interesting. And yeah, it’s really shaped who I am and living into that childlike curiosity is something I always tap into. It really informs my work and how I move through the world, and I just love it. It lights me up anytime I’m doing that. So yeah, it’s a real starting point for me, and it set me on this path that I’m currently still on. Yeah, it’s a beautiful memory too.

Douglas Ferguson:

Has that punctuated moments throughout your life? Do you recall moments where that’s popped up periodically?

Dan Walker:

I think so. I mean, even now I look at it and even when I was chatting to friends the other week and they’re talking about some of the things there now studying and looking at, and I don’t know, I’m currently studying Spanish and learning to draw and sketch and these pieces and then as my friends are talking about these other areas that they’re looking at, I’m like, “Oh my God, how do I learn more about that?” So I see it all the time. I know that’s who I am and that’s what I value.

And then in work too, I think I know my ability to ask questions is my strength. I sit in a space of genuine curiosity, so I always return to that as like, yeah, that’s who I am, my heart, that’s what I believe and what I bring to the world. So it definitely comes up, it shows up all the time, and I think it’s how do I balance that curiosity with focusing on certain things in a certain moment? And also being blown away by everything, by the fascination of spaces. Yeah, I was in CERN, the particle accelerator last year, and mind-blowing what we’re doing and what does that mean and what does that tell us about the world and how 95% of the world is dark matter, and we don’t really know what that is or what that means. And I just find it all endlessly fascinating and I love the world in which we live because of that, I guess. So yeah, it shows up everywhere.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, the quest for knowledge is a fascinating thing. It’s like this ever-receding zone of the universe we don’t understand.

Dan Walker:

Yeah. I mean for you too, I don’t know, do you feel that sense of the curiousness around the planet we live in, how we interact, the social interactions, does that show up for you too?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I mean, there’s endless things that make me curious. In fact, there’s a construction project on the highway that connects the area I live in to downtown Austin and every time we drive through trying to figure out all the pieces and what are they going to do next and what are they up to and how’s this going to work and where’s this going to go, or are they going to close this down or open this piece up? And my wife finds it hilarious. And I think sometimes when I’m pontificating about the possibilities, she’s sneakily pulled out her phone and is recording me.

Dan Walker:

Which, yeah, to watch you in full flight would be great. I mean, what are other questions are you asking? I don’t know, it brings for me such a beauty to the world. I think with that fascination, I find everything, even the hard bits, I think that’s the spaces that I’ve come to in later years is how to, in the pain of things, can you find the beauty and the fascination and the interest that we can be pushed into these spaces that are really deeply painful for us? And what does that mean and how is that experience and how is that a beautiful experience at the same time? And I would say that’s an incomplete journey, but it’s a space that I’m now moving more into of how do I hold the full experience of life and the complexity of it all and bring that same level of curiosity to everything, not just the beautiful things that I’m in awe of, but also the difficult things too? And I don’t know, yeah, that’ll be the next 50 years trying to figure that out or get closer to figuring some of that out.

Douglas Ferguson:

When you reflect back, what are the things that you found you’re most curious about?

Dan Walker:

Oh, I think humans. I think humans and the interaction of us and how we understand ourselves and how we understand the collective us. I think that interaction is just a fascinating dynamic. There are similarities that come from the shared human experience, but also these profound differences as a result of the lived experience and the systems that we live in and all these pieces. How does that sit together? How do I sit as who I am within this collective system? And then how we layer over the politics and the systems that we’ve created and how that shapes and how it changes culturally from different contexts. So yeah, I find that fascinating without end, I can’t see an end point in being curious about that.

Yeah, I do think psychology, those spaces strongly appeal to me. There’s times where I’m like, “I should maybe look into doing that,” because I just find it a fascinating subject that we’re all beautifully unique and how do we sit together, how do we acknowledge that uniqueness and how do we stitch this collective blanket together as society? That is the space, which kind of ties into my work, this question of justice and what is justice, how do we build towards a more just society, sort of acknowledges those two things. It acknowledges the unique brilliance of each of us, and it questions how do we stitch that together? And that’s the space where, yeah, I could talk about that, read about that, listen to people talking about that, thinking about that, working through it without end.

That’s just a beautiful space for me and in service of a goal that I believe is most precious, I guess, how do we find this space to have respect, a depth for one another and experience joy that can come from that collective sense of belonging? So that’s probably the big piece where it shows up most profoundly. That and then sketching, or I don’t know, whatever else it is at the minute, but really it’s the central focus on just this is the thing.

Douglas Ferguson:

So you talk about justice and connection, how did that first show up for you? What were some of the ways that you started to understand or realize that this is an important thread for you?

Dan Walker:

That’s a good question. I think fairness has always been relevant to me. I think that is probably a very almost naive way of coming to connect with it. When I was younger, this didn’t seem fair, that person was treated differently, we’d worked as hard and that different results came. So I think there was a very juvenile understanding of it, like, “That doesn’t seem fair, these people are being treated differently,” in whatever context it may have been.

And then there was an essay that we had to write when I was at high school, so I wouldn’t be that old, I’d maybe be 12, 13, somewhere in that kind of range, I just remember it too, we were sat in the library at a local school, which was an unusual event, we weren’t often taken to the library for our English classes, but for that one we were, and we were given this essay assignment, there was essentially posing the question of, should we have capital punishment in the country? Should that be legal? Should it not be legal? How do we decide that? And learned all about the miscarriages of justice and how that had transpired, went into the legal background on why it existed, what the historical significance of it was, what’s a society if we don’t have capital punishment in place? And I was enthralled with it, I was totally fascinated by this question.

And I think it brought me to an answer that I didn’t have at the time, I definitely didn’t come to this at the time, but really what was under that is who determines the answer to that question? And within that system, it was determined by a few. And I think where I’ve come to is this question of how are the systems within which we live determined by us all? And that’s the piece where now my understanding of justice sits and comes from.

But yeah, it’s always been there. It’s like always this pursuit of we all matter, our opinions all matter. If we’re having a conversation today on any truly complex subject, you don’t have the answer, I don’t have the answer. Instead, it sits between us and together we shape it and you sharpen my thinking and I sharpen yours, and all of a sudden we have this better understanding, this idea, our ideas are better than my ideas, collectively, we shape it better. And I hold that to be true and I think it comes from a place of respect for other people, a place of belief that we are all phenomenally brilliant and talented, we just need to bring that together. And yeah, that’s really the work that I now do, but it stems from this belief in we all matter and we all should be valued and considered worthy and feel a sense of belonging together. Yeah, I mean, I could talk about it for hours.

Douglas Ferguson:

And you pursued law at some point, right?

Dan Walker:

I did, yeah. So I studied that and I think that was kind of a reflection of that maybe naive answer. I was younger then, I didn’t really know the fullness of the systems in which we sit. I came to it because I believe in justice, well, of the past, you can take, well, this one has justice in the title, we’re doing the legal sector, we’re going into criminal justice, which is intended to deliver justice. But having gone into that, finished my studies, came out, worked in a London Crown Court whilst I was living there to try and figure out do I want to carry on and become a barrister and do this work? It just became apparent to me that the system wasn’t what I believed justice to be.

Douglas Ferguson:

What was the big disconnect there or the dissonance you were feeling?

Dan Walker:

I would say it was systems that were imposing punishment and it wasn’t actually addressing the underlying inequities that exist. So it was just punishing for crimes committed without acknowledging that there are inequities that exist in society that were creating those. It wasn’t doing anything to address that. So for me, there was one case that we tried, prosecuted, the defendant was found guilty, served time in prison, two years later, the exact same case for the exact same defendant landed on my desk and I was like, “This is broken. This is not it.” I look now and I think there are people doing phenomenal work within criminal justice, and I could have maybe found pathways into changing and working on the system. At the time I was younger and I was like, “I don’t feel we’re doing the work of justice,” so I left.

It’s a tricky space because I acknowledge too the victim has suffered harm as a result of the crime so there’s a real importance of centering the victim’s perspective within that conversation too. But I think that we often neglect the perspective of the defendant and the person who has committed those crimes or has been charged with those crimes, they matter too. And I think often we don’t focus on that and say, “Hang on, what has contributed to that person being here today? And how as a society do we take account for that and acknowledge that and work through that and all those pieces?”

So yeah, it’s a fascinating space. I feel like I’m way closer to what I believe justice to be now. I feel like I’m working a far more true reflection of that and there’s amazing work being done within the legal spaces around access to justice and these pieces that maybe if I’d have found those, I would’ve still been there, I just didn’t and it didn’t feel like I was doing the work that I believed to be most true.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, we all take our own path, right? I think at the time you pivoted through the outdoor industry, if I’m remembering right.

Dan Walker:

Yeah, yeah. I ended up, I was in London when I was working in the courts, I left there. London’s amazing, it’s a phenomenal city. I love music, we were talking about that before, music’s my thing, I can’t play, which it sounds like you may be able to, but yeah, I can’t play, I love listening. So in London, I go to all the gigs and it was an amazing city, but at the time it’s exhausting too. It’s phenomenal as a cultural hub, there’s so much going on, there’s so many people. But also over time, that becomes draining at the same time. Every space that you are in, it’s overcrowded, it’s overwhelmed with other people. We’d go to the pub and I’d be sat on half of a stool and then somebody else with their group of friends would be sat on the other half of the stool facing the other way, and it just became a reflection of this is a busy space, I’m quite disconnected from nature here completely to get out into nature was really challenging.

So in parallel, Canada was one of the places where I was like, it seems like it has all the pieces. Nature is here in abundance. Yes, it has its challenges politically, but the conversations around the work of justice, around truth and reconciliation and other pieces are conversations that are being named. So I think that became a place where I was curious to look and ended up moving here. The outdoor industry I came to because I was like, “Well, I guess I’m going to try something different,” I know I don’t want to go back into the legal space, I love time outside, I love nature, I love being connected in those spaces so what about trying the outdoor industry? So that’s what I did.

I initially worked at MEC, Mountain Equipment Company, which is essentially the Canadian equivalent of REI. I worked alongside their CEO, it was amazing, got a really good exposure at the time. They were pushing deeply into the work of sustainability, so focusing on people and planet. And it gave me a real eye-opener as to, wow, the power of businesses to affect change, they had the revenue figured out in a way that nonprofit sector found more challenging. They could work across all different sectors, so they could work with governments, they could work with nonprofits, they could work with academic institutions, they could move so fast on anything. If they wanted to go, they could go there and they could go quickly and they could partner and they could make shifts.

And significantly, they have this huge voice, when outdoor brands say something, it far eclipses what can be said by government or nonprofits, which we can challenge and question whether that’s right. I think a lot of the nonprofits have such credible voices, such credible expertise on these subjects, but they don’t have the recognition and the respect that brands do. And I think we live in a society where the logo has power, and I saw that and how that could be used as a tool for change. So yeah, I left MEC did the same thing over at Arc’teryx, another outdoor brand based here too, worked for their CEO for the first few years.

And one of the things that came to me was every year we’d do a sample sale, so we produce gear that we’d test and see how it worked. It couldn’t then be sold commercially, but the tested gear would be sold internally, and we probably generated about $100,000 a year. And really with that money, I just started asking questions, I was like, “Well, what are we doing with that? What’s the intent of it?” It became really apparent there was no strategy of what we were intending to do. So we went through this exercise, which I can touch on, of how do we determine the highest and best use of our resources in service of a societal and/or environmental need? That’s kind of the question that we started to answer and really became my work for the past eight years, work which I love. It’s work that got me far closer to what is justice and happy to chat more if that’s relevant too, about that process.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s curious to me because for one, what the process was even like. I think identifying a guiding purpose like that with a really clear, “This is the question that we’re going to wrap our arms around,” I think that in and of itself is remarkable because so many folks are just kind of, “Oh yeah, we want to achieve this thing,” or they might throw some metrics at things to start a project, but it sounded like that was rooted in some real curiosity. And then also how did you even bring everyone together?

Dan Walker:

I would say too it was clumsy because I didn’t know, so now I look back and I can layer over and I can see the good things in what I did, and I can also see like, “Oh, you could have probably learned to do that better.” I didn’t know what I was doing in truth at that point, but, as you said, I had this curiosity of how do we do this? How do we marry what we have, the assets, the resources, the influence we have as an organization with these societal needs that we see existing in the world?

So really it was through a process of conversations across the entire company. Our CEO at the time was amazing, we’re still good friends now, but he really had a commitment to saying, “Sure, let’s try it. Let’s try and figure out what this intersection means and looks like.” So there was buy-in from the company, it was a prioritized conversation. Different groups from all across the organization we brought together to explore this topic and try and work through what that might be.

And in parallel, I was connected to the community leaders, so people within the space who are doing the work every day on those societal issues that intersect with the outdoor industry. So whether it’s equitable access to nature or truth and reconciliation or thinking about guardianship of the land, these areas, I was connected with those groups too so gaining insights from them as to what are those real challenges? What are those pieces and the needs from the real movements?

And so really starting to bring those two together to say, who are we as an organization? First, let’s do that work, right? Who are we as an organization? Why do we exist? So for the brand, it became really apparent that yes, they designed and built a climbing harness in some ways because they believe they could build a lighter, more comfortable harness, which is great. But the question remains, well, why build a lighter, more comfortable harness? And the root note to that is really this belief in the transformative power of connection to land. So we build this gear because it gets us in these spaces that moves us in these ways that my words fall short of explaining but when I’ve been outside, I’m a different human as a result of it. It moves me in these really powerful, humbling, respectful ways. It shifts who I am.

So once you know that and you’re like, “Well, our commitment and the reason we are here is because of this belief in the power of the land, what then are the societal needs that intersect?” So if you look at the outdoor industry, it has a very extractive relationship with the land. It takes from it and it doesn’t acknowledge at a depth that this land is indigenous land and it doesn’t acknowledge the fullness of what that means. It doesn’t respect sacred spaces, a lot of the language it uses and even celebrates denies the presence of indigenous peoples. So language around first ascension, language around wilderness, this is often celebrated in the industry, and at the expense of acknowledging indigenous peoples. So a big part of our work became that focus on truth and reconciliation. How as an industry do we take our responsibility for that and start to shift the narratives and move that work?

And then the other side, a lot of the community leaders name it far more eloquently than I do, the outdoor industry is traditionally male, stale and pale. I look at myself, people listening won’t see this, but yeah, I’m a white male from Northern Europe, it sits profoundly, that is where the industry has traditionally sat, and there’s a lot of work to do. And the question really is how do we embrace the wider we and how do we do this work towards equitable access to nature? So that really became the second area, this focus on supporting the movement towards equitable access to nature.

It’s those two pieces that have driven that work over the last eight years, and really then looking to bring that to life with a commitment that Arc’teryx or any organization is leading neither of those movements. Instead, their role is to listen deeply to community leaders and map their strategy and resources in service of it. Really, that’s the work I did at Arc’teryx, and it’s now the belief that I bring with me into Collective Imagination, the consulting work that I now do.

But yeah, I look back, I don’t know, the process, it was rough. I figured it out by speaking to mentors, community leaders, and we got it to a really good place. There’s so much, I would get there way quicker now, I know now the facilitation practices, how I would structure things, how we move it, building relationships, what’s the intent of these sessions and what are we building towards? But I got there. It definitely took us longer than it would take now, but the curiosity is always key. And even in the work that I do now, that’s what I’m trying to inspire in organizations to ask those deep questions and be open to where it goes and to work with community leaders who have that expertise. So yeah, it’s been a journey and it’s kind of nice to look back and see that, yeah, I have grown and I am more competent in this and there’s still so much for me to go in the journey of getting better at this work. So yeah, it’s been fun.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. What about the power imbalances that exist when you have organizations with resources trying to work with grassroots communities?

Dan Walker:

These are good. These are not small questions. So yeah, the power, it’s the think, right? I think as you do the work more and more, you realize that the power we hold is everything. It frames who is able to determine those systems that are created. Especially as a brand, you hold immense power. In many ways, you’re a gatekeeper of resources so the grants that you provide, that is a piece. A big part of the work has been how do you acknowledge that it exists, it is a reality within the context of which we live, and how do you work beyond it too? So how do you start to move from, “We have these power imbalances that exist,” into this space of, “We know they exist, but we still want to work in partnership and we want to work in deep trusting relationship”?

I remember there was an example where we had an event, an activity with one of the partners, and we always push, I would always say in conversation, “I want to hear the honest feedback. I want to hear where we’re going wrong. I want to hear where we can get better.” And one of the partners, this is a couple of years into the relationship, shared some feedback on one of the things that was challenging in this event, “It wasn’t exactly what we wanted. We felt like there was different ways we could have done it, there were better ways we could have done it.”

And in the first instance, it’s always challenging to hear that feedback of like, oh, we kind of missed the mark on something. But it also told me we’ve been doing that intentional work the right way such that now we were starting to build relationships where we could truly hear the fullness of what’s going on and start to truly work together in deeper partnership. I think it’s critical, and it takes time. Building trust is the critical piece of work. How do you really build trust? There’s a lot of harm that’s existed between the relationship of corporations and businesses and nonprofits and community leaders, there’s a lot of justifiable mistrust there because of how historically businesses have acted.

So I think you start from that place, you have to start to build relationships from a very trusting place and slowly over time come to this position where we can move into this true reciprocal relationship, this reciprocal partnership where we share the good and the bad and we work through it together. That isn’t going to come tomorrow. If you’re just starting, there’s no way you’ll get close. I think what we heard for those first few years was, “This is great, keep doing the work,” and then you realize over time there’s a depth that is not being shared, and how do you unlock that?

And I apply that to the same things. How do we truly make people feel comfortable and supported and safe within spaces such that they can share their most preciously held ideas? That’s really what we want to hear, we want to hear the brilliance of you. And in order to do that, we need to create this safe space that makes you feel belonging, that makes you feel compelled and comfortable to share, which I think, I don’t know, that feels like a track that Voltage Control is on. I don’t know whether that tracks for you, but I think this push around unlocking the brilliance of people feels like what, I don’t know, what Voltage Control is trying to unlock in all these different contexts. So I don’t know, I’d be curious for you, is my read right? Or, yeah, how do you think about that kind of hearing people’s voices and what facilitation unlocks?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, and it’s an essential component of facilitation. And I think our mission is to elevate the ecosystem at large by upskilling more people and providing opportunities for folks to really practice and grow their facilitation skills, whether it’s through certification or the community or even some of these more complex projects we’ve been finding ourselves participating in that allow us to give our alumni really in-depth on-the-job kind of experience, resume-building experience, and at the same time driving some real impacts. And it is really about how do we elevate conversations? How do we get more people in the conversations? And back to your point, hearing that things didn’t go as well as people had hoped, while it can be really disheartening to hear because you put everything into it, you really wanted things to go really well, but the fact that they’re telling you that means that you’ve done something right, you’ve created an environment where they feel comfortable telling you that. So I think that’s a keen reflection that you have there.

Dan Walker:

It totally is. And I think feeling bad is it is this work of dissolving the ego too, I think like that. And it’s a critical part as we look to show up in this world, how do we acknowledge the ego that we all hold? How do we think through that? How do we dissolve that such that we can allow this conversation to sit in a true space of what is your experience? How can I get better at this? How can we do this better together? Rather than being like, “I don’t want to listen to that, just tell me I’m doing good work.”

And I think that’s equally a part of facilitation is how do you do the self-work such that you can step into those spaces and truly create a safe environment where we all can collaborate? I think people often, and I did too, think about facilitation purely as the mechanics of how you structure conversation, how you bring them together, but it’s also this self-work that runs into life too of how do I show up and how do I make sure I’m in that space open to what I’m hearing? That feels the big piece.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes. The success of any intervention is directly related to the internal conditions of the intervener.

Dan Walker:

Oh good, I mean, yeah, yes. It feels it. And I think I almost intuitively knew that but going through the program, it’s a conversation that continues to come up of here are the mechanics of the process, amazing. They would’ve got me to that process at Arc’teryx far faster, far more effectively, far more knowingly. But this layer of the self-work too is a thread that has constantly been hit on, how are you doing that? How are you showing up? How in the moment, in the eye of the storm when things are going poorly, how do you come back to yourself, be grounded enough that you can then create an environment where to the group you’re like, “It’s okay, we’re going to work through this, here’s where we’re going”? It is so critical. And when you see it done, it is beautiful to watch people stand in the eye of that storm calm, understood, working through, human. I mean, that’s the aspiration I guess, that’s where hopefully we’re all going.

Douglas Ferguson:

So let’s hear a little bit about Collective Imagination. I mean, what’s been some recent success stories that you’re really proud of?

Dan Walker:

Yeah, I mean, it’s fun, it’s so fun. So Collective Imagination is the consulting business I set up in the summer of last year. So I left Arc’teryx, really due to this belief in what is justice, justice being that which exists when we truly co-create the systems that we live in. I wanted to push on that. I wanted to say, “How do I find organizations trying to do this work to co-create pathways to a more just and joyful society?” That’s really what I believe at my core, I want to find organizations doing that work.

I’ve been blown away. I never intended to run a business, I never intended to do anything on my own lik this, it’s not something that organically came to me, it’s not an aspiration, it’s not something I would say I really desired or pursued, but having done it, what it has unlocked in terms of the work that I’m able to do is phenomenal. I think you name in the world what you believe to be true, and all of a sudden, I don’t know, this beautiful gift comes to you where people who are like, “That’s what I also believe. How do we collaborate on things?” It has just started to emerge. So that’s resulted in the work that I’ve been able to do.

So Burton Snowboards are doing some amazing work in this space, particularly around equitable access to nature and climate action. I got to work with them on their philanthropic strategy, so really kind of applying the same logic we did at Arc’teryx into their work, asking these deep questions of who are we? Why do we exist? Based on that, what is the highest and best use of our resources? How do we center community expertise throughout the entire process? It’s amazing, it’s a beautiful example of what it can look like in reality.

Actually, Laporte who heads up that work, the VP of Purpose and Impact there, is phenomenal. I think it’s always amazing to look at people who inspire you in the work because it can give us insights as to what are those things that I want to grow into? What are the things that I want to learn? Ashley is one of those impact leaders who I look at as, “This is what the work looks like and this is the leadership we need in the world.” So that is a plug for anybody looking and interested in the work of impact, check out Ashley and what she’s doing.

Similarly, I helped to found a nonprofit a few years back called the Outdoor Diversity Alliance. And really this sits at the heart of the outdoor industry asking that question of how do we embed equity within the outdoor industry? How do we start to do that at scale through collective action of the various brands, different brands or member companies of the Outdoor Diversity Alliance? And so I facilitated a conversation with those impact leaders from the different brands.

And from that I asked the question of like, “Okay, so we’re saying equity in the outdoor industry is what we want, what are the barriers there? Why are we not making progress on it?” And what came up really was this revelation that it wasn’t being prioritized by senior leaders. The people sat in that room were lik, “I know what I’d do. If I had the opportunity, here’s where we go. We’d center community, we’d co-create strategy, we’d work into action, and then we’d keep iterating off that. What I don’t have is prioritization by our senior leaders.” So that’s the barrier.

So the next question was, “Well, okay, well, how might we work to resolve that?” So what came up through conversation and dialogue was really we need a business case for equity in the outdoors. I’ve experienced this too, everyone within these roles is stretched and tapped and can’t get to this deeper work when they’re just trying to keep the lights on in what they’re doing. So what I did with them was they helped run a project where we brought together the very tangible business case of this work. So we’ve always had the moral imperative of the work, but in a business context that just hasn’t proved sufficient. And we say these values, that hasn’t necessarily crossed the line of where we see the work needing to go.

Instead, we started to look at these macro trends and these shifts that are really impacting the world. So we have demographic shifts, we have access to capital being more tied to the work of equity, we have future generations, both consumers and employees saying, “I demand this as part of what we’re doing and my buying decisions are my decisions on where I work will be changed as a result of it.” So we created that business case, we presented it to all the members, and now we’re figuring out how we enroll CEOs and senior leadership teams in that work to really frame that this work is not just a moral imperative, but it’s a business imperative too. There’s a demand to do this.

So again, it’s that true co-creation work, working with community leaders and business leaders to understand the needs and building together on this incremental journey towards this more just and joyful society, acknowledging that it’s generational work, it will continue long after my lifetime, but what’s that next step we can take and how can we continue to move it forward?

So those are some of the projects that have come up. And coaching too, I think a lot of people are burning in this work, they’re struggling with real burnout. The question of what’s going to happen is one that I’m hearing constantly right now, there’s a lot of political change in different countries and different contexts. What does that mean? This work’s hard, I think it’s going to get harder, what does that mean and look like? And how am I doing? I’m absolutely on fire, what does that mean? So I’ve started doing that more coaching with those impact leaders to support them through it. They’re all things I’ve experienced myself first-hand. This work is deeply challenging. The closer you get to understanding community need, the more you realize how far away we are from it.

And I think that tension of the patience needed in the work and the urgency of it is really hard to hold on the shoulders of often one individual who’s hearing all the challenges from the organization and from community and often doesn’t have anybody to turn to themselves. So that’s the space where I’ve started doing more work too. I totally love it. There are some phenomenal humans that I’m getting to work with who are doing that work. So yeah, those are some of the bits that are exciting me and then more to come, more to come, more things building, which is always great.

Douglas Ferguson:

The future looks bright?

Dan Walker:

I think so. I mean, we’ll always see. But yeah, I love what I’m getting to do. It looks bright and I think in ways I never imagined. I didn’t really know where I’m going and pieces, but it’s been stunning. And yeah, I’m excited for whatever comes next.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, as we come to an end here, I wanted to offer you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Dan Walker:

Ooh, maybe don’t sit on a squeaky chair. I’d say probably take care of yourself I think is the big piece in all of it. It’s whether we look at in the context of facilitation, it’s how do you make sure you are as an individual, you are well, and you are doing that work of dissolving the ego such that we can hold space for the collective conversation? Whether it’s you are an impact leader and you are pushing this work and you’re meeting resistance to it, how are you finding wellness yourself? How are you giving yourself grace and patience and doing that work of self-care? You’re a community leader, every day you are in community doing this work, doing the hard yards of this work that often goes unthanked, unrewarded in the ways I think it should be, unacknowledged in the ways I think it should be. In all of that, how are you truly finding the grace to acknowledge yourself and to be like, “My wellbeing is critical”?

A great mentor once said this to me, and I think it’s often said, you’re only good to the movements if you’re still in them. If we’re burnt out to the point that we leave, the movement doesn’t benefit from that. So I think especially in this moment, in these last few years, I just see it rising. I mentor on the top 25 environmentalists under 25 in Canada, and we were talking about, one of the questions at the end of the closing of the sessions was, “What is the one biggest barrier and concern you see around us not making a transition to a just future and a resilient climate future?” And the number one thing by a million miles was burnout.

And it stuck with me. And I’m like, “That is the thing.” How do we, yes, push the work forward, but push that from a place of I’m well, we’re well, our collective wellbeing is taken care of? I think if we don’t get that right, we’re going to create systems that don’t serve us and the joy that I believe what I’m seeking towards. So yeah, probably that more in this moment, it feels right to take care, I’d say.

Douglas Ferguson:

Wonderful. Well, I think that’s a call-to-action for folks to take care of themselves and put on your oxygen mask first before helping others.

Dan Walker:

It’s true.

Douglas Ferguson:

Especially true for facilitators, no matter where you’re working. And with that, Dan, I just want to say it was a great conversation. Look forward to chatting with you again soon, and thanks again for jumping on the show.

Dan Walker:

So fun, so fun. I mean, I love the conversation and I look forward to catching up in Austin in a few weeks at the summit.

Douglas Ferguson:

See you there.

Dan Walker:

Yeah, see you there.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

The post How Can Curiosity Drive Justice and Social Change in Organizations? appeared first on Voltage Control.

Let’s dive into strategies and tools, such as the Focus Finder, that help us build alignment and set the stage for a productive year ahead. By fostering alignment at every level, we can create sustainable momentum, avoid common pitfalls, and maximize our impact.

Reflection: The Foundation of Alignment

Alignment begins with reflection. Without taking the time to pause and assess where we are, it’s impossible to decide where we want to go. Reflection is not a passive act but an active practice of taking inventory. It involves looking back with a clear eye to understand what worked, what didn’t, and what resources or gaps exist.

Reflection can be thought of as a layered process. First, we review past experiences and choices. Then, we engage in what might be called a “meta-reflection”—a critical analysis of the insights we’ve uncovered. For instance, after identifying successes and challenges from the past year, we can inventory the highlights, identifying the components that contributed to those outcomes. From this inventory, we’re better equipped to decide what to prioritize.

Moreover, reflection allows us to identify patterns in our behavior and decision-making processes. Are there recurring challenges that signal deeper misalignments? Are there strengths we’ve underutilized? By asking these questions, we can uncover valuable insights that inform our next steps. A reflective practice, when built into daily, weekly, or quarterly routines, creates space for ongoing alignment rather than limiting it to a single moment in time, such as the New Year.

Reflection is also a tool for fostering resilience. By revisiting both our successes and our challenges, we build the capacity to adapt and thrive amid constant change. In this way, reflection becomes a cornerstone for personal and organizational growth.

From Resolutions to Roadmaps

Resolutions often feel like grand declarations—a bold “I will” that relies heavily on willpower. However, willpower is a finite resource. Roadmaps, on the other hand, provide a structured yet flexible guide for achieving long-term goals. They help translate aspirations into actionable steps, ensuring we stay focused and aligned.

A good roadmap begins with a clear vision of the desired destination. It includes milestones along the way to mark progress and moments for celebration. Crucially, roadmaps also account for dependencies: What do we need to succeed? Who do we rely on, and who relies on us? These dependencies must be aligned to reduce friction and foster momentum.

Flexibility is another essential feature of roadmaps. Unlike rigid plans, roadmaps allow for adaptation as circumstances change. This iterative approach—plan, act, review, adjust—ensures that the roadmap evolves alongside our growth.

Beyond practical execution, roadmaps also serve as powerful communication tools. Sharing your roadmap with your team, family, or stakeholders fosters transparency and builds alignment across the board. Whether you’re working on a personal goal or leading a complex project, a well-constructed roadmap bridges the gap between vision and action.

Another benefit of roadmaps is their ability to integrate short-term wins with long-term goals. Celebrating small milestones along the way keeps motivation high while reinforcing alignment with the broader vision. This dual focus ensures that efforts remain both purposeful and adaptable.

Prioritization: Turning Ideas into Action

With a reflective inventory and a roadmap in hand, the next step is prioritization. Prioritization is not just about choosing what to do; it’s about deciding what not to do. This requires a clear understanding of what matters most and why.

Several tools and techniques can help simplify prioritization:

1. The Vital Few: Focus on the 20% of tasks or initiatives that drive 80% of the impact.
2. Value vs. Complexity Matrix: Plot options based on their value and complexity, ensuring you’re pursuing initiatives with meaningful impact and manageable complexity.
3. Note-and-Vote: Generate ideas, then narrow the list by having individuals or teams vote on their top priorities.

Each method forces us to clarify our goals and the criteria by which we measure success. This process ensures that prioritization aligns with our values and vision.

Additionally, prioritization must be dynamic. As circumstances evolve, so too should our priorities. Regularly revisiting and adjusting our focus ensures that we remain agile and aligned with our overarching goals.

Another key to prioritization is defining criteria for success. By asking, “What makes this goal meaningful?” or “Why is this a priority?” we create alignment not only with our actions but also with our values. This depth of clarity enhances both commitment and execution.

The Harmony of Alignment

Alignment is not about achieving perfect straight lines. It’s about creating harmony—a constellation of efforts that collectively support a larger purpose. This perspective shifts the focus from rigidity to collaboration and flexibility.

Consider the analogy of aligning tires on a car. When the tires are misaligned, energy is wasted, and the car’s movement becomes inefficient. Similarly, misaligned goals—whether personal, team, or organizational—create unnecessary friction. Eliminating small points of friction in our environment or habits can significantly improve efficiency and progress.

Alignment is not just about internal focus. It extends to our relationships and external environment. Engaging loved ones, team members, and stakeholders in our goals fosters shared ownership and support. This interconnected approach transforms alignment from an individual task into a collective endeavor.

Moreover, alignment fosters a sense of purpose and clarity that can inspire and energize those around us. When a group’s efforts are harmonized, the cumulative impact far exceeds what any individual could achieve alone.

Harmony also allows for flexibility within a shared framework. Rather than enforcing uniformity, alignment becomes about mutual support, creating an environment where diverse perspectives and approaches can thrive together toward a common goal.

The Focus Finder: A Tool for Clarity and Alignment

One practical way to achieve alignment is through the Focus Finder, a structured template designed to surface priorities and clarify focus. The Focus Finder breaks down the process into four quadrants:

1. Where would you like to go?
   • Envision your desired destination or outcomes.
2. What’s holding you back?
   • Identify obstacles, challenges, and barriers.
3. Who inspires or supports you?
   • List individuals, teams, or role models who can guide or assist you.
4. What do you have?
   • Take inventory of assets, strengths, and resources.

The process begins with brainstorming and inventorying options within each quadrant. From there, the focus narrows as you identify one to three key elements in each category. This creates a shortlist of priorities that align with your vision and resources.

The Focus Finder is versatile: it can be used individually or as a team exercise, fostering dialogue and collective alignment. By combining individual insights with group discussions, the tool amplifies its impact, uncovering hidden synergies and opportunities.

When used regularly, the Focus Finder becomes a catalyst for growth. It transforms abstract goals into actionable priorities, helping individuals and teams move forward with clarity and confidence.

Continuous Improvement: Beyond the New Year

Alignment is not a one-time event. It’s a dynamic, ongoing process that benefits from regular reflection and adjustment. By embedding alignment practices into our routines, we ensure that we’re consistently moving toward our goals.

Tips for maintaining alignment include:

• Mini-Reflections: Schedule short, regular check-ins to assess progress.
• Celebrate Milestones: Recognize and celebrate small wins to maintain motivation.
• Iterative Adjustments: Revisit your roadmap and priorities regularly to adapt to new insights and circumstances.

These practices help us internalize change as a regular part of life, making the process of alignment smoother and more intuitive. They also reduce the stress and uncertainty that often accompany significant transitions, reinforcing a sense of control and purpose.

The Journey of Alignment

Alignment is about more than achieving goals; it’s about creating harmony between our aspirations, resources, and actions. By reflecting deeply, prioritizing wisely, and embracing tools like the Focus Finder, we can turn fleeting resolutions into sustainable growth.

This January, take stock of where you’ve been and where you want to go. But don’t stop there. Make reflection and alignment a regular practice, and watch as the small, consistent shifts you make today pave the way for extraordinary achievements tomorrow.

Growth isn’t about perfection or overnight transformation. It’s about steady, meaningful progress, rooted in a clear understanding of what matters most. With alignment as your guiding principle, every step you take brings you closer to your vision.

Ready to align your focus? Try the Focus Finder and take the first step toward your most impactful year yet.

The post Finding Alignment – A Blueprint for Success appeared first on Voltage Control.

“Seeing the magic of bringing people together, setting clear agendas, and leaving with action items was eye-opening for me.”- Lipika Grover

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Lipika Grover, a consultant, executive coach, and facilitator. They explore Lipi’s career journey, starting from her early experiences at Accenture, where she observed effective facilitation during high-profile client sessions. Lipi emphasizes the importance of preparation, follow-up, and creating safe spaces for dialogue. She discusses managing group dynamics, particularly with chatty executives, and highlights the value of diverse voices in discussions. The episode underscores the transformative potential of effective facilitation in driving meaningful group interactions and fostering collaboration.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

About the Guest

Lipi Grover is a leadership and resiliency coach specializing in helping individuals and teams navigate transitions and unlock their full potential. With a background in strategy consulting, sales enablement, and chief of staff roles, she brings a unique perspective to her work. Lipi empowers her clients to build emotional resilience, access their inner light, and thrive in their professional and personal lives. She also facilitates transformative workshops and coaching programs for organizations worldwide.

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab, and if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com.

Today. I’m with Lipi Grover at Grover Consulting where she’s an executive coach and facilitator. Welcome to the show, Lipi.

Lipika Grover:

Thank you for having me, Douglas.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, it’s great to be chatting here today. I always love chatting with our alumni. As usual, let’s hear a little bit about how you got your start in facilitation. Was there a moment, or does the story come to mind, how you started to just get curious about facilitation?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, it’s a good question. Something I reflect on often is I started out my career back at Accenture in the strategy consulting team, and when I first started in consulting, I got put on a pretty high-profile client. It was a big tech client in the Bay Area. I was an analyst at the time, really in the room to support the partners and the senior managers that were there. I got to witness some incredible facilitation in action where I was just awestruck. I was sitting in the back of the room taking notes on my laptop and watching this magic come together.

In that time I really saw how the act of bringing people together intentionally, setting clear agendas, making sure you’re sticking to certain things like having parking lots and having clear structured questions throughout that time you’re together, really active engagement throughout the room. All of those different pieces and seeing it all come to life and leaving with clear action items of how the business was going to move forward was very eye-opening for me. That was the introduction for me of how I saw facilitation in action.

Then of course, as I grew in my career as a consultant, I got a chance to facilitate sessions of my own and really leaned into more of the creative side of facilitation when it comes to innovation and design, design thinking, getting to learn some of those practices from experts at companies like Accenture. That was the start of that career.

After that, I got a chance to get my MBA at Berkeley where I really, again, leaned into that interpersonal development side of facilitation, and I got to learn from incredible professors such as Mike Katz and some other folks there that really got a chance to see again how you can build deep connections with people through beautiful facilitation.

I guess this is a theme in my career is when I see people that are doing things that I feel passionate about or I feel like this is something I want to learn from, I start to follow that path a little bit and I try to figure out, okay, how can I do that? I feel the same way about how I got into coaching in terms of I got very powerful coaching and I was like, how can I do that and build safe spaces for others in that same way? That carried into my career at Mural, which is a virtual collaboration tool, incredible tool if anybody hasn’t used it.

At Mural, I got a chance to do more remote facilitation and lead sales enablement sessions for anywhere from 60 people to 300 people at times for go to market kickoff events and things like that. So I got to learn large scale facilitation remotely at Mural. Now as an independent consultant, I am getting a chance to figure out what that means for a small business owner like myself to facilitate sessions that feel authentic and true for others to build safe spaces and build vulnerable conversations with one another to build connection. I feel like a lot of us struggle with that in today’s world and we want to make sure to create more of that. So that’s been the journey so far.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s quite the arc. I’m going to come back to some of those early moments in Accenture, and I’m really curious about what did it feel like to be in the room as you were telling that story? I was thinking about you in the back of the room, heads down on your clipboard or what you had and just every now and then raising your head because it’s like, oh, that’s interesting. So can you maybe paint that picture a little bit more about what was catching your attention and bringing you back into the room?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, I can almost picture it vividly right now as you’re speaking about it. I remember being on a laptop at the time, just in the back of the room, and everybody had post-it notes that they were using. So part of what my role was to do afterwards was to transcribe all the post-it notes that were in the room and put into notes and all of that. But what really caught my eye in the session itself was the amount of detail I think that went into building two days of incredible content. So I think it’s the pre-work that I was very impressed by.

Then in the room itself, seeing how people commanded the room, the facilitators and the partners at Accenture at the time that I saw were really in front of it was about 20 different executives that were all there from a large tech client. I got to see how they were able to, I think in general, executives are often very chatty, and so sometimes getting everyone to really pay attention can be a challenge for that long of a time. But really getting to see how the partners developed that safe space and that space for people to raise their hand, build ground rules, figure out how to create small group conversations as well as large group conversations, was really something that I admired about the session.

Douglas Ferguson:

So yeah, I can imagine walking in thinking, oh wow, my job’s to transcribe all these stickies once it’s all done. How did your impression of that work shift from knowing that that was what you were going to have to do beforehand to then being in the session and watching it unfold and then having to do it? The act of transcribing all that stuff, did it turn out to be the same amount of work that you expected? Was it different? How did it feel doing it versus what you anticipated?

Lipika Grover:

I think because I was paying so much attention in the room, I felt very connected to what the ideas were that being put on the sticky notes. So it didn’t feel like this, oh, now I have to go and do this extra step. Of course, handwriting was the hardest part, and reading handwriting is never something that’s easy to do. But I did feel connected to the content in a way that I was able to make sense of it afterwards, and I was able to work through what the large initiatives that we needed to build were and figure out who are the owners and that thing. So I think, again, that goes to a well-facilitated session because it was very clear to me who was responsible for which parts of the session and who was responsible for the action items after the session. So again, those are all just, I think, things that you learn by doing, and that’s something I very much have admired and tried to learn from.

Douglas Ferguson:

It comes back to the planning piece and the prep you were talking about earlier, because if we plan well and we have an eye toward the outputs we want to generate and the outcomes we’re driving to, we can collect the data in a way that’s conducive to that transcription. So I’m curious, did it play out that way where it’s like it was less work than you maybe imagined because it was structured so that the things that were generated were generated in a way that was easier to maybe map into whatever you were transcribing?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, I would say so. I think it was easier than I expected. Of course this is many years ago, so maybe back then it felt like a lot more work. But I would say that what was interesting was that we built six month long initiatives out of that two day session. So getting to then see what work unfolds from that session, it was a strategy session. So I feel like that was really cool to see how it actually turned into real actionable results.

I think a lot of people have hesitation with these types of large group innovation strategy design type sessions because they feel like sometimes the actions don’t get done afterwards and there’s not enough follow-up that can happen. So, great, we did all these ideations and we built all these great things, but then when it comes to the work, it doesn’t actually get done. So that’s something that I learned in that session was like, okay, this is how you actually can turn this into actionable things and then assign owners to them and follow-up. It was a large transformational project, so I was part of it for every step of the way, and I got to see how it can be really effective.

Douglas Ferguson:

That follow through is so critical. No one wants the innovation theater where there’s a razzle dazzle workshop and then you never do anything with it.

Lipika Grover:

Exactly. I think in general, what we talked about a little bit before is that prep is important, but one of my colleagues at Mural, her name is Carolyn Hogan, and she had told me that you’re only as good as your prep and your follow-up. That really has stuck with me so much because I think in any facilitation or workshop that you’re doing, I think that the prep and the follow-up is ultimately what’s going to get you, one, the credibility, but also, two, the outcomes that you are trying to achieve.

Douglas Ferguson:

In fact, without the prep, it’s hard to know what the outcomes that you desire are because you haven’t identified them.

Lipika Grover:

Exactly. Yeah. I think in a lot of corporate sessions, sometimes there’s just not enough time going into that prep work or you don’t have the right stakeholders in the room to do that prep work. So sometimes that’s where we can fall flat. That’s where sometimes the innovation part doesn’t get to the desired outcomes if you aren’t able to spend the appropriate time and with the right people in the room.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s always critical to get the right people. A lot of times that’s including people that have been overlooked or sometimes being a little bit more discerning on who we invite. I think a lot of times people get invited that frankly don’t need to be there, it’s going to be a distraction for them, or it’s just unnecessary. The more people we have in the room, while diversity is great, it’s also going to add to the number of voices we have to consider and accommodate for and design for. So being really mindful of the best folks for that outcome I think is really critical. Have you had any experiences having to think critically about who’s perfect for the engagement?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, absolutely. I think oftentimes we know who we need in the room, and then there’s the people that we want in the room, and then there’s people that are going to maybe create noise in the room that are not actually going to add as much time. So I think that tends to be true, and it’s hard to be discerning with that, but I think purposeful inclusion or exclusion is critical to ensuring for a successful session. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s interesting you mentioned people with the noise and it’s like sometimes noise is valuable. Sometimes the people that push back and create friction are exactly who you want in the room. That could be part of their criteria, but certainly folks that are pure noise, they don’t have context or it doesn’t really pertain to them, but we just like them, so we invited them or whatever.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. Or sometimes I think people point out problems without solutions, and that can be sometimes distracting because you’re not getting to a specific point. But yeah, I do think it’s important to have people push back on your ideas. You don’t just want to call people that like you and that your ideas because that’s not going to get you to the mass outcome that you’re trying to achieve either.

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. Yeah. One thing I wanted to come back to is you mentioned executives being really chatty, and I thought for the listener, we might just spend a moment maybe expanding on what you meant there and ways of facilitating or using facilitation to work with that.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, absolutely. Of course that’s very much a generalization, but I think oftentimes, not just executives, honestly, this goes for almost anybody, but sometimes you think by speaking, I will get my point across and I will be able to share my opinion, but it may not even add to what we’re trying to discuss in that moment. Especially when you’re in really large groups, you need to be extremely focused on who is speaking and at what time and for how long you’re speaking. So in terms of ways to combat that, I think there are several different techniques that I’ve used in the past.

One of them, I think mostly remotely, this can be very helpful, but having some sort of timer when you’re having people share out ideas. Let’s say you’re going through a certain session, or you do little breakouts and then you want people to come back and share their ideas. Oftentimes that can go on for five minutes per pair or group. But in reality, in order for the facilitator to stay on time, we need to be able to cap that to a certain amount. So depending on the conversation, I tend to use the timer feature. I think when you set that ground rule upfront, people are more able to see the value of it, and they’re less likely to go over the time because they can respect that we’re all trying to stick to a certain schedule and we have other things that we want to achieve. So that’s one tip that I would share.

Then another one would be to use a tool, some sort of tool, any sort of virtual whiteboarding type of tool to get people to share their ideas asynchronously during the meeting first. So even we can use the timer again, but we can say, let’s say I have a question that I want to put out to the group. Instead of having every person go around the room and share, okay, this is what I think, this is what think. Having a timer on and then having people put their post-it notes or ideas into a whiteboard at the same exact time. Then as a facilitator, I can go and call on specific people based on the idea that they’re sharing. We can cluster, can group the ideas and then have people expand on them based on what they have to share. So that can be really, really helpful when you’re trying to collect everybody’s ideas but not have everyone speak at the same time.

Douglas Ferguson:

All of that I would categorize as limiting dialogue, and I think that’s an aha moment for a lot of folks that haven’t been exposed to facilitation much because when you think about facilitation, when you think about good meetings, I think it’s customarily conjures up this idea of a lot of dialogue. Yet some of the more powerful facilitation tools actually limit the dialogue. We don’t remove it, we just limit it. So to your point, time boxing so that let’s keep it in this frame, or even activities that might allow the dialogue to take a certain shape or a certain form that then helps focus it, but ultimately constrain it because, to your point, all the voices in the room all the time fighting for that oxygen, it’s not an effective strategy.

Lipika Grover:

I’d add one thing, you mentioned dialogue is really critical, or that’s what people think of when they think of effective workshop. I think it’s dialogue, but it’s also participation. I think people just want to feel like they are present in the room. I think with these types of asynchronous things, people still are required to be present the whole time because almost more so than when somebody is talking because sometimes easy to tune out when you’re in the room and one person is talking on a monologue for a long time. So by asking everybody to either journal, this could also be in person where they have to journal in their own paper based on a specific prompt question that we’re asking the whole group, and then we ask certain people to share and certain people to add onto their ideas. I think that being present is actually the way that people feel like they attended a very impactful workshop if they feel like they were fully there.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, that’s fascinating. This idea of presence and walking out feeling like they were there versus something they just checked the box on, attended and split, right?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

What are some of your go-to mechanisms for driving engagement?

Lipika Grover:

I would say always starting with something that’s maybe fun/related to the current environment that we are all going through. Some sort of icebreaker. I don’t really love the word icebreaker, but just something that starts at a neutral, but also a shared ground where people can all feel like they’re tied to whatever that question might be. There’s a whole host of different types of icebreakers that of course you all share on your website as well as so many other types of icebreakers out there on the internet. But I think one thing I would say is starting somewhere neutral. Then having a really strong session design to make sure that you’re always having people engaged in a certain activity, whether that is something that they’re doing independently, whether that’s something that they’re doing in a breakout group, whether that’s something that they’re doing in a whole group.

I think making sure there’s not a lot of dead time in there, especially timing your breaks appropriately, making sure that you’re creating a space where you’re always giving them something that they should be working on or doing, and very focused time for those things. It’s like let’s say you want to do deep work on your own, you want to put in a timer for 30 minutes or 40 minutes, and you probably get your most work done in that time during the day because you have a set timer for it.

It’s like what you said earlier about being constrained, and so setting those constraints throughout the session. Then I think a skilled facilitator will ensure that there are breaks built in and making sure that they’re also having time to share their voice. That can be in breakouts so that it doesn’t feel like it’s overpowering all of the time. So I do use breakouts quite a bit for engagement because I think having deeper, smaller conversations can be really helpful, and then coming back and sharing with the broader group is something that I find to be really impactful there.

But otherwise, I think using Mural is a huge… I can talk about that more, but I feel like that’s something that from a visual perspective, most of us are visual learners, and so engagement can also be from something that’s really visual and something that’s beautiful to look at. So I tend to put a lot of time into designing my murals in a way that has a certain theme or has some sort of excitement to it, and it carries that excitement throughout the session that you’re looking forward to what’s going to be uncovered next in that visual collaboration tool.

Douglas Ferguson:

I was going to ask about that, building on the engagement piece, because a lot of times people will ask about cameras being on as their signal that there’s engagement and then their solution to driving that is just requiring cameras on. Yet, I think you talked about giving people tasks, using breakouts, making things visual as ways of driving engagement. What are your thoughts on this whole video on, video off versus some of the techniques you talked about, which are more making things hands-on and tangible and giving people tasks?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, I think it really depends on the size of the group in terms of the video on or off. I do think for small group sessions, it’s very helpful to have videos on. If everybody has their video off and one or two people have it on, it becomes a very, I think, a little bit strange dynamic for the group. But if everybody decides to be videos off, that’s fine too. I think you can have a pretty engaging session that way. But if most people are having their videos on, then I think it’s nice to ask for people to turn their cameras on. Of course, if it’s a very, very long session and people need to step away for a few minutes and eat or do something and turn their cameras off, as a facilitator, I usually just say, hey, if you need to just message me so that I know you’re here. That way, it’s not like you’re disappearing and I’m calling on you, and I’m in an awkward position now where it looks like you’re not paying attention. Now everybody else thinks they have the permission to not pay attention either.

So yeah, I do think that I just ask for communication if you’re going to turn your camera off. I wouldn’t compare the techniques like, oh, it’s this or that, but I do think that having some sort of visual type of tool can really build that engagement further because it can create another, almost like a third space for people to go and create connection. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s funny you mentioned calling on someone when they’re not there, and it reminds me of the importance of signals. How are we collecting signals on how people are participating? The visual tools provide another mechanism for that. There’s a notion of presence. Are they in the tool or not? Am I seeing outputs from them? So video on is not the only signal, and I think that’s the trick. So many people rely on that as the only signal and the only thing they’re trying to change, I think there’s a lot of depth to your point. You’re sharing a lot of stuff there.

I want to pivot to talk a little bit about your time at Mural, and then we probably have a little time to talk about the future and what’s next as well. But you mentioned doing sales enablement, and I imagine some listeners might hear that and go facilitation and sales enablement, what does that look like? So can you tell us a little bit about how you’re approaching that from, what was the tools? I’m sure you’re using Mural, but what was the experience like? If someone wanted to use facilitation for sales enablement, how might that look? What might they do?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, it’s a good question. I would say what we did at Mural, I can’t speak to what sales enablement looks like at other companies, but we had oftentimes weekly live meetings with the entire sales team, sometimes the customer success team as well. So it was more revenue enablement at that point, and marketing sometimes as well where we would bring everybody together. We’d have an usually really beautifully designed Mural to be able to teach certain concepts based on whatever enablement was needed at that time.

So if it was specific to, let’s say, how to do really good discovery, let’s say how to do really good discovery on certain sales calls, we would create Mural about that, and we would have certain questions that you can go into breakout rooms to do role plays on. We’d built certain spaces within the Mural for people to be able to practice certain concepts, whatever it is that we were teaching at that time. We would often use Mural as a place for you to share resources with the teams to be able to say, hey, these are a little resource hub of this is what you need to pay attention to for this week, new marketing collateral, new, anything that is relevant, new scripts for you to use in emails or things like that. That way it’s all in one place.

We tried really, I think, to make it very creative so that people felt like, again, that engagement during that time that they were together. I think sales enablement is something, or enablement in general, I think learning and development teams often are trying to figure out how do we make this time that we have synchronously as impactful as possible because these people are doing this outside of their day-to-day job. This is something that they are opting into doing. Sometimes it’s a required thing, but most of the time it’s to level up their own skillset. So making that synchronous time very impactful is the biggest thing that was on our minds is how can we make sure that people get a lot out of this time together because it’s a lot to ask them to do.

So we would think of different creative ways to use Mural or breakout rooms or other sort of engagement strategies to make the most of that time together and have people be present. Like Q&A at the end of the session, that’s just another idea, using Mural to have people put questions in at the end as well. Then we could take that and turn it into a whole session on its own of what are the topics that you’re struggling with right now? We can use voting even to figure out, okay, what are the things that are on your mind right now and how can we design a session around that? So just another idea there.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I know right now you’re focused a lot on resilience and the coaching work that you’re doing and helping build confidence and creating vulnerability with folks. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that’s surfacing?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. So my focus with resiliency workshops is really empowering people to understand that they can do hard things and that they have all the answers within themselves to be able to achieve everything that they want to. I think so often people stop themselves from going after their goals or their visions simply because they are scared they’re going to fail and that they’re fearful that their life is going to change in a large way. We all are creatures of habit. We like being comfortable and we don’t necessarily feel comfortable extending ourselves into new spaces.

But as a coach and as a facilitator, a lot of what I do is ask people questions to help them to get to a place where they’re able to say, actually, yeah, I want that. It’s all coming from themselves. I don’t know the answers as a coach of what they want to do. My job is purely to create that space, that vulnerable space, for people to be able to talk through what their visions are, what their goals are, and get them to believe in themselves and believe that they can do anything that they really set their minds to. So that’s the focus right now of a lot of the work that I’m doing. I do this in one-on-one sessions as well as in group sessions, and so I’m excited to see how that unfolds.

Douglas Ferguson:

So the group work, how does that play out? Is this a team that you’re working with, the folks that are working together, or is it more like a public cohort where there’s a number of individuals that you’re helping just support each other in this moment?

Lipika Grover:

It’s a great question. I’m actually launching my first cohort next year or so, early next year, where we will be creating, it’s more of a public space where people can join and they’ll be surrounded with others that also have big dreams for themselves, and they have a growth mindset, and they are just needing maybe a little bit more support and accountability from others around them to get them to where they want to go.

I piloted it already, I did a resiliency workshop earlier this year in a group setting that went really well, and people really got a sense of feeling like they found that light within themselves. That was the name of the workshop was The Light Within. I think a lot of times we think, Hey, after I do this, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We use that phrase all the time, the light at the end of the tunnel. But my whole premise is that we have light within ourselves at all times. So I just want people to be able to tap into that, especially when they’re going through maybe a change or a transition or some sort of new thing in their life. So that’s the premise of what the workshops are going to be next year.

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. Most of the folks you’re working with individually are also in this moment of transition as well?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. It’s mostly people who are either going through a career transition, a relationship transition, sometimes a move, all at the same time. Most of the time we’re all going through multiple changes at all times in our lives. I wouldn’t even say it’s always a very tangible change that it’s sometimes is truly like, hey, I want to step into a better version of myself, or I want to step into a new goal that I’ve been wanting to achieve, and I just need the mindset to be able to achieve that goal. So a lot of work is like, how do I get you from point A to point B? For example, if somebody is like, hey, I really want to go to get my MBA, but I’m working and I just don’t know how to make that leap, making that mindset shift is part of the work that we do, is just getting them to understand that they’re capable of doing it and that they are going to be able to achieve success in that. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

How often do you work with folks that know that something’s missing, they’re not feeling fulfilled, but they haven’t been able to pinpoint what it is yet?

Lipika Grover:

Very often. I think a lot of times people feel like, especially in careers, I think a lot of times it’s like, hey, I’m in this job, I’ve been in this job for a long time. I’m starting to feel like I don’t connect with it anymore, or I just know that I’m not doing what I really want to do. That’s something I hear often. It’s like, I know this is not what I really want to do, but they don’t know what that other thing is. So a lot of the work is uncovering what that North Star is going to look like for them. Some of it is just understanding your strengths, understanding who you are as a person, what you enjoy doing, what you don’t enjoy doing. Going back to the drawing board in that space. I think a lot of times people also don’t realize that what got them to this point is beautiful, and we are grateful for it all, and it may not be the thing that is needed right now in this moment.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, what do we need to leave behind?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, exactly. What can we let go of right now?

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. Awesome. Well, when you think about this work, the resiliency workshops, the coaching, all this great work you’re doing, where do you think it leads to? What’s this bright future? What is this North Star that of your own? Just like you’ve been uncovering for others, what is this North Star for you, as far as when you really peer out a ways?

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. Honestly, it’s a great question and it’s something that I’ve been designing for myself as I’ve started this path myself. I think I’ve also learned to surrender a little bit. Part of the North Star work is also following the leads, if that makes sense. So sometimes it’s pulling on different threads to see where we go, and we don’t always have to have this big reveal answer of what is coming up next. So while I would love to say, I have this 10-year plan and this is what I want to do with it, I think the reality is I’m following the energy and I’m following what is bringing me joy, and I’m following that path and we’ll see where it leads. I think that’s to be discovered.

Douglas Ferguson:

Nice. Well, let’s check in the future and see where it went. I love that.

Lipika Grover:

Absolutely. Yeah. One thing I can say is that the work is very impactful and the work, it doesn’t feel like work in some ways because it just feels like you’re creating a large impact on maybe a smaller number of people, and that can be really fulfilling some ways. So I just want to keep doing it.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, I love that. I feel that this passion driven existence is very prevalent and common in the world of facilitation because it’s the type of career that people find through passion. It’s something that people get excited about. Some careers people get into because they’re good at it, and it’s like, I’m going to be an accountant to make a living and get paid, or I am really fascinated by models for discovering whatever, but there’s not this excitement and passion about it some other fields. I think facilitation’s one of those things that’s like, I rarely meet someone that’s doing it just because it pays the bills or whatever. It’s a passion driven field.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. I think so too. I am curious, if you don’t mind sharing too, when you started Voltage Control, how did you feel in terms of what was your North Star? Did you have the North Star where you are today, or is it something that’s evolved and changed over time?

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s funny. I have multiple threads. I think you talking about pulling on the threads resonates a bit. I always refer to myself as a change junkie. I’m just obsessed with change, and I always invite change. I’m always curious about what’s around the corner. I did have a vision early on that was very anchored in facilitation and group process and helping people. I did not necessarily have this vision of being a certifying entity. I did tell myself though, that if we ever went down that path, I wanted to take it really seriously. That certificates wouldn’t be a thing we would just hand out as something you would get for attending a workshop. That I wanted to make sure that if we did that we’re really serious about it. It really meant something. It was pass/fail. You really had to do the work to receive it so it’d be meaningful to people. To me, it’s about staying true to my values and what’s important to me. Then just, to your point, following that path, but being true to those values.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah. It’s something that I would say I’ve seen over time is that the dots always connect later, this is true throughout my whole career. Even you asking, how did you get into facilitation? It’s like, I wouldn’t have said back when I was at Accenture that I was going to go into facilitation or coaching as a career, but the dots always connect later in terms of how you see the threads that we got excited by or that brought us joy along the way.

I think that’s one thing that if I could leave with is I think life is long, I think a lot of times we think life is short, which is true in a lot of ways in that we should be present when we are with our loved ones or with ourselves. I think that’s very true. But a lot of times we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do everything right now and get it all done, and we have to achieve all this, achieve, achieve, achieve. But in reality, life is long and it’s almost better if we focus on one thing at a time sometimes and just see where it leads because it’ll unfold later. Yeah, it’ll all make sense later.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. Always ask my guests to leave our listeners with a final thought. You’ve given us one there. Anything else you want to share?

Lipika Grover:

I think one thing is just trust your intuition. I think a lot of times we don’t give ourselves enough credit that we know what we want and we know what we want out of life. So I would just say trust your intuition. Sometimes you have to quiet everything else down in order to really pay attention to what it is that your head, your heart, your gut is all telling you to do. So just silence the rest of the world for a moment and figure out, okay, ask yourself what is it that I really want? That can help guide some pretty big decisions, or at least it has in my life. Whenever I have listened to that intuition, it has turned out in a better way than I think I would have if I just listened to my head or after some sort of credible thing. I think there’s so many other things that we chase in this world, but if we quiet everything down and just listen to our intuition, we’re able to follow a different path and that path is not written. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. I love that. The thing I would add, because I love that so much, is I would just say that sometimes you can’t hear the intuition. I love this idea that you say here, the quiet everything down so you can tune into it. So if you’re like me where you hear your intuition quite often, then the moments where you can’t, it can be frustrating. I don’t know what to do right now. The thing I’ve learned through the years is when I find those moments, don’t spiral into the moment, just sit back and say, it’s okay. It will speak soon. Just be in this quiet time. Let your subconscious chew on whatever it needs to chew on because it’ll speak to you soon enough. So I think both is true, right? Quieting down the noise, but if everything’s really quiet, being okay with that quiet and just knowing that when the time’s right, it’ll let you know.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, exactly. I think, to be honest, you asked me that question about North Star, and it’s like sometimes it can be frustrating to not have the answer where you’re like, oh, I wish I could give you a real answer there. But to your point, I think the answer will come as I keep doing it, and I think action is progress. Progress is motivation. So if you keep putting one step in front of the other, you’re so much more able to actually see where it unfolds.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. Excellent. Well, it’s been such a great honor and pleasure to chat today, Lipi. I really appreciate you joining me.

Lipika Grover:

Yeah, likewise. I appreciate the time and I appreciate getting to be on this podcast. To all of the listeners, just keep doing what you do and put one foot in front of the other. I feel like that is my big takeaway from today. So yeah, I appreciate being on the podcast with you, Douglas.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

The post Unlocking the Secrets of Engaging Facilitation appeared first on Voltage Control.

Table of contents

• Leveraging Global Talent in Virtual and Hybrid Sessions
• Strategies for Maintaining Energy and Engagement in Virtual Meetings
• Managing Energy and Engagement in Virtual Environments
• Overcoming Challenges in Hybrid Facilitation
• Preparing Teams for New Tools in Virtual or Hybrid Settings
• Conclusion
• FAQ

The landscape of work has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years, with virtual and hybrid environments becoming the new norm for many organizations. As a result, leaders and facilitators are now tasked with the challenge of not only adapting to these new settings but also leveraging them to their fullest potential. The opportunities for global collaboration have never been greater, yet with these opportunities come unique challenges. How can we ensure that our virtual and hybrid sessions are as engaging, productive, and inclusive as possible? How do we maintain energy and focus, foster active participation, and effectively introduce new tools to our teams?

This blog explores these questions, offering strategies and insights to help you maximize the effectiveness of your virtual and hybrid sessions. From leveraging global talent to managing energy and engagement, addressing the challenges of hybrid facilitation, and preparing teams for new tools, this guide provides a comprehensive approach to thriving in today’s digitally connected world.

Leveraging Global Talent in Virtual and Hybrid Sessions

One of the most significant advantages of online and hybrid facilitation is the ability to tap into global talent pools. No longer constrained by geography, teams from different parts of the world can come together to collaborate, bringing diverse perspectives and expertise to the table. However, making the most of this opportunity requires intentional planning and design.

The first step in leveraging global talent effectively is to establish a clear purpose for your session. Whether your session is fully virtual or hybrid, the design should be intentional, with a focus on creating a seamless experience for all participants. This involves selecting the right tools, such as Zoom for video conferencing, Miro or Mural for collaborative workspaces, and ensuring that adequate bandwidth is available to support these platforms. These tools are invaluable for creating a shared space where ideas can converge and collaboration can flourish, regardless of participants’ physical locations.

Well-planned virtual and hybrid sessions can turn the challenges of distance into opportunities for innovation. By focusing on creating impactful experiences that harness the full potential of global talent, you can foster a more inclusive and dynamic work environment that drives better outcomes for your team and organization.

Strategies for Maintaining Energy and Engagement in Virtual Meetings

Keeping participants engaged during virtual meetings is a common challenge, yet it is critical for achieving successful outcomes. Virtual environments lack the physical presence and energy of in-person meetings, making it easier for participants to become disengaged or fatigued. However, with the right strategies, it’s possible to maintain high levels of energy and engagement throughout your sessions.

One effective approach is to design your agenda with a mix of activities that cater to different interaction levels. This might include solo tasks, small group discussions, and whole-group collaborations, ensuring that the session remains dynamic and interactive. Variety is key to preventing fatigue and keeping participants focused.

In addition to varied activities, frequent breaks are essential. Virtual settings can lead to screen fatigue quickly, so it’s important to encourage participants to step away from their screens regularly. Implementing a well-timed break every 60 to 90 minutes, depending on the intensity of the activities, can significantly boost participants’ focus and productivity when they return. By thoughtfully designing your virtual sessions with a balance of activities and breaks, you can keep your team energized and engaged, leading to more effective and productive outcomes.

Managing Energy and Engagement in Virtual Environments

The dynamics of managing energy and engagement in a virtual environment differ significantly from in-person facilitation. In a physical room, you can easily read body language and gauge the atmosphere, but these cues are subtler in an online setting. As a facilitator, it’s crucial to be attuned to the signals coming through the camera, chat, and collaborative tools.

Interactive tools like Miro, Mural, and Mentimeter are particularly useful in maintaining engagement during virtual sessions. These platforms enable participants to actively contribute, helping to recreate the collaborative experience of a physical space. For instance, Miro and Mural offer digital whiteboards where participants can share ideas in real-time, while Mentimeter allows for live polling and feedback, adding an interactive layer to the session.

Another important aspect of managing virtual sessions is mastering the art of pausing. Silence in a virtual setting can feel more pronounced than in person, but it can be a powerful tool if used effectively. Pausing allows participants time to think, reflect, and respond, which can lead to deeper engagement and more thoughtful contributions. By being mindful of these dynamics, you can create a virtual environment that feels just as vibrant and engaging as any in-person meeting, ensuring that your sessions are both productive and enjoyable.

Overcoming Challenges in Hybrid Facilitation

Hybrid facilitation, which combines in-person and remote participants, presents a unique set of challenges. Ensuring equal participation and engagement for both groups can be difficult, but with careful planning and thoughtful design, these challenges can be overcome.

One of the key considerations in hybrid facilitation is how you distribute participants across physical and virtual spaces. For example, when you have a mix of in-person and remote attendees, it’s important to use tools like breakout rooms effectively to ensure that everyone is engaged and contributing equally. This might involve pairing remote participants with in-person teams in breakout sessions or creating mixed groups that encourage interaction between the two.

Technical challenges, such as managing video switches during transitions between virtual and in-person speakers, can also add complexity to hybrid sessions. Planning for these transitions in advance is crucial to maintaining the flow of the session. This might include rehearsing the technical aspects of the session beforehand, ensuring that all participants are familiar with the tools being used, and having a contingency plan in case of technical difficulties.

By being thoughtful about these aspects, you can create a seamless hybrid experience that fosters equal participation and keeps everyone connected, regardless of where they are. This approach not only enhances the effectiveness of your sessions but also helps build a stronger, more cohesive team.

Preparing Teams for New Tools in Virtual or Hybrid Settings

Introducing new tools in a virtual or hybrid setting can be daunting for participants, especially if they are unfamiliar with the technology. To ensure a smooth and productive session, it’s important to prepare your teams in advance, giving them the confidence to use these tools effectively.

One of the best ways to prepare your teams is by offering a brief tutorial or practice session before the main event. This allows participants to familiarize themselves with the interface and functionalities of the tools, reducing anxiety and ensuring that everyone is on the same page when the session begins. Whether you’re using platforms like Miro, Mural, or any other digital tool, this preparatory step can significantly impact the success of your session.

In addition to tutorials, providing clear, accessible instructions and resources can help participants feel more comfortable with new tools. This might include creating a simple guide or video walkthrough that participants can refer to before and during the session. When everyone feels confident using the tools, they can focus on the content and collaboration rather than getting bogged down by technical difficulties. By prioritizing this preparatory step, you set the stage for a more productive and engaging virtual or hybrid experience.

Conclusion

As we continue to navigate the evolving landscape of work, mastering the art of virtual and hybrid facilitation is more important than ever. By leveraging global talent, maintaining energy and engagement, overcoming the challenges of hybrid facilitation, and preparing teams for new tools, leaders and facilitators can create powerful, inclusive, and productive sessions that bring out the best in their teams.

The key to success in these environments lies in intentionality and preparation. By approaching each session with a clear purpose, thoughtfully designing the agenda, and ensuring that participants are well-prepared and equipped with the right tools, you can transform virtual and hybrid challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation. As we embrace this new way of working, the potential for global collaboration and connection is limitless, and with the right strategies, you can harness this potential to drive your organization forward.

FAQ

Q: How can I effectively engage global talent in virtual sessions?
To engage global talent effectively, start by designing your session with a clear purpose and choosing the right tools to support seamless collaboration. Platforms like Zoom, Miro, and Mural can create shared spaces that allow for active participation and idea exchange, regardless of participants’ locations.

Q: What are some strategies for keeping virtual meetings engaging?
To keep virtual meetings engaging, mix different types of activities—solo tasks, small group discussions, and whole-group collaborations—and incorporate regular breaks to combat screen fatigue. This variety helps maintain energy and focus throughout the session.

Q: How can I overcome challenges in hybrid facilitation?
Overcoming hybrid facilitation challenges requires careful planning. Ensure equal participation by effectively using breakout rooms and managing transitions between virtual and in-person speakers. Practice the technical aspects beforehand and have a backup plan for potential issues.

Q: How do I prepare my team for new tools in a virtual or hybrid setting?
Prepare your team by offering tutorials or practice sessions before the main event. Provide clear instructions and resources to help participants familiarize themselves with the tools, ensuring they feel confident and ready to engage during the session.

Q: What is the best way to manage energy in virtual environments?
Managing energy in virtual environments involves being attuned to subtle cues, using interactive tools like Miro or Mentimeter, and mastering the use of pauses to give participants time to reflect and contribute meaningfully to the session.

The post Maximizing Global Collaboration in Virtual and Hybrid Settings appeared first on Voltage Control.

“If you don’t have those underpinnings of being anchored to something, it’s really difficult to do anything else. That’s just baseline sort of human functioning.”- Kellie Artis

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Kelly Artis, founder of Mission Identity, who empowers women through the Enneagram. The discussion highlights the transformative power of facilitation, particularly through Kelly’s experiences in the George W. Bush Institute’s Veteran Leadership Program. Kelly shares her journey into facilitation, emphasizing the importance of psychological safety, empathy, and deeper connections in group settings. She reflects on how effective facilitation goes beyond traditional teaching, fostering meaningful interactions and personal growth. The episode underscores the impact of creating safe spaces for dialogue and collaboration.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

About the Guest

Kellie Artis is a passionate advocate for high-achieving women, bringing nearly two decades of expertise in communications and personal development to her role as the founder of Mission Identity. As the Director of Communications at Virtual Veterans Communities (VVC), Kellie excels in supporting military-connected students who seek to advance in their careers and personal lives. A scholar of the George W. Bush Institute Stand-To Veteran Leadership Program, Kellie is dedicated to empowering women through leadership and community engagement. She has earned certifications as a Certified Narrative Enneagram Teacher and Professional Certified Marketer, leading workshops that promote self-discovery and growth. Her work has been featured on platforms like Fox News and Military.com, where she is recognized as a respected voice in helping women achieve their full potential.

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast where I speak with vultures control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our facilitation lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltage control.com/facilitation lab, and if you’d like to learn more about our 12 week facilitation certification program, you can read about it@voltagecontrol.com. Today I’m with Kelly Artis, the founder of Mission Identity, where she empowers women to reach their full potential by utilizing the Enneagram as a powerful tool for self-discovery, personal growth, and leadership excellence. Welcome to the show, Kelly.

Kellie Artis:

Thanks so much, Douglas. I’m excited to be here.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s great to have you. It’s always amazing to me to watch folks that are making these transitions into coaching practices and becoming solopreneurs and really empowering the way they think about work and taking control of their destiny, so to speak.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, yeah. It’s wild and crazy and fraught with uncertainty, but yeah, it’s something to follow your passion, I think.

Douglas:

Well, it’s interesting you mentioned uncertainty. I always like to remind folks that most things are uncertain, and a lot of times we fool ourselves into thinking that there’s certainty or there things are knowable. It is like the safe little pod around ourselves that we think that is there. It’s not really an illusion for the most part when it’s there, and so if you become comfortable with complexity and chaos, life becomes more fun and more easy to engage with. Not easy, but easier,

Kellie Artis:

Right? Yeah. You’re less attached to it and you can just kind of flow. That’s the goal. Yeah. It’s almost like an entitlement. You’re like, things should be certain and they’re not.

Douglas:

Yeah, and I wonder how much that flow comes up in the work that you do with your clients when you’re coaching.

Kellie Artis:

Oh, I mean, it’s almost constant, right? It’s always like, okay, even the Enneagram as a tool in and of itself, which I’m sure we’ll talk more about later, it’s a professional and personal development sort of framework that you can use for self-discovery and inner observation, all of these things. But almost everyone I talk to is looking for the goal, right? Okay, how do we get there? How do I achieve it quickly? How do I do this more efficient? I’m like, no, no, no. The goal is to just allow and just kind of flow and be more okay with the flow and be less limited the pursuit of something. So yeah, I mean, it always plays a part. Is it achievable? Even saying is it achievable is like it’s kind of missing the point, right? It’s enjoyment, it’s contentment, satisfaction, all of that stuff. It’s a work in progress in my own life too. Plays, I don’t know what it actually looks like or what it means, but the pursuit and the enjoyment of the work is why I do it.

Douglas :

Awesome. Well, let’s take a little step back and look at the formative moments for you. As you were starting to realize facilitation was a thing there, skillsets and tools and the discipline around it, and I think it was the George W. Bush Institute of Veteran Leadership Program. I recall you saying that was the pivotal moment for you.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah. I’ve attended all kinds of things. I’ve attended facilitated workshops before and working sessions, and many of the various groups and nonprofits and organizations that I volunteer and work with. I’ve observed good sessions and not so great sessions. Some that I’ve walked away frustrated by and some that I was like, oh, that was really great, but never put it together that that was an actual sort of framework. I thought these folks were just particularly gifted and creative and being able to gather people and convene them in a purposeful way. When I was accepted into, yes, it’s the George W. Bush Institute’s Veteran Leadership Program. They do an annual cohort where they gather. There were 34 of us I think, for our class last year, folks that are working in military family and veteran spaces, so we aren’t necessarily all connected to the military. I happen to be, my husband has been active duty for 20 years now, but gathered all of us together for a five month leadership cohort, but the day one, first session, very first session, I was super apprehensive.

I don’t know where these people are all coming from. There’s a lot of imposter syndrome. The veteran folks who have served often, for those of us who aren’t veterans, feel like they kind of have ownership of this space so often, and just by nature of being a military spouse, I feel like I’ve always kind of had to elbow my way into certain conversations like, Hey, we’re here too. We have things to say. So anyway, I came in with all that apprehension and just really almost skeptical of how this was going to all work. Was I going to get anything out of it? Was I going to be heard and noticed, and oh, so quickly. All of that was allayed by nature of the fact that we had the most amazing facilitator I think I’ve ever experienced. This guy’s name is Todd Connor. He’s a veteran and super engaged in the veteran space, does amazing work in everything that he does, but one of his roles is as the facilitator for this specific program, and I was just in awe of being able to walk into a space and literally from the first 20 minute session we had realize we’re going to be well taken care of.

This container is well made, it’s protected. We can be vulnerable. There was psychological safety established almost immediately, and I know I was supposed to be taking part in it, but I was really doing my Enneagram five thing of stepping back and observing what was happening, and from that moment on, I was just like, it shifted my project that I was working on during the cohort. It just kind of gave me this awesome opportunity to sit back and say, wow, this is how you do complicated things, gathering really diverse groups of people and coming up with something great at the end. Wow.

Douglas:

Do you remember if there was anyone in attendance there when you were in observation mode? I’m just curious if you noticed folks that were especially moved by the experience that, because often that folks come into spaces like that and have never really witnessed good facilitation before.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, you can almost categorize personify different types of people. Who are the people that are going to jive with what they’re going to support the facilitator. There are people that are kind of dissenters in the back. They’re going to critique everything. This group was no different. We had all of that, but I feel like the people that would have otherwise not been as engaged, kind of just like, I’m here. I’m going to say my thing. I’m not going to ask questions. I’m only going to give comments. I want people to hear me and see that I’m here. I think it checked them really quickly. Oh, I’m expected to engage authentically. Just example, the very first group sort of table question that we practiced or were given was, Hey, everyone at your group write this down and then share with your table what’s one thing that people often get wrong about you.

I was like, that’s profound. That right there, you’re just laying bare. Your biggest insecurity in this really sort of just sneaky way. How do people misread you? So you’re being misread, obviously, I was misreading everyone in the room because I’m making judgements, but you’re able to then so quickly say, people get this wrong about me. And then you’ve developed empathy around the table for people who now have compassion for you about this thing that you’re self-conscious about and that you probably over project for, compensate for. Anyway, I just thought it was amazing. So in a way, it had us immediately leave all the egos at the door, and they were able to somehow kind of sustain that through every gathering. We talk about Priya Parker’s thresholds when you enter and leave the space, that was a very intentional thing that was done in order to remind us every single time that we walked into the room that we were convened in, that this is the way we’re going to behave. This is who we’re going to be. We’re not going to bring in all of our rank and labels and other sort of egos into the space.

Douglas:

That sort of thing is also really powerful when you might be judging the room, especially if you hear someone say something and it’s like, oh, wow, I totally thought that about them.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, I was guilty on

Douglas:

Several counts. They’re explaining why that’s a wrong perspective, and then it really helps everyone start to maybe just observe and think a little more versus jumping to conclusions

Kellie Artis:

A hundred percent, and I mean, I loved being able to share mine. I never share that, and I was like, oh, people think I’m aloof, and I mean, I could be perceived that way, but I’m really just trying to take it all in. I’m overwhelmed by it all. I’m more of an observer, so being able to say that and like, oh, there’s so much more to you than what I’m seeing in the moment. I loved it. I thought it was a great practice.

Douglas:

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the aloof thing. That’s one. That’s to the point I just made really powerful for connection across the group, not only for things outside the group, but in the group especially. So because if someone is thinking, well, she’s a little aloof, but then you say that, and then they realize, they start to realize, oh, wow, she is a processor,

Kellie Artis:

So

Douglas:

She’s absorbing things in a different way. They’ll just have a different perspective on you and a different level of empathy around who you are and be able to approach you in a more connected way.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, I think so.

Douglas:

Did you notice any of that having an influence on how folks related or connected across the group?

Kellie Artis:

I mean, so quickly. Personal stories were laid bare. It didn’t just stop at a characteristic because of shared experiences of this type of convening of people who are all connected to the military at a certain point in their career. We’ve been through the past 20 years of global war, so there were really close to the surface personal stories that came out in that literal first hour of us being together. So not only did we get the high level, this is a misjudgment that people often have about me, but here’s some of the personal context that also plays into my passion, the thing that I’m pursuing and that I’m working on right now. This is why this is important to me because it’s touched me personally. So just again, so quickly, there’s just humanity and compassion that often I think, in other scenarios and other maybe less well facilitated types of convenings would take forever for that to come up. So because we just,

Douglas:

If even,

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, if ever, right? Yeah, exactly. So the shared sort of agreement that this is how we are not going to share this beyond the group. This is our space, and this should be sacred, and just putting all that out there, making that clear, I think gave us all permission to say, okay, we can handle it. This is a group that will support us. And I mean, again, the relationships were instantly founded and forged. I mean, I can’t imagine never not being in touch with most of my cohort members because we were able to just so quickly connect.

Douglas:

Yeah. So it seems like Todd’s approach really broke some barriers down, and I’m curious, how did that shift your perspective on what facilitation could be?

Kellie Artis:

I mean, I think I thought of it before coming into that experience, and then obviously after working with Voltage, I had this idea that a facilitator is just a teacher that maybe there’s some teaching methodologies that my families, I come from family educators, so it was like, oh, this is just a learning design sort of, I don’t know. It’s something that you could implement in a classroom and help people absorb the information better or to latch onto the content or promotes understanding or comprehension. Right after this, I realized that there was just so much more to it, that there was so much more that you can accomplish and agree to and move forward together with and co-create with people. And so having that experience, but then also sort of holding separately this struggle that I had been having and something that I’d been noticing through all of my work in self-discovery and self-awareness, a lot of things that I’ve never really felt or hadn’t really felt qualified to do and handle.

So here I am learning the Enneagram. I’m passionate about it. I know a lot about it, but there had always been this hesitation to step fully into helping other people understand it because I felt like I could mess it up for them. Or what if, God forbid, they share something really sensitive or emotionally complex with me that, and I don’t comfort them in the right way. I’m not a therapist. I don’t know if I can handle that properly without causing damage. I was just really nervous about it. After experiencing and learning some of the facilitation tactics and techniques and realizing it’s more about making sure people feel safe versus fixing anything or deciding anything or teaching anything definite. It’s mostly about the space that you’re able to create during that time, how that is protected and handled and how people feel when they leave it, when they enter, when they leave was so much more important than any of the content, any of the other stuff. So it’s purpose, it’s connection, it’s all of those things. So that’s how it shifted for me. And then, I mean, gosh, I overlay now everything, every meeting I’m in, why are we here? What’s our purpose? How are we entering, where are we leaving? I mean, literally every aspect of any of the work that I do has some sort of element of the facilitation techniques and practices that I learned.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s so helpful to get those perspectives. And I’m remembering, you also mentioned feeling imposter syndrome, which is somewhat related to what you were just talking about, and I think you were talking about it from the perspective of when you showed up for the program and even I guess ideas in your head about not being a veteran, et cetera. And I guess what specifically shifted that? You talked about getting to a point where that subsided, and so what do you think were the critical pieces that were at play that helped you overcome that?

Kellie Artis:

There were a couple of speakers that had some, I thought profound things to say that I was able to latch onto and give myself permission to pursue relentlessly what I came in with as my passion, my project initially. So we come in and you start out with an idea of a project that you want to work on during the cohort. It’s important, but it’s not the most important thing. I mean, the projects are great and have, I mean, some people have full-blown nonprofits now because of their personal leadership project, but it’s the skeleton. It’s the structure that they put the teaching and the rest of the leadership instruction onto. So we have a capstone at the end, and then they follow up and see what kind of support is needed after you’re an alumni. But I came in with a project that I wasn’t super passionate about.

It was part of one of my day job work, and it made sense. It was good enough to have gotten me a spot in the cohort that’s a part of their application process. It’s like, what are you working on? But from the start, it was enforced through all of the activities and through all of our facilitated time that it needed to be something that you’re passionate about. How are you going to make an impact? And it can be making an impact on one person. It doesn’t have to be huge and broad reaching and solving veteran homelessness. It doesn’t have to be that big or grand, right? It could be literally making an impact in your world, in your sphere, in what you can. And I was like, well, this is who I am. I can impact the lives of people like me, people who’ve gone through things like me, using my personal story, using the ways in which I’ve kind of crawled out of stuff and made sense my life and how I’ve gotten where I am.

So being able to have that constantly reinforced from the facilitator, again, purpose, it was, this is why we’re here. Yeah, we’re going to teach you all these techniques and we’re going to teach you how to do data measurement and collaboration and all of these things, but for the most part, we want to make sure that your why is always being answered. So that sort of being the central focus of everything that we were exposed to really helped reaffirm for me what it was that I was there for and how much I belonged, how much I was meant to be. The one speaker, he was an astronaut, and he came and he was talking. He gave the story. I’d literally written in my journal, by the way, another facilitation practice that we were encouraged to do every morning during our Todd Time, set some intentions, write some agreements with yourself for today.

And then at the end of the day, we would go back and reflect upon them like, okay, did you meet your intentions for the day? One of my intentions was like, I’m going to hold onto things less tightly. I’m going to hold things a bit more loosely and just see what emerges. So there was an astronaut that gave us a story about how he was doing his first spacewalk, and he was nervous about it, and before he went up on the shuttle and everything, a former astronaut wrote him an email and all it said was, loosen your grip. And so he tells this whole story about how he’s outside on the ladder thing and freaking out and didn’t want to let go, and it was paralyzed scary, and he remembered the email from the guy, and that’s all it said was, loosen your grip. So he just kind of let go and was able to have this amazing experience that he shared with us. And I was just like, well, that was for me. So not to be too dramatic about it, but that was, I think, the moment that’s like, okay, not only do I need to loosen the grip of who I think I am and whether or not I belong and whether or not this is what I’m supposed to be doing, there’s so much more expansiveness out there and opportunity if you just kind of just go with it.

Douglas:

And after that first session, you mentioned that you were so curious about what was happening and what Todd was up to you, and you were in that observation mode that you mentioned that you actually managed to get yourself on the seat next to him on the bus ride to dinner. Did that spark the original interest in Priya Parker’s

Kellie Artis:

Work? Oh, it totally did. It was the first thing you said. I was like, I know whatever you just did was amazing, and everybody’s raving about it, but you’ve got something. You’ve got a framework. You know what you’re doing. You’ve learned this. Tell me everything. Again. I’m an Enneagram five, so it’s all about acquiring information and knowledge. So I was like, how can I research this? And he was like, okay, well, so he gave me a couple of resources, and then we got to talking about, yeah, definitely Priya Parker. I ordered it on Amazon while we were driving to dinner, and as soon as I started reading through, I was like, oh, yeah, that was that exercise. That was that. So it was neat to not only see it illustrated in the book, but then also, oh, I had that experience. I know exactly what was happening there. But yeah, and then that’s when I started rethinking my project too. It was like, not only am I interested in how you did what you did, I think that would’ve just been cool anyway. But also, I can absolutely see applying this to all of my Enneagram work, because most of it revolves around group classes, workshops.

And again, back to that apprehension of I had been really nervous to convene a bunch of people, and what if they asked me a question I don’t know the answer to. I was hung up on the knowledge part of it and the expertise versus how I would just like to be able to build a safer container for people. Maybe I could just be the person to provide the space and some guidance, but there doesn’t need to be definite. It’s not math. There’s not an equation that’s either true or false. It could just be exploration. So yeah, that really helped just open my perspective on it a lot.

Douglas:

I love the curiosity. It’s such a facilitator’s mindset, isn’t it? Wanting to know how behind the experience.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah. Yeah. It was a little meta and probably annoying. That was not the point. They didn’t convene us to learn how to be facilitators, but that’s what I took away from it. I was like, ah, this could be so useful in almost any application. So

Douglas:

Well, they were simultaneously helping you dive into your why, and I would argue that if that was resonating, maybe it was exposing some deeper insights into that. Why. So I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s all that adjacent or different than what they had planned.

Kellie Artis:

True. No, that’s true. I mean, it’s definitely a realm of leadership to be able to guide a group and do that safely. And yeah, no, it was just overall great experience. I loved what I learned about all of the things about leadership and running big businesses and all of the things. But I think, yeah, that was definitely my takeaway.

Douglas:

It’s not uncommon for students to come in having already read Priya Parker’s book. What was it like for you as one of those folks who had read it previously, to go through it again with some targeted focus and also in discussion with the cohort about the text?

Kellie Artis:

I thought it was great because it was another repetition of seeing it in practice, how it works. It wasn’t just like this anomaly that I, maybe there was something just super, super duper special about Todd. There is. He’s amazing. But it wasn’t like uniquely, he’s the one person that’s born to do this work. No, it’s like it’s work that we can all adapt and use in our lives. So that was encouraging, but then, gosh, just being able to be exposed to people who also were in on it, you know what I mean? I don’t know. Again, not having not been exposed to this as a discipline, essentially, being able to then kind of say, Ooh, what are you guys doing over here? This is kind of cool. And then not only what are you guys doing and how are you doing it, but how are you applying it?

And all of the different industries and ways in which people work. I came into the voltage cohort thinking like, well, I’m not a facilitator and I’m not trying to be a facilitator. I’m not going to put a LinkedIn post up and say, Hey, hire me to come facilitate anything you want, just come. That wasn’t my intention or purpose, and I was a little worried that that’s what I was walking into, that it was going to be a bunch of people who are just professional facilitators. I mean, I’ve done this before too, with even my Enneagram training. I took a whole course on therapists how to be an Enneagram and for therapist. I’m not a therapist, but I’m like, how are you guys using it? Because this feels like something that would be helpful to know, just exposure. So anyway, came in very quickly realized that I was in the right place. Once again, that curiosity did lead to something really profound and helpful. Okay, you can be a facilitative anything. So that was one of the biggest, the coolest things for me to see, especially overlaying everything that Priya had talked about in her work, and then seeing it executed, hearing about how people execute it, hearing about the cool outcomes of sessions or different techniques from everyone in the room, from all kinds of industries, which is really cool.

Douglas:

And after learning some of this stuff, you started to integrate it into your work with military connected families and veteran students. What were some of the first changes you made and what sort of impact did you start at sea?

Kellie Artis:

Oh, gosh. I mean, the top thing is just stop starting meetings with admin. Crap. Nobody,

Douglas:

Never start a funeral with logistics.

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, logistics. It was just like, I always hate that. I mean, I’ve always hated that, but I do it. It’s one of the very first things like, no, you need a hook. You need something to grab people’s attention, and why do I deserve your time right now? Why are you giving me an hour of your life or however long? And how do I prove to you that I will use that hour well, and it’ll be well spent. So stop doing the logistics, the agendas. Setting up agreements I think has been really helpful just for me personally, for whatever reason, that has helped me step into my role more confidently. I can be really transparent about my insecurities. I mean, frankly, usually I used to do this as, I don’t know if I’m the right person to teach you all this, but here we’re going to start doing all this self-deprecating stuff.

And I realized, oh, no, we don’t have to do that, and I don’t have to sacrifice my credibility because of my insecurities. We could just all come to some group conclusions and some agreements that this is the goal. This is what we’re trying to achieve this session. I’ll do my best to guide you guys as long as you’re doing your best to participate and learn. So that helped me kind of shake off some of the issues that I’ve had around leading groups. But yeah, just being able to keep things fresh, keep it active, seeing when there’s some energy needed, not just getting stuck in the content, which is what I typically have a tendency to do, and then making sure that it anchors somewhere. Whatever the experience is, not only are we clear about what we’re trying to accomplish, but then does it resonate? Do you leave with something? Then why did I take your hour if it doesn’t? So having those things top of mind, I think just result in just such better experiences for everyone.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s interesting. Working on the agreements can be such a nice focal point to help with intention as you’re designing the session as something as simple as thinking about, well, how do people need to show up? I mean, you can’t answer that question unless you’re really clear on your purpose

Kellie Artis :

And

Douglas:

You’re really clear on the conditions and the scenario you want to unfold in the space. And I think the number one reason so many people get things wrong or stumble is because they haven’t spent enough time thinking about that. And so to your point, the agreements are a great little hack to here, just three to five things to write down. But in order to write those down, you got to think about what’s the purpose and how do I want people to be,

Kellie Artis:

And what are you stepping away from? So I’ll give you just a quick example from my world. So in the military spouse world, so when we say military spouse, we mean we’re married to someone actively serving. A lot of military spouses have also served, but most of us haven’t, and we’re predominantly female. It’s like a 94% female ratio whenever you gather folks in the military. I mean, service members wear their last name on their chest and everyone knows what that last name is and what rank is associated with that. And just by nature of us being humans, that crosses over into the spouse world as well. So one thing that I realized really early on when particularly working with folks who are attached to people that have rank, no, they don’t have the rank themselves, but they’re still married to that person with rank. So there’s still these hierarchical things that we have to navigate really quickly. I was like, I know you guys may know each other, but I want no last names. We are not our service members. I want first names only. There will be no last names. No asking, what does your husband do? That’s not a question that is valid in this space. We don’t care. We care, but we don’t care.

It’s kind of like the shortcut for any conversation when you meet someone who’s this world. So that not only kind of alleviates the pressure from the folks who are attached to higher ranking service members, but it frees up some space for folks that aren’t to be able to be authentic and true. But then a part of that agreement also is that we don’t leave with anything that we’ve talked about here. This stays here. So being able to say, no last names really clearly, at least plants that seed of y’all, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to pretend like we’re all on the same page. We’re all on the same playing field. We’re all dealing with the same struggles, and then we can work on ourselves from there.

Douglas:

I remember you talking about revamping the veteran student orientation sessions to focus more on community building rather than, I guess cramming information, I think was how you refer to it. And so what were some of those specific changes you made?

Kellie Artis:

Yeah, so we help, in my day job, I help universities stand up their veteran support services. So part of what my role is, and my self-declared purpose as the digital community manager is to make sure students feel engaged, connected, and supported. Because if we have those three things, we have a successful student experience, and then we also have a successful career experience on the backside of school, which is everyone’s goal. We want student success, and we want ultimate mission success for those veteran students who are transitioning by way of college into the civilian world. Veterans are accustomed to being given, they call it death by PowerPoint. That’s

Douglas:

Getting briefed to death.

Kellie Artis:

Briefed to death. So anytime you say you have to come to this mandatory orientation, they know they already have a preconception of what that’s going to be. They’re super excited about it because it is just like, Ugh, here’s the number for this, and here’s, then it’s boring and rote and whatever, but however the information is important and they need to have it. So what do you do? So what we’ve shifted a lot of that session, and it’s an hour, I point to places where they can find the information, but we spend most of the time connecting. So first and foremost, we have a session called Transitioning from service to school where it’s a panel. I’ve recorded it, so we kind of play the same thing over, but it’s a panel of students who talk about the things that they’re nervous about and what they were worried about and how they’ve tried to adapt certain techniques to be able to counter that fear and that apprehension. So just right out the gate, we’re doing that same practice of what do people get wrong about you? Let’s call out the elephant in the room. Are y’all nervous? You should be. It’s hard. Let’s say we’re nervous because this population has a real difficult time asking for help. It’s just part of the nature of military service. You are either told to do it, you figure it out. There’s not a lot of

Seeking help. So we want to go ahead and squash that right out the gate. This is what we’re here for. We exist to help you, and we’re going to call you and we’re going to proactively try to help you, but we also really want you guys to get accustomed to calling us too. It makes our day, when you call us, it actually makes me really happy when you send me an email. So establishing that we spend a lot of time meeting our team. I’m really emphatic about people seeing faces. We’re not just on the phone and we’re virtual. So yeah, it’s going to be a lot of zoom, but here we are, us, we’re besties. Now you’ve seen us in orientation, and then we do breakouts where we have cool fun prompts where people can talk in small groups about what it is that they’re nervous about or what they wish they had known before they left service, or it could even just be little icebreakers, energizers, things like that. So again, we spend probably 30% of the hour not doing anything traditionally considered productive, but to me, it just feels so much more important that they have made a connection with just anybody, one other person in our virtual hallways.

Douglas:

What kind of shifts in energy that you notice?

Kellie Artis:

Well, they’re so much more engaged with our office. I mean, again, we do have a physical office in one of our campuses, but for the most part, it’s a virtual sort of, we’re here if you need us because they’re not able to walk by and come grab donuts when we have them out. So there’s often a lot of like, oh, hey, if we are on campus and do run into people, I’ve gotten like, oh, you do the orientation or you post the newsletter, or, I know I don’t know them, but that’s okay. You can be internet famous for your community, and that’s totally fine. It means that they’ve seen my face and I’ve gotten across some way that makes them know and trust me in the same way that people do business with folks online. I want the students to feel like they have advocates and allies and friends and friendly faces that are helping them navigate the system.

There’s also just there’s more of an eagerness to help other students. So we’ve never had an issue onboarding veteran ambassadors, which is a work study program that we work with the VA with. I mean, often there’s a wait list of people who want to become an ambassador because they get exposed to us so early on, and the ambassadors during that orientation that they then want to step up like, oh, I could do that. That sounds awesome. You get to meet all the people and help people and serve in that way. So there’s, I don’t know, I’m not going to say it solved all has solved all the problems. Everyone gets an A and graduates on time and all the things, but at least while they’re here, they feel like they’re a part of something and they’re a part of a community and they belong.

Douglas:

Yeah, there’s that belonging. I was thinking that earlier when you were talking about the, or I asked you about imposter syndrome and you went into a story about the NASA loosening your grip and just connecting into the content and also just the work that Todd was doing to make people feel comfortable and connected. I mean, it struck me as all of that was creating a sense of belonging, and that once you felt like you belonged, the imposter syndrome wasn’t even a consideration.

Kellie Artis:

Well, now that you’re saying it, Douglas, that’s like, yeah, I mean, if I were to think back and summarize my experience as a military spouse, even, we belong to a larger community. I still belong to the town and the community that I live in. I belong to my family, et cetera. But when we overlay all of the dynamics of our lifestyle, so the frequently moving and the shifting jobs and spending seasons of really having to intensely focus on your nuclear family, your two little kids while your husband’s deployed, that sort of thing, you can, I have noticed falling out of touch or out of feeling like I belong to things before and just how disorienting that is and how it’s just not a comfortable place to be, and no one deserves that. I mean, we all deserve to be in community, some sort of community. So I do think that that subconscious maybe consciously drives a lot. It

Douglas:

Really rocks your confidence.

Kellie Artis:

Totally. And your identity. I mean, it’s the core of who you are. If you don’t have those underpinnings of being anchored to something, it’s really difficult to do anything else. I mean, that’s just baseline sort of human functioning. So for people to ever feel like they didn’t have that, and we know our society in general is becoming more detached from each other and more detached from their communities and feelings of loss and belonging are resonating high, particularly for the community that I serve, the military spouse community, those are some of the top complaints that people have. When asked about would you recommend service to someone you love, or are you satisfied with the military lifestyle? When people say no, those are the key things and the key reasons. So there’s definitely a desire and a void there that I think if we’re all working towards some sort of goal that includes belonging in some way than we’re doing good for society.

Douglas:

And I think that’s a nice transition into the work you’re really focused on now. And that brings me to the work you’re doing now, which came up briefly. We talked about mission identity and the work you’re doing there, but specifically, I’m curious about the Enneagram insights and how you’re working with spouses and what you are looking forward to as you continue to grow that business and help folks with identity and belonging or any of these other challenges that might be well suited to the work that you’re doing.

Kellie Artis:

So with Mission Identity, I am really passionate about helping, particularly women. I am expanding my view of who I want to help serve into more the woman entrepreneur space. The professional woman who, like myself, have gotten to a point in our careers where it’s just like I’ve gotten here. I’ve just hustled and done the thing and gotten to a certain point, but now I’m reflecting. I’m not going to call it a midlife crisis. I don’t like that. But reflecting on who am I now, who am I, and what does this need to look like for the rest of my life? It’s a moment to just slow down and sort of investigate who we are, where we’re going, and what’s the impact I want to leave behind. So we’re using the Enneagram as a framework for self-discovery to help make sure that we are truly understanding who we are and the motivations behind what we do and how we feel about things, how we perceive the world around us.

And the Enneagram provides a really profoundly helpful framework for that work. So once we understand who we are and we have a strong sense of self and identity, then we can move into things like purpose and then combining self identity or self identity and purpose together within left with our perception of reality. That’s whether or not we’re seeing the world clearly, whether we’re experiencing what we’re experiencing in a way that is connected to reality or maybe distorted based on some of the things that we’ve been limited by in our experience or from our personality. And then from there, I mean, gosh, there’s contentment in that, right? There’s success, there’s freedom, and then there’s where the impact can really happen. So working with women who are mid-career farther along, et cetera, just to provide, again, the space for them to do that exploration safely without any of the ego or worried about the image or the pretense.

So I want to be able to provide that opportunity for them, provide some context and some teaching, but really do this invitation into the self-discovery in community with others. They’re, again, group cohorts. I’ll still be focusing a lot on military spouses sort of as an offshoot of mission identity. The military community is near and dear to my heart, and I am so excited to be able to provide group training exercises for them, but it actually functions as more of a piece of my story and a piece of my credibility versus now. I mean, really my inspiration into doing the work that I do, and hopefully it will inspire others, but always here for anyone who’s interested in doing the work of personal discovery and growth,

Douglas:

It’s such a strong passion for empowering others, especially women, to clarify and build confidence. So I’m just kind of curious, what would be a dream outcome for you as you continue this journey?

Kellie Artis:

Oh, dream outcome. VP Harris recently said that there are not a lot of women out here aspiring to be humble. And that quote resonated with me so deeply because I think for so long, I had convinced myself that being humble was the way to be and not the way I wanted to raise my daughter, by the way. However, we limit ourselves in so many ways and we’re often the worst offenders in capping our potential, and I can’t wait to be able to look around and see more often than not women who are not only not aspiring to be humble, but who are stepping into their greatness and their power, and just changing the world, taking control, and showing us all what it means to love and to live with purpose and to live in community. Just, yeah, there’s going to be bumps along the way, and we’re still very much learning how to do this as women. But yeah, I think that really intangible and hard to measure, but I think even seeing that on a small scale is my dream.

Douglas:

Kelly, it’s been such a pleasure chatting with you today. I could keep talking for a long time, but we have to cut it off here. So before we go, I want to just give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Kellie Artis:

Be kind to yourselves. There’s a mantra in the school that I studied with for the narrative Enneagram, and it talks about having grounded presence and compassionate curiosity. I think those are valuable tenets that I try to live by and are just so important.

Douglas :

Such a pleasure. Kelly. Thanks for joining me on the show today.

Kellie Artis:

Thank you.

Douglas:

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

The post How Can Effective Facilitation Transform Personal Connections and Group Dynamics? appeared first on Voltage Control.

Facilitation is a term often reserved for those who lead workshops, manage group discussions, or guide collaborative sessions. However, its relevance extends far beyond these formal contexts. In today’s complex work environment, where collaboration and effective communication are paramount, facilitation skills have become indispensable across various roles. Whether you’re a manager, a project lead, or even an individual contributor, the ability to facilitate can significantly enhance your effectiveness and impact.

At its core, facilitation is about guiding conversations, fostering collaboration, and steering groups toward productive outcomes. It’s about creating the conditions where ideas can flourish, and progress can be made. The art of facilitation isn’t just about making things easier; it’s about making them possible. It’s about navigating through complexity, ensuring that every voice is heard, and driving the team toward meaningful results. As the workplace evolves, the ability to facilitate—whether formally recognized or not—has become a key component of effective leadership and collaboration.

Understanding and developing facilitation skills can help professionals at all levels. Even if your job title doesn’t include “facilitator,” you are likely already engaging in facilitation every time you lead a meeting, manage a project, or help a team align on strategy. In this blog post, we’ll explore the multifaceted role of facilitation, how it can drive progress, enhance leadership, and turn meetings from mundane to meaningful.

How Facilitation Skills Benefit Your Role, Even if You Aren’t Officially a Facilitator

Whether you’re in a leadership position or a team member contributing to a project, facilitation skills can be a game-changer. These skills allow you to guide discussions, encourage participation, and keep the team focused on achieving its goals. The true power of facilitation lies in its ability to turn potentially chaotic interactions into structured, productive exchanges that lead to actionable outcomes.

Consider a situation where you are leading a project meeting. Your role as a facilitator isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about asking the right questions, creating an environment where every idea is considered, and ensuring that the conversation stays on track. By doing so, you not only help your team navigate complex problems but also foster a sense of ownership and collaboration among all members. Even without the title of “facilitator,” these skills enable you to lead more effectively, enhance your team’s performance, and drive better results.

As organizations continue to emphasize collaboration and teamwork, the importance of facilitation skills becomes more evident. They are no longer just nice-to-have competencies but essential tools that can help you succeed in any role. By honing these skills, you position yourself as a more adaptable and impactful leader, capable of guiding your team through challenges and toward success.

Driving Progress Through Effective Facilitation

At its essence, facilitation is about making things happen. It’s the difference between a meeting that goes in circles and one that results in clear, actionable steps. Effective facilitation turns ideas into reality by ensuring that every discussion is purposeful and every participant is engaged. It’s not just about making the process smoother but about driving tangible progress.

A great facilitator does more than just manage the flow of conversation; they actively steer it towards the desired outcome. This involves setting clear objectives, keeping the team focused, and ensuring that every meeting moves the project forward. For instance, during a brainstorming session, a facilitator might use targeted questions to spark new ideas, ensure all voices are heard, and help the group narrow down their focus to the most viable solutions. By doing so, they transform a simple gathering into a powerful tool for progress.

There’s a saying that there are no bad meetings, only bad facilitators. This underscores the idea that the success of any meeting or project often hinges on how well it is facilitated. When facilitation is done right, it becomes a catalyst for productivity, turning meetings into opportunities to align goals, tackle challenges, and achieve meaningful outcomes. By embracing the role of a facilitator, even informally, you can help your team work more effectively and efficiently.

Sparking Meaningful Discussions: The Art of Asking the Right Questions

One of the most critical aspects of facilitation is the ability to ask the right questions at the right time. Questions are powerful tools in a facilitator’s toolkit—they can unlock new perspectives, encourage deeper participation, and help a group move from confusion to clarity. The right question can be the catalyst for breakthrough ideas and innovative solutions.

In facilitation, the focus is not on providing answers but on guiding the group to discover those answers collectively. For example, a question like “What haven’t we considered?” can open up the conversation to overlooked possibilities, while asking “What did we miss?” invites critical reflection that can lead to more robust decisions. The goal is to encourage participants to think deeply, challenge assumptions, and explore different angles, ultimately leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand.

Mastering the art of questioning is key to effective facilitation. It’s not about controlling the conversation but guiding it in a way that fosters meaningful discussion and drives the group toward its goals. As a leader or team member, developing this skill can enhance your ability to facilitate, ensuring that every discussion is not just productive but transformative.

Integrating Facilitation into Your Leadership Style

Facilitation is not just a set of techniques; it’s a leadership style that can transform how you lead and how your team collaborates. At its core, facilitation as a leadership approach is about empowering others. It’s about creating an environment where everyone feels confident to share ideas, take risks, and contribute to the group’s success. By integrating facilitation into your leadership, you can foster a culture of collaboration and inclusivity.

A facilitative leader guides rather than directs. This means actively listening to team members, asking insightful questions, and encouraging diverse viewpoints. Instead of positioning yourself as the sole decision-maker, you leverage the collective wisdom of the group to achieve better outcomes. For example, when faced with a complex problem, a facilitative leader might lead the team in a collaborative discussion, ensuring that all perspectives are considered before arriving at a decision. This approach not only leads to better decisions but also builds stronger, more cohesive teams.

In today’s dynamic work environment, where collaboration is crucial, the ability to facilitate effectively is becoming a key leadership competency. By adopting a facilitative approach, you can enhance your leadership, making it more adaptive, inclusive, and ultimately more effective in driving your team toward success.

Transforming Meetings: From Routine to Results

Meetings have earned a bad reputation as time-consuming and often unproductive, but the real issue usually lies in poor facilitation. When meetings are well-facilitated, they become powerful tools for collaboration, decision-making, and progress. The difference between a meeting that drags on without results and one that drives meaningful outcomes is often the skill of the facilitator.

Effective meetings start with intentional design. As a facilitator, this means clearly defining the objectives, crafting an agenda that supports these goals, and ensuring that every participant has a role to play. It’s about steering the conversation in a way that keeps the group focused and productive, avoiding common pitfalls like aimless discussions or unresolved conflicts. A well-facilitated meeting doesn’t just fill time; it creates value.

By honing your facilitation skills, you can transform your meetings from routine check-ins into sessions that truly make a difference. When every meeting has a clear purpose, a structured agenda, and a skilled facilitator, it becomes an opportunity to align on goals, solve problems, and move projects forward. This shift from routine to results is what makes facilitation an essential skill in today’s workplace.

Conclusion: The Expanding Role of Facilitation in Leadership

As workplaces continue to evolve, the role of facilitation is expanding beyond traditional boundaries. It’s no longer confined to those who lead workshops or manage group discussions—it’s a critical skill for anyone looking to enhance their leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving abilities. Whether you’re leading a team, managing a project, or simply contributing to a group discussion, facilitation skills can help you guide conversations, foster collaboration, and drive meaningful outcomes.

Incorporating facilitation into your leadership style can transform how you work with others, making you a more effective and inclusive leader. It’s about empowering your team, guiding discussions toward productive conclusions, and ensuring that every interaction contributes to progress. As the importance of collaboration continues to grow, so too does the value of effective facilitation.

By developing your facilitation skills, you position yourself to succeed in any role, making a greater impact on your team and your organization. Facilitation is more than just a skill—it’s a mindset that prioritizes clarity, engagement, and results. As you continue to refine these abilities, you’ll find that facilitation becomes an integral part of your leadership, helping you achieve your goals and drive success.

FAQ: Common Questions About Facilitation

1. What exactly is facilitation? Facilitation is the process of guiding a group through discussions, decision-making, and collaborative activities to achieve a specific outcome. It involves creating a productive environment, managing the flow of conversation, and ensuring that everyone’s contributions are valued.

2. Do I need to be a manager to benefit from facilitation skills? No, facilitation skills are valuable in any role. Whether you’re leading a team or participating in meetings, the ability to guide discussions, ask the right questions, and keep the group focused is beneficial.

3. How can I start developing my facilitation skills? You can start by practicing active listening, learning to ask open-ended questions, and observing experienced facilitators. Taking on small facilitation roles in meetings or group projects can also help you build confidence and skill.

4. Can facilitation improve team performance? Yes, effective facilitation can significantly improve team performance

The post The Hidden Benefits of Facilitation appeared first on Voltage Control.

“Take that risk, take that step forward. Don’t think about it, just do it. Sometimes you just have to take that step, and by doing that, my life changed completely.”- Tony Toto

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab Podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Tony Toto, a facilitator at the Outdoor Wisconsin Leadership School. Tony shares his journey from real estate to facilitation, emphasizing the transformative power of adventure-based team-building activities. He discusses the importance of physical and emotional safety, non-verbal communication, and the role of conversation in fostering trust and collaboration. Tony also reflects on his continuous learning process and the impact of his work on participants. The episode underscores the significance of taking risks, seeking mentorship, and the lasting benefits of experiential learning.

Show Highlights

[00:05:11] First Steps into Facilitation
[00:05:58] Advice on Taking Risks
[00:08:04] Building Trust through Activities
[00:12:11] Stories of Growth and Confidence
[00:16:25] Creativity in Facilitation
[00:30:14] Community Support in Growth
[00:34:44] Common Mistakes in Facilitation

Links | Resources

Tony on Linkedin

About the Guest

Tony has facilitated more than 300 groups and positively impacted thousands of lives in his 12+ years as a professional facilitator. He takes a Facilitative Leadership approach with every group he works with. This approach opens lines of communication for all participants to engage in robust conversation, idea generation and creates a psychologically safe space for collaboration to thrive. Tony enjoys providing guidance and direction for groups to achieve their desired outcomes based on their purpose of why they’re gathering for a session.

About Voltage Control

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

Subscribe to Podcast

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Voltage Control on the Web
Contact Voltage Control

Transcript

Douglas:

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

Today I’m with Tony Toto at Outdoor Wisconsin Leadership School, where he facilitates team building programs for all age groups from grade school through graduate school to executive groups. He is currently developing a facilitation business that will service not only team building programs, but product ideation, design sprints, creativity, innovation, meeting facilitation, and strategic planning. Welcome to the show, Tony.

Tony:

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Douglas. I appreciate your time and the ability to do this.

Douglas:

Absolutely. It’s my pleasure to chat with alumni and hear the amazing stories you all have to tell. So looking forward to really diving in. And for me, it’s always really fascinating to hear how folks got their start. So you’ve had a 10-year journey as a facilitator in adventure recreation. I’m curious, how did it all start? How did you get bit by the facilitation bug?

Tony:

I got into facilitation in a different way, I started off as a volunteer. Back in 2008, I was doing mortgages. I was in the real estate industry, and the industry went belly up with the financial crisis and I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was kind of broke out of money. I had to have a family member take me in and rebuild myself to the point where I wanted to be. So I was out of a job for about three years because the economy was bad. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. So after three years, I was writing down a whole bunch of information on a sheet of paper trying to decide what excited me, what encouraged me, what I wanted to do for a new career. I just couldn’t find my place. I was lost. I was absolutely lost.

Towards the end of 2011, I said to my mom, “Hey mom, I’m thinking about volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club of America. Maybe that will get me into a new field, a new job.” And she said, “Go for it.” So I applied for the volunteer over there and I got accepted. I was in a teen center on a three-month contract. Towards the end of my contract, I looked down on the table and I saw a brochure. On that brochure had a ropes course, and my eyes exploded. My jaw dropped. I’m like, oh my gosh, I did this back in college. Through my recreation program at Western Illinois University, our instructor took us… This is an outdoor recreation class, he took us on a team building weekend. He took our class divided into three different groups, and one weekend at a time took our group out to that course.

And during that time, we had to work together using those leadership skills that we talk about, the problem solving, the conflict resolution, communication. We had to solve these activities together as a group, and I never forgot that experience and how amazing it was for me personally. So when I saw that brochure I said to myself, I want to facilitate this. So I went home. I got on the computer and I typed in ropes courses, Kenosha, where I live in, Kenosha, Wisconsin. And a site came up west of my house about 50 minutes away. So I went to their website and I went to the contact information page and I sent a message to the director. I said, here, “My name is Tony Toto. I went to Western Illinois University. I have a degree in recreation parks and tourism administration. Do you accept volunteers?” And I sent it off.

A few days later, I got a response from the director and he said, “Oh, you’re a McGowanite.” Dr. McGowan was my professor that took me out on that team’s weekend back in college. He knew my professor directly because they worked together on a committee in an association in the industry. So he says, “Yeah, we need some volunteers come on out.” So I went out there, he sent me a couple of days in May. So I shadowed a facilitator for a couple of days in May, went out there for a couple of days in June. And then one day I was out there in July and I was waiting at the top of a hill for one of the facilitators. And at this point I was really excited. I love this. This is where I loved doing because I never forgot that experience in college. So I saw the facilitator who I was going to shadow walk up the hill and she handed me an envelope. And she says, “This is from Big Dog.” And Big Dog was a nickname for the director at the program.

So I opened the envelope and I pulled out and I saw a bunch of paper was a higher packet. I was like, what? So when I saw him later on that day, I went up to him and I showed him the packet and this is what he said to me, “Well, if you’re going to show up, I might as well pay you for it.” So I became from volunteer to a part-time facilitator/tech guy. And then the next year I was with his staff full time and I’ve been facilitating ever since. So just by the power of volunteering, I got into the industry full time based on that role.

Douglas:

I once heard this advice which was, if you want to get somewhere just turn up.

Tony:

Yeah, just show up. Take that risk. Take that step forward. Don’t think about it, just do it. A lot of times people get into analysis paralysis where they’re overthinking it. Sometimes you just have to take that step. And by doing that, my life changed completely just by sending out that message and just wanting to volunteer and driving that distance just to do it, just to get in.

Douglas:

And so what was some of the early facilitation like for you when you started to lean into some of that work that was going to be volunteer work, but turned into a part-time job with Big Dog?

Tony:

The facilitation itself, I was learning. I was in a complete learning mode. And I remember what our instructor did with us back in the class and those activities. And as I was watching these activities, I’m like, I remember this so well, so vividly. And I just had to learn the style of delivering it. And I just spent that first year, that volunteer time and the part-time time just learning it and watching other facilitators. And then eventually I just started incorporating like, okay, I want to do it this way. I want to do this design. I want to try it this way. And then when I became full-time next year, I designed my own progression and my own activity set based on what I learned and based on the training that I experienced. So just by observing, asking questions and having the strong willingness to learn and grow, I developed a very successful program for my groups over the next decade plus.

Douglas:

So for those listeners that aren’t as familiar with this kind of facilitation, tell us a little bit more about what the nature of these activities, how they work, what we’re asking participants to do and the benefits they might get out of it.

Tony:

Yeah, this is adventure-based recreation team building. This is experiential learning, so learning by doing. And what we do is when a group comes in, we start it off small. We start off like simple name games, and then we start doing ground initiatives where we’re dissolving the physical barriers, getting the group start connecting and bonding, start building that trust. I dissolve an initial barrier with me so they can start trusting me and be comfortable with me, because I’m going to take them through these challenges that are going to build on themselves and become more and more challenging and requiring a lot of trust throughout the day. So what we do is I design a progression to start out those name games, go to the ground initiatives and eventually at some point we’re doing trust leans, trust falls, lifting and spotting. And then to the point where we’re lifting people sometimes 12 feet off the ground using just each other in the team. And then eventually doing some high ropes and high climbing with rock courses, rock climbing walls and zip lines.

Douglas:

So is this like rock climbing stuff where someone down below is helping provide the guideline or what is that technique called?

Tony:

Well, with the rock climbing wall there’s the belay technique, and then with the most there’s belaying. But what we do prior to that is we do it ground initiatives and some low ropes courses where we get them prepped for that type of physicality and that trust. So I start off very low, like I said, with those name games. Then I start building up from there. We start getting people foot off the ground, two feet off the ground, six feet off the ground, 12 feet off the ground and then eventually up into the climbing mode. So those activities they build upon themselves to a higher degree of trust and energy and more and more challenge.

Douglas:

Yeah, for sure. What was the pinnacle challenge when you think about the most difficult thing that you would have folks do?

Tony:

If they’re not going to climb for the day, I built them up for the 12-foot wall. What it is a 12-foot wall where the whole entire group has to get to that wall one at a time. They have to go up and over just using themselves. So when you’re going up the wall yourself, you’re pretty much surrendering your body to the team. And as a team they’re lifting you and pushing you up. And the team, the members at the top of the wall are helping you get up and over that wall to achieve that success. And once you’re up and over, you help bring up the next three people until it is your time to go back down again. Getting that trust from the beginning of those name games for the group to start trusting each other, it’s building up that support so when they’re ready to go over the wall, they have the entire support of their team and they can trust their team to keep them safe throughout that entire activity, because it’s very high energy, high trust.

And I always say, don’t let the energy get in the way of the safety. So it’s not just physical safety but it’s a mental and emotional safety, as you know with every single type of facilitation activity.

Douglas:

Yeah, those layers of safety are important. I’m curious the impact that you’ve seen when groups go back to working outside of the environment you’re working with them in.

Tony:

That is actually fascinating. I can give testimonial based on that by the groups that come out year after year, like some of the school groups and the chaperones come back. And some of the students who are in their leadership mentoring programs come back as upperclassmen who see me. And the testament is this, that the chaperones say, “Tony, I want to be in your group again because of what you did for my kids for the last several years.” So they see how powerful it is because throughout the year, these leadership programs are working together, freshmen with the upperclassmen and the upperclassmen are there to help them get through their freshman year. So by the testimonies of the chaperones coming back over and over again, and the students I see maybe from freshmen to upperclassmen, they know the power of that. It works because they are growing. I see the growth and I see the happiness in the chaperones faces based on what I’ve helped them do as a team and grow from that point.

Douglas:

Interesting. And what kind of stories are they telling you about what they notice when they’re back at school, outside of the camp or outside of the course?

Tony:

Some of the freshmen they come in very shy. For example, let’s take a leadership program, they come in shy. And over the course of the next couple of years they’re in this leadership program, and whether they stay or not stay, I’ll hear back from the chaperones saying their experience with you has given them more confidence to go through high school and do what they need to do to succeed beyond high school. So I’ve heard firsthand that their confidence has been built and it has grown based on their experience working with me on these courses.

Douglas:

Yeah, very cool. And it makes me think about how a lot of facilitation in the business space or in the community space tends to be or revolve around a lot of conversation. How much does the conversation play a role in this fairly physically challenging space that you’re operating in?

Tony:

There is a lot of conversation because the activities that we give them, they’re so challenging that the groups I give them time to take that silence to think about what they want to do. I give them that time to plan, which is a big thing. A lot of it could be trial and error, but I give them those moments to plan. And as they’re going through the plan, if they fail they got to either start over and regroup and engage in that conversation again. Or they’re talking throughout the whole entire program saying, here’s what I’m seeing, this is what I’ve done. This is what worked, let’s try this. So the conversation is constantly going throughout. But the funny thing is that sometimes when I give them these very vague, yet strict rules, if they have a mishap I will give them a consequence which is silencing the group and they have to communicate non-verbally.

But conversation either words or non-verbal is very powerful. And the chaperones love it. And even the groups love it when I silence them because some kind of magic occurs during that moment of silence when they’re trying to communicate without words.

Douglas:

Wow. Yeah.

Tony:

So conversation’s an ongoing thing, and I have a great example of this. I had a senior executive group come out one time at one of the courses I was working. And one thing they mentioned to me, the main context says… Well, actually I did a name game. I said, “I want you to say your name and a strength you have and a name and a weakness you have.” And the most senior executive in the group said, “Well, my weakness is that I’m not very approachable. I don’t like people… I’m not good with people coming up to me and talking and just I’m not very approachable in my office.” So I designed the specific activity from scratch, my own design from a base activity that I always did. I included instructions and I included consequences, and I included rules. I put the group through this and it got to the point where he was shut down. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t talk. He was reliant on the rest of the group.

They got him through the end, they got the group through the end. After we were done with this activity and after we processed, he came out and said, “Thank you everyone. Now I’m more approachable and I welcome all of you to come to my office anytime you have a problem.” Because he relied on his team to help him get to the end. My activity completely shut him down which was one of the purposes of the group, was to have them connect and bond and become closer and trust each other, because the group was in the process of a big merger with the new company coming in. So there was a lot of, not necessarily mistrust but a lot of questions to be had. But I was able to connect them to the point where this guy was just surprised by how much his team helped him in a moment of crisis in that activity.

Douglas:

Yeah. And I’m picking up on a thread of passion and deep interest in that work you were doing. Can you share a little bit about what led you to pivot from the work with the physical challenges and the ropes courses and things, to more business setting or more innovation type facilitation?

Tony:

Yeah. During my time as a team building facilitator, I saw this amazing creativity coming from people during these activities. And that always just really got my fire going, just watching the creative process happen. And I realized that going through the certification program with Voltage Control, that in any situation the creative process is there. So going into the business model, the business side or the group or the corporation side or the meeting side of it, I could still do these activities, facilitate the activities and see the creative process happen. That’s the one thing that drives me that I’m passionate about. To see these groups come together, collaborate and work together and cooperate and have that creativity thrive and shine, so they can all work at an optimal level and achieve what they want to and have that success.

Douglas:

I was also thinking about the moment you shared in the alumni story about the health crisis that you encountered, and make me think about just how often these tough moments that we go through help us discover the depth of our resilience. And I was just curious to hear a little bit more about that time for you and how much that played a role in how you were thinking about your career.

Tony:

Yes, I was obviously back out in team building in 2021 after everything started to open back up again. And in July of 2021, I started experiencing this health issue with breathing, and I found that my feet were getting swollen and I was retaining water and I just couldn’t figure out what was going on. And my mom says I was always tenacious, so I just always worked through whatever, I need to work through my issues. But it got to the point where I was having extreme breathing problems where I couldn’t speak more in two words without coughing. And I eventually went to the emergency room and they found out that I had a critical heart issue that I needed to have surgically repaired. They had to replace my aortic valve. And because I’m tenacious and because I’m a fighter, I’ve always has been, that didn’t determine me. I just knew I had to heal myself, get back to work.

I never lost my passion for facilitating, and I knew I wanted to get back into it. I couldn’t do team building right away because of my recovery, because of the restrictions I had. But now it’s been three years so I am resilient. So I healed myself back up. I put on a lot of muscle again, and I’m able to go back and do what I love as a passion.

Douglas:

So you’re back out on the ropes course with teens and young adults?

Tony:

Yeah, I’m back out there. I’ve been facilitating the summer. I got back on top of a ropes course 30 feet in the air, climbed the pole to get up there, went out to the course to help people in need. So I’m back to where I was and I’m happy I’m able to do that. The director at the place where I got my start was Owens, that Outdoor Professional Leadership School, it’s a new director now. And he knew my situation. He’s like, “Take your time. You do what you need to do. I’m here to support you and back you up.” And it was no problem for me. I just built myself back up to where I needed to be. It’s not just a physical thing, it’s a mental thing. I had a little thought in my head, I’m like, am I going to be able to do this? But I pushed myself through because I’ve always been an adventurous person. As a kid I was out there breaking bones, and playing around and scratching and bruising with my childhood best friends. So I’ve always been that type to just keep pushing myself forward.

Douglas:

What did it feel like being back in the course with the youth and getting on the top of the 30 foot?

Tony:

Oh, it felt exhilarating. Actually I mentioned to the director, I said it felt so good to be back up there again. I just recently did a two-day program with a group that I’ve been working with for years. The leader of the group saw me for the first time in five years. He was happy to see me. I did a facilitation program on the ground with him the first day, then we did the high ropes the second day. So he was happy to an experienced facilitator back with his group again. And to me, it just felt good to be up there and work the course and work with the group.

Douglas:

That’s fantastic. I’m glad you’re back at it.

Tony:

Well, it’s funny because I thought, as I mentioned in my article, was I going to lose my skills, was I going to be rusty. But once you get out… I was a little rusty when I got going again, but as I kept doing the same activities or doing the same thing over and over again, I quickly remembered how to do it. I didn’t lose sight on anything. It just happened really fast to the point where the director’s like, “Okay, I have to go down to the bottom of the hill. Tony’s going to be a site supervisor on the ground.” Oh, okay, because he trusts me. I’ve been in that course for over a decade so he knows that I know what I’m doing.

Douglas:

What advice would you have to others who might be facing similar challenges or making a pivot of some sort, exploring new things?

Tony:

Just go for it. There are times where I’ve experienced analysis paralysis. I just at this point say, if you want to try something, you have to do it. Otherwise, you’re never going to do it. Just take that step forward, even if it’s baby steps. But the biggest thing with that is surround yourself with mentors and surround yourself with people you can learn from. That’s the key to all of this. When I first got started, I just listened, I absorbed, I learned, I observed. I just took it all in. I am a question asker, so I would ask questions all the time and everybody in the industry was just so patient with answering my questions. So that’s the one thing I would tell people is ask questions because people are out there willing to help you. It’s kind of funny because the old director when he first hired me, he would introduce me, “This is Tony. He likes to ask questions.” Just because I just drilled him all the time with questions because I wanted to learn.

I wanted to know because I wanted to make my activity set for the day very powerful and impactful. And when I designed it and I tested it on a group, it worked so well based on our debrief and processing that it was a coach of a soccer team. They loved it. So I just kept doing the same thing over and over and over again to the point where I mastered the delivery and I became very good at facilitating. I was able to ask the right questions, engaged in those strong conversations and watched the group grow and thrive in the moment.

Douglas:

Yeah. So when you joined us for the certification program, you’d been facilitating for quite a while, and as you just mentioned, had built a lot of confidence around techniques. And yet when you came to us, you had that facilitation identity. And afterwards you mentioned to me that you had redefined that identity from a whole new perspective. I’m curious how that felt and what that really meant for you as far as how that identity shifted.

Tony:

Oh yeah. So the identity changed in a little bit where I realized that team building facilitation is not the only type of facilitation out there. I realized that my identity can expand and I can use this in any aspect of facilitation, whether it be in meetings for nonprofit groups, corporations, product development. So my identity is expanded as a facilitator. And I’m happy to see that with the certification program that allowed me to see beyond just the team building. So it is just what I experienced in that facilitation certification class was very eye-opening because I was introduced to a whole new world of style activities, programs, and possibilities. It’s not just team building. There’s just so much more out there that I had no clue that existed. So I’m just happy for me to continue to learn and grow and explore those opportunities.

Douglas:

Yeah. And how much of what you learned during certification has found its way into the team building work that you’re doing? So when you find yourself doing the games with youth or on these rope courses, do any of those little lessons or little shifts in the way you think about your work, have they found their way into those moments?

Tony:

Yes. Actually, I was working with a high school football team a couple of weeks ago, and I included the 1-2-4-All, the writing structure. I never heard of that until I got into the course and started researching that. So I gave them a topic and I had them all think about it for a minute. Then I had them pair up, then I had them come to groups of four. And then I had them come to the entire group and the conversation was rich and robust after I did that set up. And another thing that just happened with this two-day group that I worked with, it’s a college group, there were RAs. They were going to be RAs for the year, Residence Assistants in the dorms. And based on what I saw in the facilitation class about the power of silence that Eric talks about in the class, I’m a talker.

I was very uncomfortable with silence in my early days of facilitation. I felt like I had to give the answers. They didn’t know what was going on. I just sometimes couldn’t control myself. But eventually over time, I learned how to step back and let the group take complete control. With this group when it came to the end of the day, we just got off the higher-ups course. It was time for us to do our closing before they were going to leave for the afternoon to go back to college. I circled up the group for a final debrief, and a lot of times some groups will just debrief for five or 10 minutes. I actually got them in a circle for 30 minutes and I started off by asking them to, I said, “Okay, we just did a bunch of activities that involve leadership. You’re going back to college to become leaders. What have you learned on this course the last two days in terms of leadership, and how are you going to take that back to college and put that into play with your students and on campus?”

And I silenced them for a minute to think about it. Just complete silence, and then we had this amazing discussion with all 26 of the RAs. And then I silenced them again for another 30 seconds and I said, “Okay, we experienced some challenges out here. What challenges that you saw out here that you think you could possibly face back in school and how you going to solve those challenges? What resources are you going to use?” So I silenced them for 30 seconds, and then we had another robust conversation. So I used that power of silence. Well, later that day, I was in the office with the director and I was kind of debriefing on some key issues that I saw over the last two days when the leader of the program he came in to pay the bill, and he looked at me and he looked at the director.

He goes, “Tony, I was blown away by that 30-minute debrief that you just had. You stole my thunder. I was going to do exactly what you just did.” I said, I’m glad that you silenced the group. I’m glad that you used that power of silence to get them to think instead of just throwing out their words to have that deep thinking because on our campus, they’re going to need to do that. They’re going to have to think about those challenges and those leadership roles that they have to play without just jumping in sometimes And I want them to do that deep thinking. So he was very appreciative, and he said to the director and me, he goes, “I love the fact that you are very well-groomed and well-known facilitator in terms of your learning, your style and how you deliver, how professional you are.” So he was very happy with how professional my role was in getting his team to an optimal level for this school year.

Douglas:

That’s fantastic.

Tony:

This was our first event as RAs for the year. He also said, “I’m glad somebody outside of the group did what you did and not just listening to me all the time, because I’m going to be training them for the next two weeks. Last thing they wanted to do is hear more out of me, so what you did in that debrief is exactly what I was looking for.” So he says, “I understand the power of professional facilitation of facilitators, and you’re one of those.” So I did that based off what I learned from Eric in the class is that power of silence. And when I hit my stopwatch, I was comfortable standing there in that silence. Before I’d be like, come on time, hurry up. I can’t take the silence. But at that point I was just like, this just feels great.

It’s wonderful because it gives everybody a chance to think, especially the introverts. I’ve noticed that introverts don’t just want to say something, they want that thought before they share. So it’s also a good example of know your group, and I’ve worked with this group in the past. So know your group very well and do your pre-work with the group so you have a good strong understanding, because with our briefing notes as the groups, we get their purpose, their goals and objectives. And I read that and I design my day or two days around those briefing notes. So it’s the power of facilitation works with every group.

Douglas:

Yeah, that’s great. And you mentioned the power of community in your professional growth. Can you share a story about how the Voltage Control community supported you during a critical moment in your journey?

Tony:

Yes, actually I can. In my cohort for the certification program, when I was working on my portfolio, I was kind of lost on my last artifact that I wanted to do on there. And I just didn’t know what to do. And so I reached out to Eric and he gave me some pointers and I said, “Okay, I know what I’m going to do now.” When I wrote it out, I had my monthly partner look it over. He goes, “No, you got to do this, this, this, and this. You got to change this to this. You got to change this to that.” So I took his recommendation because he had experience on what my artifact said. So after I rewrote it, I showed it to him again, he goes, “This is perfect. He did exactly what you needed to do.” So I got that community of being able to reach out to somebody to look at your work and get feedback on it to improve yourself, plus that person providing the feedback also grows and learns from you, it’s just very powerful.

So I am very community focused because as my growth in team building, I used a lot of mentors to help me grow. And I saw that in our cohort, and I saw that in the Facilitation Lab and circle that people are out there to answer questions and help everybody grow and become successful.

Douglas:

Yeah. And you’ve been playing a really active role in the Facilitation Lab as a volunteer.

Tony:

Yeah, I enjoy it. Here’s the funny thing about me, when I find something I really like and I’m passionate about, I go guns blazing. I enjoy it. I love it. I put my heart into it. That kind of goes back to that being tenacious. I want something, so I’m going to go after it. I want to get my ideas out there. I want to help people grow and share what I know. And it’s just the power of that community is just amazing wherever you go, as long as you are tuned into what’s going on and you take an active role and part in that whole process.

Douglas:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of those things where you get out of it what you put in.

Tony:

It truly is because when I first got started and when I was asking all these questions, one of my old managers, he managed three different courses throughout the time I was in team building. He recently left the business back in 2021. But every single course he went to, he always brought me on because he knew that I was willing to learn, willing to grow, stay on top of my profession, stay on top of new technology, new activities, new ideas. So I’m one of those people that always stays on top of trends and technology in any industry. So for example, in the circle, the fact that Eric puts up workshop design or people putting in advice or people putting in activities and libraries and books to read, I’m all about that support and providing that as well because that’s what helped me grow. And I just want to be able to go full circle and give it back to the people that are new in the field of facilitation.

Douglas:

Absolutely. Speaking of people that are new in facilitation or even ones that have been around and are looking to take their skills to the next level, what key pieces of advice do you offer?

Tony:

That’s a good one. It goes back to the whole… So I’m a big networker. I’m an extrovert, so I like talking to people, meeting people, connecting people. I used to be in Chambers of Commerce in my old industries. I just like getting that whole connection. So I would say build your network of facilitators in any industry because we all have different experiences, backgrounds, ideas, suggestions that can be incorporated in any style of facilitation. No matter what activity you’re doing, you can always have that delivery in a certain way. So build your network, surround yourself with mentors. I always say surround yourself with people smarter than you so you can learn from them, that’s my saying. So get that network in that community of people in place so you can grow and thrive from that experience.

Douglas:

Are there any common mistakes you see people making that you want to advise folks to try and avoid?

Tony:

Yes, I’ve seen mistakes, and I hate to say it this way, but I’ve seen bad facilitation. What I would suggest is… And this happened to me, when I provide feedback… I remember one time we just got done with an eight-hour session. And the new facilitators were, I hear a bunch of complaints. I hear a bunch of arguing, I hear a bunch of this, hear a bunch of that. I was staying silent because I learned that leaders speak less like, you know what? I’m just going to let this ride. Finally, toward the end the director said, “Tony, you’ve been quiet. What do you have to say?” So I wanted to just listen to what they were saying and I said, “This is what I see.” And I shared my thoughts. And whether or not they take that with them or not, that’s up to them.

But it is challenging for me because sometimes people don’t want to hear what you have to say because they think they know the best or they think their way is working, when you clearly see it’s not or may not be working in the moment. So you kind of give them some feedback. So even I remember one time I got feedback back in 2013, I was struggling with some of my facilitation because I was still new to it. And one guy brought me up to a white board. He goes, “Okay, this is what I’m seeing out of you. This is where you need to be. This is the steps you need to take. I took that to heart.” Next thing I know, I was at that moment. That’s where I learned to talk less and listen more. So I’ve learned from my mistakes and I take on everything that’s coming to me as a learning opportunity. So that’s what I would do regarding mistakes.

So just listen to the people, listen to everybody’s… Just listen to feedback. It may not work for you, just listen to it. You may have that aha moment somewhere in the future. It’s like, oh, I understand what he said now. It makes sense in this moment.

Douglas:

Yeah, having that growth mindset and being willing to hear suggestions from anyone, it’s really valuable asset and equality to have as an individual.

Tony:

Yeah, don’t fight it. When I was doing workshop facilitation for a non-profit for a year and a half, one of the things we said was be open to feedback. Don’t fight it, don’t resist it. It may not work for you, but you may have that aha moment down the road where it will. So that’s one thing people have to take to heart.

Douglas:

And as you continue your journey, what are the things you’re most excited about with your career?

Tony:

What I’ve always experienced with what I’ve been currently doing is watching people connect, collaborate, thrive, create and grow. I’m all about that, getting them beyond that choke point where they can expand and grow to the point where they succeed. So I’m all about the expansion of ideas and having every voice heard so that everybody can learn from them, and they can work effectively after the time with me.

Douglas:

Yeah, that’s so important and quite common with a lot of facilitators feeling that way.

Tony:

One thing that I had a crisis with was this, how do I know I’m making an impact on people? I remember I was talking to another facilitator about that, and she’s had a lot of experience doing a lot of different things. She said it very clear. She goes, “Well, think of it as being a teacher. Your students leave after the year, you may never see them again. You just got to trust that what you’re doing is providing opportunities for them to grow in their future.” And actually, after having this conversation with her, I reflected on my team building days when I was doing this workshop facilitation. It’s like, yes, by the chaperones coming back out and some of the students coming back out again and hearing what I did for them the year before, shows that I am making a positive impact on a lot of people. So with all the groups that I’ve facilitated over the years which has been over 400 and the thousands of people I’ve positively impacted just based on feedback, I know that I’m succeeding in my job and doing it very well.

In fact, I remember one year I went into work one day at one location. I used to work at all these different ropes courses. I was brought on to nine, 10 different places throughout my years. And I remember I came in one day and I met this woman that worked at one of the locations. She goes, “Tony…” She said, “I got to get my daughter in one of your programs.” I said, “Why?” He goes, “Did you see what came in the mail?” I said, “No.” He goes, “Eric got this envelope full of thank you cards. Your name’s all over them.” I’m like, “What?” She goes, “Yeah.” She goes, “It’s just unbelievable the feedback they were giving you, this great feedback.” So at lunchtime I looked through all these cards. I’m like, holy cow. So I saw firsthand the positive impact I was making on people’s lives.

Douglas:

That’s amazing. Well, as we come to the close, I’ve just got a couple of questions. First is, how do you plan to continue evolving as a facilitator, and what role do you think the Facilitation Lab community might play in that?

Tony:

I’m going to continue to evolve by doing what I always do, and that’s learn, grow, ask questions, get involved, because I noticed that the more you get involved you’re just going to learn from that experience no matter what you’re doing. For example, as I volunteer in the lab and I’m putting up articles and stuff, I’m reading some of the stuff and I’m learning something new. So that’s part of my growth evolution. So that just makes me feel happy because now I have more information in my toolkit to make myself more successful for the groups and make them more successful in the end.

Douglas:

Yeah, it is amazing how just having a project or having something that needs to get done can force so much learning. It’s like if you need to post something in the hub, then guess what? It’s forcing me to go look something up that I might not have otherwise.

Tony:

Right. And when I look at some of these briefing notes, I study them like, okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this. And it becomes a learning experience because based on what their purpose is. And I learned something new every single time I at the facility and I’m like, well, this worked. This didn’t work as well, so let’s just kind of tweak it this way. But through that growth process, I’ve mastered a delivery that’s just crazy good. Just got a lot of feedback, and it just makes me feel so good because I know I’m doing my job at a high level.

Douglas:

Great. That’s wonderful to hear. And to wrap things up, I’d like to invite you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Tony:

Yeah, this is pretty much based on a lot of stuff we touched on today. One, take that step forward. I don’t care how small it is, take that mini step if you have to, because I always say and I used to do this with one of my groups, I would show them the photo of that circle where inside the circle says your comfort zone, and then the circle says where the magic happens. You have to step outside of your comfort zone to achieve that magic. So take that baby step and keep moving forward with every single step. I’ve designed stuff I’m like, I have no clue what this is going to look like. But in the end, it became very, very successful. So take that baby step, create your network, surround yourself with mentors, ask questions, and always have an open mind about any information you’re receiving. If you’re not sure, ask somebody with that experience or just get some feedback or just engage in that conversation to bounce ideas off one another.

Douglas:

Fantastic. Tony, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show, and I really enjoyed the conversation.

Tony:

I had so much fun, Douglas. Thank you for inviting me on here. I really appreciate you and your time.

Douglas:

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

The post How Adventure-Based Facilitation Can Transform Team Dynamics appeared first on Voltage Control.

“I think that is one of the best gifts that you can give other people is yes, we’re all just chemical biological beings at the beginning of these, and we have all the choices in the world to go somewhere else.”- Nathan Hughes

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson converses with Nathan Hughes, COO and co-founder of Detroit Labs. Nathan shares his journey from a technology-focused career to embracing facilitation and leadership. He discusses the pivotal role of facilitation in managing teams, especially during crises like the pandemic. Nathan highlights the importance of practice in low-stakes environments to build facilitation skills and emphasizes the need for trust and connection within teams. He also offers advice for technology leaders transitioning into management, stressing the value of redefining success and maintaining personal creative outlets.

Show Highlights

[00:01:30] Nathan’s Journey into Facilitation
[00:04:48] Communication and Change Management
[00:07:30] Integration of Facilitation into Work
[00:25:29] Acknowledging Group Tension
[00:28:02] Facilitator’s Role in Connection
[00:38:38] Involving Teams in Change
[00:41:12] Adaptive Leadership and Facilitation

Links | Resources

Nate on Linkedin

About the Guest

Nathan is the co-founder of Detroit Labs, a leading software development and consulting company known for creating innovative digital products across a wide range of industries. With over 25 years of experience in the technology sector, Nathan is a certified coach and trainer who oversees culture, strategy, and operations within the organization.

About Voltage Control

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

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Voltage Control on the Web
Contact Voltage Control

Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast where I speak with Voltage Control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our facilitation lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab. If you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com. Today I’m with Nathan Hughes at Detroit Labs where he is the chief operating officer and founded the business with three other founders 13 years ago. Welcome to the show, Nate.

Nathan Hughes:

Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Douglas Ferguson:

So great to have you. It’s always fun to talk with alumni and folks doing great work out in the world. And I guess for starters, let’s hear a little bit about your journey and how you started to begin, what often people call this unexpected journey into facilitation.

Nathan Hughes:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m a double alumni because I started and then paused and had to go do some other stuff and then came back and finished. So I like to think that I’ve … Man, I’ve gotten a lot of face time with the facilitation.

Douglas Ferguson:

Get the benefit of multiple cohorts, building the network even bigger.

Nathan Hughes:

Multiple cohorts. Lots of friends. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks. So right now I’m chief operating Officer, like you said, I’m in the technology side. Information technology. I started my career in the ’90s at the University of Michigan, library science, helping install database systems and things like that. I got into development. I did a lot of contracting, so did a lot of individual selling myself to win a deal and then go and hopefully do that deal well enough that they would want to hire me again and move through a couple different contract companies that collected all of us up and offered services and things like that. Traditional, maybe 10, 15 years after doing that, build up some skills, got into a little bit more leadership, a little bit more management, started managing some small software teams and then some larger software teams, and then got involved in managing software network teams and system administrators and things like that.

About 13, 14 years ago, I got an opportunity to help co-found this company, Detroit Labs, which is a services company. My whole life has been services. I’ve just always been in … I think of it as technology hospitality so I’ve always been in that side of the business. And this was a business that the first week we were talking about, we’re going to go very heavy and focus on some of the startups that were starting in Detroit. I’m in the Detroit area. Detroit Labs, the name of the company. And how all of that changed so rapidly.

And I was going to go in and I was going to be in charge of the web development side. That was some of my background. And then we had mobile development with another founder, and within about a month decided what web development in 2000 … When was this? 2011, 12, 13 years ago. Web development was very commoditized. This might not make sense for a business so changed it and focused on mobile. And we’re going to focus and do only with the startups that are in the startup community here. They’re startups, they don’t have money, and we’re trying to build a business. We want clients that can pay. We started immediately to change that and just flux and change in all these plans that we had immediately going off in different directions. And how do you keep on top of that and how do you create some consistency, some stability when you’re in the middle of that startup whirlwind?

And we’ve been doing it last 13 years. We’ve pivoted and changed the business a couple of times. When we went through the pandemic, we obviously changed like everyone else. Another pretty radical situation where we could send everyone home and work from home easily as a technology company but the kinds of services and products and things like that that we offered had to change radically because all of a sudden people wanted to buy something else. And so as you would expect, it’s been nonstop find something that works, do that for a little bit. All of a sudden it seems like it’s not working as well. Let’s change. Oh my gosh, we got to change everything again. We got to talk in a different way. We have to communicate this to a whole team a different way and move into something else and repeating that. And I think we feel like we do that pretty good. I don’t know if any organization does change management and that kind of thing. Well, but I think we do it and I’m pretty pleased with, okay. And a lot of it is because we spend a lot of time focusing on communication and message and mentoring and coaching and partnership within the company as well as partnership with our clients and all those good things.

And so there was a point when I was doing a lot of … In labs, I started out as a developer and then I got really heavy into people ops, and then I got heavy into operations. And during my people ops side, I started doing a lot more training. I actually offered up packaged training as well as putting together workshops that were specific to the kinds of things that we were doing at labs. This is what leadership means at this company and the way we structure teams or this is how we collaborate and do these kinds of projects and how do we talk to that or give presentations, workshops, etc. And I was doing that and finding out that I liked it. And then I realized I really like this a lot. This more structured piece. I was going to some training and things like that, but I was more flying by the seat of my pants just, oh, this feels like the right thing to say, or I read this book or these things in a different context. I’m going to pull that. Maybe that’ll help with the training. And what I finally realized, oh, with the facilitation, that’s what this is.

And so there was a moment when I realized I’m doing a lot of facilitation. It would be really neat to actually look into that as a real thing and understand what the heck I was doing because I bet people have already figured out a lot of stuff and really smart about this. And I think that’s when I crossed paths with voltage control. We actually partnered with you for a small project. But then I think more importantly to me, I saw … You might have just started … Maybe. I don’t think I was in the first cohort, but you just started the facilitation certification program And that’s where I landed.

I decided, you know what? I want to actually learn some of this stuff and see what I’m actually doing and maybe do it in a better way, a more professional way, more learned way. And that’s how I got involved in that kind of business. I’ve never put facilitation on a resume. I’ve never really thought of it as a skill set until that moment. And then after that I thought, oh wow, this is really a rich and comprehensive book of work and set of skills that if you know it exists and you can start focusing it, you can actually get better and practice and things like that. It’s been in my head as this is what I’m doing. Okay, let me look at that and let me see if I can get better when I’m doing my normal job, which is never, Hey, Nathan, can you come facilitate it’s, Hey Nathan, can you jump in and do this work? And in my head I translated to, oh, here’s some facilitation I’m going to do and I’m going to use these skills because I want to get this kind of result.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. That’s so common. We hear that all the time with folks saying that their title’s not facilitation or facilitator, but there’s so many opportunities to bring the skills to bear, whether it’s planning out a full agenda or I’m just bringing in some little nuance to how I show up or how I encourage others to show up.

Nathan Hughes:

Absolutely. Like I said, I do a lot of change management kind of things. Throughout the pandemic I was chief pandemic officer, so the weekly meetings, here’s what’s going, here’s what we’re doing, here’s what’s happening, here’s how the company that you’re part of plays a role in this situation. But everyone’s lives were so much … It was so much different and so much more expanded. Everyone was thinking about something else. And so here’s how much we need you to think about labs while you’re working and dealing with all these other things. And so there was a lot of that kind of work. And then client services is always a … I don’t want to say it’s a battle, but it’s a struggle between, hey, here’s what we’re going to build for you client and the client saying, Hey, here’s what I thought you were going to build and they never match.

And then how do you bring them together and how do you show that okay, what we’re building is what you want and how does the client show us, okay, what you’re building needs to change in this way. That’s always happening. And then there’s just normal people stuff. Talking about roles and titles and how do people bring their identity to work and how do you get that information. So there’s always these fundamental aspects of the work that I’ve always been involved in as a very high-tech person for most of my career. There’s always been this need to be better at that. In a room how do I try and have a conversation that includes all six of the people in the room, not just the loudest or the most comfortable two? Or in a communication that I’m putting together how do I leave it open so it’s collaborative, not an ultimatum or not cut and dry or open myself up to risks in the future? There’s all of these bits that have always existed and I feel like I have a better chance of getting some of them right now that I’ve studied some of this stuff and practiced some of this stuff in a formal way.

Douglas Ferguson:

You mentioned practice a couple of times now. What does practice look like for you? How does that show up for you and your team I guess?

Nathan Hughes:

So I’ve always had this notion that, or this feeling that when you’re at whatever you’re trying to do, but when we’re talking about work. So when you at work, there are things that are important, but they’re hard to practice because they only show up maybe when the stakes are the highest. Or if you’re a emergency crisis management kind of person, you need a crisis and emergency in order to practice some of these things. And so practice to me is okay, I’m looking at that and identifying this is a thing that happens at the best time or the worst time or whatever your context around that is, or at the highest stakes, how do I fake it and create opportunities to practice that aren’t make or break. I don’t want to do it for the first time when it’s the most important time.

And so throughout my professional career, I’ve identified places where, oh, you know what? I’m afraid to do X, Y, Z. I want to practice that. How do I figure out? I used to be really, really nervous, afraid of public speaking or I don’t know, talking in a podcast conversationally where the questions aren’t fully written out and I didn’t have my answers. How do I practice that? I don’t want to practice it only when I have to get up on stage and give an important message to … And so I did improv. I identified the fact that, okay, improv is a way to practice this, and if you fail at it, who cares? No one. If you’ve ever been to your friend’s improv show, they fail all the time and who cares? It’s just how it is. That’s literally the goal of it is to get up on stage and be able to do something so terrible and realize, oh, that’s fine. I’m still alive, I’m still going. And then sometimes it works really good and that feels good and so I practice that.

Facilitation. Same thing. The certification program introduced a bunch of workshops and games and structures and these formal role plays that were practiced for facilitation for me. I’ve never introduced one of those specifically in 100% like, “Hey, we’re going to do this exercise.” But through that practice, I have 100% absolutely done the exact same work with a couple group of folks and said, “Okay. You know what, I want you two to go out and write this on this sheet, and you two go and write it on a different sheet and we’re going to come together in five minutes.” A very familiar workshop exercise that I’ve practiced in a low stakes way. And in this point this was a negotiation of I feel like I should be promoted and I’m not being promoted. Like high stakes. People’s entire identity and their salary and comp and feeling of value is able to play with those things that I practice in a way that I don’t feel like I’m completely making it up on the fly.

I do a lot of one-on-ones or I do a lot of intervention stuff or that. So I went through a full certification program for coaching. And in my head I’m not necessarily opening … I’m putting my shingle up to be an executive coach or a performance coach or business coach. What I want to do is practice that in a safe way so that when I’m actually doing it for real with real people and real people stakes, I’ve gone through and gotten some practice. I actually have a fairly full full-formed idea of practice when I say that in a very intentional thing. I play a lot of games that are role-play and improvisational. Same reason. To practice being up and getting a really hard question from a teammate. Hey, you said this two weeks ago, but this other thing happened. Why? And being able in that moment to feel the flush and the heart rate and realize, oh geez, I feel like, oh, I’m going to give a defense. And then okay, no immediately switching gears and being able to give a legitimate, a valid response to that. And I feel like I get that right about half of the time because I practice a lot of it and I think half of the time’s pretty good. As a human being in a stressful human being world, I’m pretty okay with half of the time.

Douglas Ferguson:

How have you found your team to respond to the idea of role-playing and that kind of practice? Is that something that they’re receptive to?

Nathan Hughes:

Here’s a funny thing. In business, in professional life, you don’t say, “Hey, you want to role-play something.” You start talking about vision and vision is role-play. Hey, here’s what we would love the world to look like a year from now, 10 years from now, next week, whatever. It’s pretend. It’s pretend with facts and basis but you’re just making it up. That’s role-play. What would you do in that world? And put yourself … And so role-play is just one-to-one, it’s vision and it’s future strategy conversations. We want to change, we want to be something different tomorrow than we are today. As soon as you start describing what that is, and then start even more importantly, describing or putting yourself in the place … Okay, what are you doing in that new world and what is your role and how are you interacting with someone who’s also in this new world? That’s role-play.I wouldn’t say role-play. I wouldn’t use those words. I don’t want people to associate it with other things that they’re grabbing onto because that word’s going to mean something. But that’s all that is. It’s the same skill.

I’m convinced that your body doesn’t know the difference. When it starts flooding, like stress hormones or excitement or nervous energy, whatever that is, those stress hormones are the same, whether you’re doing role-play because you’re on stage at an improv show or you are talking to 40 people in your company, or you’re giving the most important sales presentation to this client. Your body floods you with the same hormones, the same chemicals. You can learn how to deal with that differently and it feels the exact same way so the practice really works. So vision is role-play. Fantasy football is role-play in some ways.

All these things, they’re very similar kinds of dynamics at the fundamental core. I think you can put them into different contexts based on what you’re doing with them. Oh, I’m at work, so I’m going to do that. I’m at home, I’m talking to my 17-year-old daughter who just graduated high school and is trying to … We’re role-playing. But I’m not saying role-play saying, oh, I see you’re looking at these three or four different programs at this college. What are you thinking about? What do you see yourself doing? Oh, if you had that job, what’s the day look like? You know what that is? It’s role-play. That can be role-play fundamental as a tabletop RPG, but it’s a different context. It’s okay, pretend you’re in the future, different world, everything looks different. What do you want that to look like? And now how do you start putting the plan in place or what steps do you need to get there?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s interesting that you talk about the chemicals. I think that’s such an important part of practice. And as we think about the scenarios we might put ourselves into to simulate future scenarios, how do we encourage the physical elements? How do we make sure that it simulates it well enough that our body’s actually starting to create that cocktail so that we’re learning to be comfortable with it, learning to notice it, learning to make peace with it maybe?

Nathan Hughes:

So I personally think it starts with one thing you just said is learning to notice it. At certain levels we are all responding very similarly to different signals in the environment. Same chemicals or same general chemicals. Some people have … Well one, some people know that that happens. That’s a basic level. Oh, I am not thinking this. It’s just a body response. So when that happens in my thinking brain, I don’t get to say, oh, I want this or I don’t want this, or I’m proud of this reaction, or I’m not proud of this. We haven’t even gotten there yet. It’s just chemicals. And knowing that is a good first step. And then the second step is to notice those chemicals. Like this recording about five minutes in, maybe even earlier, I felt some of the chemicals that I feel when I start getting … It’s nervous or it’s fear, but then it just gives me energy. Because I’ve learned to notice it and say, “Oh, that’s happening. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to talk maybe too fast if I don’t notice that. I’m going to run out of breath because I talk even way too fast if I don’t notice it. But also if I notice it, I can use that energy and that can be excitement just as much as it can be fear.”

So the second part, after knowing it actually happens, there’s a biological thing, that piece of knowledge. The second part is learning to recognize it, notice it in yourself. And I don’t know. I know what it feels like in my body. I can’t really say, “Oh, this is what it’ll feel like in someone else’s.” I don’t know that. But I can say you probably feel it as well if you’re trying to learn this. Recognize that and then pay attention to what you do with that.

Don’t start immediately saying, oh, I’m going to change. Just pay attention to what you do. We’ve all learned from our upbringing how we … I think maybe a lot when you were kids, whatever your kid situation is, it trains you, teaches you how to deal with a lot of these reactions, responses. Maybe if you were a sports kid, you’ve got that context. If you were in a house that was maybe more difficult, you’ve got that context. If you were in a rich upbringing, a poor upbringing, whatever. As kids, we learn. But as adults, I think we sometimes don’t reexamine and relearn that stuff. And so the third piece is realize you have natural responses to that physical, that physicality. They don’t have to be those responses forever. And sometimes you have to make a specific effort. So I’m going to change how I feel. You know what? I don’t want to run out of breath anymore. When I’m in this kind of situation because I get so excited I just let it go and run away. So I’m going to notice that and I’m going to change my specific behavior to do something else. You can relearn those things.

Or when I feel this way, I’m not immediately going to jump and start throwing fists and fighting because that was what maybe I did at 14. Well, guess what? That’s an easy one because at 18, 19, 20, you can’t do that. Society stops you. But very few things are that clear. It’s usually not that line. And so as facilitators, I think we get to notice that, recognize that, use that in ourselves, but then we also have to know that others that are in the room are going through that and help or facilitate that moment, that energy. Oh, wow. You get a group of folks that are the smartest in the world at something, and then you introduce something different and they’re the dumbest in the world and you’re like, “Oh, what happened?” Well, so much changes in the room as soon as you introduce something that’s new and people are unfamiliar with. So as a facilitator, if you know that you can work with that and you can adjust to that I think in a productive way. Maybe I shouldn’t have said dumb.

Douglas Ferguson:

You really got me to thinking there and this idea that the noticing is so important and also the conversation you have with yourself around what you’re noticing. I think a lot of times once we label something and interpret it to be a certain way, that sends us into a path. And if we take that path, it may not lead us to where we want to go. So for instance, re acknowledging that, oh, what I’m feeling could be labeled as excitement, not fear, not anxiety. And so simply reframing it and having a different conversation with ourselves. And then I love that you steered it toward the group as well. So realizing that people in the room are having similar experiences or reacting to, interpreting things and helping the group renegotiate with themselves and maybe with each other, how they’re reacting to the things and making it normal to be able to have these kinds of conversations.

Nathan Hughes:

Normal. And even just flat out talking through. You’re in a room and you’re trying to do a in-person, stand-up, physical exercise. You want people to stand up and do something and people don’t want to. It’s just people won’t want to. Unless you have this magic room of people that have been doing this and they love that kind of … If you have a bunch of theater students that have been doing their own work together and it’s a troop, oh, sure. But in case you don’t have that, being able to just say, “And no one’s going to want to do this and a lot of you might be feeling it in your body right now that you don’t want to. Same as me. That’s fine. So just notice that, recognize it. Maybe use that energy to be a little bit more silly or more wild or more free with what you do up here.”

I think being able to recognize that or things as simple as, “Wow. You just said that.” In a meeting. Maybe I’m in an operations meeting, client meeting. “Wow. You just said that. You know what? I am so upset about that. I’m so angry. I want to take revenge on that. I’ve noticed that, I’m going to change that because this isn’t what … That’s just came up. And so I’m going to do something totally different.” Especially if you have a modeling role. If you are at a level where people look and maybe look to you to identify how. If you can say, “Yeah, I have this reaction and I’ve decided I’m going to do something different with it because that natural reaction is not going to serve.” Maybe that original caveman reaction of, oh, this is because it’s a saber tooth tiger that’s going to eat me and so this is why I feel, and I have that same energy, but it’s not. I don’t know. It’s a mobile app that’s slower than it should be. There’s no saber tooth tiger out there, so I’m going to do something else.

Showing people that that’s okay, and that’s normal I think that is one of the best gifts that you can give other people. Is yes, we’re all just chemical biological beings at the beginning of these, and we have all the choices in the world to go somewhere else. And in terms of facilitation, like biological facilitation, just noticing, acknowledging and speaking to that, it’s so powerful.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. Even in a room, if things get tense, oftentimes the tendency is to pretend it didn’t exist, change the subject, move on. Actually taking a moment, just like we need to notice in our bodies when we’re having a personal response, if there’s a group response or someone’s experiencing something in the room that’s created tension or uncertainty, just taking a moment to say, “I’m noticing that …” X, Y, Z. Fill in the blank. “How does everyone feel about that? What does that mean?” And allow the group to then do some group problem solving together. Turn it into a dialogue where we notice together. It can create a lot of opportunity for better understanding, better collaboration, and better empathy. Because we can really start to get at the core of like, well, why did that surface and can be really powerful. I think way better than to sweeping under the rug.

Nathan Hughes:

Oh, and the connection possibilities with that as well.

Douglas Ferguson:

Oh yeah.

Nathan Hughes:

We all know that you go through a very difficult whatever together as a team. That team is so strong. hey can individually be on the opposite sides of everything. They would never be friends, they would never hang out, they would never whatever. But you set a group of people through a very difficult situation, they start and get through that difficult situation together. Why are they so tight? Why are they so strong? I think because that creates so many situations for all of that to be stripped and for that raw reaction and response to be bare, to be visible, and to see that that’s okay. And no one’s going to kick you out of the group. No one’s going to send you to the side. Everyone’s going through that. And once you see that, you trust, you get this feeling of trust and this feeling of connection. It might take a year to develop that in a more calm, normal way. Might take two weeks to do that in a really difficult project that you’re in the trenches with someone together.

And I think one-on-one, that’s also a place where this comes in. A lot of times, oh, we’re the facilitator. You know what that means? I’m the boss. I’m in control. Oh, I’ve got to have the answer. Oh, you know what? The movie moment, Independence Day president speech. That’s what I have to end every session with. And the goosebumps and everyone’s cheer … No. It’s not true. It’s not true at all. And sometimes the best thing that I can come up with one-on-one … Maybe in a group, but one-on-one when someone’s just dropped something is telling them wow. All I can think to say is, I have this … My whole body, I feel like I’m on fire just hearing that. Tell me more. I don’t have anything else. I don’t have any insight to that. All I can do is share and connect how that has impacted me or that connection with someone else. And I don’t need anything other than that. I don’t need to give them any of the words and some logic or some solution. That’s hardly ever going to be the thing that really works. All I can do is show them, yes, I’m also human sitting on the other side of you, and this is the humanity that I am feeling and it’s on display.

Douglas Ferguson:

You talked about the team or creating opportunities for them to be more wild and free. I’m curious if you have any stories that exemplify the team rising to that occasion?

Nathan Hughes:

So in terms of a workshop, there’s a workshop that I used to do. Haven’t done it in years. And I learned it from … Oh my gosh. Where is this? Harvard Business School? They had a negotiation workshop and I went years ago. Six, seven, eight years. And the idea is you have everyone stand up, there’s some physicality of it. You have a room and you need a group and you present a question to the group. And I haven’t done this in a while, so it might be fuzzy. But basically the question is, Hey, here’s corn. Everyone knows what corn is. And is corn a vegetable? Is it a grain/ is it a fruit? And I think there’s a fourth. Whichever one you move different corners or whatever. And so the intent of this is to show the power of a group or one person in a group having a strong opinion and how that affects. And then you go through a couple rounds of debate, mini debate.

We think it’s this because. No, we think it’s that because. And the spoiler on this … I hope I’m not spoiling corn for anyone. The spoiler is there is a definition for corn that fits every single one of these things. It is a plant, it is a vegetable. The FDA will define it in all of these different ways. It is a grain versus plant, versus … So anything anyone said is right. But what happens in the room as they’re up … And their whole bodies are engaged because you have to move around and you have to come in. It’s intentional. You bring them all into the center to debate a certain thing, and then they move. And so you have detractors that move to a different corner and the whole room is like, “Ooh, look at that.” And one group usually collects the most and they’ve won. And then you just put up all the boring government pages and words that say, oh yeah, every single person is right because there’s no definitive.

And what happens? I think the energy around that and what you do up in the front is prep that group to use the group dynamic as something that motivates their behavior. So you open it up. You’re trying to break down some of these, oh, I want to stand as … No. You see someone, they give a good argument, go over there. Jump ship immediately, and this and that and do. And so that workshop or that little exercise is something that I love because it does lean so heavily into what it feels like when you are in a group doing something as a group with your brain and your body and how that energy can be so dynamic.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. Even just getting people to move around.

Nathan Hughes:

It’s so hard.

Douglas Ferguson:

Is an amazing thing to do. And it can be hard as you say, but if we can get people doing it, the more they embody something that you connect to it in other ways. It comes back to the chemistry stuff we were talking about earlier.

Nathan Hughes:

There’s another thing that I have done a couple of times with certain teams. You know you … Whatever it is. It’s a meeting, it’s a group, it’s something recurring. And you’ve got the same people that show up and this is more physical space. But same group shows up, physical space, sits down. The place they sit down that very first meeting is the place they will try to sit down for the rest of their lives. Until they’re in the grave they will want that same spot. And what I’ve done, and what I’ve noticed is sometimes … I do a lot of change management. Sometimes when you do change management, the first thing you need to do is signal that it’s time for change. Changing seat is such a violation of the norm and the status quo that I believe that nothing … It’s one of the most powerful ways to signal yeah, we have to do something different and we’re starting off by, you can’t sit in that same seat. And you have to sit somewhere else. And it’s nothing. It’s so meaningless. It doesn’t matter. This is a meeting room. This isn’t someone’s desk, office, chair, whatever. It’s just we’re in this meeting room and you always sit next to her this or so that.

The physicality of it is so important at even the most minor, meaningless, smallest levels, people get so upset and so offended at that smallest … And that’s the intent. Because I’m sitting up there saying, yes, we have to dramatically change. We can never do the same thing that we just did. And it starts here with that’s why I’m on this side of the room versus that, or that’s why I’m this seat and everyone … Because that model in your head has to break it. It has to start breaking somewhere. And as facilitators, I think one thing that we need to do is look for the ways that we can drive whatever we’re trying to achieve in a room. Whatever we’re trying to help a group or a team move towards with all of the different senses. And we talk a lot about the visual side and the sound side, but the physicality is harder in a more remote world, but the physicality is just as important and sometimes more important because it is stunted in a lot of our white-collar professional lives. And so any little bit of physicality is like a gigantic bolt of lightning.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. The seats a fascinating thing. There’s a strong sense of identity when it comes to where you’re sitting. There’s a reason why people bring their photos of their family and decorate their little area. It’s their little slice of the office that they’ve planted a flag on. But there are other ways that identity shows up and it has a big impact on change management because if people have created some roots around their identity in this place, that needs to shift now because there’s some change coming that can be really scary for folks. They feel like they’re having to sacrifice that piece of their identity or they’re getting uprooted. I’m curious how much you’ve noticed these things or if you have some interesting facilitation, style tactics that help with people as they’re struggling with that identity shift.

Nathan Hughes:

That’s a good question. That’s a big one. Because you’re right. It is fundamental to change management. If you’re doing something that’s worth a change management process, it probably means it’s big enough that it’s important and it counts in some way. It might count towards titles or promotions or raises or something performance. And it is responsible for results that matter. Why would you do a change management process to change something that doesn’t matter? And so knowing that you’ve got to prepare yourself for that. There are a couple of things that I see. And one is getting down to the bare metal in terms of transparency around what you’re trying to achieve. I think what I’ve learned is it’s seldom worth spending a lot of time talking about why the old thing needs to change. But sometimes that’s the trap. You feel like, oh, I’m going to explain why the old thing didn’t work or was bad or this or that. And all you’re doing is re-centering and focusing on and making sure that that old thing is still the center of attention.And so what I’ve learned is I have to do all of that work, but only on the new stuff. Here’s why. Here’s what we’re going … Here’s where we’re … And I think in terms of change management, you never rely on someone just knowing.

So whenever I’m doing a change management process, I’m listening in my head and things I’m writing. Did I use just? Oh, it’s just this. Oh, that’s a warning. Simply. Oh, that’s a warning. I’m assuming. Any assumption obviously is going to be wrong because any group is going to have every one of those beliefs and your assumptions in a change management process become deviations or invalidations of identity as minor or as innocent as you think they are. You are insulting someone if you accidentally invalidate their identity.

And so I’m looking for places where I’m assuming it’s going to be simple or obvious, straightforward. It’s just going to be that. I’m looking for that kind of thing. And I need to keep painting a picture of here’s why and what we’re doing. Here’s what we’re trying to achieve, here’s what we’re trying to change for this result. And the result is very important. We want to make this thing happen this way. And showing how that world might look when that change has happened is super important. So what is my role? What is my job? I’m this and you’re going to make this change in how we do … I don’t know. I’m a project manager. I’m going to make this change in how we price projects. How do I … Okay. I know that we price projects wrong, but it’s still a way that I know and I’m comfortable with. What am I doing in detail? And that’s so hard because a lot of times you don’t know yet. You’ve got to go through the change manager, but you have to be able to talk through it. You have to be able to show this.

And then I think every change management process needs to have a very dedicated and intentional mechanism to assign out parts of that change management process to the actual folks that are impacted. We need this result. I need you to figure out how this thing works as part of that.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s so key.

Nathan Hughes:

And this other person, you or this role, I need you to figure out how we get to … You know what? The change is we need to go from 63 over here to 92. That part of it, please figure out how to do that. Also, I’m going to tell the organization, you’re in charge of doing that. I’m going to rally up all the support you need because you’re not operating on your scale, you’re operating on a strategic scale, not an individual scale. So people need to support you and people need to and it’s visible. I need you to do this work. And when that happens, I am validating and judging it based on does it get me to the result? I’m trying my damnedest to get rid of that oh, I’m in charge. So let me look at how you’re actually doing it and give you all the judgment there. I’m trying not to do that. Now I’ll look at it and if I know it won’t work for some reason, I might try to carefully … oh, this is … Yes that. Whatever. But a lot of times, I would say more often than not, that’s not the problem. Is the actual change … We want to get to this result, let me look at how that’s working and involving folks very intentionally and specifically in getting to the … Do I do that all the time? No.

Douglas Ferguson:

That plays a role too in the everyday facilitation stuff. Because if we’re not clear on the results we’re seeking, then people can’t step in with novel ideas of how to shape the future and they’re just slaves to whatever vision or whatever tactics you have already laid out.

Nathan Hughes:

Exactly.

Douglas Ferguson:

And that’s tiring. Anyone who’s leading them that way must be exhausted all the time.

Nathan Hughes:

Yeah. I have come across a couple and I just watch in awe. Like, wow, you have the energy to really direct and mandate all 90 little details of … Okay. Bless you for that, but I could never even comprehend that. That’s so much work. And you’re right, it’s only going to be as good as that person. And a lot of times that person is pretty good. They’re in that position because they were pretty good. But no one person is pretty good forever and no one person’s pretty good is always better than a few people’s innovation and best. And so you’ve got to be willing to take that risk in opening that up in order to get better results.

Douglas Ferguson:

I couldn’t agree more. And we could carry this conversation on for a very long time. It’s been really fine, but we do have to bring it to a close here. And as we wrap up, there’s a couple of things that I’d love to hear your thoughts on. One is you’ve got this unique background as a technology leader, as someone who’s made these pivots from purely creating, developing, launching technical products and services to thinking about people ops and then all this change management work. And so I’m curious what advice you might have for technology leaders and just this importance of adaptive leadership and facilitation. And also maybe just a final thought. So what advice do you have for other technical leaders and then how do you want to leave our listeners today?

Nathan Hughes:

So for other technology folks that are maybe like me directly … I used to work for a living writing code and now I no longer do that. I don’t know if I have advice, but the thing that I will acknowledge is you’re exactly right. You’re absolutely right. It was so much fun writing code and it was so satisfying to have that direct feedback that I did a day’s worth of work and did something for real and now I can see it. At the end of the day, something has changed. It is so different and I will say so much more difficult to find value or find satisfaction as you get away from that direct one-on-one. So there’s an acknowledgement that I’m going to offer up that you’re exactly right. It was a lot easier and sometimes a lot more directly fun to be that.

And so if you want to expand up and out in more management or more leadership or more strategy or more whatever it’s called in your world, you’ve got to do two things. One, you have to readjust and understand how you’re going to find satisfaction and value out of much less direct and much more abstract results. And how are you going to find that personal satisfaction when you can’t take responsibility for anything really that’s going on because it’s a team that did it, or it’s these other folks that are … It’s this or it’s this process running and etc. So there’s that.

And then the second bit is fill that gap of direct creation with something. Anything. You need a hobby. If you’re a direct technology person moving into leadership management, you better get yourself a hobby where you can be a direct builder of something else. And I don’t care if it’s a hobby, you’re still in technology or it’s a hobby … Woodworking is mine. Or it’s a hobby … Something. You’ve got to keep and create for yourself a way to directly contribute so you can have that little selfish bit of satisfaction of your thing that you do. And also continue to work on how do I value and how do I enjoy the larger, less directed work that I am achieving results in. So that’s what I would say if you’re in my spot and that’s what I’ve learned for me.

Douglas Ferguson:

Wise words.

Nathan Hughes:

I think a final thought is you can change how you react and respond to this biology. Like this point that we were talking about, my final thought is I think it is possibly the most powerful thing you can do to rewire and retrain your body and your brain to abandon the ways that you’ve learned in the past as a child or whatever … All of us survived childhood. None of us get through child. We all survived childhood. So the way that we survived childhood, retraining yourself to use those exact same responses. Take those skills, take those strengths forward, but then decide how you want those to be in your actual professional world, your adult world, your different in your non-child world. My final thought is there’s nothing more powerful and satisfying than being able to do that. And you’ll be doing it forever. You never get to stop doing that, but that’d be my final thought.

Douglas Ferguson:

That sounds like a worthwhile journey. Thanks for being on the show, Nate. I really appreciate it.

Nathan Hughes:

Thank you. This was fun.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

The post How Can Facilitation Transform Leadership in Times of Change? appeared first on Voltage Control.

At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Erik Skogsberg and Dirk Van Onsem delivered a thought-provoking workshop titled “Facilitating Change Through Systems Mapping.” The session was designed to help participants understand and leverage the power of systems thinking to drive change within their organizations.

The workshop began with Erik and Dirk highlighting the significance of seeking truth rather than being right, emphasizing a systems-based perspective. They explained that true understanding comes from recognizing the interrelationships among various elements within any context, challenge, or opportunity. This approach is crucial for effective facilitation and leadership.

The session was structured around five key elements essential for creating a compelling change story:

1. Future Vision: Participants were encouraged to articulate a clear and compelling vision for the future. This vision serves as a foundation for others to buy into and support the change.
2. Personal Connection: Erik and Dirk stressed the importance of understanding and communicating personal motivations for caring about the change. This personal connection helps build trust and emotional resonance with others.
3. Current State: Through systems mapping, attendees explored the current state of play, identifying the relationships and patterns that define the present situation. This step is crucial for grounding the change story in reality.
4. Stakeholder Engagement: Participants learned to map and understand the motivations and interests of key stakeholders. This step is essential for building a coalition of support for the change effort.
5. High-Leverage Interventions: By combining systems and stakeholder mapping, participants identified high-leverage interventions that could drive meaningful change.

Participants engaged in mapping exercises to visualize system relationships and dynamics. Dirk shared a real-world example from the sporting goods industry, demonstrating the practical application of systems mapping. In group activities, participants integrated their maps and shared insights, emphasizing understanding over perfection.

Erik and Dirk’s workshop showcased the value of systems thinking in facilitation. Participants left with tools to navigate and influence complex systems effectively.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Erik:

So I’ll give you just a moment if you haven’t already soaked this in a little bit. This willingness to seek the truth rather than seek to be right. And a core part of seeking that truth in many ways is taking a systems-based perspective, really understanding the relationships amongst all the things, all the people at play in any one context or challenge or opportunity.

Dirk:

Yes. And so just for anyone who hadn’t noticed, we knew we were coming right after Jose, who is an MC and who was an amazing DJ. So Erik and I were brainstorming what do we do to go after such a performance, so the only thing we could figure out was let’s make sure we match up.

Erik:

You see this system here?

Dirk:

I know we were subliminal, but we just wanted to point that out. It’s all in the detail, all in the detail. So just as a brief sort of connect between facilitating change as a workshop and what we’re going to do today is this belief that facilitation is a very core leadership skill, which I’m sure all of you agree as you are facilitators, but also a very, very important way in our view to really drive change. Facilitation of change is actually a core leadership skill and we do believe that actually a big part of that is having a story that other people can buy into. So the workshop that we’ve designed is actually a workshop that helps tell your change story in a way that brings others along. And the five elements that are part of that are on the screen.

The first is what’s my future vision, very much connected to what we’ve heard just now, the future state. Can you articulate in a compelling way the vision that you would like people to buy into? So that’s a core element of that.

The second is who am I and why do I care. The soil exercise we’ve just done is a way of doing that, obviously. But there’s multiple ways to try to understand who am I and why do I specifically care about creating this future. Why is that important? Because when you can touch others in a chord that touches their heart, very often it’s because you share vulnerably why you care. So the notion of digging in personal mastery and understanding this is why I care about this is actually a way to connect to others.

The third element is where are we today, which is bringing the state of play or the current state as we’ve just again today referred to. And this is the area that we’ll dive into today with the systems mapping. Then why should you care? We heard a lot about stakeholder mapping, convincing stakeholders. So why should you care is part of your change story, is identifying those important stakeholders and understanding deeply why do they care and how can I connect to them.

So then lastly, if you have mapped both the system and the stakeholders, you can identify high leverage interventions and make suggestions of what should be done. And if you would narrate those five topics in one go, you actually have your change story by which you can in a more confident way convince others to drive the change with you. So that’s sort of a little sort of setting on how we came up with facilitating change as a concept. And then within that, again, where are we today, the systems mapping is what we will dive into.

And systems, we hear a lot of people say it’s a systemic problem, it’s a system. But sometimes the word system or systems thinking can be a bit confusing or intimidating. And again, most, I assume many of you are familiar with it, but just to ground us in one of the definitions, and there’s multiple ones, but Peter Senge is obviously the person that started the academy for systems change where both Erik and I went and met each other actually the first time. This is his definition. It’s a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things. Seeing patterns rather than seeing static snapshots. And it’s actually very much looking at the space in between two things and the interrelation and the correlation between that.

And so the problem statement or the problem that we’re going to address today and tomorrow, we actually are going to have our first exercise today on trying to see the interrelationships, really trying to see the patterns rather than only the statements of what maybe is happening.

Erik:

So a couple further ways to provide some context and why behind seeing things systemically are so important. And as Dirk mentioned here, we’re oftentimes paying attention to the in-between, what’s happening in connections amongst different relational pieces. Because oftentimes when we’re working with complex problems, which a lot of us are, in fact most everything we talked about today is systemic, multi-layered here. And when we’re talking about systems, there’s oftentimes a delay, sometimes a pretty long delay between cause and effect.

So anytime you may have gone to, say, quickly try to solve a problem that’s actually systemic and find that actually your solution came back to you with something that’s actually making the problem even worse, that’s where understanding things systemically is really important because there’s this delay and a complex relationship between cause and effect.

Give you a couple of quick examples here that hopefully are recognizable or familiar enough. So a couple of basics here. And we’ll tell you this multiple times because we see it a lot when we first introduce systems mapping to folks, the point of today is not creating a perfect systems map. All right? So we can geek out on this stuff and it’s interesting to dig into. Take what is helpful for you. The most important thing is that we are starting to better understand the relationships amongst a bunch of different things.

So I’ll give you an example here of a really common loop that oftentimes comes up when we’re talking about systems. So feedback loops here can either be reinforcing or balancing. So an example of a reinforcing loop here would be like interest in your bank account. All right? So you have money in, interest is being accrued, and that continues to add money to that account.

A balancing loop here would be an example of a thermostat. So you have something set, a desired temperature, and ultimately there’s a gap between the desired and the current temperature. And that then responds to balance things back out, to bring things back into a balance to what you have ultimately set here. And this plays out in a lot of different systems, whether things are reinforcing and continuing to grow or ultimately trying to bring things back to some form of balance.

In systems work, we talk a lot about system archetypes, because there’s some pretty common ones that come up in complex systems, and one of those here being fixes that fail. So a good example here of where you ultimately try to implement a solution to fix a problem and that solution ultimately makes things worse. All right? So an example here of the problem, maybe there’s high interest on a credit card for example, and an initial fix being to balance that out. We’re going to take out an extra credit card to start paying on that. Uh-oh, we’ve got more interest coming. That creates more debt, more debt, more debt, and we ultimately don’t fix the problem. And again, these play out in a lot of different ways across the systems in the different challenges and opportunities in our lives.

Dirk’s going to take this a step further here with some examples from Nike.

Dirk:

Yes, exactly. So about three years ago in the job I’m in now, when I started that job, which was being responsible for sporting goods for EMEA. And the sporting goods industry, so basically Dick’s Sporting Goods is I assume a retailer that many of you know. So you could think of the equivalent of Dick’s Sporting Goods, but then in EMEA. And so I was handed over that team and that responsibility. It was the time that we were in this course, so I used that new job to try to understand how can system mapping help. And I want to talk you through that one example just to make it a bit more tangible and practical rather than maybe the theory about archetypes.

So what I found, and this is what we’re going to ask all of you to do as well later, you just start to write down things that you notice, not necessarily thinking about links between them, but what are the things that you notice. You know when you start a new job or a new assignment, you just ask questions. You interview people and you just start to, “Hey, that gets repeated. I’m going to note that down.”

And so basically I ended up having things like, okay, there’s low profitability. All those retailers have a tough time making money. That was one of the elements. For the sake of the time, we’ve put it straight away in a map today. So you will see how things are interlinked straight away. But another thing that I noticed actually was there was a lack of investment capacity. Someone else was telling me they just don’t invest in their stores, these retailers. They don’t invest. But obviously there’s a clear link between if you have no profitability, you have very little to reinvest in your business.

On top of that, they have very low digital capabilities. Again, linked to these lack of investment capacities. But the comment of low digital capabilities was a comment I got again from someone else. But if you map them, you can then see, well, if you have low digital capabilities today, consumers shop first on their smartphone. So if your websites aren’t great, and if you’re not really investing in digital capabilities, guess what? You don’t attract the consumer. If you don’t attract the consumer, you need to drive promotions to get people to your store to bring them in. Now you can imagine if you need to drive promotions, you have low profitability. So this is a typical reinforcing loop.

Now then as a company, we thought we were really, really smart, which happens very often if you’re inside of a company. So what do you do? Actually we say, “Wow, we need these retailers so we’re going to give them more discounts.” Because if we give them more discount, they’re going to be more profitable. It seems quite logical. They buy from you, you give them a higher discount so they can create more money. The thing that happened is actually as a result, many of the retailers that should have gone out of business because they were actually not doing a proper job in serving consumers, they actually stayed in business. What’s the result of that? Way too many competition. So what do they do? They need to promote to attract the consumer.

So this is how you see, even if you have actually think you’re doing something that makes sense. The moment I started to see, and this is only one very small section of the map that I created with my team, but just for sake of example, we realized we were doing this to ourselves. Or we had a very big role that we played in keeping this system turning in a way that wasn’t helping the overall consumer experience. So it’s by mapping and all of these points that are on here came from different interviews, and then we did the exercise of mapping it. How is this linked? Because now it seems very logical when I tell this story in this way, but it wasn’t when I started the role. So that’s just an example on how that works.

So obviously our role or what we want to do with you today is actually show how this process of mapping and again linking it to the facilitation summit, how as facilitators we can have ways to map complex systems with a large group actually and get to insights that we maybe didn’t have before doing this exercise. So obviously the core question, “How might we raise national awareness and adoption of the ACC Digital Fluency micro-credentials and certificates for military spouses?” That was the task or the prompt that we were given by the organization we’re working with. And so what we’re going to do today is map. What do we know of that system as a collective?

Any question before I hand over? We’re going to give a prompt in a second, but any questions on that intro first before we move to the next part? No? So I think we’re first going to give the prompt, right?

Erik:

Yep.

Dirk:

So the starting point is we’re going to replay the video. It was called out this morning. We are very sure all of you watched the video. We are a hundred percent sure. But just in case or just for your memory, we’re going to-

Erik:

Just a refresher.

Dirk:

A refresher.

Erik:

A refresher.

Dirk:

We’re going to replay the video that was sent out. That is also at the same time your solo time. So we were going to give you anyway solo time to reflect, so we’re going to play the video at the same time. If you’ve seen it, feel free to jot things down. What’s important is based on what you’re hearing or what you know about the situation or based on the workshops we’ve done already this morning that gave you additional insights, write down things that you notice that you think are part of the system of the issue. Important is to do one per sticky, so don’t list them on ones. We need one idea or one prompt or one thing you think is part of the system per sticky. At the moment, don’t try to find links in between. Just what you hear, note down what you think is important and relevant. And from there, we will go further.

Erik:

Yeah, cool.

One thing I’d say here is you’re diving in because for many of you, this is a new process. So I’ll just tell you, if you’re doing it right now, you’re doing it right. Don’t worry about creating a perfect map. Okay? The point here is that we’re starting to think more systemically. All right? And that gives us an opportunity to then have a conversation together. Back to Donella’s words, this allows us to build a collective truth together. Because then when that’s out in front of us, we can make better decisions together. So just start. All right? And I’ll keep coming back to that as a reminder.

So I’m going to pop up a video here in a moment, actually from some of the research that has been done with these military spouses about their needs and the challenges that are coming up in their lives and accessing some of these resources. And you can just note as you’re listening.

Speaker 4:

We were researching kind of how users currently find different resources on installations and what pain points that they may have been seeing. So we interviewed a lot of different people and surveyed several hundred more. And what we found was that people would just get stuff by word of mouth or via social media and it wasn’t always completely accurate information. We also talked to services and we use that to inform the features that we decided to put in our MVP launch for My Army Post.

So I think the biggest thing that we learned was that there’s not enough childcare providers on the installation to effectively provide childcare for every Army family. A military installation is ran by any of the military service, whether it’s Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, and it’s where all of the buildings are that are the federal government property and that’s where all the services lie for families to access.

And that was where a lot of the issues come in because it is cheaper on the installation for military families because it’s a little bit subsidized. So if there’s not a space for them on the installation, they have to go off-installation, which is a little bit more costly. And that’s where there’s not a little bit of a gap, a large gap that makes it difficult for them to find careers as the family member.

Something that is hard is finding those careers that can transfer to different places wherever we get stationed. And then building the community is hard. It’s the longer you’re in, kind of the harder it gets I feel like. I think some of the things that we saw in our research and that I’ve seen is that we are pretty good at getting training for spouses or for service members that are getting out of the military, but most jobs now require experience. And where can they get experience if no one is willing to hire anybody without experience?

Actually, you facilitated a little exercise at our kind of fair. I thought that that was an awesome program and I thought that it could benefit a ton of people. And the main person that came to my mind was my mother who is in her sixties and has a job that uses digital tools like Excel and Outlook and I’m just her tech support and she just calls me to get that information. But if she was able to get some sort of micro-credential that could help her understand it, whether it was actually getting that micro-credential or just the knowledge, I think that that could be very helpful and I can see how that would be helpful to military families as they’re moving throughout the states.

Speaker 5:

I also enjoyed it. I thought it was really, really cool because I was like, “Well, maybe I could do some of these things.” Because some of those skill sets transfer to a wide variety of disciplines. You can use it for a lot of different things.

Speaker 4:

I think the biggest thing that we saw as a huge pain point was advertising. The Army doesn’t necessarily have a large advertising budget to be able to market these different things. And so if ACC could take advantage of a way to market these better, I think that that would reach a lot more people.

Speaker 5:

For example, I was telling Celeste, I was like, “Hey, did you know there is a virtual internship for the federal government?” I did it for my master’s program. And she’s like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah, you really just have to be a student and you apply at the US gov jobs, but then you get experience with the low-threat internship at the federal government working for almost every agency known to man.” But if you can scaffold on that and actually then, well, I worked for the VA virtually and then I’m going to apply for this job to build your resume up and say, “Hey, but I learned these skill sets along the way because I knew I was weak in some of these areas. ” I wasn’t really good at spreadsheet management per se or Excel, but through my internship and a program through ACC with building my digital literacy, I had another skillset.

When I actually applied, I had somebody who would vouch for me as a reference who already works in the industry and I have the skill to back it up. And I’m using veteran preference because a lot of jobs have that for spousal preferential positioning. And to leverage all those things into one to apply for some of these jobs I think could be super useful. And I think people underestimate how valuable those small state or federal organizations actually have impact. There’s a lot of job offers that come there. They say, hey, we need a public health person.

The job fairs are so important. Even if you are not actively looking for an actual job, you’d be surprised what you can land on and what you can find that can kind of fit the things you want to do by just asking people and just talking to them. I just think the whole scaffolding thing is the most important thing. So even if after they do their micro-certification, if there’s a way for them to connect with companies even for maybe just a week trial or two weeks and to say, “Hey, just let me walk around and just intern and see what I can learn from just being here on ground.” It’s low threat to the company because you’re an intern and they don’t have to pay you. But it also gives people experiences and to build that bridge and of course targeting people who are actively looking for people.

Erik:

Nice to hear the voices of folks closer to this challenge and opportunity. And I’m going to add a few more details here from another person very close to this challenge who unfortunately we were going to be doing an interview but unfortunately unable to be with us today, but I wanted to share her answers here with you. So just asked what they noticed is going on right now in this problem and opportunity space in and amongst this challenge. And she said, “Unemployment has remained the top concern for military spouses, especially since military families relocate every one to three years. And there’s been a real shift in the working world post-COVID. Employers have moved a lot more toward remote work.” And so that presents both opportunities but also challenges if you didn’t already have some of those digital skillsets, right?

I asked, “Why do you think things are working or not working at this point?” And she said, “This is a great opportunity for military spouses, especially for those that are looking for remote work. This allows them to focus on becoming more proficient in the digital skills they need in order to succeed in remote work environments.”

And finally, “What elements of this prominent opportunity space do you hope we, all of us here, most focus on?” And she said, “Since unemployment is a top concern nationwide for military spouses, how can we get national military organizations to subscribe to the micro credential digital skills program here at the college.”

Speaker 6:

I was also at the military families center ribbon cutting. And there’s one thing I noticed that I thought might be helpful to share which was a military spouse that had been invited to speak about her experience and she said something that was quite, it made sense in retrospect, but never hearing it before. I was never exposed to it. But the fact that as she moved around with her husband on different deployments into different installations, there would commonly be a really vibrant and strong and tight-knit military community that would be very supportive. So then they were to move somewhere, they would instantly have a lot of resources around them and they could lean on that and learn to depend on it. But not all installations are created the same.

And something that really was surprising for her when they came to Austin because her husband is actually attending the software factory, which is the software bootcamp for the Army. So these are active duty Army, they’re learning how to be software developers and UX designers. And so he’s attending that. They come here, Austin’s very widespread. There’s not a centralized base here. So everyone, while there is a vibrant community, it’s very spread out and it’s hard to tap into those things. And that’s one of the things the Military Family Center is striving to provide is that hub, that central spot. But she also spoke of, she first experienced it here, but there are other installations around that are more distributed so that centralized nature doesn’t exist. So that really spoke to me when I heard it, so I wanted to share that just in case it’s stoked any thoughts for y’all.

Erik:

All right, thanks.

Dirk:

Yes. So we’ll give you one more minute solo just after absorbing all of that and then we’ll go to the next section of that. So just one more minute to maybe finalize some of your thoughts, some of the things you noticed.

So we would like to move to the next part, which is pairs. So at your table, we’ll make it easy to start with, just look at your neighbor and together share the stickies, the things that stood out for you. And you start to create, if you see connections between some of the things you do, you start to create a very small map in between the two of you on the table. So that’s why we also asked to try to clean the table. So if there’s still a lot on the table, just try to move that a little bit. We’re using the resources that we have and if you see connections, if you see connections, you can also use a sticky in between the two points to draw an arrow. So we’re going to be creative here. So if you see a connection between two things, use a sticky to make the connection. So you get 15 minutes together to create one map with the two of you.

Erik:

Okay, move yourself to a pausing point. And then please direct your attention back up here. If you’re right in the middle of a sentence or in the middle of a question that you’re still wrestling with, that’s a great sign. That’s the kind of conversation we are hoping that you’re having. And if you’re coming in to have figured this all out in the next 90 minutes, you’re going to be disappointed. But hopefully you have some new understandings and some better questions and we have a better sense of those truths out there that we can operate with.

So in a moment, we’re going to shift to creating a group of four. So pair will join a pair right next to you and you’re going to then be integrating both the maps that you’ve created. And it’s going to feel a little messy. That’s the work. All right? Now if, and hold on one moment before … I know as soon as I said four, it’s, “All right, let’s get going. Let’s get a jumpstart. We can get the answer key down. This is going to be great.”

So as you move into your fours, you’re obviously going to have to integrate pieces. There’s probably going to be some duplication. So it’s like, “Yep, we’ve got this piece here.” You can bring those together. This is similar. Do we want to bring those together or keep those separate? Also too, this is the point, and I see some great examples here. We even have people tearing stickies to create arrows. It’s fantastic. No, it’s fantastic. So if you haven’t already started to think about the nature of those relationships, start to draw those arrows, which ones are particularly connected? Which one do you see may be acting on another? Are there potential loops here? And again, it’s not about perfectly identifying them, it’s starting to surface the nature of those relationships.

I’m going to share one thing that I always find really helpful when especially first engaging in this process here. So have a great colleague of ours in this space who has spent years doing systems work and systems maps. And so oftentimes, and we’ve asked what’s the step and are we doing this right? And she always returns us to, Darcy Winslow is her name, co-founder of the Academy for Systems Change, and oftentimes returns us to this quote from Alice in Wonderland in terms of the instructions for this. So as you’re doing this, begin at the beginning, and go until you come to the end, and then stop. That’s how to do it. So give yourself that grace. All right?

Now move to your group of four. We’re going to take the next 10 minutes in your group of four to start integrating those maps and thinking about the nature of those relationships.

Okay. Our final or almost final turn here. And again, the point is not to have these things absolutely complete, but as I’m listening across groups, it’s fantastic to see the nature of the conversation or witness the nature of the conversation. Each of you posing questions of one another. Well, here’s how I see this. How do you see this relating to this piece over here? Or is this really like this or should it be over here? Again, co-constructing a truth and an initial map that then we can gather around and further merge together.

Lilly, did you have-

Lilly:

I have a question.

Erik:

Yeah.

Lilly:

So really quickly, our group, I felt like at times as we were trying to create our map, we were also thinking of solutions. And I was curious, should solutioning come into this first pass of mapping?

Erik:

We’re not solving. We’re trying to understand. Okay? So it’s not that those solutions may not bubble up, but set them to the side for now because we’re not even necessarily clear on what the nature of the map is and the potential problem and opportunity space. So again, as is a hallmark of design thinking and in a lot of the systems work, let’s make sure we’re solving the right problem before solving a problem. Because that can then … If we were talking earlier about again, those solutions or fixes that fail, you could end up doing something that then ultimately makes your problem worse. And we’ve seen that in a lot of complex systems-based challenges out there.

Jimmy also asked in the back there about should we be mapping just the things that aren’t working or the things that aren’t working and the things that are working. Both. And in fact, I was mentioning back there, systems are working in the way that they were oftentimes designed. They’re working. They just may not be working to do the things that we want them to do. And so that’s where having the full picture, like these things are working, they’re working the way that we want, but that leads to these things over here not working. So let’s get the full picture.

Our final turn. I’m going to throw down the gauntlet here. It’s 10 minutes. Now, you’re going to have a facilitator at your table. And here’s how we’re going to side that. So whomever at your table has a birthday closest to today is going to be the facilitator for this final turn. Now, before you go to figure that out, here’s what I suggest. All right? Quickly have each group of four share briefly the story that’s there, and then you can be starting to combine things. We have that, let’s get that in the center. And again, clear the table. I see so many drinks out here. I don’t know, you’re going to have things spilled. All right? So make sure you have space in the next 10 minutes. Facilitators, help your group come up with a collective table map. Go.

Okay, move yourself to that pausing point and I’ll ask you to direct your attention back up to the stage here. Have a chance to hear from groups. I know it’s at the end of the day, and it’s so great to see people standing up around table … You’re leaning in, right? No, this should go, no, I think this is actually the nature of this. And this is for some of you a challenge that hits close to home. I know we have some military spouses in the room, people from military families. But also some of you, this is a problem that’s not even that closely necessarily connected to you and you’re leaning in, you’re building a sense of truth and surfacing something that people can work around, that starting point.

Key thing that we didn’t mention earlier, this process helps to surface what in systems mapping is called mental models. It’s kind of an internal ways that we view and order the world that until we oftentimes can externalize them in a way like this with our colleagues, it’s a filter that we’re not aware of, our colleagues aren’t aware of. And so this gives us an opportunity to surface, “Well, here’s how I’m seeing this. Okay, I’m seeing it this way. Let’s bring that together so that we can collectively act.”

So I’d love to hear from a group or two, hopefully from everybody. And facilitators, you’re particularly on the spot here. Would love to hear, I know you just did so much work on this. What did you notice as you facilitated this process? So there’s a couple of different ways into this prompt. Either you could talk about the process itself, here’s what it was like to facilitate that integration of ideas, and here’s what I noticed. And or wow, this new breakthrough surface, we didn’t realize this one piece and here’s what we’re thinking could be really important for us to think about tomorrow as we start moving to solutioning. So a couple of different either process or content or breakthrough.

Speaker 9:

I’ll be happy to go first. This is an awesome table because it’s humbling to facilitate masterful facilitators because you all facilitate yourselves. And as somebody that’s trying to step back and allow the dance to happen, what was really interesting is just understanding for ourselves what really is the place to start. Where’s the beginning? And I think we have this really interesting dichotomy or juxtaposition from what really is the beginning of this system between awareness, advertising, lack of budget. Is that the place to start? Or is it really the underemployment as the place to start? So it was very fascinating to see the differences and a little bit of the dance, but also some arm wrestling of where is it really going to go. And I think even though we didn’t fully combine what we wanted to do, I think just stepping back, observing and helping to facilitate that, I think we got a better awareness of, ah, I hadn’t thought of that perspective or hadn’t thought of it this way. Or ooh, there’s some commonalities, how do we bring this back together?

Speaker 10:

With the data we had, I found that there’s just more questions or hypothesis to prove out. We started creating assumptions. It was like, “Is that real or is that just what we think?”

Erik:

Yeah, which is a great outcome of an exercise like this. And obviously, people spend multiple months on these and in these kinds of conversations. Ultimately get to, Dirk’s map as a starting point, if he were to share other iterations, I mean multiple months there, but then that’s a powerful way for a group to move forward. And it does. That’s a really powerful outcome there. Wow, we don’t know about that. We need to know more. Okay, let’s go out and talk with some more folks that, again, surfaces that gap in a way that until that was out there wouldn’t have been apparent.

Dirk:

Absolutely. It starts the inquiry. It gives direction on where to inquire further and not just, again, to those mental models think that now you’ve mapped the truth because it hasn’t. So if you identify additional questions, that’s amazing. And to the point of where does it start? One of the core things of a system map is it doesn’t really matter where it starts. It actually doesn’t matter. When it’s mapped and you see the correlation, wherever, it’s all interconnected anyway. So just as an extra add-on.

Speaker 11:

Something that really surprised me was I started to get really wedded to the model that I was working on. And then when we had to join most recently, the whole table, I was like, “No, don’t cave, Phil. That’s the right one.” And I was like, I thought I was kind of an evolved human being, but it kind of surprised me and it took me back to the quote that you had about it’s more important to find the truth than to be right. And I’m still struggling with that right now because it really blew me away that I experienced this. I am just curious if other people had that too.

Erik:

It is bringing us full circle. Thank you for sharing. It’s bringing us full circle to our work with Leah this morning in a lot of ways as to what truths, how tightly we hold onto them, what does that mean about the different systems within us. Right? Other teams, would love … Yeah, Leah.

Leah:

Well, just on that point, it was a growing of the system in the group. So it started out with two, and then going back to what Ann said, you had maybe your attachment of the pair, and then the four, and then to the whole table. And yeah, it’s an interesting exercise of looking at the system and then being a part of a system trying to solve or trying to notice the differences and the differences of perspectives and not holding on too tightly.

Erik:

Which whether we have or recognize it or not, we’re kind of doing that every day in our companies and our organizations. We just are doing it with oftentimes a pretty blunt tools and hurting a lot of people in the process. So this just surfaces it in a way that can be more constructive. Others?

Speaker 9:

I was going to add on that. When we were merging the four of us, we said, “Well, we still have a gap.” But it was when we brought the eight together, we were like, “Ah, you filled the gap.”

Erik:

Cool, cool. There was here from a-

Speaker 12:

Okay, so I had the challenge to facilitate our table. Good reframe.

Erik:

So we had the cool table. That was the challenging table. We got the-

Speaker 12:

So what I noticed is that we, in terms of the elements in the system, we were almost identical, the two different groups. So I thought, okay, that’s a good starting place. Then though the relationship that the two groups of four had identified were … Well, we didn’t have a lot of time to actually process how similar or dissimilar the relationships were, but they definitely weren’t as similar as the elements were. And then to Ann’s point about wanting to be right or wanting to find the truth, I think our group was a little quick to gloss over the differences and just say, “Oh, it’s pretty much the same.” Which I think wasn’t like a deep commitment to finding the truth of the system.

Erik:

Was that a little shade there? That sounded like a little shade.

Speaker 12:

I wrote that as a facilitator because that was what I was hearing them say. I’m not necessarily endorsing that though.

Speaker 13:

Or we said because they’re so similar, just pick one because they’re both right. So we’ll just pick which one we were going to present as our map.

Erik:

Which I think is another good reminder here of not losing sight of the verb for the noun. Because in that example, you choose one, you’re going to follow that verb through, and if you’re truly seeking at the end of the day, the truth you’ll bring back in those other pieces. So again, don’t confuse the verb for the noun there. Yeah?

Speaker 14:

Yeah, I will probably just echo some of the comments you’ve heard. I’ve heard some labels for tables, and I do have a label over here as well. We have a lot of enthusiasm, and the great thing about being with a lot of design thinkers is the willingness to share ideas. So I’m going to call us the fun table.

Erik:

Perfect.

Speaker 14:

You want to come over here for some fun in building some systems. And really I think what we had in really seeing the connections evolve, and I think I kind of heard that throughout. But it’s really seeing the different connections between the different pieces and hearing the different perspectives and seeing how connections that you may have missed or didn’t know were there suddenly come up. So the system ended up changing and combining in a way that we think overall improved and gave a good overview of what we were looking at.

Erik:

Cool. I’m looking at our time here, and we’re just a minute over, just a minute or two over. So a couple of things.

This isn’t the end, obviously, in 90 minutes to have completely figured it out. I always tell folks in my sessions this is a launch. If you come thinking that this is the end, you’re going to be disappointed. So let’s get real about what we’re able to do if we’re actually going to tackle things in the ways that we need to. Hopefully you’re starting to see some ways to build some truth into the complex systems that you are a part of each day, and that you can take a lot of what emerged in this space into further building to the truths and solutions into our work for tomorrow. So thank you for your willingness to dive in and to seek that truth with each other, to develop this very scarce but important resource. Thank you.

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