Facilitation Lab HQ: Fauxhawks & Slugabed: Is Your Language Keeping Up?

Featuring: Andi Cuddington and Rika Kebede

When was the last time you used words like, ‘collywobbles’ or ‘Walkman’ or ‘Google’? The world is changing and the language we use to communicate is constantly evolving as well.

Language is powerful. It focuses our attention on specific aspects of the world and has the ability to influence our perceptions but it also influences our thought processes and feelings. When we verbally describe things, experiences and the people around us, we are also assigning value to them and that value impacts how we interact with each other.

As facilitators, we have an opportunity to reflect on how our choice of words, metaphors or idioms can help create a more inclusive experience for our participants. In this hands-on session, we will explore words and phrases that we may use regularly and the unintended impacts they have. We believe that small actions like word choice are a profound way to demonstrate allyship to equity-deserving groups in your workshops.
___

Facilitation Lab Meetup is a virtual meetup focused on helping facilitators & leaders hone their facilitation craft to help improve the quality of team collaboration and innovation.

We present and share many different methodologies, including Liberating Structures, Game Storming, Thinking Wrong, MG Taylor, Improv, and much more.

At each meeting, we switch venues and rotate topics between highlighting practitioners sharing tips and tricks, open facilitation practice where you go hands-on with tools and deep-dive skill-building workshops.

Facilitation Lab is a community of Facilitators organized by Voltage Control. In addition to meetups, Facilitation Lab provides many resources and learning experiences for facilitators and people seeking facilitation skills. In addition to Facilitation Lab HQ hosted by Voltage Control, there are events around the globe hosted by Facilitation Lab global chapter leads. Current chapters include HQ, Austin, Seattle, and Oslo.

Date

November 9, 2023

Time

1pm - 3pm CT​

Location

Live Online

This event is happening again!

You should join us on October 17

Get Tickets

Interested in a private cohort for your team?

What to expect

What to Expect

We offer opportunities for facilitators to gather in a safe judgement-free zone to learn from experts and one another. Our community offers many levels of engagement and exclusive resources for facilitators, whether you are a beginner or a Master Facilitator. Our weekly Facilitation Lab makes up 5 key segments: impromptu networking, our guest facilitator session activity, community critique, a weekly giveaway, & After Hours. Come & network with facilitators from around the globe and expand your facilitator toolbelt from each Lab experience!

What You'll Learn

Ever left a session and remembered all the content of all the sticky notes? Nope, most of us don’t. Ever left a session and remembered a few key concepts the group had named? “Hmmm, should we try out ‘The Big Swing’ or ‘The Guaranteed Garden’?” Organizing, and then naming concepts is a key facilitator skill. We use it to kick-start sense-making, enable strategic decisions, and leverage playful engagement. In this workshop, you’ll tease apart the foundational elements: narratives and taxonomies in order to deepen your logic modeling craft. You’ll also practice naming the contents of a logic model and reflect on when in your work you apply this method.

How You'll Learn

The workshop will be activity-based with facilitation simulations and collaborative sessions. You’ll recognize, practice, and design your workshops based on key learning experience design principles. We won’t just talk at you — you’ll learn through doing, work with other participants, and get feedback. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, so you can learn in real-time from a master facilitator with tons of experience running hundreds of workshops at some of the world’s largest institutions and enterprises.

Agenda

Impromptu Networking

Engage with everyone in the community during a quick round of introductions to network and begin our time together

Guest Facilitator Session

Experience the lead facilitator's activity & method to engage together as a community.

Rose, Thorn, Bud Critique

Share your feedback as a community and offer expressions of tangible takeaways to our lead facilitator.

After Hours

Stay awhile & chat post-session about your experience in the Lab.

Who Should Attend

Team Managers & Leads

who want to learn more & benefit from the power of facilitation practice

UX Designers

who want to expand their facilitation skillset while gaining inspiration of new approaches

Experienced & New Facilitators

who want to level up their facilitation skills and enhance their facilitation tool belt

Teachers

who want to gain feedback & uncover new resources with forward-thinking activities

Key Takeaways

Discover what withholds are getting in the way of your life, career, and intimacy

Learn how to transform a Raw Withhold into a Skilled Withhold

Get a peek into the most advanced conscious communication skills training available

Practice a facilitation skill to have a room of crickets speak up

This event has ended

Interested in hearing when this workshop will occur next?

Chris Federer

Chris has helped design and facilitate Unconferences, Design Sprints, Team Alignment, Kickoffs, Business Strategy, and Collaboration Training for companies such as Dell, Alliant Insurance, Snap, and FAI just to name a few. His previous roles include Design Sprint Facilitator, Community Builder, UX Designer, Program Director, and Event Director.

Andi Cuddington

Andi Cuddington describes herself as a facilitator by day, kitchen dance party host by night, adventurer by heart. She is the Creative Strategy Lead at the Deloitte Greenhouse where she works at the intersection of innovation, creativity, and leadership. As a facilitator, Andi draws on her background in neuroscience, organizational change and systems thinking to design experiences that champion curiosity, promote dialogue across difference and generate momentum.

When not armed with sharpies and post-its, she runs a global community called the Design Thinking Zeal; guides ‘deep work’ productivity sessions with Caveday; and is the heiress to the best cheesecake recipe.

What you won’t learn from her traditional bio? A couple years ago, she completed an 18-month exploratory global “working sabbatical” and she still can’t stop talking about it!

Rika Kebede

Rika Kebede creates spaces where people can show up authentically while exploring their edges and expanding their mindset. She is currently an Apprentice Facilitator and Senior Experience Designer with the Deloitte Greenhouse where she helps companies generate creative solutions to their trickiest problems. But as the sun sets on the Atlantic ocean and the corporate hustle subsides, Rika gracefully transitions into her role as a yoga teacher. In both domains, her work embodies principles of adaptability, curiosity, and empathy as she believes that the best solutions (& practices!) emerge when minds are clear, hearts are open, and a touch of playfulness is in the mix. She is passionate about designing strategic conversations that carefully consider wellness as well as diversity, equity and inclusion.
What People Are Saying

"I always enjoy the opportunity to network with other facilitators in the Facilitation Lab. I've gained so much knowledge from other attendees' insights & experiences each and every week in our community."

Anonymous

Facilitation Lab Attendee

Apply for a Diversity Scholarship

A key part of our mission is to support diverse facilitators from different methodologies, backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, cultures, and ages. If you are a part of, or serve, a traditionally underrepresented group and feel that this scholarship would allow you to amplify this mission, please apply now.

Photo Disclaimer

Please note that photographs, video & audio recordings will be taken throughout this event. These will be used by Voltage Control for marketing and publicity in our publications, on our website and in social media, or in any third-party publication. Please contact us via email if you have any concerns or if you wish to be exempted from this activity.​

The Books

Bring Your Ideas to Life

Innovation can seem complex or reserved for the exceptional. But we believe innovation is for everyone. We’ve set out to illuminate a path for you to generate bold ideas, visualize and share them, overcome obstacles, and turn them into reality. Our books are equal parts guidebook and stories from years of experience helping companies adopt an innovation mindset and culture. They’re practical & actionable, so you can get started now. We hope they’ll help you on your journey to realizing your biggest, boldest ideas.