A conversation with Rubens Filho, Director of Spells & CEO of Abracademy

“The emotions that come out from magic, the spaces that magic allows you, they are quite global.” – Rubens Filho

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

Show Highlights

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

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About the Guest

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

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

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

About Voltage Control

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

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

Exactly, yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

Rubens Filho:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

There you go.

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

Yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

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

Rubens Filho:

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

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

Yes.

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Rubens Filho:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Lori Boozer:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Lori Boozer:

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Lori Boozer:

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

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

Douglas Ferguson:

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

Lori Boozer:

Thanks for having me. And to be continued.

Douglas Ferguson:

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