Introduction | Douglas Ferguson, President of Voltage Control
LIGHTNING TALKS
9:10 AM CST
Sana Akhand | Choosing Freedom
We live in a society with rules, expectations and pressure trying not to disappoint people or trying to impress people.
No amount of success will ever feel fulfilling if it's built on seeking external validation or approval.
A truly worthwhile life is one created by your own values and purpose.
It all starts with stripping away our attachment for approval from others, limiting beliefs from our upbringing and unlearning everything we thought we were to learning who we truly are.
Everyone's journey will be unique and different, but ultimately we all want the same thing.
A fulfilling, happy, purposeful life filled with peace, joy, connection and love.
And the only way to achieve it is by learning how to get out of war with our own minds.
9:30 AM CST
Renita Joyce Smith | Discovering & Embodying your Authenticity – Keys to Getting Out of Your Own Way
"Be Authentic" looks great on a vision board - and we put it there every year....but we look up and are still stuck in the same, disconnected version of ourselves.
Enough is enough.
This intention of this workshop is to provide you with supportive, real-life, ACTIONABLE tools to do the real work of discovering your authentic self. The authenticity journey can be daunting and it's not for the faint of heart - but with a roadmap you can actually get started and begin the process of unlocking who you truly are.
9:50 AM CST
Vincent Perez | Leveraging a Social Impact Model to Create Equitable Facilitation Experiences
Often access to facilitators or business consultants has been a premium service and often, BBIPOC and URM communities are unable to access these services due to budget constraints, prioritization of business needs, and more.
Kwerk is helping these communities by promoting facilitation and mentorship as a service through brand workshops, business development, product creation and beyond. Kwerks mission is to ensure these budding entrepreneurs and small business owners are able to focus on core problems and solve them on their own without the need to spend an exorbitant amount of money to grow and scale their businesses.
During this session, kwerk Co-Founders Jamae Lucas and Vincent Perez will speak about their experiences facilitating for these entrepreneurs, the value it brings to underrepresented communities and the importance of a social impact model in the facilitation world. Audience members will explore possible solutions to the statement starter, “How might we empower traditionally underrepresented startups and entrepreneurs to solve their core business challenges creatively?”
10:10 AM CST
Reflections with Shannon Varcoe and Mark Tippin
10:25 AM CST
Break & Networking
10:40 AM CST
Taylor Cone | How Might We Measure “Impact Potential”?
From the moment we set out to achieve the impact we seek, our "impact potential" – the likelihood that we will produce the change we're hoping for – evolves according to a variety of ingredients and conditions. Measuring these inputs – and even stating them in the first place – is not a ubiquitous practice. Yet doing so is absolutely crucial if we are to reach a sustainable level of impact. What if you could plot your impact potential over the course of your project, just like ESPN can plot the win chances for each team over the course of a game? And what if that knowledge enabled you to make the necessary changes in real-time – like the coaches of those teams do – and boost your impact potential when it matters most?
11:00 AM CST
Benjamin Herndon | A Human-Cognitive Perspective On AI Transformation
As organizations race to capitalize on the power of AI, they often overlook critical interdependencies with the various dimensions of human cognition. This talk explores these dimensions and the strategies organizations can use to align them.
11:20 AM CST
Yvonne Alston | The Ultimate Connection: Head, Heart and Soul
For facilitators, gone are the days of focusing on knowledge transfer alone. As our world evolves with greater complexity and uncertainty, those who hold space for uncomfortably, critical conversations, need to level up engagement tactics and outcomes. Audiences want less perfect eloquence and more transparency, honesty and deeper connection. They crave compelling storytelling to “feel” the meaning and purpose of our words and expertise. And that means allowing audiences into not just your head, but also your heart and soul to connect, resonate and impact them more deeply.
11:40 AM CST
Reflections with Shannon Varcoe and Mark Tippin
11:55 AM CST
Lunch & Networking
12:55 PM CST
Jimbo Clark | Take the BOX Breakthrough Challenge
People tell you think out of the box, but no one tells you what the BOX is.
We changed that by designing a physical box that represents the boundaries of your thinking.
In this fully immersive session you will get your very own BOX, map out your current thinking, and then literally break through the box with new ideas.
1:15 PM CST
Corrie LoGiudice | Unstuck Yourself : Your Foolproof Strategy to Activate Extraordinary Action
It’s common to become so overwhelmed in your life and work that you feel “stuck”. However, it’s actually a positive sign. It’s a queue that something in your current strategy needs to be adapted to your current reality.
In this session, Corrie shares with your audience the 5 “overwhelm culprits” that could be holding back their progress and what exactly to do about them. After, they’ll have a framework they can implement immediately the next time they feel overwhelmed so they can take continued action, no matter their circumstances.
1:35 PM CST
Matthew Reynolds | Biggest Fullest Brightest- Expanding instead of Climbing
I believe that we, as humans, can be so much more. More in the sense of inner potential coming forward and into the world. The magic that we cultivated when we were but small children, and more connected to this planet and all its wonders are not gone. I am hoping that today you have encountered tools you can adopt to help you create what is needed for you to be authentically you, and thus live your biggest, fullest, and brightest life.
1:55 PM CST
Reflections with Shannon Varcoe and Mark Tippin
2:10 PM CST
Break & Networking
2:25 PM CST
John Rabasa | Don’t Be Clever–an Insight from Improv that Goes Beyond “Yes, And…”
Beyond warm up games, deeper than "yes, and...", there is a core principle truth about improv from Keith Johnstone, founder of Theatersports and luminary in the improvisational theater community. The common understanding of Improv is that because it is off-script or off-score, it leads to "out of the box" thinking. However, the importance of improv is not on the output (you wouldn't generate a new script from an improvised sketch), but what happens in the room, and more importantly among the participants. Improv is about group dynamics. Presentation will be about 10 to 15 minutes to leave room for a selection of exercises to demonstrate the major points. Exercises will be done with those in the room, with remote participants as audience members. Time allowing, or following the presentation, zoom-prov versions of the exercises can be demonstrated.
2:45 PM CST
Amy Luckey | Access and inclusion in action
As facilitators we have the unique ability to lead our clients toward more inclusive organizational practices. From our workshop design process through the event and follow up, our approach and choices signal to participants whether and to what extent we value their full participation. In this highly interactive (and perhaps unexpectedly intimate!) experience, participants will co-learn with their colleagues in small groups.
3:05 PM CST
Eric Brown | The Green Beret Approach
Taking decades of Special Operations experience Imperio provides the Green Beret Approach a systematic repeatable process to address any opportunity or challenge.
3:25 PM CST
Reflections with Shannon Varcoe and Mark Tippin
3:40 PM CST
Break & Networking
3:55 PM CST
Robbin Arcega | Digging into Mentorship - How we can be better mentors and mentees
Mentorship. It sounds like a good thing, right? But how many of us really ask ourselves: WHY do we become mentors in the first place? What are we helping our mentees to do? Is there some kind of component of mentorship that just "happens", or is there a way for us to break down what we're actually able to provide for our mentees?
Join Robbin in her exploration of what mentorship is from the mentor perspective and learn about how she's currently thinking about it: mentor FACT -- facilitator, advisor, coach, or teacher.
4:15 PM CST
Zach Montroy | Leveraging Emotional Intelligence for Connection
At the heart of what we do as presenters and facilitators is connecting with our audience. If as a presenter, I can connect with the cognitive, affective and behavioral parts of the mind I know that the work covered in a facilitation isn’t going to be put in a binder on a shelf, never to be dusted off again. If I connect with all three parts of the mind, research shows there’s a much greater likelihood for change and implementation, our ultimate goal as presenters - we want the work to be put into action.
The missing link for most facilitators is leveraging emotional intelligence to connect with the hart of their audience members. A study published in The Leadership and Organization Development Journal showed that effective leaders, ones that were leading profitable companies, distinguished themselves by showing much higher levels of emotional intelligence in key areas like reality testing, problem-solving, empathy and decision making. In fact, EI simply on its own was able to predict the profitable from less profitable companies almost 90% of the time. In other words, emotionally intelligent leaders lead their companies to profitability with greater ease and with more success than their emotionally unintelligent counterparts.
EQ has twice the power of IQ to predict performance. EQ is also a better predictor than employee skill, knowledge, or expertise. In my workshop, I’ll use an interactive model to help facilitators understand how to employ EQ to better help their audiences put their material to work post facilitation.
4:35 PM CST
Reflections with Shannon Varcoe and Mark Tippin
Closing
4:50 PM CST
Closing | Douglas Ferguson, President of Voltage Control
Post-Event Virtual Schedule
February 9
4:00-4:45 PM CST
Andrew Otwell | Storytelling for Facilitators
February 14
2:00-2:45 pm CST
Amy Lee | Start with the end in mind: Psychological Safety From Start to Finish
February 15
10:00-10:45 Am CST
Florentine Versteeg | Facilitating Language Diversity & Inclusion
2:00-2:45 Pm CST
Marisa Davis | Practicing Feedback In A Safe Environment: The Power of a Purposeful Warm-up Game
February 16
4:00-4:45 pm CST
Andi Cuddington | The F* Word: Thinking of Failure as a Skill
