A conversation with Erin Warner, founder of Head + Heart Coaching and Facilitation

“I showed up just wanting to observe, but a deep prompt and a one-on-one conversation led to a beautiful, unexpected connection.” – Erin Warner

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Erin Warner, founder of Head + Heart Coaching and Facilitation. Erin shares her journey from traditional leadership training to interactive facilitation, emphasizing the power of peer learning, rituals, and the “flow channel” for team engagement. She discusses authentic facilitation, embodied practices, and her holistic “3D wellness” approach. Erin also explores how words and self-talk shape reality, encouraging leaders to foster connection, courage, and creativity. The episode highlights facilitation as a transformative tool for personal and collective growth in organizations and beyond.

Show Highlights

[00:03:01] Learning from Each Other
[00:07:09] Redesigning Experiences, Not Just Agenda
[00:12:06] The Importance of Ritual and Structur
[00:15:02] Studying Civil Rights and Facilitation
[00:20:14] Empowering Participants Through Facilitation
[00:26:04] Advice to “Don’t Conform” and Authenticity
[00:31:06] 3D Wellness: Physical, Emotional, Social

Erin on LinkedIn

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About the Guest

Erin Warner is an executive coach and facilitator who helps leaders and teams connect more courageously, communicate more clearly, and collaborate more creatively. As founder of Head + Heart Coaching and Facilitation and partner at EXEC Consulting, she brings over ten years of experience guiding organizations and individuals to build trust, emotional intelligence, and authentic leadership. Erin is a bridge builder, weaving together the precision of a lawyer, the presence of a coach, and the playfulness of a dance teacher into a deeply personal approach to growth, self-love, and empowerment.

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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 Erin Warner, founder of Head + Heart Coaching and Facilitation.
She’s on a mission to help leaders connect courageously, communicate clearly, and collaborate with creativity. She is also a partner at Exec Consulting, where she facilitates trainings on leadership, emotional intelligence, trust, and teamwork. Welcome to the show, Erin.

Erin Warner:
Thanks, Douglas. It’s great to be here.

Douglas Ferguson:
Oh, it’s so great to have you. Well, let’s get started here with some early on experiences that you’ve went through. And I know that early on at Exec Consulting, you and Mauricio were delivering tried and true content for leadership trainings that folks might be very familiar with, and you began to notice some subtle surges of energy during partner shares and reflection. What were the specific patterns in those rooms that told you facilitation was calling you toward a different way of working?

Erin Warner:
Yeah, exactly. We were doing a series of workshops that were very well received, people really liked them, and I had the privilege to see them over and over again because of that. And I noticed that the little bit of interaction that we had built into it were moments of particularly high energy in the room, and actually delight and pleasure of the participants, and learning from each other in that moment instead of just simply learning from us.
So, I got curious about that, and I started to bring in little bits of other interactive moments and saw that that held true. People loved it. They got a lot out of it. And so I just got curious about, “How can I find ways to up-level our workshops with intentionality by leveraging this pattern that I’ve observed?” And I had a feeling that there was a whole world out there that I didn’t really know about, and I set out to find it. And that’s how I found Facilitation.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. That’s really interesting. I’d love to hear more about this learning from each other. How was that first showing up for you?

Erin Warner:
Yeah. So, the most basic form of interaction that we had in our original format was when we asked people first to take solo time to reflect on their aha moments and takeaways from what we had taught them. So that was the first step, solo reflection time. And then we had them pair up and just simply share their aha moments and takeaways with each other.
But that’s what I mean by then they were learning from each other in that moment, because it’s either reinforcing something that they also thought was interesting, or maybe bringing something back up that had kind of slipped through and not registered with them and they’re like, “Oh yeah, that was interesting.” And so, maybe they would bring in their own work context and explain why it was interesting or relevant to them.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. It’s always fascinating too when folks are able to connect to something a little bit deeper inside themselves, ’cause then they’re relating to the material in ways that are difficult when you’re just passively just soaking information in.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. And so relating to material, I’m really excited about the first intuition I had to bring that into our training. There’s something we teach called The Flow Channel, which many people might have heard of. It’s that flow is when you’re so engaged in an activity that you lose track of time, you forget about your surroundings, and you’re just like fully present with the activity or the challenge.
And so we teach about that. And we also teach that managers have the power to like bring people into flow by balancing challenge and support with intention, because if you have too much challenge, you get into anxiety, and if you have too little challenge, you get into boredom. And we used to just simply teach that to them, but then we brought them an activity, as I was exploring this world of like, “How do we make it more interactive, and they get to actually wrestle with the information instead of passively receiving it?”
So we had them draw just an X and Y axis, a little graph, and then a diagonal line from the lower left to the upper right, and then that represented the flow channel. And then literally like plot themselves and their colleagues as little dots on the graph, either above the flow channel in anxiety or below the flow channel in boredom, and just start to have real awareness of what this means in their real life. Not just as an abstract concept, but, “Oh wow, look, my colleague is in anxiety, and how can we bring them back into flow?” And so that became really a favorite of our participants.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. They can connect to it in a more meaningful way. It becomes an assessment versus just a piece of information.

Erin Warner:
Exactly. Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, I’ve seen that used too for leaders to think about managing and mentoring their team, because the idea of helping ensure that you’re assigning tasks and work when you’re delegating, you’re doing that in a way that is keeping them in that flow state.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. It’s a little bit counterintuitive. We come across some managers who are afraid to give people too much challenge, but humans actually… The flow channel actually isn’t where challenge and skill are perfectly matched. It’s actually where challenge exceeds skill just by a little bit, just enough to make it fun and to make you feel like you accomplished something when you did it.
And you can look at video game design. Once you complete a level, what’s your reward? It’s a harder level. It’s not an easier one. Nobody would play that game. We actually crave challenge as long as it doesn’t put us into that stress and anxiety zone. And so it’s really liberating for managers to learn that and know, “Oh wow, actually I can challenge my people and that’s going to bring out the best in them.”

Douglas Ferguson:
And it’s such a fun reframe too, because oftentimes I think managers are looking at the symptoms, and this is a great way of stepping back and looking at, “What’s really at play here? Are they really disengaged or is it that I haven’t given them enough a challenge? Or have I over challenged them?”

Erin Warner:
Yeah. And I’d advise them to be curious about the whole person. Maybe they’re challenged, but it’s not things that work, but maybe things are going on in their life, maybe they have a sick relative, and just being curious about what challenges though are factoring into how they’re showing up and how we can support that.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah, absolutely. In your alumni story, you described the Piedmont sessions as a mirror for your practice, where you could literally see when the room leaned in or leaned back. And I’m curious, can you take us to a moment where you realized you needed to redesign the experience, not just the agenda?

Erin Warner:
I would say that we like to over-deliver. We really want to give so much information and content, but I think we know as facilitators and learners ourselves that there’s a certain point where it’s too much, the brain can’t take in anymore in a day.
And so, seeing that fatigue set in when we, out of goodwill, were just giving so much, but mid-afternoon people are just not receiving it anymore, then we can still provide value without providing more info and content, but actually providing space for them to integrate and reflect and connect with the content that we’ve already provided. So it’s not about quantity at that point, but it’s about quality.

Douglas Ferguson:
When you’re working with clients like that, and diving in the content and helping them find tools, integrate, go deeper on stuff, how often are you coming back and coaching later on? I’m always curious about the relationships that folks have with their clients when they’re working in a facilitative manner.
Some folks tend to spend more time coaching and there’s a little bit of group work that feels more facilitated. And then there are others who do nothing but the group work and they don’t do any coaching. I’m kind of curious where your blend is there.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. I don’t know how to quantify the blend. It’s a mix and it depends on the context. We do now, in the version of the workshops that we have evolved into, hold a lot of space for group coaching in the moment.
So the things that emerge, and if we see a consensus in the room like, “Yeah, I have that problem too,” then we pause, we don’t give any more content. We just have a group coaching moment, 10 minutes maybe right there, ’cause that’s what’s alive for them, that’s what they’re asking for.

Douglas Ferguson:
And what about after the session? Does it typically transition into some one-on-one coaching work after the session or are some of these sessions just purely a group education and you’re done with that team?

Erin Warner:
Yeah. I’d say that the majority of them don’t engage with us for further coaching and that that’s just the experience that they get in the room. Of course, sometimes that does happen. We go deeper, we get brought in house.
And I will say when we do, not in this Piedmont series that we’re talking about, but when we are already in house and we’re doing a workshop training for our company, very often we have what we call a follow-up program, where we follow them for like two months after the fact to give them accountability, support and coaching around applying whatever it was that they learned that day.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. I found that accountability can really help ensure the stickiness of what’s been learned in the more dynamic group session.

Erin Warner:
Absolutely. It’s very challenging to then go back to the demands and the pace of your normal workday and then try to apply new behaviors and shift things. We tend to go back to our default, and that’s human. And so, we do try to support people by giving them the structure and accountability, and the feedback and the coaching and all that.

Douglas Ferguson:
And I recall you also talked a lot about early formative experience that shaped your instincts as a facilitator before you even knew the word facilitation?

Erin Warner:
Yeah. So looking back, I really felt well when I was in a container of an excellent facilitator. Looking back, I can name it. At the time, I had no idea. A big example for me is Girl Scout camp. I absolutely adored Girl Scout camp. And I was kind of a shy introverted girl, and going to a camp, actually, it wasn’t with people I knew like these are all new girls, and they’re all strangers at the beginning and dear friends at the end. And how was that possible for me to have a positive experience is because of the counselors and the leaders who really facilitated a strong sense of belonging and connection.
And the way they did that was things that we might see in pop culture about camps, but there were things like songs that each little group had their own songs, so you had a feeling of belonging and identity, or simple things about like how we gathered for our meals, or even how we lined up and walked from like our tents to the dining hall. Or we would raise and lower the flag every morning and evening, and these rituals marking the deeds throughout the day. And it was really excellently facilitated, and I think it allowed me to thrive and feel welcome and safe and included. And I think that’s one of the things I love about facilitation.

Douglas Ferguson:
Rituals can be so soothing, this idea that we know what to do. We don’t have to have anxiety around what’s next or, “Am I fitting in right?” Or, “Am I doing the right thing?” Or, “Do I look funny?” It’s like, “No, I have a purpose to be here.” And so I think they can provide nice structures to kind of lean on.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. I really relate to that. I feel structure for me does make me feel safe and guided, and then you can flow within that. Then you can explore and be free, but you’re held in that structure, and I think that’s a really good feeling.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. It’s different just going to the gym and picking up some weights and throwing them around, versus having a program or even having a coach, or even being part of a class. It’s just a totally different feeling and experience, right?
You might be way more self-conscious just walking in a gym and heading over to the free weights and doing whatever, unless you’ve got a lot of experience. But if you go to a class and the instructor’s giving you some really specific instructions and moves and exercises, it feels way different. Right?

Erin Warner:
Yeah. Yeah. And that makes me think about my life. I moved a lot as a child to different schools and different states, and luckily I played sports, and that’s how I was able to make friends quickly, because I knew how we were going to interact. We’re going to get on the field, we’re going to hit the ball around.
Meanwhile, we’re chatting, we’re getting to know each other, we’re joking, we’re becoming friends, but that structure, I think, made it really easier and more accessible for me to connect with people quickly when I was the new person in a new place, in a new school.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. And when we’re invited to be parts of different new teams or new programs, or invited to work in new ways… And this comes up all the time because innovation is constantly shifting just the status quo, or what normal is, right?
We didn’t have all these AI tools five years ago, and yet, now they’re commonplace. So it’s changed the landscape on how we work. And having rituals surrounding that and underneath it helps us come together in a way that’s more knowable and more calming.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. And that makes me think of one team that I’m working with, they’re growing, so they’ve brought a lot of people on board in the past year. And the onboarding moment is so crucial, and there’s so much opportunity there to really let them know the culture and give them some structure of like, “This is how we do things.” Now you can flow within that, be yourself.”
But it gives them something to work with that I think is healthy for the collective and also for that individual. And it’s just such an important moment, that with the client that I work with, we’ve been iterating on to really capitalize on that moment.

Douglas Ferguson:
And how did studying civil rights at Reed’s College impact this? Were there formative moments there as well?

Erin Warner:
I studied civil rights because fairness is a value of mine, and anything that has to do with the racial inequality or discrimination on a very basic level, just has always struck me as unfair. Nonsensical really, but I’ll call it unfair because that’s how it registers in my value system.
For instance, in 2020, I found Voltage Control because I was looking for ways to develop my facilitation skills for my work. And at that time, there was a lot of racial upheaval in the US, and one of the first activities that I participated in was a remote gathering where a facilitator gave us space and processes to reflect on and share how we were feeling about what was going on in the country.
And this really meant a lot to me, because again, it was very helpful to have some structure around that, because otherwise, because I really care about these things and emotions were high, I could range from feeling overwhelmed and highly activated to just shut down and disconnected. And with a really skilled facilitator who gathered us that day online, it helped me have some clarity and moving the feelings through, and sharing them with other people and feeling not alone.
And I just had looked for facilitation ’cause I wanted to make my work, my corporate work stronger. I didn’t know it could also offer these things that were so related to my deeply held values. And discovering that was really amazing because then I was even more excited about facilitation. I feel like it truly can be something for civic engagement.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. I remember you telling me that you had planned to work quietly at that first Facilitation lab. And so bring me back to Erin showing up, assuming that you’re going to just kind of lurk and be quiet and soak it in. How did that unfold for you? How did you get sucked in?

Erin Warner:
Yeah. So, I just showed up with curiosity wanting to observe, which was pretty common in those days. I was on a lot of calls we were passively observing, and the facilitator gave us a really deep prompt, which was, “When was the last time that you cried?” And then he put us into breakout rooms of two people. So there I was one-on-one with somebody. I had my camera off.
And of course, I’m always at choice. No one had a gun to my head. No one forced me to do it, but I did decide like, “Hey, I’m here with this person, I’ve been given this really human question, and I’m going to turn on my camera.” And we proceeded to have a conversation that I do remember to this day, because he vulnerably shared crying recently, more out of joy ’cause he had just finished a big milestone in his life, and that was beautiful.
And I was actually in a moment of my life that was not easy. I was feeling really down in that period. And so, just being able to share not a specific cry, but crying or feeling like crying was a feeling I was living with. And just being able to be witnessed in that. He didn’t try to fix it or anything, but it was a beautiful moment, and so unexpected that that kind of connection could happen across space and time and screens.

Douglas Ferguson:
How did that unexpected intimacy shift your sense of what a gathering can do?

Erin Warner:
It really raised my ambitions, to be honest, in a good way. It showed me that the limits were my imagination and my courage to make bold invitations. That was a bold invitation, to ask us to reflect and share when was the last time we cried, and it has to be handled delicately.
And I’m glad that I’ve invested in this skill and that you train people in this skill, but with the right care and craft, so much is possible, so much depth and healing and connection, and delight and wonder. And so yeah, the lesson I took from that is that really anything is possible with the intention and courage to pursue it.

Douglas Ferguson:
And as you got deeper in the facilitation, so it’s 2020, you’re attending these sessions, you’re kind of going deeper, you’re experimenting more, what would you say was the first idea that you tested with your participants, and what changed for them as you started to make some of these experiments?

Erin Warner:
I think as I started to make experiments with facilitation, what changed from my participants was their own sense of empowerment, because with great facilitation, you really are empowering the people in the room to generate their own experience, their own collective wisdom, their own decisions.
And I think that is refreshing for them and energizing and motivating. And so, I’d say that’s probably one of the biggest gifts that I’ve been able to offer now that I lean more on facilitation, is the empowerment of the participants.

Douglas Ferguson:
Do you recall a specific story? Does anything come to mind when you noticed this empowerment, and what was the facilitation move that really unlocked that?

Erin Warner:
I was working with a group that was not connecting as a team. And we were literally trying to do team building, and help them feel and function as a team instead of a group of solo practitioners, individuals. And I think it was really important that we facilitated them through what that meant to them and what that would look like, what would make them feel like part of a team.
So we used some of my favorite activities, we used TRIZ, which I think goes by some other names sometimes, like inverse thinking or opposite thinking. But TRIZ is basically where you say, “If you wanted to have the most dysfunctional team ever, where no one trusts each other and everyone’s at cross purposes, what activities would you do?”
And we have them brainstorm and share, and then we kind of turn the tables on them and say, “Okay, which one of these activities are you currently doing?” And to create safety, I let them keep that anonymous. I didn’t ask them to share it with everyone. They weren’t outing themselves, but just like, “Be honest with yourself. Which one of these are you doing?”
And then giving them not a to do list, but a not to do list. So like, “I’m not going to give you any extra work, but I’m going to ask you to just stop doing one of those things that you identified that’s counter to building a team.”
And so, I think that was a moment where they felt like, “Hey, we are responsible for creating our own reality of whether we function as a team or not, and here’s some insight and awareness around that. And now, here’s an action that I can take.” But I didn’t tell them what to do. They told themselves what to do.

Douglas Ferguson:
TRIZ is fantastic, and I think the biggest challenge with TRIZ is getting folks to follow that rule of not identifying new things to do, but identifying things to stop. Everyone always wants to say, “Oh, they’ll turn the stopping thing to a doing thing.”
And if we can really hold people to that notion or that rule, that ritual of identifying the thing we’re going to stop doing, that’s really powerful because it creates room for other things we’ve been wanting to do.

Erin Warner:
Yeah, it is really powerful. And that’s one where I have the privilege to work with some of the people in that group individually. And so be able to follow up with them after, like, “How is it going? Are you able to…”
Sometimes these things are habits, you’re not even conscious you’re doing them, so stopping isn’t always easy. So checking in, “Are you able to break that habit, shift that, make a different choice in that moment?”

Douglas Ferguson:
I’ve even seen participants, they get really clever, they use double negatives. So it sounds like, “We need to stop not having annual report.” It’s like, “Hey, you’re just saying we need to start making an annual report. What are we doing that’s getting in our way? Let’s identify those things and stop them.”

Erin Warner:
Yeah, exactly. Like, “I’m on to you.”

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. They have little tricks, of course.

Erin Warner:
They do. They do, because it’s hard, and I get that. It’s hard to look in the mirror, take responsibility, and accept that there’s things that we’re doing that are productive and there’s other things that are counterproductive, and let’s let those go, but it’s not easy.
There’s a reason. I also tried to share with them in this particular case, empathy and understanding, “I know there’s a reason you’re doing these things. You’re not doing them to sabotage the team. They’re serving some function.”

Douglas Ferguson:
Or they served a function in the past.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. But if they’re still serving a function, “Okay, it’s going to be hard to stop doing it until we get to the root cause, and then address that in a different way or resolve it so that you don’t feel the need to do that anymore.”

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. Sometimes people feel the need to do the things because of, coming back to that word we were talking about earlier, ritual. If it’s become customary or ritualistic, then I think these activities can be powerful to connect back to the purpose and, “Why are we doing these things?”
And if we’re doing things that are counterproductive to what we’re wanting to accomplish, and we can’t really attach to any real meaningful why, and it’s just for historic purposes, then we should probably get rid of those things.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. In this particular case, what we identified, many of the counterproductive behaviors were stemming from trust or lack of trust. So either maybe micromanaging because I don’t trust that person’s going to follow through, or maybe double checking because I don’t trust that that person’s got my back. So, a lot of it came down to trust was producing counterproductive behaviors, that once that was addressed, which is no simple feat, it would help them function better as a team.

Douglas Ferguson:
I’m also remembering that you were given some coaching advice, “Don’t conform,” that was powerful and reflection, because you said it gave you permission to bring your full self to the work. And I’m curious, can you share a moment when you felt the pull to fit a mold and instead chose authenticity?

Erin Warner:
Yeah. Well, I want to share that that advice came from Eric when I was in the Voltage Control Certification, ’cause I had noticed a pattern in myself of once I train and learn the way things are done, then I feel pressure that I put on myself to conform. And then that drains me of the enthusiasm that I initially had, and my unique contribution that I might be able to make.
And I mentioned this pattern that I was trying to shift and resist, and Eric really gave me the greatest gift of saying to me, “Your unique perspective is an asset. It is your contribution and it will attract people to you who resonate with that, so don’t conform.” And it was really meaningful to me. He gave me that advice.
And one time that that came into play was actually when I had been invited to facilitate a session at the Voltage Control Summit, which was a really exciting opportunity for me and one of the bigger stages I had ever been on. And I felt a lot of enthusiasm at first. I was like, “This is great.” And then I started to feel resistance and procrastination.
And I’m glad that I was able to identify it was because I was starting to feel like it was a performance and I needed to show up the way I thought a capital F facilitator would show up and not as me. And then I remembered, “These people know me well, they know who I am, they know my vibe. And if they asked me to do this, it’s because they want me to do it, not me pretending to be someone else.”
But I was able to make that connection because of that amazing advice Eric had given me a couple of years prior, and it continues to be something I reinforce to myself regularly.

Douglas Ferguson:
I love that. It’s reassuring to tap into who we are and let that shine.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. I always tell myself, “I’ll be an infinitely better version of myself than I ever will be of anybody else. Just be my best self. Don’t be my best imitation of somebody else.”

Douglas Ferguson:
That reminds me, one thing that’s unique about you and your approach is how you’ve woven fitness into your work, and how that’s a hallmark of how you think about facilitation and how that shows up for you. So I’d be curious to know more about that. And I’m sure the listeners would be interesting to hear how you kind of weave that into your style.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. I really believe there’s a lot of wisdom in the body, and also a lot of energy and pleasure. And so, I think it’s great to bring those things online. That’s exactly what I brought to the summit. I led a session on embodied decision making. And I have a background as I used to be a lawyer. And I love decision making. I think it’s really powerful and one of the greatest outcomes we can bring in facilitation, if that’s what’s been requested. And so I wanted to bring those two things together, and what does our body tell us when we’re sensing into a decision?
And so, giving people opportunity to actually feel how they feel about a decision gives them information, like, “Do I feel comfortable with this? Do I feel torn?” That’s a metaphor for your body being split. So, one thing I particularly like is if you have a few options, to set up stations in the room where those options are being represented. And you can mingle and look around, walk through the room, walk through the space to evaluate them. And then when it’s time to vote, to literally go walk and stand in that space.
And in this experience, little by little, got narrowed down to two. And maybe your top choice is no longer available and there’s only two choices left, and you have to walk to one of the two options that’s left. There’s a lot of information for you and for the facilitator in your walking. “Am I walking with hesitation or with enthusiasm? Am I literally dragging my feet? Am I feeling like I don’t want to walk over there?”
And I think that’s the wisdom in the body versus just checking a box on a ballot, for example. So, I love to bring in the wisdom of even it could be standing up or sitting down to represent your point of view, or walking closer or further to a certain point to represent more like your temperature on that decision.

Douglas Ferguson:
Yeah. It’s kind of about tuning in, and it’s making me think about your 3D Wellness concept.

Erin Warner:
Yeah. So I do have a background also as a fitness teacher. And I was teaching on Zoom during the era when we were all online during the pandemic. And I had a big aha moment, when at the end of my classes that I would do every week on Zoom, people would stay and chat and laugh, and joke around and commiserate for a long time, like 30 minutes minimum. And then I might close the room at that point, but people were loving it.
And so, I realized that people were coming for the fitness, but they were staying for the connection. And I realized that what I was offering them was not only physical wellness, but also emotional wellness within themselves as an individual and social wellness within the collective. And so I named that 3D Wellness and that’s something that I try to offer in all of my experiences.

Douglas Ferguson:
So, as your clients begin to experience the impact of this work and you bring on more facilitation and the Exec’s offerings, how are you aligning with long-term clients who expect content for a delivery so they can embrace a more participatory, co-creative way of working?

Erin Warner:
Honestly, it’s not feeling like a very hard sell right now. I find that people are actually hungry for this. They’re hungry to participate and be asked to contribute. We do live in a time where there’s no shortage of information. And if we’re gathering in person and making that effort, it’s starting to be, I feel like, in the zeitgeist that people feel like, “It’s a waste of time to do something I could do on YouTube or research myself.”
And so, we’re building on the abundance of information that’s available. We will refresh it and we will bring some teaching always to anchor what we’re going to be focusing on, but our clients are really on board with getting to roll up their sleeves and play with it and apply it. And everyone wants results, so they want to know like, “What is this going to do for me? What’s the point?” And that’s what facilitation is. They get to immediately use it and see how it’s going to benefit their company, their culture, their customers, and just their day to day.

Douglas Ferguson:
We’ve talked a bit about how you are ready to and have stepped into moments of leadership for corporate rooms and intimate circles alike. And I’m curious what signals tell you a team is genuinely ready to do the self-awareness and shared responsibility work this approach requires?

Erin Warner:
So when we’re scoping and engagement and making the plans with the leader who’s bringing us in house, we really want to be of service in a practical way. And so we lead with that, “This is not just like a nice to know, ‘I read the book and now I’m done.'” We are very results oriented and I think leaders like to hear that, but they also want to know, “But how is that going to happen?”
And so then we can explain to them about facilitation, “That we will bring in some content that’s going to anchor our focus. Everyone knows that this is the topic today, and then we are going to actually…” I like to make the word responsible into a verb, like, “We’re going to responsiblize the people in the room for their own upleveling and their own professional development,” because they’re adults and they’re going to learn better too if they feel autonomous and empowered and responsible.
And so, I think that’s how we get leaders on board with the style of learning that we’re offering that’s interactive and participatory. And I think they want to hear that it’s not just going to be silly games and icebreakers, but it’s going to be actually really deep and potentially rigorous for an outcome that shows results, ’cause that’s the name of the game, I think, for the leaders.
And then in the room, we kind of give a recap of that and say, “Hey, we are going to talk about this topic today and then we’re going to put it back in your lap, in your hands to generate the connections and ahas and the takeaways, and the action items and how you’re going to apply it. We’re not here to tell you what to do. We’re here to help you discover what makes sense for you to choose, to commit to, and then to help you have accountability and support around doing that.”

Douglas Ferguson:
We haven’t talked about Head + Heart much, so I’m curious to learn more about the vision there and what experiments you’re excited to run in the next year to test that vision.

Erin Warner:
In my personal life, I’ve been on what I call a self-love journey, where I really learned a lot of things about myself and healed some things, and reframed some self-limiting and beliefs that I had. And it really changed my life, and I’m so grateful that I did that.
And so now, what’s really meaningful to me in this chapter is to make a new, more personal offering. It’s completely separate from the corporate work that I do, and it’s self-love and empowerment, experiences, gatherings and coaching.
And I’m a very word-oriented person, and so what I’m offering is actually thinking about words as literal magic spells that we use every day to create our reality. And so, harnessing the power of words to create a reality that is more empowering.
My background is in law, and law is a great example of words creating reality. You can go to jail or not based on following the things that are written down in a law book. They have the coercive power of the state behind them, but that gives them power, and it’s just words.
Words that we say to ourselves, self-talk definitely creates our reality. It creates our frame of mind, the decisions that we make, the way we respond to people. That’s a big focus of the work that I’m doing now.
And in facilitation, the words, the invitations that the facilitator offers is creating an immersive experience that is the reality for the people in that room in that moment.
So, I’m really excited to be exploring this in partnership with people who want to go on this journey with me. And it’s just a very personal offering that I am making in this chapter in my life.

Douglas Ferguson:
Wonderful. And as we come to a close, I want to invite you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Erin Warner:
So my final thought is that words are literal magic spells that create our reality, so use them wisely, especially the ones that you say to yourself. And words are the tools that empower us to connect courageously, communicate clearly and collaborate creatively.

Douglas Ferguson:
So great chatting with you, Erin. I look forward to the next time we’re able to sit down and talk, and thanks for coming on the show.

Erin Warner:
Yeah, I look forward to that as well, and it was a pleasure to chat with you, Douglas. Thank you.

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.
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