At the 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit, Shannon Hart brought five years of facilitating innovation sessions at Shell International—working with geoscientists, petrophysicists, and data engineers on complex energy sector challenges—and used that hard-won experience to offer a session that was as much expedition as workshop. Her talk, “Innovation: Stepping off the Edge and Leaving the Agenda Behind,” made the case that real innovation doesn’t happen because a facilitator planned the perfect session. It happens when a facilitator creates the right conditions and then trusts what emerges.

From Tour Guide to Expedition Leader

Shannon opened with a reframe that set the tone for everything that followed. Facilitating innovation, she argued, should feel less like a tour guide on a bus—structured, predictable, with carefully timed stops—and more like an Indiana Jones expedition. There’s a north star, there are skills and tools, but there’s no pre-drawn map. The goal is to search for hidden unknown treasures that you can’t fully define until you find them.

That framing carries real implications for how facilitators prepare. Shannon described the work before an innovation session as building a base camp—everything from asking the right questions to deeply understand the actual problem, to getting the right people in the room, to thinking carefully about who might derail versus who is ready to explore. She shared the cautionary tale of discovering, moments before a session began, that a C-suite executive had already signed a vendor contract for the solution the group was supposed to co-create. The room was intended to validate a decision, not make one. That kind of misalignment, she noted, is why base camp work is non-negotiable: you cannot hold space for genuine innovation if the outcomes have been pre-decided.

Physical environment matters too. Shannon pointed to small but meaningful gestures—colored markers, upgraded Post-it notes, pipe cleaners on tables to give fidgety hands something to work with—as signals that creativity is invited. These things are inexpensive, but they shift the atmosphere before a word has been said.

Three Circles and Unmapped Terrain

To give participants a visceral experience of what co-creation actually feels like, Shannon ran a deceptively simple exercise: each person drew three random circles on a piece of paper, then passed it to the neighbor on their right, who transformed those circles into something new. Tables then found the connections between what had emerged.

The debriefs were rich. Participants named what the exercise quietly demonstrated: that ideas are malleable, that diversity of interpretation is a feature not a bug, that the brain is wired to find patterns and meaning even from fragments, and that unfinished ideas can be more generative than fully formed ones—because they leave room for someone else to bring them somewhere new. One participant captured it simply: “Anything can happen here.” That, Shannon noted, is exactly the energy needed before a group attempts anything genuinely creative.

From there, Shannon sent participants out into unmapped terrain—literally. The walk and talk exercise paired participants with someone they hadn’t met, sent them wherever their legs would take them for 15 minutes, and asked them to share a moment when they were leading a session and the outcome got disrupted. The insights that came back were grounded and honest: the value of side-by-side conversation over face-to-face, the way movement loosens thinking, the reminder that when a group loses track of the facilitator because they’re so deep in conversation, that’s not a failure of control—it’s a sign of genuine ownership.

Protecting the Space Where Magic Happens

Shannon closed the session with the concept that tied everything together: emergence. In innovation, she explained, emergence is when something new arises that was not present or possible before. And the biggest threat to it is the rush to convergence—the desperate drive to wrap up, reach consensus, and declare the problem solved before the real insight has had time to surface.

One participant, Robin, offered what Shannon called the clearest signal that emergence is genuinely happening: “When you’re no longer sure whose idea it was in the first place.” Other signs the room surfaced included people losing their attachment to a fixed destination, questions becoming more interesting than answers, and a room full of laughter and play. Warning signs pointing the other way: forced consensus, burnout, low morale, and the loudest voices crowding out everyone else.

That last point was one Shannon returned to with particular care. In her work with global technical teams, she had seen brilliant people—foreign nationals, non-native English speakers, those who think more slowly and deeply—consistently overlooked in Western-coded brainstorm cultures that reward whoever speaks fastest. Her reminder to the room: protecting the quiet sparks is a design challenge, not just a good intention. It means building in Post-it rounds, structured round-robins, and Miro spaces that don’t require someone to fight for airtime in order to contribute.

She closed with the simplest version of the whole session’s philosophy: “Rather than control, we create the conditions that enable that to happen.” Hold the container, trust the process, and allow for emergence. That’s the work—and she left the room with no doubt that they were ready for it.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Chris’s Session:

Shannon Hart (00:04):
Thank you for having me. It’s so exciting to be in this space. This is my first facilitation summit, but it will not be my last. I’m stepping up here and I just want to acknowledge two things. One is the layers of nuance and wisdom and brilliance that is already in the room from the previous speakers and how maybe you guys are just geniuses that you planned it this way, but how the topics intertwine and layer on each other and are building. And it’s just going to feed into the themes that I want to explore with you guys today. So that’s just brilliant synergy. And then second, to step into a space where, I mean, I was just standing back there and I don’t know, 10, 15 people, some of whom I don’t even know are acknowledging and supporting the success. They want this to go well and they want me to do well.

(01:00):
And that’s just a really cool space and energy and an important reminder for me when I’m in your seat like, “Oh yeah, I don’t need to sit there with no affect and be bored by somebody’s taking a risk and standing in front of me.” So that’s powerful stuff. So I’m excited. I just feel that energy. So thanks for that. Good. Good. Let’s see. When I think about innovation, I’m talking about, yes, the applying of new ideas to create measurable impact, right? That’s basically what innovation is. But holding the concept, we’ve been talking about it in several different ways already. True innovation is a concept that is, it’s non-linear. It doesn’t happen in a simple, straight line. It’s iterative. It takes lots of tries and experiments. It is relational. Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation.

(02:02):
And that relational, the collaboration piece allows emergence. So those are the features of innovation I want us to hold onto as a backdrop to the conversation today. Emergence in the sense that something new arises that was not present or possible before. So we hold those conditions. So if that’s the way we want to think about innovation, facilitating innovation sessions has to be less like this, less tour guide on the bus where it’s really specific and it’s structured and it’s predictable and I know where we’re going, but I give the participants some freedom. “You can get off the bus here. You got 20 minutes. Then we’ll be back on the bus to move on to the next thing.” Right? So less that and more Indiana Jones style expedition. “We’re heading off to who knows where.”

(03:03):
There is an objective, there’s a north star, but we don’t have a pre-drawn map. We have probably some guidelines, but it’s time to be curious. It’s time to explore together bringing the right skills. We’re not going to wander off in the desert unprepared. So we bring together the right things, but we are searching for hidden unknown treasures. So to give you a little bit of context of where I’m coming from, because I walk into this space knowing that my context is very specific. So I have been supporting for the last five years, a team in Shell International, the data digital and innovation team that supports the upstream business. So for the past five years, my job has largely been facilitating collaboration, co-creation kind of spaces, problem solving.

(04:03):
So coming together, mostly scientists in the petrophysics and the geoscience disciplines, coming together to solve big problems in the energy sector with digital and data solutions. So yeah, it’s pretty niche. That’s pretty specific. So I’m curious about for you guys, when we talk through this stuff, how much of it resonates for the spaces that you’re working in. So that’s one of the reasons I’m excited to explore this with you. How many of you already, you are supporting a team or organization that you would put in that innovation bucket. You’re an innovation team, you’re a design space, you’re a startup. Yeah, so more than a third of us probably already in that space. Now, no matter what space you’re in, how many of you are already facilitating innovation sessions where you’re doing brainstorming, ideation, problem solving? A lot more hands that time, almost everybody.

(05:09):
Yeah. I would think with the never before experienced challenges that are emerging with the fast-paced technologies, that’s only going to become bigger and bigger parts of our jobs, right? In some way or another, we’re going to be having to bring people together to solve new and old problems in new ways, so practicing that. I’ve got three main components to the formula if there could be such a thing as a magic formula for creating safe space for innovation. And if we play with our metaphor a little bit, we’ve got part one, we’ve got to create that safe and inclusive base camp. What’s going to be our launching point? What’s the container going to be like? How are we going to prepare that space? How are we going to be ready for that? And we’ll have a creative tabletop exercise in that space.

(06:12):
And then the second component, biggest component is having the courage to venture into the unmapped territories. And it’s nice to have the space. I feel safe here. We’re going to experiment a little bit there and we’re going to do a paired walk and talk in that unknown terrain space. And then last but definitely not least, the concept of emergence, of integration, of synthesis. How do we create space and focus and time to discover the hidden treasure that we don’t even know what it is yet? So how can we possibly know how to get it? In our first topic, I said we’ll have a creative tabletop. We’ll do a walk and talk. And then in that third area, I’ve got a little bit of a case study. We may or may not have time for that. I’m going to practice what I preach and I’m holding the activities a little bit loosely so that we can follow the energy of the room.

(07:12):
But either way, you’ve got the case study and a little blueprint on your table that when the time comes, you’ll be able to walk out with those. All right. So step one here, preparing the base camp. As I said, we would never go on an expedition unprepared. We’re not going to know something. We’re not going to do some planning in advance, some gathering of the right resources and tools. So what does that look like, at least in my corporate setting? I consider the base camp piece to be the step from the moment you’ve gotten the request, “Hey, we need to have a session around poor pressure drilling. We’ve got this big challenge and we’re going to in two weeks have the session.”

(07:53):
So from that moment up until about the first third of the workshop or session or virtual space, all of that is the window of time we have to prepare and that’s what we need to spend some time doing. Because if the ultimate outcome is, “Hey, we want to have this energized team of explorers out there ready to come up with creative and insightful, perhaps risky concepts, what are the things I need to do in advance to make that possible?” So in my space, that has a lot to do with… I whip out my Consulting 101 manual and I ask a lot of questions, because a lot of times these requests, as you guys have experienced, a lot of these requests come in and they’re not completely clear.

(08:44):
We’re not sure why that needs to happen. So we need some better understanding of the underlying, what’s behind that? Or maybe it’s a known challenge, what’s been in the way of solving that challenge before now? What’s the root of that problem? Or what are some of the symptoms of that? So it’s really important before we lead the expedition that we understand what the… Do we really have a deep understanding of the goal? And then getting the right people in the room, that also happens well in advance. At least in my world, you can’t get anybody to a meeting if you don’t give them weeks of notice.

(09:23):
So if you’ve got a specialized skill, “Oh, we forgot to invite the IT guy.” Well, dang, we’re proposing a digital solution, but we didn’t think to get their perspective on it and now the meeting’s tomorrow, right? So doing a lot of pre-thinking and poking and prodding who’d be the right… “Oh, we definitely don’t want Carl in the room. He’s a big naysayer. He’s got a bad attitude.” “Okay, yeah, but if Carl is holding some important piece of information, that’s going to make it important, right?” So we have those conversations. All of that feeds into preparing the base camp. Then the space itself, are we doing a virtual? My teams are global, so most of my work is virtual with the a few times a year face-to-face summits when we’re really lucky. So if I want this playful, creative, curious atmosphere at the end, or for the ideation part, what do I need to do ahead of time?

(10:24):
So big and small things that you can do. We know it’s really hard to be creative if you’re in a boardroom with the big fat leather chairs, or if you’re the one person online and everybody else is in the space. It’s hard to have participation, so we want to consider inclusion, all that kind of stuff is going to make for a safer base camp. So tiny example for the room, pipe cleaners on the tables. If you are someone who needs permission, you have permission to play with them, do whatever you want with them. That’s what they’re for. A lot of us think better and listen better while we have something in our hands. So consider that your neurodivergent gift to have something. It’s an inexpensive, unexpected, so it’s a small thing that you can do in the room. Colored markers, the upscale post-it notes, all those little things that you can do. They’re small touches, but they really help prepare that space.

(11:27):
And then, of course, the session itself, are you opening up in such a way that you’re setting the right expectations with both your participants and whoever’s owning the meeting? And there’s often a big gap there, at least in my experience. “We want you to think big. We’re talking moonshot, disruption. Let’s really blow it up and we need to start by March.” “Oh, okay.” “We’ve got a $6,000 budget.” “Oh, okay.” So helping know what those expectations are when you open a meeting. There’s nothing worse than discovering those constraints while you’re trying to help people be… “Think moonshot creativity, but within a budget or a timeframe.” Another good one, I’ll just plant this, I’ll tell you one story, is for example, they’re saying they want an ideation workshop. “We want to come together. We’re going to bring all the key players together and we’re going to really search through this problem. We want to deeply understand it.”

(12:36):
And then we find out before, right before the session starts, that somebody at the C-suites has already made a contract with the vendor to provide an off-the-shelf solution for the problem that we’re going to explore together. And it was all intended to be a place for him to showcase the features of the thing that he’s already picked, and he wanted everybody to go, “Oh, that’s such a good idea.” Is that what’s going to happen? No. So we have to set those perfectly legitimate requests, but that’s an alignment meeting. That is not a creative innovation ideation session. And that’s one of the reasons why people moan and groan when you go, “Oh, brainstorming,” because we want certainty that whatever we put our energy and thought and creativity in is actually going to go somewhere. It’s going to matter, it’s going to mean something, and if it’s been predecided.

(13:27):
So again, all of that comes in in your base camp. We’re holding the concept of innovation as collaborative, that it is something that requires more than one person’s input. Our world is too complex now for any one person to solve, hold all of the skills, knowledge, information that we need. And for you, maybe your participants are really well-versed in collaborative problem solving. Mine are not. Mine work in deep technical fields where they tend to be the specialist, they tend to work in a silo. I answer the question, I hand it to the next guy, they work on the next layer of work, et cetera, et cetera. So I don’t have a sense of what it feels like or means to work together. So sometimes our opener has to provide a visceral experience. What does it really mean to collaborate or co-create together? So we’re going to have an experience of that right now. This is one that I use fairly often as a warmup.

(14:32):
So grab, I think everybody should have enough. Grab a white sheet of paper. There’s blank paper on all the tables. Grab a blank sheet of paper and something to write with. Choose the color of the day. And we are going to create something new together. And the spark is simply three random circles on a page. So your job right now, very simple, three random circles on the page. You can see mine are small, medium, and large, and they’re intersecting. Yours might be all the same size, but far apart. They might be inside each other. It doesn’t matter. Three random circles. It’s a 30-second or less effort, not a big effort. People are still picking their colors. Okay, come on. Now take your circle, your page with your circles, and pass it to the person on your right. Right hand.

(15:53):
Now, your job, receiver, is to incorporate the three circle drawing you received into something new. So when you look at it, you have just inherited a spark, a new idea, a green shoot of an idea from a coworker, and now you get to evolve it into something else. What does it look like to you? What does it bring to mind? Artistic ability does not come into play. Let your kindergarten drawing shine. So if your three circles was a 30-second exercise, your drawing is maybe a minute or two. Nothing fancy. Just enough for your concept to be clear is fine. Okay. Are you ready to have a little fun with this? So what you’re going to do is you are going to share around the table, show your picture real quick, just everybody get a view.

(17:00):
And while you’re looking at everybody else’s, I want you to start, you can start with internal reflection. What connections do you see? What is the story that is emerging as you look at your pictures together? Now, it might be something that’s very concrete. Oh, I see we all like the color blue, but I would encourage you to stretch a little bit, get creative, leverage those storytelling skills. And we’ll spend about eight minutes here. So decide what your connections are. All right. Let’s begin to draw your connections to a close. Not a close. That’s a tough word. A little pause here. You’ll have a chance. Your drawings aren’t going anywhere, so they’ll be laying out on your table. But I am curious, we could spend a lot of time debriefing that, right? If I were in the session with my Shell scientists, we would be talking about stuff like, “How was that experience for you? Has your mindset shifted from where you were before?” But I’m curious for us as facilitators, what does that exercise reveal about the evolution of ideas?

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Anything can happen here.

Shannon Hart (18:50):
Yeah. That’s an important energy to bring into a room when you’re about to do creative stuff together, right? There’s that air of possibility. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah. I thought what was interesting to me about this was how important it was that you gave us permission to be creative and when. It was like, “You’re going to draw three circles, whatever is fine.” And it’s like, okay, there’s only so much creativity you’ve gotten there. But then it’s like, okay, now here is the time when you need to be creative, and everybody rose to the occasion. And I thought that was really great food for though. For me, as I work in the social sector, and a lot of people don’t have the confidence and the resources or the experiences. And so I just really liked that aspect of it.

Shannon Hart (19:39):
Yeah. And you guys went a little crazy. I heard their story. They’re all going to the country fair and they’re riding a three-wheel bicycle to the-

Speaker 3 (19:46):
We brought snacks.

Shannon Hart (19:47):
And you brought snacks.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Croissant.

Shannon Hart (19:49):
Awesome. Delightful. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
This activity demonstrated how ideas can be malleable and everything can be added on or even modified.

Shannon Hart (20:04):
Yeah. And it’s one of the cores of innovation that we often leave behind. It’s like you go, “Ooh, oh, you said that first. So I’m going to give you permission and I’ll leave it behind.” No, build on it, add to it, enhance it. Let’s talk around it. Right? So that’s a great observation. Yeah. Jordan, mics from all directions.

Speaker 5 (20:27):
I thought it illustrated really well how different experiences, identities and backgrounds can interpret such a universal, simple shape and idea. We all had pretty similar arrangements of a very simple shape, but we all interpret it in such different ways and how diversity of ideas and backgrounds can lead to such an interesting outcome.

Shannon Hart (20:49):
Yeah. And again, one of the cores, if you want to co-create, there’s value in everybody’s viewpoint and it’s, wow, it’s radically different. So it’s a great way to begin that conversation of how are we going to honor what is brought into the room by others, so it’s a good space.

Jordan (21:06):
We have one over here.

Speaker 7 (21:10):
Hello. I liked how we all put these together and passed them along, but we didn’t know where we were going. The outcome or the end goal was not known, but we all brought something very unique to the table and were able to find through lines through it. I thought we were going to keep passing them around, but I like the idea of making a story through the four.

Shannon Hart (21:39):
Yeah. Cool. Go ahead.

Speaker 8 (21:41):
For me, the cool thing was just to see how amazing human brains are and how it’s always naturally trying to find a pattern or a connection or something from nothing.

Shannon Hart (21:54):
Yep.

Speaker 8 (21:55):
So our brains are cool.

Shannon Hart (21:57):
Our brains are cool. Okay. Last thought.

Speaker 9 (22:01):
Well, I was just going to share that I’ve done similar types of activities with groups and it almost as a way to do norms of like deferring judgment and following the rules of the permission in that you didn’t ask us to be an artist. You didn’t qualify that it had to be a certain quality of art, and yet as we shared, I still noticed myself and others defending or… You saw something different than I saw or I didn’t draw that very well, et cetera. And so I think just naming that it’s okay to be imperfect and that I understood what Jackson drew perfectly even though he’s like, “Well, I didn’t do a good job.” And I was like, “But I understood it.” And so the power of just visual thinking as a means for communicating ideas, the bar is a lot lower than we all think it is.

Shannon Hart (22:45):
Yeah. If I had said, “What negative messages do you tell yourself about your creativity that’s keeping you blocked?” We want to put that aside before we start creating together, you’re going to be like, “Well, it’s a different mode,” but having the visceral experience of it’s like, “Oh, it’s right there present.”

Speaker 10 (23:01):
Just a small thing to add, the power of unfinished ideas, because if I had a drawing here of three circles that was clearly something, it’s harder for me to imagine something different because I know what I’m looking at. Instead, when we just have unfinished ideas, we can be a lot more creative sometimes or we allow ourselves to be. And if you think about it, sometimes we’re in a session and because our idea is not all the way clear, we don’t say it out loud and there’s a power in unfinished ideas.

Shannon Hart (23:33):
Yeah. We’re going to explore that a little bit more when we talk deeper in ambiguity, right? It’s unfinished. It’s uncertain. We don’t know. So how do we hold that? So we’re going to explore that next, in fact. All right. Ooh, thank you. That was a good conversation. It is so fun to be in a room of like-minded people. But I can tell you, even when you do that with a bunch of really… What’s the polite word? For the scientists that I work with who are perhaps not as attuned or as open-minded or as relaxed as you guys are, they still always find connections. Humans are wired that way. So again, I call these what to pack for our expedition, but these are your key takeaways, is that reminder that everybody has it in them. Our brains are amazing.

(24:27):
We have these abilities to be creative and innovative. It’s just, it’s layered under a whole bunch of programming that we might have to… So when I think about, do I want to invite Carl who says no to every idea? Do I have the time to do exercises like that to unwind his mindset and help bring him along? And if I don’t, then I probably don’t need Carl in the room. I’m looking for people that are sparky and ready to go when we launch. So trust that everyone is creative and curious, but it still is really important to bring the right people into the room and having the right resources, the right… In my case, the right data, right? It’s a very data-driven organization. If I don’t have the right data, then there’s no point in having the ideations, so having that stuff.

(25:14):
I talked about it, understanding the real goal, and I saw a lot of nodding. You guys understand that clients say one thing, but they mean something else. So before you get into this kind of space, you really have to understand that. And then all the ways that we already know as experienced facilitators to make it safe, to make risk-taking feel better. So psychological safety, warmups and low stakes. And before we leave the topic, low stakes activities like this one where we’re not putting them up on the wall and evaluating everybody’s drawings. But I did want to say one quick thing about grounding. If you’re going to have an ideation session, especially a technical one or something around a complex concept, and you are going to invite Judy from legal and Aman from finance, can they contribute to the conversation? Do they know enough about the complexities of the issue to be able to participate?

(26:15):
So how much or how little, I don’t know, is that a universal term, grounding? We use it in Shell all the time. I need that baseline of information. We need to create a shared understanding before we ideate. The risk in my space is there’ll be three days of grounding and then 30 minutes of ideation. So nobody wants to live through a two-hour presentation on poor pressure before they can start doing the creative things. So really being curated in your grounding, but not skipping that step, that’s really important. So talking with folks about what is it going to take for us all to participate evenly. So all that’s our base camp stuff. Then we’re ready to venture into unmapped terrain and you saw what happened like that was… We didn’t start with clarity. We didn’t start with an end goal. We didn’t even know what was happening.

(27:10):
Although as facilitators were trying to guess, maybe we are going to pass these around. We’re trying to puzzle it out, but we don’t know what’s going to happen, but what did emerge, right? As we worked and shared those fragments and started making sense collaboratively, that’s when meaning and a story started to emerge. So building on that, this moment, it very much is part of the innovation space, but of course it mirrors what happens in facilitation all the time. How much instructions do I give? How detailed? How prepared? How structured should it be? Versus how much freedom, how much interpretation do I need to allow? So that’s, ambiguity and uncertainty is a requirement for innovation. Does that make sense? You’re not going to innovate on stuff when you already know the answer, so how do we handle that?

(28:07):
And I know you guys have loads of experience in it, so we are going to do an ambiguity walk. So I’m going to invite you to think of a time when you were leading a group or a session where you did not know the outcome, or you thought you did, but guess what? Got disrupted, something changed, the group needed to go in a different direction. We’ve talked about this in several different capacities today. What was that experience like? What helped you recover? And what would you do differently? So again, an opportunity to explore how we as facilitators handle that ambiguity. And because you’re advanced, we’re going to notch… I’m especially curious about how handling ambiguity balances with the tension of desired outcomes. So again, I’m being paid to…

(29:05):
At the end of this workshop, we need a roadmap or we need a project plan. But I’m trying to hold space for ambiguity and I’m getting this disruption. So in your experience, I want you to think about an example and then chat with a partner. And I couldn’t think of a better visceral way to experience unmapped terrain than to go walk in unmapped terrain. So 3:45, we’re going to spend 15 minutes in a walk and talk. Find somebody who is not sitting at your table that you have not yet met in the whole day today, somebody you do not know, and share for seven minutes, we’ll switch, they’ll share for seven minutes, but you are free to go wherever your little legs will take you, as long as what? You’re back in 15 minutes.

(29:55):
The risk when you do a walk and talk, especially in an unknown area is that I will never see you again. So I need to see you back here shortly after four o’clock. Okay? So back in here, a little after four, we’re going to play some music. If you want to just make a loop, this building is a nice rectangle. If you want to do more than that, great, but you’re on your honor to be back in the room. It looks, I can see from your faces that that was energizing and nice to get up out of the space for a sec. Anybody go outside? Is it hot out there? Little warm? Good. All right. So maybe three or four different tables. Let’s hear a couple of insights that came up from your walk and talk. What came up for you? Mark’s got it.

Speaker 11 (31:13):
Hi. Both of us had shared experiences where it was actually ambiguous from the beginning and we were given a task to work with some folks that there was… It seemed like just an exercise in ambiguity. And so how could we make sense of that and build something that felt like a win for… Mine was for an organization and hers was for her boss, but it was a win for them that it felt that we were going down a path that was actually helpful and how we used our skills to make that happen, right? That it was like in the end we could work with folks to get somewhere, but knowing that there was such a high level of ambiguity even going into it, that might… Being clear about that, I think from the beginning.

Shannon Hart (32:04):
Yeah. I hear that, the tension between the unknown and the, “We’ve got to have something for our boss at the end of the day.” Yeah, that’s excellent.

Speaker 11 (32:12):
For whatever their reason is.

Shannon Hart (32:13):
It sounds like you navigated that really well, so that’s…

Speaker 8 (32:20):
Thanks. So in my example, it was a team where I didn’t do the grounding part and I didn’t understand the problem space, but I went in with every naive expectation that we could solve the problem that this team needed to solve and quickly ran into a brick wall of no. So that’s when I just called a timeout and I said, “I’m going to meet with you each individually after this so I can level set and I can understand.” Because there was a lot of history about this particular issue that I didn’t have. And so do the grounding, like you said. If you don’t, then surprises happen and you’re probably not going to get the outcome you want.

Shannon Hart (33:05):
Yep. And the grounding doesn’t have to be in the session. Maybe that happens, as you say, in advance. We have little interviews, we have some meetings. Maybe in the scientific community, it’s often a pre-read, “Here’s the 10 things you need to know about this theoretical thing before we start this conversation.” So there’s a lot of ways to be creative about it, but you got to get that part done. Otherwise, surprises happen just as you described. So thanks for sharing. It makes me feel less alone. That’s good. Go for it.

Speaker 12 (33:34):
Thank you. So we were talking about grounding from the perspective of shared principles. So having like, “These are the principles that we work by,” or “This is the intent of this conversation, this meeting.” And then if things get off the rails, coming back to that, or if people don’t respond in the way you intended to, if you set it up upfront. And what I liked about that is it tied back to conversation our table had earlier where people were talking about when you do work with a certain group and the new people join in later, you have to reset those ground rules and you have to reset like, “Here’s the principles of how we’re going to plan to work together.” So just a connection between the sessions today. So appreciate that.

Shannon Hart (34:21):
Yeah. And that’s really powerful because it reminds me of, at least in my environment, it’s really common, “Oh, we’re going to bring an expert in to share about X, Y, Z on Tuesday from two to three, but it’s a three-day workshop.” We’ve all been working together and we’ve created that space and that container. And then here comes somebody in who doesn’t have that context and might say things or derail things without understanding. So it’s a really valid point.

Speaker 12 (34:45):
So I think when you talked about grounding before, it was more in the context of like, what’s the data? What’s the knowledge we need to have?

Shannon Hart (34:46):
The content, yeah.

Speaker 12 (34:46):
The content.

Shannon Hart (34:51):
We use the term in terms of content.

Speaker 12 (34:53):
And then I think what came out of the conversation we had was more really the, how do we work together? What do we expect of the people that are in this room?

Shannon Hart (35:02):
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, whatever you call it, that’s a really important part of it, right? We’ve got to have that, those expectations helps hold the container for sure.

Speaker 13 (35:10):
It’s always so helpful hearing when, because shit always goes sideways. So it’s so great when you hear someone else’s story, you’re like, “That thing may not have happened to me yet, but it probably will.” You know? And it’s so awesome to hear how someone else recovered and landed on their feet or what they said or what they did. So that’s already super valuable, but I was thinking about how… Oh, my train of thought. There it went.

Shannon Hart (35:38):
Left the station. We’ll come back when you need it.

Speaker 13 (35:43):
But yeah, things always go sideways and it’s helpful to hear how other people have navigated things when you know that it’ll probably happen to you.

Shannon Hart (35:51):
It will happen to you. Yeah, that’s good. It’s a good segue. I want to just jump back a minute and think about it again from the meta perspective. For us as facilitators, what is powerful about a walk and talk experience? Or was it not powerful for you? Was it disruptive out of your… I’d love to hear pros or cons about it from your perspective. Yeah. Now you’ve got it.

Speaker 13 (36:15):
I remembered my train of thought.

Shannon Hart (36:15):
Good. Bring it.

Speaker 13 (36:18):
Which is that when you are figuring out what… Oh my God.

Shannon Hart (36:28):
That is so validating. I’m just like, “Yay, you are my people.”

Speaker 13 (36:34):
Oh my goodness.

Shannon Hart (36:35):
Delightful. That is so resonant.

Speaker 13 (36:39):
You know we were talking about… Oh, okay. So I was leading something where it was like a two-hour session that was EMEA-friendly, two-hour session that was APAC-friendly, same group of humans. And we were talking about how you’re not the… It’s not about you. You’re here to provide a service for these human beings in many ways, but the energy with which you’re bringing to that is so important and doing your checklist of staying grounded and all the things. And I, in between the first session, total dumpster fire, and I totally called it out. I was like, “Wow, look at this dumpster fire. It’s happening in real time.” And afterwards, I was like, “I have so much stuff to get done in between these two sessions.” And then I was like, “You know what? No, your job right now is to actually go to the gym, have lunch, take a nap and get it together.” And then the second session was like bomb. We totally knocked it out of the park.

Shannon Hart (37:30):
Awesome.

Speaker 13 (37:31):
Energy was amazing. But that starts with me making sure that I’m showing up in a way that I can serve this group of humans and that part’s super important.

Shannon Hart (37:41):
Yep, that is super important.

Speaker 13 (37:42):
Thank you for-

Shannon Hart (37:42):
Especially post dumpster fire. We need that regroup because you’re busy going, “Oh my gosh, I should have said this and I wish I’d done that.” That doesn’t serve anyone. No, that’s a really good observation.

Speaker 13 (37:53):
Thanks for dealing with my train of thought. Appreciate you.

Shannon Hart (37:55):
I’m thrilled that you brought it back into the room, so thanks for that. Yeah, Kathy.

Kathy (38:01):
So I was talking to Jordan and we had a interesting situations that required us to hold space in the moment when things were on fire. But what stood out to me is not just how maybe the space was grounded, but how did we ground ourselves in that moment so that we could move through it and get beyond it.

Shannon Hart (38:21):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Any maybe quick observations on the meta level more… Oh, you’ve got an observation about the activity itself?

Speaker 15 (38:33):
Yeah. I was just going to connect to your train of thought that we got to around the energy you’re bringing to a space and how much a walk can reset the energy for everyone. Like coffee, yes, great, love it. Sugar, also good, but moving changes I think how you think. You’re not looking eye to eye with someone.

Shannon Hart (39:00):
Side by side. Exactly.

Speaker 15 (39:01):
You’re side to side. You’re seeing the same things. You’re also moving physically in space. There’s just so many things that change about, I feel like my thought process feels similar to when you’re in a long car ride with someone you love and you’re like, “Oh, let’s have a big juicy conversation. You can’t leave.”

Shannon Hart (39:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (39:23):
But a smaller scale within the context of this space is incredibly useful.

Shannon Hart (39:29):
It’s super inclusive too, because when you pair up, you cannot sit back and be passive. So everybody has a voice, small scale, then table scale, then big scale, right? And so that’s inclusivity is just a huge part because so much of the stories we tell ourselves about I’m not creative, whatever, whatever, if we are not being included and drawn in, we just stick with that narrative and then we don’t participate. So for me, a walk and talk is a really easy way. We’re talking about a pause, using the pause. It’s a different way to reset the thinking to create different expectations. It is not something that we do in the corporate world very much. So sending people outside, it’s worth the investment of time. And guess what I was doing while you guys were walking? I can do whatever I need to do, breathe and look at my notes and think about what’s next and maybe pivot because we weren’t quiet where… So it benefits me too.

(40:29):
Anytime I can put the entire activity on you, then I have a minute to regroup, which is for me as a more introverted person and a person who has… That helps my nervous system stay settled. So I need that. And you guys are no worse for wear. It’s an add. It’s a benefit for you. All right. I want to share… This is going to be really quick because some of this is familiar to you, but I wanted to refresh on a couple of models because I think these are narratives that we hold in the back of our heads and I wanted to… I was thinking about what makes innovation/ideation sessions different. We’ve got a lot of us grew up, I won’t age myself, but grew up in this model of, I have a problem, I’m going to brainstorm a bunch of ideas about it, I’m going to pick the right answer, and then I’m going to be done.

(41:23):
And it’s a sequence. It often happens alone. The image that comes to my mind is Thomas Edison sitting in his laboratory. He did what? 10,000 tries at the light bulb and voila, light. And somewhere in our brains and somewhere with our participants, we have conflated that. We have the outdated idea of how invention, how innovation actually happens. In a more updated view, the areas that we’ve already talked through that we need to really emphasize and change is the prepare stage. There’s a lot of prep that has to go in. I need to really deeply understand, to your point, the problem. I need to know what the various viewpoints are. I need to gather the right data. I need to have the right resources. I got to get that guy from IT in the room. So that, we need to emphasize that part a lot more. No ideation can happen until all of that stuff happens.

(42:26):
Then I’ve got to create that safe space so that ideation feels fun and creative and curious as we’ve been doing. But then I have to allow time for that emergence, that integration, that part of synthesis. I stole one of those cards. I thought these were so beautiful, but it’s a different that the synthesizer is the person who can summarize key themes from the discussion and suggest a unified approach. So this is the person that’s the pattern finder, that’s the meaning maker, and we all have that to some degree. So we’ve got to make space. How do I build on ideas? How do I have time to integrate your insights into the story I came in the room with? And then how do I build on it? I’m going to add the wheels to the bicycle and I’m going to make it be a penguin. And then how do we create something different together?

(43:24):
And at least in the space I work in, that push to convergence, there’s such a desperate drive to converge that this is a real challenge to keep that space, that integration space, that emergent space open. And I know that. Does those models look familiar to you? Because they map to what? This is how we facilitate processes. It’s the messy middle, it’s the grown zone, but in innovation, it has a really specific flavor. This is a part where we are finding the patterns, we’re making the meaning, we’re building on those ideas because innovation, real change doesn’t happen without that space, which brings us to wrap things up talking about the emergence phase. How do we discover those hidden treasures? How do we go in new and different ways, co-creating together? So let’s explore that in a little bit more of a practical sense.

(44:26):
I’ve got on your tables, there’s two pieces. One is your emergence trail map. It’s like a little canvas. So pull that out. The other piece is a case study. We’re going to set the case study aside because I want you to have it as a go away. You can read this and think about it. What would I do differently? But for the purposes of our conversation, I want us to focus on reading the terrain. If I’m committed to having emergence happen, how do I know that it’s happening? So spend a moment reflecting. What are you watching for? Renita talked about it really well when she’s talking in general about what are you noticing? What are the things you are noticing if your diamond is… Yeah.

Speaker 16 (45:23):
I just don’t know if there are any more of them.

Shannon Hart (45:25):
Oh, are we missing some?Because some tables are… Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Raise your hand if you don’t have one or the other. Everybody good? Thanks for asking. So what are the signs and signals that I’m looking for that emergence is either happening or is not happening, has been shut down prematurely? We’re converging too quickly. We’re going to do this in the one, two, four, all liberating structures format. So spend a moment, I’ll give you a couple of minutes. The block on your sheet that I’m calling your attention to is on the backside and it’s labeled Warning Signs and Interventions: Reading the Terrain. But they might not all be warning signs. They might be pros too, like, what are the things you’re watching for that give you clues that emergence is really happening?

(46:19):
A couple of minutes, individual reflection capture some thoughts, and then turn to your neighbor. And this is a good chance for co-creation together. That means cheat off their answers and write them on your paper if they’ve got good ideas and vice versa. So what are those signs and signals you’re looking for that emergence is happening or not happening? Take a couple quick minutes, have a conversation with your neighbor. I am curious about one concise learning that you have when we’ve reflected a little bit about emergence and what are we watching for. So we’ll take four or five insights here as we wrap things up. Yeah, Robin. It’s coming.

Robin (47:31):
One of the things that signals emergence is when you’re no longer sure whose idea it was in the first place.

Shannon Hart (47:37):
Oh, I love that. I love that. And nobody is claiming ownership.

Speaker 18 (47:43):
That was my idea.

Shannon Hart (47:48):
Beautiful. Thanks, Robin.

Speaker 19 (47:59):
Something that was emerging for us in our conversation. It was an aspect of shifting context and shifting perspective, that people aren’t fixed to their view, and that there’s a deeper interest in the questions and the answers, and there’s liberation because of that. People have lost the desire to get to a destination, and they’re a little bit more comfortable with like, “Oh, that’s curious. Why is that that way?”

Shannon Hart (48:31):
Love it. Thank you. Any other thoughts?

Speaker 20 (48:45):
We talked about a sign of emergence not happening is when consensus feels forced. We’re trying to reach consensus so fast that we forget everything along the way.

Shannon Hart (48:59):
Yeah. Yeah. That rush to convergence, man, for some people that is very much human nature and for some organizations that’s the culture. So how to keep that space open so we don’t rush.

Speaker 21 (49:18):
Yeah.

Shannon Hart (49:22):
Go ahead.

Speaker 21 (49:22):
Oh yeah. Okay. Also, another moment when emergence doesn’t happen is when the whole team is in a state of low morale, burnout. That’s a big part of it, like just feels so depleted.

Shannon Hart (49:35):
Yeah. I don’t have any juice in the tank to get creative with you right now. Right here.

Speaker 22 (49:42):
Dan and I had a similarity in ours in that we might ask the question like, “Is there joy? Is there laughter? Does this feel playful?”

Shannon Hart (49:50):
Yeah. As a facilitator, I can often sense it when I totally lose control of the room, like the walk and talk and everybody’s going, going, going. It didn’t matter if I was like, “Hello, everybody.” Right? That’s a really good sign that it’s not just that their attention is elsewhere, but they’re owning the process, right? They’re so engaged in the process and owning the process that it doesn’t matter. And that’s a great sign for structure. So key takeaways, if I could have my slides back, and we’ve talked about several of these things. But one, we really focus on holding that diamond open longer, slowing the rush to certainty, paying attention, are we rushing because we are just depleted, we’re over it, we can’t shift those perspectives?

(50:40):
You as the facilitator, your job is to protect the quiet sparks, especially in the industry that I’m in, there’s a lot of foreign nationals, there are a lot of non-English speakers, and they are brilliant people with amazing ideas who often in our hyper Western-focused, the loudest voice in the room wins culture, they’re often overlooked. So it’s not just, “Hey, did I make sure so-and-so had a chance to talk?” But am I embedding in the immersion space, emergent space, weighs other methods for people who have a harder time speaking out? So are we using Post-it Notes? Are we in Miro? It’s a round-robin. Everybody’s going to talk. So how am I managing those expectations to help protect the quiet sparks?

(51:30):
And then of course, as challenging as that space is, that’s where the magic happens is keeping that integration space open longer. So today hasn’t really been a laundry list of tips and techniques, but it’s really about that space between people where co-creation, collaboration, true innovation actually happens and how we can create, rather than control, we create the conditions that enable that to happen. So it only happens if we’re willing to hold that space. So the hold the container, trust the process, and allow for that, guide that emergence. All right, that’s the work. And I think you guys are ready for it. So there we go. I’ll leave it there. Thank you.

The post Innovation: Stepping off the Edge and Leaving the Agenda Behind appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit, Chris Lunney opened his session with a blank slide and a single question: “What did you just experience right there?” It was a deliberate provocation—a small, engineered taste of the unknown—and the perfect entry point into a workshop that challenged facilitators to rethink how we navigate uncertainty. Titled “Navigating the Unknown with Whole Intelligence,” Chris’s 90-minute session invited participants to move beyond the analytical mind and access a deeper, more integrated form of knowing: one that draws on the body, the heart, the imagination, and the subconscious alongside conscious thought.

The Trap of the Thinky Brain

Chris opened by naming a tension most people recognize but rarely examine. When we’re trying to move from where we are—Point A—to where we want to be—Point B—we reach instinctively for analysis. We research, compare options, ask for advice, and try to plan the perfect path. The problem is that planning the perfect path tends to leave us stuck, perpetually searching for a missing ingredient that can’t be found through thinking alone. The alternative—finding the optimal path, the shortest route between A and B—is often just exhausting. Sometimes the shortest path goes straight through the mountain.

The core issue, Chris argued, is that we’re trying to navigate the unknown using only the analytical mind: a map without a compass. Our brains are excellent at working with known variables—choosing a refrigerator is his go-to example, a decision with clear dimensions and measurable constraints. But navigating genuine uncertainty requires a different set of instruments. Not just analytical and relational thinking, but somatic and emotional awareness, subconscious and imaginal insight, and personal and collective understanding. He’s been calling this combination “whole intelligence”—what happens when we bring all of these sources of knowing to bear at once, rather than expecting one of them to do the work of all four.

The Refrigerator and the Heart

To make this tangible, Chris led the room through a guided meditation. Participants were invited to bring an unknown situation to mind, close their eyes, and—through a sequence of breathwork and imagery—find themselves at a refrigerator late at night, filled with the weight of their situation. The prompt at the door was deceptively simple: open it to find the exact feeling your heart desires. What word or phrase does that feeling bring with it?

What emerged in the room was striking. One participant found that the answer that surfaced matched almost word-for-word something she had written earlier in the day during a different session entirely. Two others discovered, without any prior conversation, that they were navigating the same unknown—where to move their families. The subconscious and imaginal, it turned out, had plenty to say when given a structured invitation.

The key insight Chris returned to throughout: “The quality of our sense making equals the quality of our sensing.” When we only consult our analytical mind, we’re working with a fraction of the available information. The body knows things. The heart knows things. The imagination, given room to move, often goes directly to what actually matters—bypassing the noise that the thinking brain generates when it’s trying to figure out something it cannot figure out.

From Insight to Experiment

The session didn’t stop at sensing—it built a bridge from inner knowing to action. Drawing on neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s book Tiny Experiments, Chris introduced the concept of a trackable experiment: not a provable hypothesis with a binary pass/fail, but a small, timed commitment that generates useful data. Participants moved from the meditation into identifying one action aligned with what had surfaced—something that engaged the head, the heart, and the hand together—and then gave that action a structure: a timeframe, a way to check in, and a simple retrospective at the end. Plus, minus, next. What’s working? What isn’t? Given this information, what do I do differently?

Three methods, Chris offered, can access whole intelligence depending on who you’re working with and what the room needs: the embodied heart meditation they experienced together; somatic movement practices drawn from Social Presencing Theater, developed at MIT’s Presencing Institute; and structured physical play with objects for those who need to build something in order to think. All three begin in the same place—the body and the heart—and then hand off to the analytical mind once there’s genuine material to work with, rather than asking it to generate insight from scratch in a vacuum.

Chris closed with a poem from his friend Kyle Finchem, a movement practitioner: “There’s always something to see if you’re listening. There’s always something to hear if you’re looking. There’s always someone to feel if you’re here.” For a session about navigating the unknown, it was a fitting final note—a reminder that the path forward isn’t found by thinking harder. It’s found by listening more completely.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Chris’s Session:

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Oh, that’s interesting. There’s supposed to be something on this slide. I’m just kidding. What did you just experience right there? Was that

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Like …

Speaker 1 (00:23):
We’re going to talk about that experience today. Usually as humans, we start off at some point. We’ll call that point A. And we do this interesting thing where we want to get to point B. That seems logical enough. And we do this thing where we want a really clear, reliable, easy, risk-free path to get there. And that’s not usually the way it is because it involves change. This is the thing about being at point A. You’re in point A, that’s just what you are. You’re A shaped and you’re trying to get to B shape and that’s just a different thing. And so when you’re trying to get there, it doesn’t look like change. It looks like the unknown.

(01:17):
Because if we stand at point A and we try to figure out how to get to point B, we can’t do that because we’re not point B. We’re trying to be this experience that we haven’t experienced yet. And that’s really scary and frustrating and all types of things. And so today we’re going to talk about how you challenge, well, the challenge of picking the path. Because when you stand at point A, there’s all these other ways you could go. And each one of them kind of looks unknown. And so how do you trust yourself to say, “You know what? Actually, this is the path that I’m going to walk. I might not know so much about it. ” Wow, it’s scary over here personally. I’m like, wow, that’s such a wide stage.

(02:03):
But we’ll explore this today because this is an experiment on how to navigate the unknown authentically. And authentically is going to be an important part about this. We can just go run off into the distance, but there’s a way that’s going to be supportive to do so, sustainable to do so. The beauty is you already have what you need. This isn’t anything new. You just probably are overlooking it. So we’re just going to take a pause here. We learned that earlier. Just to investigate what is your unknown like? You all digesting some food. This is kind of nice. The person after lunch is like, “You got to bring the energy.” It’s like, no, just digest. It’s okay. We’re actually going to sit and just reflect on this for a moment.

(03:00):
You might even want to close your eyes. This is helpful. Bring to mind something that’s unknown currently for you. Seriously, close your eyes. Because this way you’re safer in your own space. Yeah, bring something to mind that’s unknown for you. Something you’re navigating without a clear map. Let yourself really be with this for a moment. Feel where this lives in your body. And patiently identify maybe what sensations arise in you. What emotions? Maybe memories. Maybe images. And when you think about navigating this unknown, what personal tools or resources do you reach for? What’s authentic to grab? Or what do you go to first? Thank you for that. Welcome back to the room. And just in five minutes, just quick and brief, turn to a partner and just debrief. It’s two questions. What sensations are emotions surfaced? And what resources or tools do you commonly reach for in this situation?

(05:22):
If somebody wants to share, what was coming up for you? What emotions, feelings, and maybe what tools were you reaching for?

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah. So sensations, I have lots of things that are unknown right now. So I was like, “What path do I pick?” But what I did notice was that this sort of swirling on instability, once I let myself feel it was like kind of in here was this sort of feeling. In terms of emotions, I mean, that’s just this disorientation, I would say. But because I feel like I’m in this all the time now, that the tools that I’ve been using or the tool that I have going most right now is Twila Tharp. I read the creative habit. She talks about scratching and that you just start scratching at things. And so I don’t need to know where I’m going. I just need to start being very attuned to signs.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Beautiful.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
And symbols. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Cool.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
Anybody else? Their experience of the unknown and the tools? Yeah, go

Speaker 4 (06:27):
For it. Is it cheating if I’m from the same table as the previous?

Speaker 1 (06:30):
No. In fact, now

Speaker 4 (06:30):
The

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Whole table needs to answer, but yeah. Awesome.

Speaker 4 (06:35):
For me, there’s the physical sensations, but what I wanted to mention was particularly the resources and something I just experienced that I closed my eyes. And when I got to that prompt, after a few seconds of reflection, I opened my eyes and I instinctively looked at you. And the tools that I look for in those moments are people, humans, their creativity and their wisdom. And it was a subconscious thing. I right away looked up and looked at you in that moment of contemplating what do I need right now. So Chris, I need you.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Thank you, dearly. I’m going to deflect that as a facilitator and say I don’t have any answers, which is counterintuitive to what I’m about to do. If I could have my slats back real quick. So this is interesting. Kind of between those two answers, there were similarities of like internal investigation, external investigation, and then like personal sense making and collective sense making. And it’s funny, it’s like when you break down the unknown, it looks like risk or failure or, “Oh God, what if I make mistakes or the worst? There’s more unknown.” Oh no, we go through the unknown and there’s just more of this. And then on the other side, it looks like reward and possibility and opportunities and the change we actually seek to make. It looks like that journey between A and B. And the only difference between this is our filtering. One emotional lens is anxiety, which is super easy to fall into.

(08:12):
And the other one’s excitement. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It could be cool. It could be fun. Maybe I become somebody new. It’s kind of like standing in the woods. Eric was just talking to me about this right before this. He didn’t know about it either. And we have this question of like, where am I? I can’t see anything. I have no orientation. For argument’s sake, you were dropped in the woods. You didn’t just walk there. Okay?

(08:42):
And where do I want to go? Is also a deeper question if you can’t see where you are going. Everything’s dense and built up around you. And you’re asking this question, “Well, how do I even get there if I knew all these things?” There’s bramble and bushes and thorns and like, “Is that a river?” Oh God. And so we do this wonderful thing called figuring it out and it really works kind of. We do a lot of research and we compare all the options and we have so many tools to do this now. It’s incredible. We ask other people, “Hey, what have you done in this situation?” Where you’re looking to the facilitator, “What should I do? ” And we do this thing called, “What does the data tell us? No, seriously, what does the data tell us?” Which is interesting. It kind of nuts out one of two ways.

(09:39):
You’ll notice I’m doing a lot of binary thinking here, which is like when our brain goes into freakout mode, we do binary thinking. We don’t see the nuance in between. So at one side, I love this one. This is my favorite. I plan the perfect path.

(09:55):
If I just get all the variables together, I’ll know exactly what I need to do. I’ll have this feeling of like, “Oh, this feels right. I’ve figured it all out. I’ll just do that. ” Or we do this other thing. Well, I’ll get there. If you plan the perfect path, you end up feeling stuck. And why is that? Because you’re always looking for some type of ingredient that feels like it’s rested in you, but you’re moving from an unrested place and trying to fill in the gap about something, frankly, you just won’t know about until you get there. And then there’s the other version, which is I’ll just take the optimal path. What’s the shortest way between A to B?

(10:37):
Thank you. That was the camera guy. Sweet. The shortest path can be tiring. Extremely tiring. Sometimes the shortest path between A and B is through the mountain. Are you going to dig through the mountain? Or maybe it’s at the top of the mountain. All right, fine. You’re going to climb straight up the mountain? How tall is the mountain? You’re going to have to do that for a while. It’s just not sustainable. So something’s missing. Something just doesn’t make sense. So let’s look at sense making for a second. Inside of us, we have this thing called our brain, does the analytical and the relational thinking. It’s pretty good. It’s super good when we have known criteria. It’s like picking a refrigerator. There’s a hole in your wall. It has a specific dimension. There’s an outlet. It has a specific voltage. You have a specific amount of people you need to feed in your house.

(11:39):
You go somewhere and you’re like, “Ah, these three options, these are pretty good. That one’s kind of cheap. I’ll go for that guy.” And there we go. I got a new refrigerator. But then we also have somatic and emotional awareness. This is the thing of what our body’s telling us. And it’s really wonderful when we can combine these two like, “Hey, where should we go to eat for dinner tonight?” This is a fascinating situation. We’re using both our intellect and our body. Where can we go? What can we afford? What do we want to do? What’s close to you? Also, what do I want to eat? What’s nourishing for me? And we’re integrating these senses. And then we also have this interesting thing called the subconscious and imaginal insight. Now, I admit all of this is an abstraction and I’m consolidating a lot of sense making into a single slide, so just bear with me.

(12:24):
This is like happening always even when you’re not conscious. This happens in our dreams. This happens when you’re in the shower and you’re like, “Oh, that would be so cool.” And it’s an amazing thing for asking questions like, “What could my future look like? This is where dreaming and possibility comes from.” And the last one is personal and collective understanding. You’re way ahead of the curve. Thank you. And it’s what do I know about myself and what does the collective know about us together? And when put this together, we can ask questions like, “What could I or we become?” But the thing is, when we’re in the unknown and we only rely on analytical and relational thinking, it’s like using a map without a compass.

(13:07):
Does that make sense? Just bear with me. When you pull out your phone and you look at the map, it’s just oriented to the world. We have taken this for granted greatly. If you were dropped into the woods and someone handed you a map and said, “This is where you are. ” It’s not oriented to anything. You don’t have a compass, especially if you can’t see anything. Yore like, “I can’t see where the mountains are. I don’t know where the river’s at. I have no form of orientation.” And so we have to do this thing where early explorers were looking at constellations. What are a lot of points of reference that I can make sense of together collectively and bring these intuitions and this thinking all into one place where I can start to say, “Ah, this is maybe where I’m going to go. ” And I’ve been coining this thing called whole intelligence.

(13:59):
It’s a shorthand. It’s not perfect. It’s just what I’m working with right now. If you have critiques, come let me know. But it’s this idea of what happens when we put all these pieces together and you’re probably wondering, well, how the heck do we access all of this intentionally? Because that’s a lot of different stuff. So let’s experience it. So in a moment here, we’ll have a nice long bit of time. It’s like you’re still digesting, you’ll just get to meditate. You’re welcome.

(14:34):
In a moment, I’ll bring you through a short guided visual meditation, one where we’ll be accessing the more subtle and embodied parts of ourselves, and we’ll use these along with our intellect to craft a path, something that feels intuitive for us to walk. And before we go in, I want you to bring to mind an unknown situation. It might have been the one that we were just referring to previously. Just pick one if you have a lot. I want you to sit upright in your chair. It might be nice to actually push away from the table too, and you got some little bit of space.

(15:19):
And get oriented. If you’re familiar with meditation and you love an upright posture, rock and roll, if you want to just sit back and relax, that’s also okay. The suggestion is to close your eyes. I think this is easier with your eyes closed. If that freaks you out, don’t worry about it. Keep your eyes open, but kind of have a blurry, vague focus. And classically, with meditation, start focusing on your breath. Just your natural breathing. And just watch the breath. Observe it because we know by just watching the breath, breathing our natural breath, the things we feel out of order or imbalanced, just tend to return to balance.

(16:21):
They tend to restore their natural order just by breathing and watching the breath. And as you breathe out, you see the number three and as you breathe out, you see the number two. And as you breathe out, you see the number one, tall, clear, and bright. And you imagine you’re at home and it’s late at night. It’s one of those nights when your mind has been fixed on this exact unknown situation and breathe out. You find yourself called to the kitchen maybe because you’re still hungry, or maybe you’re just in need of something to distract your mind, and breathe out.

(17:41):
And you arrive at the refrigerator door, and just before opening it, you’re filled with the feeling of your situation, the dynamics of it, the people in it with you, your excitements, and your concerns, and breathe out. What is this situation asking of you? You can sense this in your body and how it makes you feel, and breathe out. And in that moment, you realize something, it’s not your stomach that’s hungry tonight. It’s your heart. Your heart is longing for something in this situation, and breathe out. And with your hands still on the refrigerator door, you now open it to find inside the exact feeling your heart desires, and breathe out.

(19:06):
And just like a dream, you pick up this feeling and you eat it in one bite, your heart and your body satisfied with what’s in you now, and breathe out. And you close the refrigerator door and turn to face the kitchen, and having satisfied your heart’s hunger, a word or a phrase from the feeling in you that you’ve found rises up. And maybe just to yourself in your head, you speak these words as a reminder of how to navigate this situation, to give your heart what it needs, and breathe out. And as easily as you’ve imagined this scene, it now begins to dissolve.

(20:22):
And as you breathe out, you see the number one. And as you breathe out, you see the number two. And as you breathe out, you see the number three, and you slowly, graciously come back to the room. Thank you for enjoying that experiment or experiencing that experiment. So in the next moment, we’ll figure out what to do with emerge for you. You’ll have about five minutes. This is a juicy amount of time for self-reflection, and just write for a second in a notebook, in a device, whatever you got. What images or sensations came up for you in this? I also want to make apparent that if nothing came up for you, that’s okay. That’s totally cool. This is a weird practice that we’re just starting. And in that area of nothingness, there’s also potential.

(21:35):
What feelings emerged? Maybe what word or phrase emerged for you? Did anything surprise you? Feel free to start the timer. Thank you. So next, we’re going to reflect for another about five minutes. How might your heart’s longing be expressed through your actions? These are small things. These don’t need to be grand gestures. Small things that align your head, your heart, and your hand, meaning what makes sense to you? What does your heart want? And what do you know your ability to be able to do? And this phrase could look like, “I could try this, or I could do this.

(22:38):
” So I’m actually borrowing this next method from this book. Go get this book. It’s awesome. It’s called Tiny Experiments by Anne Laurie Lekomf. She’s a neuroscientist and she’s figured out a lot of really good things for how to get unstuck in your life. And she has this technique called building a trackable experiment. Trackable is very different than a provable experiment. Approvable experiments, did it work or did it not? And if you go into the unknown, you might not know, but you will have more information. And so the idea of this is two things. You’re declaring an action, one of those things that you just chose. So just choose one of them. How might this actually look and how might you convert this into something that you can do over time and pick something like a week or a month or something manageable and reasonable that you would actually look at and recount.

(23:35):
And the idea of this is to sense, is there a pattern? Did I even do this thing? And that could be information. No, I didn’t do it. That’s okay. I didn’t want to do it.

(23:46):
And there’s no judgment. We’re just collecting data here. And at the end of this experiment, you do this thing called plus, minus, and not delta. Sorry, voltage control. Plus, minus a next. What’s working? Maybe what’s not working. Given this information, what do I do next in this scenario? And you can recursively regenerate new trackable experiments. So again, in this time, develop an experiment. What’s one of those actions that you came up with and apply some time to it? And maybe how might you check in with yourself? Oh, you know what? I’m going to check in in the morning. I actually do that thing that I said or I’m going to do it before I go to sleep. Or maybe it’s in a moment of work or some habit, some behavior.

(24:42):
So now’s the chatty part. Find a partner. And I think Renita, you maybe shared this earlier, which is this aspect of people are going to be sharing some deep unknown aspects with you. Also, just follow your own boundaries, your own guidelines of what feels intuitive to share. And if somebody’s sharing something really intuitive and authentic with you, hold that. What a beautiful thing to witness. And as a partner, your intention isn’t to like, “Oh wow, that’s amazing. You know what you could do is this. ” You can ask more questions. “Oh, that’s interesting. What do you think of about that? How do you think of applying that? “And I trust we’re in a good room of brilliant facilitators, so we won’t have an issue in that sense. More just guidelines. So we’re going to take 15 minutes, a good chunk of time because we just unearthed a lot of interesting information here.

(25:38):
So at around the seven, eight mark, and I’ll ring a bell because it seems everyone’s Pavlovian in here. That’ll be the cue to switch if you haven’t already. And then I’ll ring the bell again as if somebody won or raced the Olympics and then we’ll come back here.

(26:13):
Just some simple questions. I mean, we went through maybe something that was fairly new for you. Maybe you’re familiar with this type of experience. And I’m just curious, what was that like? The meditation, maybe images, maybe working through these different methods, maybe what felt clear, maybe what didn’t feel clear. It’s totally okay, but both of those are possible. Did anything surprise you?

Speaker 5 (26:37):
I was surprised by two things. I was surprised during the meditation exercise that the sort of answer came to me so clearly. I wasn’t

Speaker 6 (26:46):
Anticipating

Speaker 5 (26:47):
That. And then I moved over to this table for a partner because we’re at odd tables and my partner and I had both explored the same unknown, which was, where should our families move to? Nice. So that was a very weird bit of synergy there in our conversation.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. That’s a wonderful serendipity. Anybody else? Yeah.

Speaker 6 (27:23):
I’m going to make a connection between my experience in the meditation and one of the previous reflections we did in one of the other facilitations, but the question of what’s your heart’s desire. My answer spontaneously came out and I was like, wait, I think I wrote that earlier today. And I had the same answer for the pursuit of joy and wellness. I had to look at my notes and I was like, literally the same words came out. So that was surprising and interesting to me.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Convergence. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s also just how sense making works. It’s like we didn’t just drop into the problem for the first time right now. As this has been building over time and what we’re collecting. Maybe from the perspective of the listener, of somebody else explaining their path, what was that like to experience or maybe what surprised you or what felt intuitive for you and how to respond?

Speaker 7 (28:30):
So I first-

Speaker 1 (28:31):
This table’s going strong.

Speaker 7 (28:33):
All

Speaker 1 (28:33):
These other

Speaker 7 (28:34):
Tables. You have to step your game up. Yes. We are the yes and team.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
Remarkable.

Speaker 7 (28:40):
Yes, Antarctic.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Mark, you’re not allowed to give this table a mic anymore.

Speaker 7 (28:44):
Thank you, Mark. So I think I shared first for a moment and then my lovely partner shared and we both actually came up with a similar visual of how we were looking at ourselves and where we are in time and space and in experience. And then someone that we shared our lives with has a different experience and they’re in a different space and time and pace. And it was very interesting because we both were like, well, we’re out here and our person is over here and we have it come at it from different angles, but the visual of it was the same. So that was really, wasn’t that surprising? I thought that was very cool. So thank you. Cool. I’m going to pass it to someone at my table. Oh my

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Goodness. Oh, thank God.

Speaker 7 (29:45):
We have one over here.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah. Over here. You have one. Yeah, please.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
We’ll

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Come to you next. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
So Jane and I, our unknowns were wildly different, but one of the things that we both really agreed on in general I was supporting ourselves by thinking to ourselves about our unknown in a way that we would maybe talk to a good friend if they were going through that. So we talked about the power of self-talk and how it’s interesting how the nicest people to other people can have really negative self-talk. I mean, I think we all kind of do at some level. And that’s really not fair because we would never say that to someone that we love. So why is it okay for us to say it to ourselves? So we both, even though our unknown was so different, we both really linked up and connected on that concept of, am I actually giving myself a fair shake in the tone that I’m speaking to myself about this?

(30:43):
Probably not. What would I tell a friend or what would I tell somebody that I love? So that was a takeaway for us.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
That’s amazing. Yeah. And there’s a lot of nuance in what you’re sharing. And it’s, God, like the narrative and the language around what our path is and why we could or could not do that and what resists that and how that shapes what we think is even unknown in some way. I want to hear yours after this session, if that’s okay. That’s totally fine. Thank you. So I want to break this down for a second because we kind of just ripped through the exercise. It was quiet, but we were just doing it consistently. The first thing we did was start with personal sensing. Probably no surprise there. And we were looking at our body and our heart and our imagination. And you’ll notice that this really requires slowing down. Sorry, bud.

(31:37):
And deep listening, of which I witnessed you were capable of both. So it’s totally cool. And then we were reflecting and capturing. We were converting things that were inherently ephemeral into something that was structured. So we’re actually taking something that our non-language brain does and moving it into language. And this way we can do something with our analytical brain where we can translate this and synthesize this and come up with patterns and understand what’s emerging for us. We literally do, we let the thinking brain do what it does best. We’ve now given it some material to work with instead of just chatter with itself in a circle.

(32:20):
And then lastly, we were designing a learning experiment. It’s just trackable. And critically, I can’t stress this enough, we are aligning our head, heart, and our hands. Just take that away today. If you just thought I was rambling, just remind yourself of head, heart, and hand. And the beauty is you can just repeat this pattern, the learning keeps going. And so here we have a compass, right? This is our heart. We have a map. This is our head and we have a path because we’ve shaped it to our ability and what’s intuitive for us to walk. It’s not, might be a little scary, but we’ve at least shaped it to a way that we’re invited to go do it. And you might be saying, “Wow, this isn’t so different than most workshops.” And you might be right. We’re just starting somewhere else. It’s like most of the time we ask people to brainstorm, which is a really funny, weird thing when we’re exploring the unknown.

(33:10):
We say, “Hey, use your thinky brain to do some stuff that the thinky brain isn’t going to figure out. ” And so instead, we just use the same structures, but we started somewhere else. We started with the body and the heart and imagination because you can see the rest of it’s just like, cool. We’re generating options. We’re synthesizing those options. We’re discovering patterns. We’re building prototypes out of these things. We just started somewhere else in the body and the heart.

(33:34):
Does this make sense? This is resonating. Yeah. Okay, cool. I think that’s all I wanted. That’s great. I don’t know why. I was like, “I’m going to pause and ask everybody,” but they were like, “Yeah, go for it. ” I was like, “All right, sweet.” I love this quote. This is one of my favorite things. The quality of our sense making equals the quality of our sensing. The quality of our sense making equals the quality of our sensing. If we’re expecting high quality sense making out of ourselves, we need to use all of our senses and we spend … I know I do. I spend most of my time thinking in front of a computer with some AI chat.

(34:20):
And so I know all you are thinking right now. So every time I’m facing the unknown, I should meditate on my refrigerator. Dear God, no, please don’t do that. We should have a refrigerator like branding for this event, at least. I’m going to share a few methods with you. So the first one is what we just experienced. This should be intuitive based on just having gone through it, but it’s simple. We’re breathing and we’re grounding and we’re bringing the challenge to mind and body. We’re not thinking about it, we’re embodying it. That’s not a hard thing. We just have to slow down and be like, “Oh, I’m already feeling these things.” And we shift into our sense of what our heart’s longing is. And if that’s hard for you, I love the reframing of like, what are you hungry for? We experience hunger almost every day, and it’s so much easier, especially if you’re not practiced at asking your heart questions.

(35:14):
And you can reframe that. Well, what’s my heart hungring for? It’s a slightly easier reframe. There’s another thing. If you don’t like meditating and sitting still, you can also move your body. And I’m stealing this from social presencing theater, which is used in theory you to develop at the Presencing Institute at MIT. And it’s an entire suite of embodied practices that you can use to do systems change work and all types of stuff. And I’m doing a real quick abstraction of this one. This is where I wish I had a lav mic.

(35:46):
You can just stand there and say, “What is my unknown situation?” And you can feel it in your body. And it’s kind of like, I don’t know, it’s like this. I don’t even know what the heck this is, but this is what my body is doing. Cool. Okay. And then I’m going to pause. I’m going to say, okay, if this is what my unknown situation is, I’m not going to move to a desired situation. I’m not going to be like, “Ha ha, this is what I want. ” Your brain did that. Don’t do that. I feel this thing and I say, “Oh, this is interesting.” And it’s almost like sitting in a chair uncomfortably for a while. Your body just knows when to move. You don’t think, “Hey, maybe I should move because I’m not getting enough blood flow to my legs.” And then you do that.

(36:32):
It’s like your body just tells you. And so you sit here and you’re like, “Oh, what’s interesting? Oh, oh, I’m feeling … There’s something like standing is easier and actually, oh, whoa, something’s happening. Where is this going? Oh, what do I do with this?

(36:53):
” But this is a very different thing than this. And then you’re doing the same pattern. You’re going to look at those differences and say, “Oh, we can make sense of this. This is a different thing. This might not be the solution, but it’s a different way of relating to this situation.” Where’s my little clicker? The next one. For all the Lego serious play humans out there, this is almost identical. If you’re like, “I don’t want to meditate. I don’t want to use my body weird like you, Chris. I just want to sit at my desk. I’m sure you have a bunch of crap all over your desk and if you’re super organized, get some crap on your desk.” Or you can rip up some pieces of paper and you can scatter them around and just structure like play as if you were a kid building the city of your situation.

(37:40):
What does that look like? How is it structured? What’s stable? Wha’s instable? And maybe move some pieces around. Why would you move that piece specifically? And how would you chart a path through this space differently? So three very different ways to approach something that is more subtle and not thinking first. Okay. So let’s try to apply those. I know we went through those fast and they were abstract. You have at least experienced one of them. And I’ll give you some things to work with here. I’m not going to just throw you into the fray. Again, select a moment of the unknown. You can work with the same one. Actually, it makes more sense to work with a previous one or a future one, I’m going to say. And sketch a plan for how you might engage this concept of whole intelligence, leaning into something you’re not thinking first to develop an authentic path.

(38:33):
And I’m going to give you a few things, right? We have the process. This is what we went over before. These are just some steps. It’s kind of like design thinking, but a little different. And then we have some methods. Just use these or make up your own. You’re like, actually, I do this funny thing when I go and walk my dog that all the answers from my unknown come to me. You’re like, great, just use that dog walking method. We’re going to have a few minutes to digest this. And while you’re answering this, maybe concentrate on these specific questions of like, well, why are you picking this situation to apply it? And maybe you’re not applying it just to yourself, you’re applying it to a group. How might you adapt it to be appropriate for this collective?

(39:35):
If I can bring your attention back here, thank you so much. Yeah, if we could stop the timer and hopefully this remote works. I’m going to do this thing where I trust everything was clear. Everything was amazing. It all worked out perfectly only because we’re nearing the end. So as we were before, you can hop to miro.com/join or use the QR code. And we’ll be answering this question. I’m going to go to the next slide and maybe somebody in charge of slides can click the little QR code button again, the top right. Amazing. We’re going to investigate this question. What’s one thing that’s beginning to emerge for you today? And you could think about this at a personal level. Oh, this is something personal that’s emerging or ooh, these are interesting concepts and practices and maybe this is emerging for me philosophically or conceptually about this.

(40:53):
No right or wrong answer. Truth, failure is not final. More listening to my heart is hungry for the tacos. Just appreciating now, slowing down to the unknown. The real answer is inside of us all along. Trust. Use/listen to your body. Already did some of this work intuitively. Perfect. Unification of my design, emotional and spiritual practices. Thank you for saying that. That’s been the thing I’ve been struggling with most of my life. Convergence. Stretching myself creatively and creating frameworks to do so. I am safe. Beautiful for how everyone’s experiencing this. Being present to what already is. The value of sitting in the unknown longer. Letting the unknown exist without needing to solve it. It’s also a beautiful observation. So often we feel the thrust to do something in the unknown. You’re like, “What if you just sit there? What if you just sit in the unknown for a moment?

(42:04):
If the world’s changing, something will come to you. This is great. I’m going to move forward.” Okay. So the next time you’re in this situation trying to move from A to B and you’re looking for a perfect path, but instead you find yourself in the woods of the unknown. Remember, you have a compass. This is different than a map. Start with a compass.

(42:31):
Start with a compass of your heart, your feelings, your emotions, what’s really you’re yearning for, and then get out the map. Then chart a path. And with that information also into it, what’s reasonable for me to do here? What is my ability? What can my hands achieve in my life? Because this way you can find your authentic path, because the only way through the unknown is the path that you can walk authentically. I wanted to end with a poem from a really good friend, this guy, Kyle Finchem. This guy’s literally in the jungle right now. He’s a great movement practitioner and he’s taught me a lot about how to use the body first and not the mind. And the poem is this. There’s always something to see if you’re listening. There’s always something to hear if you’re looking. There’s always someone to feel if you’re here.

(43:34):
Open your heart, Kyle Finchem. So thank you. Enjoy navigating your path, and I’m very grateful that our paths could merge for a little bit today. See you.

The post Navigating the Unknown with Whole Intelligence appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit, Renita Joyce Smith stepped into the room—and immediately made the room itself the subject. Her session, “The Edge of the Room Is the New Center,” challenged facilitators to stop hiding behind tools, frameworks, and polished agendas, and start asking a more uncomfortable question: how much of you is actually in the room when you facilitate? With warmth, humor, and a gift for meeting people exactly where they are, Renita guided participants through a deep exploration of authentic presence—what it means to be unmasked, why it matters, and how it changes everything.

The Unmasked Facilitator

Renita opened with what she calls her “welcome mat”—a belonging slide that trades the standard resume for a more honest introduction. Oldest daughter (which drew knowing laughs from a specific demographic in the room). Natural introvert. ADHD/autistic. Improv enthusiast. Owner of a famously bougie dog. The point wasn’t to overshare; it was to model something she has tested across years of facilitation work: when a facilitator lets people behind the curtain, the room breathes differently.

She grounded this in a story from early in her career. During an executive retreat, a CFO paused mid-session and shared something raw: “I really just don’t feel like I have the trust of this team.” Renita heard it—and then, with her agenda queued up and her rent payment ringing in her other ear, she kept moving. “Thanks for sharing. Next activity is.” The debrief afterward was polite but flat. They hadn’t gotten to the heart of it. She knew exactly which moment she’d missed.

That experience became a turning point. “From that moment on, I’m going to sense and really be present in what’s around me. And remember that there are humans in the room. Beyond the plan, there are humans there.”

She was careful to draw a clear line around what being unmasked actually means. It isn’t oversharing. It isn’t ignoring what the room needs in favor of performing your own authenticity. What it is: being real enough so the room can be real back. Trusting your instincts. Naming what’s actually happening. And knowing your secret sauce—what Renita calls your “bay leaf in the gumbo.”

The Stage and the Paradox

Midway through the session, Renita sat openly with a paradox she’d wrestled with for days while building it: how do you show up as your full self and hold the room’s wisdom at the center? How do you be the person who facilitates and not just the facilitator?

The answer came from an unlikely source—a glass of whiskey and a rewatch of Hamilton. Renita was captivated not just by the show but by the stage: its turning platforms, its hidden intricacies, its ability to expand and contract around whatever the story demanded. She tracked down the set designer’s interview. David Korins described his task simply: “To create a malleable envelope that could expand and contract to support the story and then stay the hell out of the way.”

Facilitators, Renita offered, are that stage. Not the star of the show—but the carefully designed, responsive container that makes the show possible. The invitation was to build your own stage: a full toolkit of pivots, questions, and moves you can deploy the moment you sense the room shifting. That’s what allows you to be fully present as a human and fully functional as a facilitator—at the same time.

Notice. Name. Invite.

The session’s practical framework was deceptively simple: notice what’s happening in the room, name it out loud, and invite the room to go there with you. Noticing, Renita emphasized, isn’t just reading faces—it’s tracking shifts in language, energy, pacing, and the offhand comment that changes the texture of a moment. Naming means having the courage to say the thing everyone in the room is already feeling: “I’m sensing a shift here—is it just me?” Inviting means opening a door, not issuing a demand: “May I ask you a question? If you’re willing…”

She illustrated what this looks like in practice with a live moment from her own work: a CIO who kept speaking in data and process, with conspicuously little warmth. Renita asked her directly, “Do you like people?” The mask dissolved. The CIO admitted she found the emotional demands of managing people exhausting—and that became the real design brief for the workshop.

Participants then worked through their own versions of this, revisiting moments where something had been missed, writing a headline for that moment, and then rewriting it—what would you have named, and what would you have invited? The tip exchange that followed surfaced a remarkable collection of practical tools the room generated together: “elephant spotting” with actual stuffed elephants on the table; fist-of-five alignment checks done with eyes closed; ten-second pauses that cost nothing and give everything; and the simple reminder that clarity is kindness.

Throughout, Renita returned to the same thread: the facilitators in the room who were showing up most powerfully weren’t the ones with the most polished technique—they were the ones willing to say the real thing, ask the real question, and trust that the room could handle it.

Renita closed with an invitation as much for herself as for the room: we are never finished becoming. The work of showing up unmasked isn’t a destination—it’s a practice that evolves with every room you enter. For a session that challenged facilitators to stop performing and start connecting, Renita modeled exactly what she was asking for. The room, in turn, gave it right back.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Renita’s Session:

Speaker 1:
Let’s give a warm welcome to Renita.

Renita Joyce Smith:
So excited to be here. This is a great space. I was contemplating in the back of the room listening to Dan’s great. Thank you for teeing all of this up amazingly. What I noticed hearing all the conversation, I was like, “Oh, Renita, you get the opportunity to model what you’re talking about today.”
This room is very self-aware. This room is very advanced. I’ve been in a lot of rooms. I’m like, “They’ve got poetry. They singing songs. We doing land agreements. Oh, this is a different type of space.” So, I’m going to invite myself to also pivot in this moment to dance in what we are in this space together. I’m going to copy and paste over Dan’s container and agreements. Is that okay? All in favor, say aye.

Audience:
Aye.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Any opposed? Awesome. The motion carries. Second thing. I love conversation. So, the same energy that you brought to the last session of being able to, I have a thought, here’s how I’m contemplating. I invite that into this session as well. All in favor, say aye.

Audience:
Aye.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Any opposed? Motion carries. Awesome. So, what are we talking about as the edge as a new center? I don’t know if any of you noticed lately, the world’s been interesting lately. We talked about a lot of it in the last session around how are we holding this tension? How are we holding these spaces in different types of ways?
But what I’ve been noticing is that outside of work walls, we’re having these conversations. But when it comes in to the corporate spaces, we clam up. We have to be professional, and the conversation stops. We don’t push ourselves. And so what I’ve been experimenting with over the past few

years is what does it look like to push a room, to be a bit more of myself, to allow others to be more of themselves?
It was a risky gamble because I like to eat and I like nice things. My dog likes his little dog food that has actually little wet dog food. Listen, he’s spoiled and he’s bougie, like his mama. And so it was a gamble and a real risk to show up this way because people are paying me tens of dollars to be in these spaces and in these rooms to facilitate these conversations.
And if I take a gamble by pushing the edge, will I get invited back? Will I have more work? Will I be able to keep doing what I love doing? And I said, “Okay. Let’s give it a whirl.” What I found out is the more that I pushed myself, the more the room opened up. The more conversation got deeper. The more unhinged I was, folks were like, “Oh, my God, we love you, Renita. Come back. Come to my room.” Not that room, come to our… Although any of those invitations, hit me up later on, we’ll talk. Just kidding.

But what I’m setting the context for now is that what we thought before were these edges and being a bit more of a rebel, actually is the re-baseline of what is necessary right now. The world has recalibrated, but we haven’t quite caught up with it just yet. So, the whole purpose of this session right now is to invite you into a recalibration of yourself.
Dan hit on it that to be able to do the work out there, we got to do the work in here. So, in my deep self, I’m going to be inviting you to do the work in here. So, every time that I present, first thing I throw up is a slide. It is called a welcome mat or a belonging slide. There’s usually a wonderful resume or a bio read about me. She was in management consulting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But the real thing is this is who I am. I’m a oldest daughter, which informs a lot of how I… See, I always listen for the laughs in the room because it’s usually the eldest daughters. It informed my sense of responsibility and how I show up. Quiet as it’s kept, I’m naturally an introvert. This takes a little efforting for me to be into personality, to be in an extroverted space.
I’m going to crash when I get home. I tend to be a bit more on the ADHD, autistic side as my therapist is like, “Take this test.” And I was like, “Oh, this explains a lot of things.” But when I lift that up, folks in the room are like, “Actually, I’m neurodivergent as well. Thank you for saying that.” I was feeling odd and quirky, but now to see you doing this, I can show up more in the room too.

In addition, I have a diverse group of friends racially and ethnically. I hang out with pretty much everybody. Now, what this does is two things. I’m let you behind the curtain. I don’t tell my folks this. I’m going to tell y’all this, okay? When I show up into a space, especially when I was doing a lot of DEI work, folks are like, “Here’s the black woman coming and talk about DEI.”

So, to be able to flash this up and say, “There is a whole human with a lot of experiences.” I do improv. I like unicorns, queers, hells. There’s a lot going on right here. It brings my humanity into the space where regardless of whatever ideas they had of me, now I’m telling the real story here of who I am. I’ll tell you, like I tell my folks that are usually in my sessions, if you were to make this, what would be on your slide?

In this moment, I invite that version of you into the room. Not the one with the title, not the one that says facilitator, but who and what is in your collection of background and experiences that make you you? Even the most obscure thing. I do improv and I love it. Folks are like, “Nerd Alert.” I jam out on it, but it’s my secret sauce in spaces, because I can pivot and dance with a room and tell a very corny dad joke every once in a while.

Now, how did I get to this moment? So, a few years ago, I was invited into a room. I had just got my fancy certification and I had executives come to me and say, “We need you to facilitate an executive retreat. We aren’t gelling as a team. We got this whole strategic plan, God help us, that we aren’t rallying around. So, we need to circle back and get alignment and cohesion for the path forward for the organizational goals.”

And I’m like, “Yay, this is going to be great.” So, any great facilitator, I had my slides, I had my exercises, I had my agenda, my session lab was on cue, had my mural queued up. It was great. So, we’re partway through the session, working out all the things, and the CFO says, “I really just don’t feel like I have the trust of this team, and that’s what’s getting in the way.” In that moment, I heard Eric in my ear, “Hold this space.” And in my other ear, I heard my rent payment, “Keep going.”
They didn’t put you here as a therapist. They didn’t ask you to do all this, and I froze. I looked at my session lab, it’s like two seconds before the next activity, and I looked at her and said, “Thanks for sharing. That’s important. Next activity is.” I asked, you debrief on your follow-ups, I was like, “How was the session? Did we get what we need?”

And they said, “Yeah, it was a great session. It was fine.” I was like, “It’s a little bit of a lackluster fine. What’s going on?” They said, “I really don’t think we got to the heart of what’s actually going on.” I knew the exact moment they were talking about because I missed it. I went back and said, “Well, why did you miss that, Renita? Why’d you punk out?” I talk to myself kindly sometimes.

I said, “I was scared of the moment. What if it got out of control and people started crying and rinsing robes and gnashing of teeth? How would I hold that space? I didn’t trust myself in the moment.” So, from that moment on, I said, “Okay. Now on, I’m going to sense and really be present in what’s around me. And remember that there are humans in the room. Beyond the plan, there are humans that are there.” And that brings me to the whole thesis of our time today, which is, what does it really mean to be unmasked?

It’s a cute word. Be yourself, be real, be authentic. What the hell does that mean? Especially when this has our money involved, our credibility, all these things. And then we say the V word, be vulnerable, which is a hot topic now. But what does it truly mean to show up as the person who facilitates and not as the facilitator?

I struggled with this topic a bit and really wanted to explore what the difference between what unmasked is and what unmasked isn’t. So, I’ll start first with what it isn’t. It isn’t oversharing or making it about you, but it’s a fine line because I know I just showed y’all a slide that was all about me. But it served a purpose of setting the container and the framing for the room.
Unmasked also isn’t ignoring the room’s needs in order for you to be authentic. If you haven’t noticed, I have a personality. I love the knot there. Thank you. Now, this personality has a dial setting. If I’m showing up into a stiff room, I’m not coming out to Shut Up and Dance

With Me. Maybe. But I can dial that in based off of the setting on where I am for what the room needs in the moment.
Also, unmasked doesn’t mean performing personality for its own sake. You may easily come in here and say, “Renita, you got a lot going on. I’m more reserved. I’m more quiet, more pensive and thoughtful.” There’s room for that in here. Show up that way bec

ause people who are like, “This is too much,” want you instead in the room and your fullness of yourself that’s there.
Last but not least, it’s not abandoning your role as a container holder and getting caught up in the drama of the moment. I can’t believe you just said that. Well, what do you think about that? Well, let’s stir the pot some more for stirring the pot’s sake versus stirring the pot in a very responsible way. So, if we talk about what it isn’t, let’s now talk about what it is.
What unmasked actually is, is being real enough so the room can be real back. Someone was mentioning at the end of the last session, I was like, “Y’all can come up here and teach my own session here.” Being able to name what’s happening in a moment. I did that earlier. I got to pivot some things because y’all are smart and thoughtful.

I can be real enough to say that in front of y’all and know that that’s what’s happening right now. It also means trusting your instincts, and we’ll talk about that a lot, that intuition. There’s going to be some other speakers today talking about, and Chris is talking about whole intelligence.

What are these signals in your body that’s giving you information about what’s happening in the room? That’s letting down these barriers and these guards and saying, “Let me really be present and embodied in this whole space.” And then you layer on top of that, “What is your secret sauce? What’s your style?”

I tell people, “What’s your bay leaf in the gumbo? How are you seasoning it up beyond the salt and pepper?” Please use more than salt and pepper. Thank you. There’s garlic powder. Tony Chachere’s has got a whole league in the spice aisle. What else are you adding to the food, to the moment to bring your own style?

So, when I’m introducing you to these concepts, I’m curious now pivoting it to the room. What are some of your thoughts when you think about being masked versus unmasked? What’s coming up for you as we’re exploring this concept? Yes.

Audience:
Just as of December, I’m starting my own business. I’m a freelance graphic designer. Thank you. It’s terrifying. I’m really balancing what you’re talking about right now, but specifically the word professionalism. I have to bring a level of professionalism. I have 10 years of expertise. I know that I can do the work, but how do I show up in a way that just frankly shows my human, my whole self?

The way that it’s showing up for me right now is that I’m not really interested in showing up in semi-business wear, just reminding people that I am human, and trying to find those intersections within conversation where we can remind one another that we are in this human struggle together.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Okay. Let me ask, what have you tried so far?

Audience:
Besides how I show up clothing-wise, I’m not good at small talk, but I’m practicing it more so that those as inroads to find the meat of conversations and things that we have in common. If somebody really passionately cares about something, that’s something I gravitate to and letting that drive the conversation.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Yes. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing that. I’m a coach at heart and a sage, so may I invite you into a coaching moment?

Audience:
Sure.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Awesome. More of an advisor moment, actually. Something that really helps, and you touched on two things; clothing and small talk. Clothing is a small act of rebellion, and usually just enough to crack it open to begin to say, “Well, that was safe. What else can I do?” We need those moments of safety and experimentation to give us more information than, “Oh, this actually is safe. This jacket is a whole choice.”

The first time I wore it, I was like, “We going to see what happens.” The feedback I got was like, “Girl, it’s a cute jacket. That’s cute. I like this.” Data then told me I don’t have to show up in a black blazer, in black slacks, in a white t-shirt. I can do this and it’d be okay. So, you’re experimenting to get more data, which is amazing.

A quick thing on the small talk. I don’t do it either. But I have a pocket of questions that I ask that’s not about weather and sports because I mess up sports so bad. I’m like, “So, did they get the goal in the hole of the…” No. But I have three questions. What’s bringing you joy right now? What’s alive in you lately? What are you curious about?
Still small talk, but it has substance that’s there so you can experiment with that. Thank you for sharing. What else is coming up when we were talking about masks and unmasked? Yes. I got you friend. I don’t think you could. Breathe, honey. You’re good.

Audience:
I’m a new mother, I have a one-year-old, so something I’ve been doing… Thanks. Something I’ve been doing, especially with my online meetings, is being honest when I have a little kid running around and crying, and I’ll bring them on camera before I even start and be like, “Hey, this is Shiloh. Shiloh, say hi.” I just take the mask off. I’m like, if I seem distracted, I am.

The other thing I’ve been doing, especially with my online meetings, my neurodiversity makes it really hard to have meetings with my camera on and I’ll call that out. I’ll say, “I’m turning my camera off because I’m neurodiverse and this helps me get through my agenda more focused way.” And people really respond well to that and they’ve pulled me aside after and been like, “Thank you for saying that. I love that.”

Renita Joyce Smith:
Absolutely. I’ll meet you right there. Thank you for sharing. And the cool thing here again, listen to the data in response. People responded back and said, “Thank you for sharing that.” People are craving. Please be real because they’re being real, real on the TV and the tickety toks. They’re being real.

And now I got to show up on a Zoom screen and act like everything is okay? That I also don’t have kids screaming in the background and a partner popping in here asking me random questions when they know I’m on a call? Life is happening. And when we can acknowledge that life is happening, we stop gaslighting ourselves.

So, as facilitators, how can you reduce that as well to not gaslight your folks of everything is fine, everything is okay when you can feel in the room it is not. What else is coming up if it’s talking about mask versus unmasked on this side of the room? Yes. I got you. Go ahead. Let me obey up here. Let me …

Audience:
I think there’s a tension between being, if you’re a people leader, you probably have a lot of ambition and motivation and ideas and things like that, that gave you fuel to get where you are and lead people. But at the same time, if you’re a facilitator, then it’s the opposite.

Now you’re just a container, you’re trying to help other people take the spotlight and think and collaborate. So, then there is a tension where depending on your personality type, you’re masking your internal desire to participate directly or insert yourself or whatever.

And so you’re having to occupy two spaces simultaneously, where you are cognizant of the goal and you’re cognizant of your own ideas, but you’re also trying so hard to be present with people and sensitive to them. It’s hard to be in your head with your thoughts and in their space with their thoughts simultaneously.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Very much so. So, my coaching question for you, you don’t have to answer in this moment, unless you would like to, what would it look like for you to hold both at the same time and not see a separation, but collapse it into one identity? The facilitator that holds the room with experience, ideas, vision, and all the things, what would it look like to hold both?

Audience:
That’s hard to answer because I think when it’s happening, for me anyway, I don’t know about other people’s experiences of this. But I think sometimes we are in a flow state where we are holding both, but in such state, we’re not aware maybe. We would need someone else to tell us like, “Wow, you held both,” or whatever.

But then in a state of suddenly becoming aware of these two different levers that you’re supposed to be pulling at the same time, then there can be a lot of insecurity about whether you’re doing it successfully. Oh, no, I went too far in my direction. Maybe I made someone feel alienated. There’s so much insecurity in the gap whenever you’re aware of these two people you’re supposed to be at the same time.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Oh, great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that in. We’re going to actually work through this. How many of you identify with what she just said of holding two identities at the same time? Yes. Thank you for being honest. We’re not alone, sis. Me and you.

The thing that happens, and there is a term within coaching and psychology, it is being able to examine what is the limiting belief that’s in my head right now? I say collectively, let me take the belief out of my backpack and say, “The story I’m telling myself is that I have to be two different people and switch back and forth between the facilitator and the professional/people leader.”

We get to ask ourselves, “Is that true? Do I actually have to choose? Have there been moments where I’ve been in this flow state and not had to choose? What did that look like?” That’s how we can begin to dismantle the narratives that keep us masked of, I can’t do that because. Well, is it actually true? And most of the time it’s not.

But I also am very much aware that there is a paradox. I sat with this for days working on this slide. I’m like, “Renita, you’re saying two different things.” One, to show up in your fullness of yourself and also to be able to hold the room and let the room be in its own wisdom. How do you navigate and choose what you’re doing at any given moment?
I was like, “Well, wait a minute. I don’t want to do too much that way, because then I hear Eric in my ear.” You stay with me often. “And then I don’t want to go too much the other way because then you miss the moment. So, what do you do?”
So, I had a glass of whiskey one night and I had on… Yes. This little musical you may or may not have heard of, it didn’t really make a splash. It’s called Hamilton. I sat there and I was looking at the stage in the moment where Angelica was like, “Rewind, rewind, rewind.” I was like, “This stage is doing the Lord’s work.”

I kept watching, so the stage turned. If you haven’t seen Hamilton, let me paint you a picture. It looks like this, just two floors, wooden planks, but there’s so many hidden intricacies within this stage. It turns, the dancers are using the furniture on the stage on the world turns upside down. They’re turning tables and chairs and Lafayette is jumping off of the tables. And the stage is in service of the show. And as great AUDHD goes, I go in to say, “Who was the set designer? And there has to be an interview.”

I want to know what made him create the stage in this way? There’s always an answer in the bush. So, David said, “My task was to create a malleable envelope that could expand and contract to support the story and then stay the hell out of the way.” He built a container that could push and pull and be flexible, so that the actors on that stage could then be able to use it into its fullest capacity.

So, you may say, “Renita, great story. How does this apply to me?” As facilitators, what is your stage that you have built? What is your bag of tricks in your containers you can pull out at any given moment to say, “Hey, the room needs this. I sense something.” Here is a pivot. Here is a question. You walk in and folks may not think, “Oh, you have a whole agenda,” but they might not be knowing how you are pivoting in the middle because you have a whole stage of things that’s available to you.

What we’re about to do in a second here, I want to invite you to explore something, so we can really begin to talk about how we can push our own selves. I love the concepts of experiments. When I’m coaching clients, a lot of times I’m inviting them/telling them to say, “Hey, let’s go try this new behavior.” And a lot of times resistance pops up because it’s like, “Well, wait, if I try that, then I’m changing my whole personality,” and our nervous systems and our brains are like, danger, danger, danger. We don’t know. We don’t trust this.

So, what an experiment allows us to do is to try it on for size. Do I like this? Let me get some information. Let me see how the world responds to it. In the book, Holding Change by Adrienne Maree Brown, Inca Mohamed has this quote, “Learning and experimenting with new approaches is key to keeping the excitement and passion alive as you walk into a room.” When was the last time you experimented with something as a facilitator? I see it all the time. When have you tried a new activity?
At the same time, keeping it alive for yourself answers the question of the paradox. “To trust that the people in the room have the answers and be mindful that my job is to not get in the way, but to facilitate the surfacing of those answers.” So, my experimentation is to have as many ways as possible to allow those answers to surface in a room.

So, I’m going to turn this now to you. I have talked enough, my dear friends. In front of you, there is a handout on your tables. It should look like this. Pass it around. If you don’t have one, my friends will come and find you and give you one. We’re going to start on the side that says, “Me unmasked.”

Speaker 4:
If you don’t have one, raise your hand.

Renita Joyce Smith:
You told me to ask that. You did. I’m sorry. If you don’t have one, raise your hand. So, here’s what I’m going to invite you to do. I mentioned I’m a teacher at heart, and someone mentioned also wanting to go back analog. There’s a lot of power in having people write things down tangibly.

So, doing a mix of both technology and also allowing people to write is a tool in your toolbox. So, start on the side that says, “Me unmasked.” At the top, you will see how much of you is in your facilitation. You’re going to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10.
One, they don’t know my name. I’m showing up as a figure on a stage. 10, I’m all the way live. This is me, Greatest Showman style. You’re going to rate yourself. And then I invite you to reflect on three questions. Why that number? What would make you the next number up? So, if you rated yourself a five, what would a six look like? And then the last piece of what is holding you back from beginning that next number?

So, we’re going to play some nice music for about four minutes here, and we’re going to go into a pair share afterwards, but just stay in this moment and I’ll lead you to what happens next.

All right, my friends. As we bring it on back, I am here for all of this conversation. It is delightful and yummy. I want to hear what came up for y’all. So, I would love to invite three shares, one from this side of the room, a middle, and I’m going to mose my way on down that way, so get your minds right.

I’ll allow you to choose your own adventure. Share either what came up for you during this contemplation and conversation, any net new awarenesses or aha moments. So, I’m going to start down or my friends are going to start down there. I’m going to stay put like y’all told me too. Yes.

Audience:
This may be more of a question for you.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Absolutely.

Audience:
I gave myself an eight, but as in the discussion, we talked about it being a refined civilized eight versus silly, goofy 10. And so I pull myself into a professional grownup version of myself instead of the curt, silly, goofy tend that I could be in a room, but the room probably doesn’t need that.

Renita Joyce Smith:
That is a really good… So, I toy with this often, so thank you for saying this. I often talk about authenticity and vulnerability being a ladder, and figuring out where you are on the ladder at any given time. A lot of times we think of that authenticity as going from zero to 100. Nobody wants that. It’s exhausting.

It is, if you’re at the eight, what does the texture of the nine look like? And even having a net new ladder and a scale for professional settings. My brunch 10, nobody wants to see that. It’s a hoot and a half. I will get fired. I will get fired. But my professional 10 has a little bit more unleashed in it. Depending on the crowd, I might throw out a million dollar word here and there that’s in the other side of the dictionary to wake people up a bit.

I said hell earlier. That is scooching towards the professional 9, 10. Another part too is if you do have a bit more of an unhinged personality, I set that tone with whoever is writing the check at the beginning. Do you know who I am? They call me a velvet hammer. My personality is a secret sauce. I’m going to push the room with it.

I might say a couple of things here and there, do y’all have the tolerance for that? Pause for response. So, no one is surprised by you showing up as the 9 or 10, but figuring out what that looks like for you. Thank you for that share. Moving towards this part of the room. Yes. Behind you.

Audience:
Yeah. I’m really glad you brought up the whole topic of the person writing the check. So, if the person writing the check really indeed in their heart want their team to get better, or they’re just checking the boxes say it’s the annual retreat, let’s bring somebody in and entertain.

I think in those early calls where you’re actually vetting the person hiring you, then say, “If you really want to get here, your competition got here. We can get you here. It’s going to be uncomfortable potentially for you and your managers. Are you okay with that?” And then we can calibrate this session to actually get you there.

So, I think a lot of times that conversation that what is the sponsor really willing to allow you to do? In that case, then you can actually zoom in on what you want to do and then scale up and get to your 10.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Absolutely. I will even invite you to push that further and talk about what uncomfortable looks like.

Audience:
Yes.

Renita Joyce Smith:
You’re uncomfortable and my uncomfortable, wildly different. Sometimes what they’re imagining is uncomfortable really isn’t the thing that’s uncomfortable. So, being able to paint it out in almost explicit detail of, I’m going to ask these types of questions and I’m going to want you to also answer in the room. Are you okay with that?

This is what’s going to happen. I have almost a mini coaching session with them. The fact that people keep hiring me is wild. I talked to one CIO and again, this is all on that spectrum of being unmasked. And some of the answers she was giving me, and I’m like, “I’m going to be real honest with you. Can I be honest and ask you just a real question? Do you like people?”
She looked at me, she’s like, “Renita, what?” I said, “I am just, look, it’s in my head. Do you like? Because I’m hearing a lot of process and data. Do you actually like managing people?” I saw her mask begin to dissolve and she was like, “Actually, no. I hate this part of my job. It’s so many feelings that are involved and personalities. It’s too much.”

Then we got to the heart of the session of actually we’re going to work on that. How can this team be able to flex and talk to each other in ways that bring in emotion, but also hold the data in the process? But because daring to ask the real questions and stay in the container, you can actually design the workshop that’s really needed, not the one that they signed up for on the paper. But it’s risky in doing it.

Thank you for bringing that in. What else came up for this exercise?

Rob:
So, we were talking and it actually just came up. I was talking to Stephanie and we were sharing back and forth and I had written myself down as an eight and it was this insight at the very end of our conversation that I thought about. I think what would be very interesting with this exercise is if there was a second line.

The second line is, what do these three people who you work with very closely, what number would they give you? Because my number was an eight, but I think a lot of those people would be like, “Well, Rob’s like a three or a four.” And so I think it’s our perception and how people perceive us. And is that an opportunity for us to think more broadly about what we could do differently?

Renita Joyce Smith:
May I ask you a follow-up question?

Rob:
Sure.

Renita Joyce Smith:
If the folks around you did rate you a three, what do you think that they’re seeing that make you a three?

Rob:
I think they would say that Rob, I look at it as myself managing… Someone had said it earlier on, making sure that we introduce as much of ourselves as needed for the intended outcome of the session. It’s not egregious. And so I look at it as I’m managing, I’m introducing myself, but I have the service of what we’re trying to do here together in mind. I think they would just say I’m just too closed up. They see me in other contexts and they’re like, “That’s not you all the time.”

Renita Joyce Smith:
Interesting. Thank you for sharing that. So, what Rob noted here is there are two parts of this process. We talked about phase one, staying in the container and being the human in the room. There’s this other phase two of actually doing the session where we can’t turn ourselves off there. So, what does it now begin to look like?

These aren’t revolutionary practices that I’ve named here, but it’s three of them. Each facilitator across these two days is going to probably double click in my consulting language into each of these as the techniques and tools for how to do it. But again, I’m bringing into the identity of who you are. So, three things that I invite you to. When you’re in phase two, now you’re actually in the session.

What are you noticing? What are you naming, and what are you inviting? So, within the room, what are you noticing as the energy of the room? I’m noticing various levels of folks varying contemplation. Some folks the caffeine has worn off. Some people are like, “What’s she going to do next?” And so I’m paying attention to the pulses that are here and responding as such.

And then it comes to being able to name it, to actually say the thing out loud, I’m noticing this and then inviting a pivot. So, let’s dig into these a little bit more. So, when we notice something, we tend to just look at maybe one or two pieces of data, faces, or if there is awkward silence because no one is answering your questions. But what else is available to your senses for you? If we turn on our bodies, what else begins to be in the space that we notice?

Whether it’s something that someone said, was there a shift in language? Did somebody make an offhand comment where they’re just being disruptive, or are they not? How do we notice really what’s happening in these textures of the moment while still holding our agenda, but at the same time, being able to say, “Something is afoot here.” Good, bad, or indifferent. This is just not a negative circumstances.

Sometimes the room is so locked in and zoned in and buzzing, you allow them more time, but what are you picking up by being present in the moment? And in addition to that, the next step is you back in your humanness, what can you say out loud to put a label on it, to put words to what you have noticed? What does that look like for you?

Sometimes it could be I’m sensing a shift in the room. Is it just me? I noticed when you just said that, I want to pause right now and really give that some space. I’m noticing we might need to take a little break and do an energizer because the energy is dipping. But being okay with noticing and naming it out loud and some facilitators are like, “I can’t actually say the thing that I’m seeing.”

Well, guess what? Everybody out here is seeing it and feeling it too. So, you can be the person that says, “I’m feeling a little bit of a pivot here. Can y’all rock with me?” So, having something in your tool belt that will allow you to be able to name it in your own personal style.

And last but not least, it is to invite. It’s one thing to notice and name, but the wheels fall off the bus in inviting. I don’t know how to ask the person. What if they feel like I’m picking on them? You’ve noticed how I’ve done it here. May I ask you a question? If you’re willing, can you tell me more? I would like to pause here. Are you okay with that? What does it like for you to invite someone to expand on a moment in a space?

So, what we’re going to do next is on the back of said handout that you just had, in true facilitator style, there’s more contemplation here. So, I want you to think about a facilitation experience you’ve had that may not have gone the way that you wanted it to go, or you could have went deeper into the moment.

If you’re like, “Renita, I haven’t had a facilitation moment. I just got here. I still have fresh ink on my facilitator badge.” Think about a meeting you had, or a conversation with a friend, a loved one, a coworker. Those are also facilitated moments when you might have missed something.

So, if you were to revisit that, I want you to think of a headline of the moment. I was in the C-suite meeting. Someone said there was lack of trust. I missed it. With that, what did you notice and what didn’t you name? This is teaching us how to be very explicit and hone our senses.

And now we get to rewrite history. That second row says, how would you name it now and how would you invite? So, we get to create tools in our toolbox. And then those last two boxes we’re going to save for a moment. So, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to give y’all about four minutes here to write this out.

And then in the spirit of there being collective wisdom in the room, we’re going to have a round two of a table share, and I’m going to give you instructions there. So, get your minds right, you’re going to be talking some more. But for first, about four minutes while we have the experience playing and really lean in to this, because you will be sharing. Let it be messy. There are no wrong answers. And go.

Okay. Now we’re going to do a bit more of a complex facilitated exercise, but I trust this room to be able to handle it. Yes? All in favor? Any opposed? Wonderful. Motion passes. I need one volunteer from each table to raise your hand. One volunteer from each table. As you all look at each other like, “You knew, not me.” Thank you. One volunteer each table.
We got someone, we got some holdouts in the draft. There we go. Here’s what’s about to happen. We’re doing two rounds. First round, you as table captain are going to help facilitate this. It’s a low lift. Each person is going to go around. Give your two-second headline of the moment. This is not War and Peace. Well, back in 1960.

Picture it. Sicily. No. I was in a room. I facilitated a team. Someone said X headline. You’re going to say what you noticed, and then what you’d name now and what you’d invite. So, how would you invite and how would you name it? 90 seconds per person, probably less than that. Table head, if folks are giving War and Peace, do this.
If you’re their neighbor, you can invite to gentle. May I touch you?

Audience:
Yeah.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Hey. Okay. We’re going to do a little bit of speed round around the table. This is not a crosstalk moment. Just going to listen to each person’s share. When your whole table has gone around, I need the table captain to raise your hand, so I know that y’all are done, okay? Any questions? And go.

Okay, my friends. In the spirit of true facilitator style, I’m going to also pivot because I’m very nosy. I want to hear some of the tips in the room. So, this is going to be a little bit of a two-parter. This is now going to be the tip exchange. So, this first round, you heard each other’s stories, what they would do. You probably heard some things that was like, “That’s a good idea. I’m going to steal that.”

This is the only situation you have permission to steal. So, there’s a whole box in that lower left-hand corner on tips I’m stealing. What did you hear that stood out on pivots, on naming, on inviting? I want to hear as a room, some tips that you talked about and how you would name, notice, invite that came up at your table that you might have even shocked yourself of like, “I’ve never had that in me.” What came up for you?

Let’s just share this wisdom. I’m going to start down here this time. Yes. I heard great stories, I know y’all got tips.

Audience:
I’m going to share one. It’s elephant spotting.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Tell me more.

Audience:
So, a lot of people talk about the elephant in the room. No one really wants to talk about it. There’s an opportunity ahead of time though with your sponsor, with the group that you’re going to be spending time with. And it’s like, let’s surface some of those things that no one really wants to talk about. And maybe there’s opportunity to surface those.

Renita Joyce Smith:
I’m immediately stealing that. It’s going to be a whole elephant. I see a whole poster. The elephant. Yes. Great tip. Thank you.

Audience:
To lead on that, I actually make little flags out of a chopstick and a thing that would be, in that case, would be like elephant. So, it could just be on the table and we talk about it and set it up, so that someone can actually just pick up the flag and go like that. Like you name the things and you bring it forward and then you give people tools to nim them in the moment.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Fantastic tip. What I love about these both, it’s both tangible and tactile, where you account for all personality types; the shy ones, the outspoken ones. The little popsicle stick, it’s fantastic. What else?

Audience:
Can I just build on that idea?

Renita Joyce Smith:
Absolutely. Build away.

Audience:
I’ve heard this idea, but then literally with stuffed animal elephants at the table. And so you can grab the elephant. Instead of the flag, you could have actual physical elephants.

Renita Joyce Smith:
I’m going on Amazon or whoever we support nowadays. Yes. Getting actual. Hi.

Audience:
I think, forgive me, I didn’t catch your name.

Noel:
Noel.

Audience:
Noel mentioned, can we pause? I’m horrible at it. I’m a maximalist in my agendas. We’re slamming. We’re getting shit done. When you said, “Can we just pause for a moment?” I haven’t asked a team to just stop and breathe in years. That’s just my jam. So, that was really refreshing.

Renita Joyce Smith:
And are you willing to incorporate that?

Audience:
Oh, heck yeah. Absolutely. 100%.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Thank you. So, what’s cool about that too is the level of self-awareness as facilitators we have to have of, I know I do this a lot. I might need to incorporate a new tool in my tool. I can imagine your sessions are gangbusters, man.
The pause is a gift for all humanity. Let’s just take a beat and an inhale and an exhale. See, that’s how you do it. You’re doing it great. It was only 10 seconds. You’re still on agenda. Yes. What else do we have? Oh, we’re volunteering, voluntelling someone. Here. I love the collective wisdom. You.

Audience:
We talked about this idea of that when somebody is quiet, you can interpret that as that they disagree. We have a new leader, a new CEO in our company, and the way that whenever we’re making a decision or discussing something, he says, “Show your hands.”

If you show five fingers, it means I emphatically agree. Four means I agree, but can we tune or fine tune this a little bit? Three means I’m skeptical. I need some convincing. And basically two and one is I’m not with you. And then you can have a discussion about the, why not? And then a decision can be made, but you can disagree and commit and everybody had the chance to weigh in to buy in.

Renita Joyce Smith:
How have your sessions changed by doing that?

Audience:
One thing is it’s become playful because first for all, are we throwing on three, or two, or four? It’s like rock, paper, scissors. But sometimes you realize that you have alignment and you can move on. You don’t have to dwell on it. And so sometimes it helps you move faster.

It’s also been surprising that sometimes there’s misalignment on things that seem trivial and it would be easy to blow by it. But if you have two people that aren’t there, it’s good to identify it and take the extra moment to understand it and try to work through it.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing. Also in the pocket. What else came up? These are getting juicier as you progress. New friend here.

Audience:
Hi. I have to share with the idea of the stuffed elephant. I have used stuffed worms, stuffed rats, and it’s about going in a wormhole or a rat hole. You can literally throw them across the room. I had four of them with a group of 25 people recently and they loved it, and it caused this big giggle in the middle of the whole conversation. It’s really awesome.

Renita Joyce Smith:
But that wasn’t professional. But amazing. What I’ve loved all these shares progressively is that no one stormed out of the room and said you’re fired, right? Anyone say you were fired? Popsicle stick, anyone say you were fired? Elephant, anyone say you were fired? No. Aha, there’s a theme. Let’s keep going this way. Yes.

Audience:
So, just listening to everyone in our group, I was pulling out themes of what’s similar in everyone’s unique little secret sauce. And really, the two main themes came up and one was just clarity is kindness. So, clear and direct. Naming it. Using those I statements of like, “I noticed this, I did this,” or, “I want clarity on this.”

And then the second part is how do you follow up with a probing question or more of an honest and curious question. So, really utilizing your inquiry mindset to approach and pivot in the conversation.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Absolutely. And being able to have a basket full of questions in your pocket is the greatest thing. You find out how many people don’t ask questions when you start asking them, like, “Oh, that’s a good question.” I know. I Googled it before I got here.” It was great. So, being in that appreciative inquiry is a fantastic tip. One more.

Audience:
I have one. I just want to respond to the fist of five, not the energy one, but the alignment one. I wonder what would happen if you did it, where people closed their eyes and they put it up? And then maybe you have them open their eyes so they’re not influenced by other people’s decisions and they saw, or just keep it anonymous the whole time. And then you can see as a facilitator, that’s data for you to see where the alignment is.

Renita Joyce Smith:
In my pocket.

Audience:
Yeah. I’m stealing that for sure.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Fantastic. Thank you. So, then thank you for all of the tips here. And as you’re going into lunch and at your tables, reflect back on each other’s stories and say, “This may be a good moment here or that’s a really good idea. This doesn’t have to stop here.”
So, any good facilitator, I always ask, what are our curiosities, our questions? What’s still sticky, if anything, in your mind that you want to bring into the room? I invite a bold soul that’s like, “Renita, I got questions.” Oh, yes.

Audience:
A curiosity that I’ve been thinking about is navigating what the potential client hired you for. Which is, at least in my experience, it’s often they want something practical, they want a final product, they want something tangible. But often I find myself leaning of the intangible things and that balance between what the client is paying you for, and meeting that goal or that expectation. And really holding that container of surfacing what is actually happening or what the group actually needs in that moment. So, it’s a question. I don’t have an answer.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Yes. I invite others during break to also come and add to the wisdom. One thing that’s worked for me is the ability to hold both. So, there’s a duality. Your discovery meeting is your gold session. So, you take everything they want to happen and you give the good old improv, yes and this is also what you’re going to get. It becomes your differentiating factor.
Other facilitators are going to come up here and probably give you a workshop out of a box. I’m going to also feel what’s in the room and pivot in the moments and really dig in deep. You’re still going to get a framework, a report out, and a whole coach in the moment. So, it is a gift and a benefit, not just, you want this? I’m going to give you this. How can you be a partner in it?

That becomes that secret sauce there. Fantastic curiosity. I see a hand. Did that help answer? Yes. Oh, he’s writing. Okay. It was a good answer then. Yes. Oh, did you have a hand? Oh, I’m with you. Yes. Yes. Any other questions or curiosities to bring into the room? Yes, please. One over here.

Audience:
If you are still in the process of unmasking, what is the best way to accelerate that? To really determining who you are unmasked.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Can I give you a secret?

Audience:
Please.

Renita Joyce Smith:
We never stop being in the process. I have asked my therapist this consistently. When am I done becoming? Can I became? Have I be’d yet? I have racked my brain on this. There is no destination unless you’re probably in a crematorium or a casket. But that also becomes the fun part of you get to discover net new pieces of yourself. We don’t spend time in our curiosity and wonder of ourselves. We want to rush to the final product.

I want to be the best facilitator now. But we were talking about patience earlier and how we can be impatient, and it’s allowing the process to move through you. I tried some stuff up here today. I’m like, “We’re going to debrief myself on that later on. How did that go?” But that is also the unmasking and it becomes its own adventure and you’re never done.
When you stop doing it, that’s when you get concerned because it gets stale. Fantastic. So, in true fashion, we have a question for you on the miro join here, le QR code. The question for you is going to be, what is your secret sauce? And then what’s one aspect of your unmasked self that you’re bringing in? Is it your contemplation? Do you like to tell a dad joke? Are you going to bring in a pause, Eli?

Eli:
I’m going to try.

Renita Joyce Smith:
Let them breathe. Are you going to ask, tell me more? What’s going to be your secret sauce? As I see some of these come in, and as we talk about sauce, I want to thank you for allowing me to be in my secret sauce today. I hope that the lunch is saucy as we go to it next. I’m around for questions, conversations. Thank you so much for having me, and turning this back to our Master of Ceremonies.

The post The Edge of the Room Is the New Center appeared first on Voltage Control.

In March 2026, Voltage Control was granted the HLC Short-Term Credential Provider Endorsement by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) — the same accrediting body that evaluates hundreds of colleges and universities across the United States.

I want to tell you what that actually means, why we pursued it, and why I think it matters — not just for Voltage Control, but for anyone making decisions about where to invest in professional development.

Let me start with the problem this solves

The professional training market is enormous and almost entirely unregulated in terms of quality. Anyone can call themselves a training provider. Anyone can issue a certificate. There’s no equivalent of a building inspector, no independent body showing up to check whether what’s being taught is actually rigorous, whether the organization running the program is operationally sound, or whether the credentials being issued mean anything at all.

For individual learners, this creates a real dilemma. You’re being asked to invest time, money, and professional credibility into programs you have to evaluate almost entirely on faith, based on testimonials, brand recognition, and the provider’s own claims about their quality.

For enterprise L&D buyers, it’s even harder. When you’re recommending a training investment to your organization, procurement wants to know: how do we know this is legitimate? What’s the third-party validation? What happens if this turns out to be vaporware?

For a long time, we’ve answered that question the same way most providers do: with client logos, testimonials, and the strength of our reputation. That’s not nothing. Our alumni include leaders from Google, IBM, Nike, Autodesk, SAP, Cisco, and hundreds of other organizations. But reputation is still self-reported. I wanted something better.

Reputation is self-reported. I wanted something better.

What the HLC endorsement actually is

The Higher Learning Commission has been accrediting colleges and universities since 1895. When you think about what makes an institution’s degree legitimate, why a hiring manager trusts a credential from one school and not another, HLC is a significant part of that answer for institutions across the United States.

A few years ago, HLC recognized that the world of learning was changing. Short-term credentials, professional certifications, bootcamps, and workforce training programs were growing fast, and learners had no reliable way to know which ones were worth pursuing. So they created the Credential Lab, an innovation hub specifically focused on evaluating and endorsing short-term credential providers.

The endorsement they offer isn’t a membership fee or a badge you buy. It’s an independent evaluation. HLC’s Credential Lab reviewed Voltage Control against rigorous criteria for quality, reliability, and operational soundness before granting the endorsement.

It applies to us as a provider, meaning it’s a statement about the organization and how we operate, not just about one course. And it has to be renewed. We’re not a once-and-done. We maintain an ongoing relationship with HLC and will go through a renewal process before the current endorsement cycle concludes in March 2028.

Why we pursued it

Honestly? Because I think facilitation skills deserve to be treated with the same rigor as any academic discipline, and I wanted to put our money where our mouth is.

We talk a lot about the importance of quality; in how we design our programs, in the standards we hold our instructors to, in the feedback loops we build into every cohort. The HLC endorsement is a way of saying: we’re not just claiming this internally. We’re willing to have it verified externally.

There was also a practical dimension. As we’ve grown and especially as we’ve moved into enterprise training and AI transformation programs, we increasingly work with organizations that have real procurement requirements. Legal teams, L&D directors, and procurement committees want documentation. They want to know that the provider they’re recommending has been evaluated by someone other than themselves.

The HLC endorsement gives them that. It’s a recognized, independent signal that travels well in institutional contexts, such as higher education partnerships, enterprise procurement processes, and government contracts. It’s the answer to ‘how do we know this is legitimate?’ before the question even gets asked.

It’s the answer to ‘how do we know this is legitimate?’ before the question even gets asked.

What this means for our learners

If you’ve completed a Voltage Control certification or you’re considering one, here’s what I want you to know:

1. The credential you earn is backed by an independent endorsement from one of the most respected accrediting bodies in U.S. higher education. It’s not a participation trophy.
2. When a hiring manager, an institution, or a procurement team asks about your credential, there’s now a verifiable public record. HLC lists endorsed providers on their website. Anyone can check.
3. For practitioners working in or with higher education institutions, this matters especially. Our credentials now speak a language those institutions recognize and respect.

I’m also aware that many of our alumni already hold impressive credentials from top institutions. The HLC endorsement isn’t trying to compete with your MBA or your PhD. It’s a signal that the facilitation and innovation skills you’ve built with us have been evaluated by the same world that issued those credentials.

What this means for organizations investing in their teams

Enterprise L&D is full of decisions made under uncertainty. You’re trying to build capability in your organization, and you’re betting on providers you can’t fully evaluate from the inside. The HLC endorsement is designed to reduce exactly that uncertainty.

When you bring Voltage Control into your organization, whether for a private facilitation training, an AI transformation engagement, or a cohort through our certification program, you now have independent, third-party validation that you’re working with a provider that meets institutional-grade quality standards.

That’s meaningful for your procurement team. It’s meaningful for the leaders you’re recommending this investment to. And it’s meaningful for the employees who will carry these credentials forward.

The post The First HLC-Endorsed Facilitation Certification appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit, Dan Walker led a session titled “Unlocking Collective Wisdom,” guiding a room full of facilitators through a rich exploration of why collective work matters, how to stay grounded amid societal turbulence, and what it truly takes to navigate difficult moments in a facilitated space. Dan, a facilitator and community builder from the Coast Salish territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples—colonially known as Vancouver, Canada—opened with characteristic candor, acknowledging his own imposter syndrome at the summit before centering the very philosophy he was there to teach: our ideas are better than my ideas.

The Case for Collective Brilliance

Dan anchored his session in a foundational belief: the smartest person in the room is the room. He invited participants to sit with the question of why we should embrace the brilliance of the collective—and then gave them time to actually do it, building in space for personal reflection before pairing participants to share emerging themes.

What surfaced was striking. Participants observed that collective creation fosters a sense of ownership that top-down direction never can. They pointed to the value of the journey itself—the making of meaning together—as distinct from whatever outcome is eventually reached. One participant offered that holding space for multiple truths is an act of resistance, a challenge to systems that prefer singular, authoritative answers. And in a moment that drew audible appreciation from the room, another reached for something more poetic: “To hear the song of our highest possibility that no one knows they have access to, and to empower them to be the place where it happens.”

Dan reflected that he once believed facilitation was simply about finding better answers. What the room reminded him—and what he returned to throughout the session—is that the collective process itself is where the real value lives: the relationships formed, the meaning made together, the shared recognition of a common human experience.

Patience and the Long Game

One of the session’s most resonant moments came through a personal story. Dan described his time leading social impact work at outdoor brand Arc’teryx—years of building toward change, only to find himself completely burnt out, frustrated that progress felt impossibly slow. During a walk with an indigenous elder on the island, he shared his frustration. She stopped, looked him in the eyes, and offered one word: “Patience.” The land beneath their feet, she told him, had been under negotiation since 1963.

This story opened a rich, wide-ranging conversation about one of facilitation’s most persistent tensions: the urgent need of now versus the patience required for generational change. A participant offered a concept that resonated immediately—”manufactured urgency”—the idea that urgency is often wielded as a form of avoidance, an excuse not to do the harder, slower, more honest work. Another framed the tension like a rubber band: tension is the point, not the problem, and the question is whether we can make space to hear each other’s values within it.

Dan held all of these perspectives without rushing toward resolution, which was itself the point. Different people come to this tension from different places—some lean toward speed, others toward patience—and the work of facilitation is to bring those expressions into the same conversation rather than declare one of them correct.

Finding Joy When the World Is at an Edge

As the session turned to the current moment in society, Dan created space for something facilitators rarely name out loud: the challenge of sustaining wellness—and even finding joy—when the world feels like it’s at an edge. The room responded openly. One participant spoke about reclaiming analog experiences and slowing down enough to feel human again. Another raised the importance of privacy as a precondition for genuine play and personal growth. A third quoted something she’d been holding close: “I know that there is kindness in the world because I exist in the world.”

Dan connected these reflections to something he’d learned from years of mentoring young climate activists: burnout is the single biggest barrier to long-term change work. You are only as useful to the movement as long as you stay in it. His invitation was both gentle and serious—give yourself permission to find joy, tend to your own sustainability, and trust that doing so isn’t a departure from the work. It’s what makes the work possible.

Navigating Turbulence as a Facilitator

The session’s final arc brought everything back to the practice of facilitation itself. When a single comment shifts the energy of an entire room—what do we do in those moments? Participants offered grounded, practical wisdom. Slow down, one suggested, and let the turbulence be the wisdom that wants to be heard. Set the container before anyone walks in, because it is far harder to establish safety after something has gone sideways. Design sessions like stories, with a clear narrative arc that makes space for disagreement, tension, and resolution. Actively invite the counterpoint—what Dan described, drawing on the Lewis Deep Democracy method, as “finding the no”—so that dissonance becomes part of the process rather than a disruption to it.

One insight that lingered long after it was offered: take 15 minutes with each participant before the session begins, because what the client thinks is the challenge is often not what participants are actually carrying. And as another participant put it simply: discomfort is not danger. Giving a group that frame, and trusting them within it, can change everything about how they move through difficulty together.

Dan closed the session with a song by Fred again—a piece about light, dark, and light again. It was a fitting end to a session that held both the weight of turbulent times and an abiding belief that collective wisdom, given the right conditions, will always find its way through.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript of Dan’s Session:

Dan Walker (00:03):
It’s a pleasure to be with you all. I kind of want to go around and just say hello to everybody. I won’t do that. To begin with, I don’t know, is anybody sick of the word edges so far? Is that feeling like we’ve said it too many times? I don’t think we have as of yet, but we’re getting closer. What I would say this morning, like when I think about edges, an edge by its very definition is that space distant from the comfortable space at the heart of us. There’s very much comfortable, familiarity, safety in who we are. The edge is pushing into those spaces beyond. They’re challenging in so many ways. One of those pieces being a clarity of vision. Where am I going? What does it look like on the other side? It’s these new spaces that we’ve not stepped into previously. And more than that, there’s this area, once we do know where we’re going, this challenge of how am I going to move to action?

(00:54):
The imposter syndrome that comes up of what right do I have to do this? Am I capable of doing that? Should somebody else be doing that? It even resonates with me right now. I sat this morning and I looked at the summit agenda, the facilitation lineup. And I saw as I was looking, every other facilitator has done the master certification. I have not. That stands out. And it’s like, okay, well, what right do I have? What am I missing? What’s the opportunity there as well? But these spaces are critical to us. We have to move into those edges and move beyond. And I see that as challenging at the best of times, but profoundly so when the world itself feels like it’s at an edge. It feels like we’re very much living in an edge, in a society that’s living at an edge. How do we maintain doing that work collectively?

(01:42):
How do we find the courage to push through and unlock that self-brilliance, that collective brilliance that exists and is so heavily needed? So that’s the conversation that I want to look into today and kind of chat through. Tap into the collective wisdom in this room. I think that’s really what we have as it’s come through so strongly in these times. We’ll touch on three things. We’ll unpack facilitation, why facilitation? Why do we do this work? We’ll then step into really within the context of this moment, what are we navigating? What are we thinking through? What’s it revealing to us to be important? And how are we finding wellness in those times too? And then we’ll bring it home and we’ll come back to really in facilitation. Similarly, times of turbulence emerge. One comment can send the room in a completely different direction. How do we manage that and how do we work through it?

(02:33):
So that’s kind of what we’ll work through today. I’ll guide us all along the way. Click through. I’m coming here from Coast Salish territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, colonially known as Vancouver, Canada. A big part of protocol there is to acknowledge the land on which we’re from. So I bring that into the space today to acknowledge with gratitude, the indigenous peoples of this land who have guardianed it since time immemorial. Similarly, it’s Black History Month this month too, and I’d invite us to reflect on that. So much of this work through times of turbulence and challenge, we’ve seen brilliance of black peoples, indigenous peoples to navigate that. And I’d invite us to think about that as we do this work today.

(03:14):
I often say, and I offered this at the intro, I just say I do things and I smile lots. That’s really who I am. I’m a human. I care. I smile all the time. I don’t know. I don’t like sharing my resume. You can probably find it on LinkedIn if you wish. But I think it’s more interesting, like what are the core values that we hold to be true? For me, this is central to what I believe. I genuinely believe our ideas are better than my ideas. The wisdom that’s in the room is always going to be higher than whatever I can muster. If we’re having a conversation on any complex topic, no single human has the answer. Instead, it sits in the middle and together we shape an ever better version of it. I’m seeing some nods which tells me I’m in the right room. I was like, “That’s a great sign that this resonates.” I think just a sense, this resonates with facilitators, this is great.

(04:05):
Similarly, I expressed a different way. I actually picked this up last year at the summit. Danny, I don’t know if he’s here from San Francisco, maybe not this year, but he brought this into the space. The smartest person in the room is the room. Similarly, a similar belief. And I shared this last week actually. I was doing some work with a group doing amazing work around refugee settlement and said the same thing. One plus one equals three. And the gentleman in the front row looked at me incredulously and was like, “That does not work for me. I studied mathematics at university. That does not make any sense.” If this doesn’t serve you, disregard it. But really the belief, the belief is this. The belief is in the brilliance of the collective. That’s what we’re trying to unlock and that’s what I believe as facilitators is our work. How do we think about that? How do we support that? How do we move through? And that’s what we’ll do today. And we’ll see that repeated time and time again.

(05:00):
To click in, I want to touch on these sort of agreements that we’ll look at. I’m going to try and move the room. The room’s massive, so I’ll try and shift up and down. These are the agreements that I would encourage us to sit with today. So the first one being we act with respect. I say this as respect for ourselves. If you need time to nip to the washroom, if you need to go and get refreshments, if you need to find Liquid Death, feel free to do that. But yeah, move with respect. Be kind to each other. We need that more than ever in this moment too. The smartest person in the room is the room. I’ve said that at the start. That’s true. How do we unlock that wisdom? I’m not giving away prizes or dollars for the smartest human. That’s not on offer. Instead, how do we unlock that collective wisdom that exists?

(05:45):
The next piece is just to advance our collective learning too. So that’s always the goal. If we bump into challenges, those pieces, how do we learn through it together? And the final one I think is really important to me. We’re often entering into spaces that are uncomfortable, unfamiliar. It’s okay to be raggedy. Even more than that, it’s a gift to be raggedy. It allows others of us to express our ideas. So if we’ve got ideas that we’re like, “I’m not entirely certain this is where we are,” feel free to share it. It’s likely that that’s the idea that resonates with us too. So those are the three pieces that I’d encourage. Oh, that’s looking good. It’s looking good and different.

(06:23):
So yeah, we want to start with an activity. So I think we often touch on this. We often get into facilitation, but why do we facilitate? Really what’s at the heart of that? Why do we think there’s power in doing this? So the question that I want us to sit with, and we’ll take some time to personally reflect on it, is why should we embrace the brilliance of the collective? What is the reason behind that? Why do we come to believe in this? Why do we facilitate because of that? The way we’ll structure it is we’ll have time for personal reflection. I often find this in society, we don’t give ourselves that time just to stop and compose our thoughts. We immediately jump into action. So we’ll start there. We’ll have personal time and then we’ll pair up. So pick a partner beside you and then we’ll unpack that question. So we’ll take another four minutes to go through that. And then we’ll come back into the room and we’d invite some opinions that have emerged, themes that have come up.

(07:31):
I’d love to invite into the space just what came up. Yeah, what were some of the themes that emerged? Anybody want to share?

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Oh, I have a mic. Look at that. Jackson and our group was talking about the strength of a sort of collective creation. And so people are bought into ideas when they come to them together rather than somebody sort of bringing it in and requiring it from the top.

Dan Walker (07:54):
So good. It’s huge, right? The difference between us building it together and feeling that sense of ownership versus us being told by the leader, “This is what we’re doing.” Yeah, thanks for sharing.

(08:04):
Yeah. Who else has other things to contribute? Yeah, I can jump.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, I’ll just say something my new … I’ll just say here, something my new friend brought up here is there’s also immense value in the journey to come to that collective decision.

Dan Walker (08:19):
So good. So good.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
And just the journey itself shouldn’t be discounted for whatever you get to.

Dan Walker (08:24):
Really great. Yeah. The value of the journey, the making meaning together. That is a big part of this work, right? It’s like how do we actually make meaning? Some of these challenges that we’re working through are immensely complex, but how do we collectively process it and learn together?

(08:38):
Yeah, maybe one or two more. Yeah, we can go to the back. Thank you.

Speaker 5 (08:41):
I hope this isn’t too intense, but if we leave room for multiple truths, for just sitting with ambiguity, mistakes, then that is one of the best ways to challenge authority, fascism, things like that.

Dan Walker (08:54):
So great. So great. So great. It’s not going too far. It’s great. I love that you share that too. I appreciate you bringing that into the space too. It does. It challenges the way we run systems, right? It re-imagines this possibility of the collective brilliance that we’re trying to unlock that systems often pushes against. So yeah, huge thank you.

(09:11):
I’d love one more. Yeah, in the back.

Speaker 6 (09:15):
And to wrap us up in a bit of a poetic sense, my thought was to hear the song of our highest possibility that no one knows they have access to, and to empower them to be the place where it happens. It’s an extraordinary feeling.

Dan Walker (09:32):
Wow. It’s beautiful. Wow. Wow. Stunning. Yeah. So many pieces that came up in that conversation. So the journey, the power of that together, the power of the collective brilliance, our possibility of challenging systems, redefining the way we do it. So many of these ideas are brilliant and central to why we do this work. Just to click through, if I could get the slides back up, that would be awesome. If I can’t, that’s fine too. But really when I started out, I always thought this was the reason we did it. I always thought the reason we facilitated was to find a better answer. And I think it’s true. I think we do find a better answer when we work together, but I don’t actually think it’s the fullness. I think what we identified in the room is the reason. That collective process, that collective meaning making is where the value comes.

(10:17):
It’s probably for many of us, it’s hard to sell that to leaders at times. The belief in that the process is the value of itself, but you see it time and again, that conversation around the sense of ownership we feel when we’re going through that collective process, this realization of the shared human experience that we have, that’s really where the power is. I work a lot too in conflict spaces, and you’ve seen this shift in that work too. Historically, the space was known as conflict resolution. This idea of how we’re resolving the conflict. These are big complex issues. What’s the resolution to it? And you’ve started to see a shift into actually that being named as conflict engagement. So it’s not actually possible to resolve some of those pieces, but how do we engage with it better? And so that’s a big part of this work.

(11:04):
That’s a big part of facilitation and what we’re trying to do is engage better, make meaning together, build relationships, build bond, build resiliences that challenge systems and structures. So yeah, I love what came into the room naturally, and thank you for that. The next space I’ll touch on at some point is this piece. So I was burnt out. This is where we go back six years ago. I was at the outdoor brand, Arc’teryx. I was leading their social impact work. It was amazing in many ways, but the big challenge is as you do this work, you get ever closer to community need to understand what’s going on in community, the barriers that exist in terms of access to the outdoor industry and to nature in general. And you realize how distant we are from that. That’s profoundly challenging. You’ve then got to turn internally and try and build the CEO’s buy into that work and there’s a tension there.

(11:57):
And I was totally frustrated, totally burnt. I couldn’t move anymore. And so I was over on the island. I was actually over here and I was chatting to an indigenous elder and we went for a walk and she stopped me at one point and just looked me square in the eyes and was like, “Patience. Patience is what you need.” I’ve been doing this work for five years and I was like, “I need to move. It’s not moving. Why is it not going?” She said that the land we were on had been under negotiation since 1963 and that year the agreement on it might have been signed. It’s this long-term view that we often don’t bring into the spaces. So I think there’s often this reality within that, it’s the work of generations in which we sit. We’re slowly shifting systems, we’re solely shifting product design and all those pieces, but it’s long-term and we often sit in this urgent need of now at the expense of the long-term nature of the work.

(12:52):
What I would say is this tension is really this. The urgent need of now played against the patients of long-term change. It’s a thing we often don’t bring in, we often don’t talk about. They both exist at the same time and that’s challenging to hold. So that’s what I want to do for the next question is really within our work, whatever space that’s in, but how does this urgency play against this long-term game as well? How do we sit with that? So the question we’ll ask is that it’s like that. Yeah. How do you balance that tension between urgency? We need this now, we need this yesterday, we need it last week with actually the quality work takes time. How do you hold that tension? Maybe you can’t resolve it and that’s okay, but what comes up within that? So we’ll kind of do personal reflection time and then we’ll share back within the group. So yeah, start writing in your notes, whatever comes up for you.

(13:52):
What came up for people? What emerged? How do you balance this? How does urgency and … Yeah, please do. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 7 (14:00):
I think where I used to find this tension is like everywhere. Especially I see myself as someone who leans a little bit more patience. Like I’m a little bit more slow with how I operate. So yeah, I would find that tension everywhere of people annoyed with me. But I think where I am now is I don’t think there is tension. The tension’s not actually there. It’s just perceived and we can choose to play with it or be in it or not. So yeah, I just don’t think there’s tension.

Dan Walker (14:34):
Wow. I’m just curious as a follow-up, how did you arrive at that place too? What was the journey to arrive there?

Speaker 7 (14:42):
That’s a good question. I don’t know. I think I just woke up one day and was like, “There is no tension.”

Dan Walker (14:48):
And epiphany’s always a good solution. So have an epiphany is the …

(14:52):
Yeah, maybe one at the front and then we can go to the back would be great. I can give you this. Thank you.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
This is one of my favorite topics.

Dan Walker (15:00):
Oh, great. Here we go.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
So I’ve coined this phrase manufactured urgency.

Dan Walker (15:04):
Love it. Love it.

Speaker 4 (15:05):
And so I think you need to be intentional about when urgency actually matters and not have it as a default position.

Dan Walker (15:14):
Sounds great. Wow.

Speaker 4 (15:14):
And one of the things that I’ve concluded is oftentimes people use urgency. It’s a form of apathy to me because it’s an excuse not to do the hard work.

Dan Walker (15:22):
That’s good. Whoa. Whoa.

Speaker 4 (15:25):
And so I try to combat it now.

Dan Walker (15:26):
That’s good. That’s really good.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
Part of the way that I maintain credibility on those positions is sometimes urgency does matter. And if you can really explain why it matters, then sometimes time is the most important element, but time is very rarely the only measure of outcome.

Dan Walker (15:40):
So good. So good. And how have you found that? I mean, I love so much in what you just shared. How have you found that ability to then explain manufactured … Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:49):
I find it’s an extremely polarizing topic because there are people who think speed and velocity is the only thing that matters.

Dan Walker (15:49):
So good.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
And then I think there’s kind of the other side where you’re kind of looking at the whole.

Dan Walker (16:00):
So good.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
And I use analogies all the time like, “Well, do you want your omelet cooked quickly or you want it cooked right?” And so there are things in life that just require the right amount of time and there are things in life that you can do quickly and you have to just be able to make the judgment between the two.

Dan Walker (16:17):
So good. Intentional when we are urgent and intentional when we take the time. Yeah, I love that.

(16:22):
We can go to the back. Thank you very much.

Speaker 8 (16:23):
Yeah. Both of those gentlemen sound very patient and I love that for y’all.

Dan Walker (16:30):
Let’s get urgent.

Speaker 8 (16:31):
I am a very impatient person, always have been. So for me, this is like a very big struggle because I am somebody who I think I usually work very much towards the urgency piece. And I kind of, I don’t know, I flatter myself by thinking, oh, I can get it done urgently and right. And we know that that doesn’t always work. So I think that for me, the biggest part is when I have to slow down and be patient and let things play out organically, it’s hard for me because it means I have to acknowledge the fact that I’m not in control of every outcome and I have to acknowledge the fact that I may not know the correct answer and that is very hard for me giving up that control. So I think that the personal journey, what’s made it easier for me is acknowledging the fact that I don’t have all the answers and if I have to give up control, that’s all right. And then the patience kind of comes naturally from that. But it’s hard. Yes.

Dan Walker (17:35):
It’s so good. So good. I mean, it’s the work, right? I’ll go to the back with one more and then, yeah, we can come back in. But I think that piece, right? It’s like this personal work, it sits within us. We often gravitate by our lived experience, by where we are to different expectums. Some of us want to move fast, some of us want to go slow and patient. That’s beautiful. But how do we acknowledge that? How do we hold it? How do we hold that we all have different expressions of that? And how do we bring that into the conversation too? Yeah, I love what you shared.

(18:01):
We can go to the back too. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (18:02):
Hi.

Dan Walker (18:03):
Hi.

Speaker 9 (18:03):
So when I look at this, I think of the fact that urgency and this idea of slowing down and thinking of a long-term goal actually work hand in hand and it’s a tension that exists and needs to exist. And so a way to think about it is a rubber band. A rubber band is effective when you actually have tension and you’re holding and you’re tying something together. And that’s essentially an organization maybe versus an individual. In my perspective, it’s not a right or wrong, it’s what do we value? So what am I valuing versus what are you valuing? And can we make space to hear each other and figure out what is going to work?

Dan Walker (18:45):
So good. So good. I think that’s beautiful in what you said too that can we make space to hear each other? We all have these different expressions and that’s a beautiful thing. This tension isn’t, we should always answer it urgent, we should answer it slow, but actually how do we resolve it together and how do we have it as a conversation rather than it is just this way or is just this way? Yeah. Thank you for everybody you shared. I would love to carry on longer, but I should probably keep moving.

(19:09):
Kind of in the next piece that I want to touch on, really the lessons that I strive to learn are these two, the importance of the collective, the importance of that work together. This repeats time and again. We’ve heard about that, the sense of ownership that comes, the sense of meaning making that comes through that. It’s all there. The importance of the collective is everything. And then two, bringing in this conversation around the generational nature of the work too, and how do we resolve that with the urgent need of now? How do we have that as a conversation and a dimension of the work too? So those are the two pieces.

(19:41):
We’ll move kind of into the next section. Really, this conversation is always framed around it. How might we maintain this ever upward spiral towards a more just and joyful society is a question I often sit with. I think it’s collective work that we hold, that we sit together. How do we advance it? I think coming here … I’m based in Canada and we see the conversation that’s live. We see what’s happening in the world right now. There is a massive shift. There are massive changes at play and it feels wrong not to create space to have that conversation. We’ve got a room full of people. How do we process this moment together? So that’s what I want to do.

(20:20):
I want to focus in two ways. Really the first piece, as moments of turbulence arise in our lives, in society, there’s too much going on. I’m overwhelmed. How do I focus my time and energy? These are conversations that rise, but what does it reveal to be important? I think this is almost the strange gift of this. Amidst that noise, you start to see, actually, it’s this. Actually, it’s my family. It’s my community. It’s whatever that may be. I’m not going to answer it, but this is the question that I want us to sit with. So now we’ll kind of take some time on our own again just to go through what’s the moment revealing to be important to you.

(21:05):
It’s feeling important to people. Yeah, we’ve got one at the back.

Speaker 10 (21:19):
What’s revealing to me is that we’re like seeking, at least from my truth, is that I’m seeking analog experiences and not necessarily optimizing for efficiency and profit and creating for the sake of creating. And I do think that with the age of AI, the pendulum will swing and that we’re going to have this creative renaissance again.

Dan Walker (21:20):
So cool.

Speaker 10 (21:39):
And so for me, I think we’re tapping into what makes us inherently human, which is like, how do we build things that tap into our senses that remind us that we’re alive?

Dan Walker (21:49):
Wow. Wow. And just as a follow-up, I mean, it’s beautiful. That piece of tapping into who we are and our humanity and how we express and how we share ideas, how’s it feeling for you? I’m just curious to you like … Mark, maybe we can get the mic? Yeah.

Speaker 10 (22:02):
Sorry, repeat that again.

Dan Walker (22:03):
Yeah. How’s it feeling for you to do that? To be centered … Yeah, to be focusing on that.

Speaker 10 (22:07):
Oh, it’s changed my relationship to my work, which is like, one of my affirmations when I show up every day is like, my soul’s not in a rush and that I’m doing whatever-

Dan Walker (22:07):
So good.

Speaker 10 (22:17):
… I need to do for this collective.

Dan Walker (22:19):
So good.

Speaker 10 (22:20):
And that may be a small piece of this much bigger puzzle, but we’ll figure it out.

Dan Walker (22:25):
So cool. Yeah, my soul’s not in a rush. It’s beautiful. That’s all right. Yeah. Amazing. Welcome to the front. Yeah.

Speaker 11 (22:31):
Yeah. For me, privacy is something I’m trying to really hold onto right now. I think often privacy is framed in this sense of like, “Well, if you’re not doing anything wrong, who cares if you’re being continually surveilled?” But I think privacy, the conversation about how privacy enables play and personal growth is undertalked about, I think. And so the example I came into my mind was just yesterday, I was going to rake leaves in my front yard and I put on some headphones, got some country music going, and in my mind I was going to go practice two-step in, dance in while I was raking the leaves. But as soon as I got outside, I noticed my neighbor had her Tesla parked in her driveway and a nest camera on her doorstep. And I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched and I could not feel comfortable dancing and raking leaves because I just felt like I was being watched by this camera. And that’s just a shame. We’re going to lose all of our private spaces.

Dan Walker (23:36):
Wow. Yeah. And that piece of the inability to express who we are and what we want to do. And imagine if we could, imagine if that’s possible that you can go and dance whilst raking leaves in the garden. Awesome. So good.

(23:50):
Yeah, can we come here? Do you want me to go? Erase me.

Speaker 12 (23:58):
So this came up for me that you cannot fully progress as a collective unless you fully acknowledge and atone for mistakes of the past.

Dan Walker (24:09):
Wow.

Speaker 12 (24:09):
And that’s what I’m feeling viscerally in this moment right now.

Dan Walker (24:14):
Yeah. Yeah. The acknowledgement of what’s the reality, the mistakes that have been made, the mistakes that are ongoing, the challenges, the harm that’s resulted in that. It’s true, right? Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 13 (24:28):
Thanks. I’ve been thinking a lot about risk and this moment and watching a lot of truly incompetent people be really confident.

Dan Walker (24:38):
I don’t know who you’re talking about.

Speaker 13 (24:44):
So why not me? So why not us? We are the people we’ve been waiting for. So when I see all these folks kind of confidently stepping into places and doing terrible and ill-mannered and otherwise bad things, and here we all are working on ourselves trying to be better and better we shouldn’t be reserved. We shouldn’t hold back. We should take the risk. We should step into the unfamiliar place and we should shine.

Dan Walker (25:15):
So good. Yeah. Be brilliant ourselves. Yeah. So yeah, round of applause, definitely. So good. So beautiful to express the fullness of who we are, the brilliance that we each hold. I think that’s what we have, right? Whether it’s the creative expression, whether it’s dancing to leaves in the front garden. Be us and be brilliant us and unapologetically us. Yeah, thank you. Maybe one more. I can come here too.

Speaker 14 (25:39):
I’m going to combine two answers.

Dan Walker (25:41):
Oh, this is great. This is great. You’re doing my work.

Speaker 14 (25:43):
Between the creativity and the leaning in, because I can imagine that probably everybody in this room is creative. Everybody’s creative, but I imagine this group is maybe a little elevated in the creativity. So taking that creativity, because I think when you lean into those things, it does contribute to whatever professional work you are doing. But I’ve also really been leaning into those uncomfortable creative spaces, like learning guitar with my son, and I’ve never done anything musical in my life. And I’m an aspiring standup comedian. And speaking of people that have competence and no talent, go to an open mic mic in Hartford, Connecticut. And so you think, “I’m terrible, but they’re worse, so I can get up there.” So I’m really pushing myself into those spaces where it’s uncomfortable and I can grow maybe with no purpose. I don’t know why, but I’m just going to do it.

Dan Walker (26:33):
So good. Yeah, like pushing us in … Yeah, so good. So, so good. Growing in those uncomfortable spaces in different aspects too. We’ll go to one at the back and then, yeah, we’ll go to the next section. Thank you.

Speaker 15 (26:44):
One more thing that came up for me is the need to go back to a conversation about values and human values because I feel like with the world getting so polarized right now, our ideology can get in the way and we cannot see eye to eye with people. But if we bring it back to values, then maybe we can find common ground. Maybe I’m hopeful we can find common ground. And even if we can’t, I personally feel the need to go back to that conversation.

Dan Walker (27:14):
So great. So great. Yeah. I mean, shared values, really. How are we having that conversation? I think I see this all the time. So I’m originally from the UK. I’m from near Manchester is home. We don’t have a shared vision for what England’s doing. We don’t have a shared vision for what Canada is. I see the same in the States. We don’t name what is that shared value. I think when we click it up, our shared values are probably closer than we realize. We care about good health for ourselves, our family, our loved ones, fair opportunity, a roof over our heads, food on the table. We’re pretty aligned in that, but we put this polarization in place and we sit miles apart. And so how are we creating those spaces to have conversations around values? Yeah, thank you to everybody who shared as well. We’ll move through in the interest of time.

(28:01):
The second piece, and this is kind of wisdom that’s often shared in justice movements. It’s shared with me when I started out, you’re only good to the movement as long as you’re a part of the movement. If you’re burnt out, you leave, the work’s not moving. So the key is like, how do you push with all that you’ve got, but not push beyond that you then leave. It’s the thing that I see. I mentor a lot of youth in the climate movement. I was on a mentorship call probably four years back now it would be, and they asked this group of 50 youth, what’s the one biggest barrier to positive climate action in the future? And by a million miles burnout was number one. It stuck with me, right? It’s this piece of like how do we push when we care, our values exist, but we don’t push beyond.

(28:48):
So this is what I want to kind of focus on. I want to take us into the next conversation, which is really here. How are you seeking to maintain wellness and find joy in this moment? We’ve heard pockets of it too, which is beautiful. And I think how do we tap that up? It feels challenging. For some, it might feel jarring to say, I’m actually finding joy in this moment when there’s so much pain and harm existing at the same time, but I think it’s important. So we’ll take some time here on our own. We’ll get into conversation later, but yeah, take five minutes. What is this moment? Yeah, how are you finding joy and wellness amidst it?

(29:23):
Okay, everybody in taking another minute now, just the final minute to come together. I’m curious, what came up? Yeah, I’d love to hear some thoughts in the room so we can go to the back, please.

Speaker 16 (29:45):
The first part was being willing to give permission for wellness and permission to find joy and recognizing that when I take care of myself, it builds capacity for me to take care of other people. And when I have capacity for joy, I have capacity for heartbreak and rage and everything else.

Dan Walker (30:03):
Wow. Yeah. Huge. Huge. Yeah. Taking the permission, giving that permission for yourself to hold it all. And that’s wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, we could go back here as well.

Speaker 17 (30:15):
I just wanted to give a very specific example of something I tried a few years ago and then I’ve kind of upped it. So a couple years ago I was in Milwaukee for work and I realized a friend of mine used to live there and so I texted her and said, or lives there and I said, text her. I was like, “Hey, do you want to get together?” I haven’t seen her since high school. And she happened to be in jury duty. She checked her messages during the break and said, “Absolutely, I’m there.” And we went out for dinner and three hours later it was like time never passed. So ever since then I’ve been trying to do it. And I was just telling my partner Kelly here that I, a couple months ago I was in San Diego and looked up another friend and I was like, “Oh, Chuck, he’s still in San Diego. Where in San Diego? Oh, 45 minute walk. I’m just going to walk to his house and I’m just going to knock on the door.”

Dan Walker (31:01):
Wow.

Speaker 17 (31:02):
And at worst, I’ll leave a message on his phone or in the Ring camera. And he was there and he’s like, “Oh my God, I haven’t seen you since college.” And we spent three hours just connecting and being human.

Dan Walker (31:11):
So huge.

Speaker 17 (31:11):
And so being in that moment just brought me so much joy and him so much joy. So I’ve told that story a couple times now because I’m like, it brought me to the moment and I want other people to feel like they have those moments too.

Dan Walker (31:24):
So huge. So huge. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I think you heard it too in the space, like the joy that was shared when you were sharing that story of connecting with old friends. You hear the giggles, the laughter, the amusement too. So thank you. Yeah, we can go here.

Speaker 18 (31:39):
I just got something to say. Okay. This is also kind of speaking to last question as well. So I really took this question more practically, but mutual aid and resistance. Gathering is a way of fighting the, or gathering well is a way of fighting the idea that we should all be angry at and scared of each other. And so how I’ve been managing it personally is journaling. It’s been really easy with a fountain pen. That’s been nice. Adding novelty to our lives because we get in the routines. That’s so important, especially for your brain. I meet a group of girls every two weeks for facilitated conversation and we all chose to be there, which is great. And finally, I saw this quote and I think it’s helpful for all of us. I know that there is kindness in the world because I exist in the world.

Dan Walker (32:39):
Ah, wow. Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 18 (32:41):
And there’s got to be more.

Dan Walker (32:43):
Wow. Wow.

Speaker 18 (32:44):
And finally, it’s not just going to happen on its own. It’s a conscious decision to not let the rot consume you.

Dan Walker (32:53):
Wow. Wow.

Speaker 18 (32:54):
And someone else has something to say after.

Dan Walker (32:56):
That knowing that kindness exists, because we can put it into the world. We can control. We have agency over that, right? How we show up and how we bring that into the world, the processing together, processing individually in the journal, whether we do that, whether we process together in groups and how do we intentionally work through it. Yeah. Thanks so much. That’s awesome. I’ll go this end and then yeah, over that side too. Yep. Great.

Speaker 19 (33:16):
So Tony and I were talking about disconnecting, which we’ve already talked about a couple times, but I was discussing how I’m really trying to enjoy the minutia of life. I used to wash the dishes and listen to a podcast or listen to an audiobook. And now I’m just trying to be so present in the moment and be more mindful and try to enjoy, stop rushing and just be like, “Oh, it’s a Tuesday and I have to wash the dishes and I’m just going to do that or I’m going to drive in silence.” And I think that’s so important to ground you and also go outside. Just also go outside.

Dan Walker (33:51):
So good. Thank you. I mean that, I mean, time outside, I’d second that any day. Time in nature, it’s there. It’s magical. It’s wonderful spaces to be in. But just having presence in those moments slowing down. My Spotify playlist was problematic this year. The wrapped days, I had 179 days literally of like 24 hour, 179. It’s too many. I live with music all the time. I love music, but I’m not intentionally listening to it. What is the crutch that I’m holding onto and how might I have presence instead? Yeah, thank you.

(34:21):
We had one over this way and then I’d come in the … Yeah. Come to you. We can go here and then we can go to the back. We’re good. Yeah, we can go. I’ll come to you.

Speaker 20 (34:30):
So Phil and I had some similarity in ours that we’re finding joy and wellness in putting ourselves in places where youth are, because it’s just hard for everything else that’s looming to continue to loom when you see joy and hope in the young people that are around us.

Dan Walker (34:50):
Yeah, that’s amazing. Yes, finding that energy in others too. There’s one at the back too, if we could go to this … Yeah, there’s someone here. Oh, Mark has got it, I think, behind you.

Speaker 21 (35:00):
I have found finding rhythms helps with wellness. And so making sure that every day there’s space every week, there’s a couple of nights and a day, like a day a week, and then rhythms kind of annually where you’re just getting away. In terms of joy, I left Toronto yesterday with four feet of snow and I landed here in Austin and experienced a great deal of joy.

Dan Walker (35:25):
I echo that coming from Vancouver where it’s much colder than it is here. So jumping in Barton Springs was a delight yesterday. It’s beautiful. It’s these little pieces, right? It’s the space and the presence that we apply, but making space for that and the time to connect, the time to find youth as well and see that joy that’s rising.

(35:42):
Maybe one more. Does anybody else have anything to share? Yeah, over this backside.

Speaker 22 (35:48):
You’re doing a great job, Dan. Thanks.

Dan Walker (35:49):
Thanks.

Speaker 22 (35:53):
For me, there’s a lot of talk right now about the importance of storytelling as a core competency for business, but stories are the technology that we have developed to share the tools for persistence and survival. And all of us are here because our ancestors persisted and survived and they had a story to tell. So I work a lot in addiction and recovery and trauma, and there is so much healing in sharing stories.

Dan Walker (36:26):
Wow. Wow. Yeah. The power in stories. And we’ve heard that through time and again, the human experience, the shared connection that we have too, and that’s what we have. We each have those stories. We each have that lineage. And how do we connect and share that and find the joy that exists? Thank you everybody. Yeah, it was amazing. So we’ll kind of move into the next section. So starting to bring it back into facilitation. These parallels apply. Really this work around the importance of the collective, this human identification, this shared narrative that we have, these shared experiences, the ancestry that we’re bringing forward, the stories that we’re carrying into the future, that applies too in facilitation. It’s exactly the same. And similarly, this embrace of the long-term nature of the work, I think that touching on the ancestry just then, that’s part of it, right?

(37:12):
We sit in this long line of work that’s moving forward. So that’s what I want to turn to now and start to bring back. How do we come in to this work of facilitation with this mindset as well? So the question I want to sit us with is how might you best navigate moments of turbulence that arise in facilitation practices? So when we’re facilitating and that one conversation, that one comment comes up in the room and it changes the entire energy, what do we do in those moments? What are these stories around the human experience, these connections that we have? How can we learn from that too? So we’ll take time on our own and then we’ll come back into the main room as well. So yeah, if we take five minutes ourselves just to reflect, how do we apply these lessons within facilitation?

(37:56):
Okay. And I’d love to get some thoughts in the room. What came up? How do we start to apply these conversations we’ve had within the context of facilitation? When turbulence arises in a facilitated practice, what do we do? How are we approaching that? Would love to hear some thoughts.

Speaker 23 (38:24):
This is where I come the most alive, so I’m going to slow down.

Dan Walker (38:28):
That’s great. You go. You go.

Speaker 23 (38:30):
I think the best way to navigate these moments is to slow down.

Dan Walker (38:33):
That’s so good.

Speaker 23 (38:35):
And to let that turbulence be the wisdom that just wants to be seen and heard in service to the conversation that’s wanting to emerge.

Dan Walker (38:48):
So good. So good. So good. So slowing down to allow that turbulence to allow the conversation to emerge. Yeah, it’s huge. And hard too, right? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. We’d love to come … Yeah. Mark, just down at the front.

Speaker 24 (39:07):
This is probably something that comes up in every facilitation lab we’ve ever had in New York City that a lot of the work happens before anyone gets in the room or what you did at the beginning where you’ve been intentional, you’ve set norms, agreements of how you’re going to navigate the space, because it’s so much harder to respond to something after it happens if you haven’t already laid those groundworks. And it makes me think of Priya Parker’s generous authority, where you have to set the boundaries and hold those boundaries because then that’s what creates the freedom and the space and the safety within to say we can navigate and wrestle with the discomfort and the disagreement and let the wisdom emerge within the boundaries that we’ve all agreed to. Without the boundaries, then it becomes much more difficult.

Dan Walker (39:48):
Yeah. So good. Setting the container is huge, right? That’s what we’re doing. We’re creating this container for this conversation to exist. Huge thank you. Anybody else get a similar theme to that of setting the container and how … Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 25 (40:01):
It’s facing it immediately at the beginning of a session. So giving people the space, I call it a lot of times the brain dump after going through the purpose and the goals and realizing that everybody might not be on the same page, giving space and time to discuss what is not aligned, what issues there are, what questions need to be addressed. And that kind of lets the air out of the balloon of the turbulence and the pressure that they’re feeling. And you’re able to then design it in a way where you can address issues and redesign a session as you go to answer those questions. So instead of waiting for the turbulence to happen, you address it and then design it into your session.

Dan Walker (40:46):
So good.

Speaker 25 (40:46):
And then another thing is acknowledging the resource of time and energy and even emotional capacity that people have. Something that’s really great here and it’s awesome, but almost is a little overwhelming is how open everybody is. And how in tune everybody is. Most people aren’t like that. Most people don’t have the time. So being able to acknowledge that and design for that is really important to help people feel comfortable and respected.

Dan Walker (41:16):
It’s huge. And just on a practical level, how do you make space for that in that conversation of like bringing up what is actually in the room? What are we bringing in? Yeah, how on a practical level of your ideas of how you approach that as well?

Speaker 25 (41:28):
Practical on …

Dan Walker (41:30):
In how you structure your sessions of what you’re doing to bring that in the space.

Speaker 25 (41:32):
Oh, I can talk all day about how the practicality of the structuring sessions. But I mean, in the most practical tactical terms, it comes in treating it like a story. I think somebody mentioned storytelling and the importance of stories. Structuring sessions like a story where you have a beginning, middle and end, you address, you set the rules for the entire session in the first place. You set the idea that everybody can show themselves and their needs. You establish the characters, everybody giving everybody a chance to talk in the first place, setting the scene, letting the growth happen in the middle, having a resolution in the end. And if you don’t have a beginning or an end, you’re not going to have a good story that people could walk away with and sort of this narrative of growth or discovery or a solution without that.

Dan Walker (42:21):
So good. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, this narrative arc we’re taking and how are we processing that within the context of this container, this space that we’ve made. I think there’s maybe one in the front. You put your hand down so you can …

Speaker 26 (42:37):
The real microphone at the front. Okay. Yeah. I just had a thought based on what you were just sharing, which is I also like to navigate turbulence by actively inviting disagreement. When I feel that we’ve reached consensus, I like to call out this is what I’m hearing, but also like, what’s missing? Who disagrees? Where is this? What corner haven’t we explored? To maybe try to invite in, to use the turbulence metaphor, the strong winds before they become turbulent, right? So that people feel like they aren’t pushing against the direction we’re moving, but it’s actually part of the process to begin with.

Dan Walker (43:26):
Thank you. Yeah, I’d be curious for others too. I do work with the Lewis Deep Democracy method and they say this. They say, “Find the no.” Within each of us, I think if you look at that piece of the urgent need of now and the patience of generational change, we hold them both. I might lean one way, but I also hold the other side too. And so how do we bring that into the space? And it allows us to see the fullness. None of us are completely one thing or the other, we’re all of it. So I love that too. Yeah. Any other … Okay. Yeah, you go. Thank you.

Speaker 27 (43:57):
So in this room, we have a lot of creative individuals and part of being creative is all the grace you give yourself. It’s you give yourself the ability to try things and develop opinions and then try other things. And that’s kind of the creative process as we know. And there’s a lot of safety in that, but it’s all safety you give to yourself. So if you’re trying to facilitate a group and you want everyone to be able to engage in a creative process as a group, then you have to figure out how the group is going to have grace for the group. So creativity involves a lot of self-love and forgiveness to be successful. So how is the group going to develop some belief about themselves that creates that love for all the peers within the group? So just very like, not abstractly things like, “We’re an amazing team.

(45:04):
We’re like raccoons. You give us any kind of like weird container and we’ll figure out how to open it and get at that peanut butter.” All of those positive things that the team can iterate to themselves and tell themselves and create the story about themselves helps with the turbulence part because then whenever there’s a point at which people’s personal egos are in conflict with the identity and goal of the team, then you can do what you do for yourself as an individual, but as a group and say, “Okay, well, let’s just try that. Let’s try and see.” And then also as a facilitator, sometimes your own ego gets in the way and you don’t agree with the people in the room and what they want to do. So then you can try to have that same group level grace and be like, “Okay, let’s just try that. Let’s try and see.”

Dan Walker (45:56):
So good. So good. Yeah. The building the dynamics within the group that we are in this together, how do we build that cohesion, that trust, that safe space where we can misstep? Things will come up inevitably. We’re never going to be perfect. No one’s ever perfect. That doesn’t exist. And so how do we have trust within each other that we can go through those moments? Would love, yeah, anybody else, anything else? I’d be curious too, if you go to the back.

Speaker 7 (46:27):
Something I’ve been exploring, but it’s not necessarily tactical or practical and it actually is kind of painful sometimes, but I’ve been looking to explore the turbulence that I experience externally as really a reflection of the turbulence I feel internally and using it as a mirror, which is hard. It’s not easy. But yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at right now.

Dan Walker (46:54):
It’s amazing. I think because that’s the piece too, right? There’s this work in the space, but there’s the work outside the space too. There’s so much of like, who are we coming in? What am I bringing into this space today? What am I activated by? What have I read? I think a big one too is our media intake. We see that all the time and we see ever more challenging stories emerging. Yeah, what’s our relationship to that? Do we want to bring that in? Do we not want to bring that in? How do we manage it?

(47:18):
Just maybe a couple more. Yeah, any thoughts on what’s happening prior to the session as well, what people are doing prior to the session? If not, that’s okay too. Yeah, we can go. Yeah.

Speaker 28 (47:35):
Something that’s been part of my practice for a couple of years now is to the extent that I’m able, I try to have as many, just like 15-minute conversations with as many participants as I can beforehand because what the person who’s like hired me to do this considers the challenge is often not reflected in what other people have to say. And recently I had engagement where everybody said how much tension there was and also everyone was coming with a very similar perspective and desire for getting through that tension. And in reality, they were not that far apart and they just couldn’t see past this idea of we feel uncomfortable, therefore something must be wrong. And it’s like, no, you’re uncomfortable because this is really hard and that’s okay. And like giving space for discomfort is not danger and that’s like your growth edge there.

Dan Walker (48:31):
Yeah. Such beautiful framing that discomfort is not danger. That’s huge. And that time to intentionally, kind of as we were saying with building connections with our teams, the same way with participants too. That’s part of this team that we’re having. How do we support together? How do we build those relationships? Yeah, huge thank you. So we’ll kind of come towards the close of the session. This is a new feature. So Douglas has developed this, but really starting to get feedback on the next question of really what are we taking away? What’s that next step? So if everybody wants to grab their devices, wherever they may be, take down the QR code.

(49:10):
And on this, I’m not entirely sure how this is going to work, so we’ll see. But in response to that question, we’d love to get your thoughts. So what are those tiny actions that you’re going to take out of this session? Make it small. Yeah. What is really the smallest thing that you can do leaving this session? Participate, discuss connecting with others, networking, community, family. These are themes that came up repeatedly. Find the no. Yeah, find the no. I love that too. Discomfort is not danger. I think that came up in the conversation and is really powerful too, that that discomfort will emerge. We don’t view it as danger. How do we embrace and run through it?

(49:56):
Invite novelty too. How do we move into these different spaces? So we’ll keep watching a few more of these come in and then we’ll move to a close. Get out of the comfort zone. Practice patience. Be present. Presence keep coming up too. Listen aggressively. I like that. Listen aggressively is great. Okay. So I’d encourage us to keep reflecting on these and bring these outside of the space as well. I’d love to continue the conversation with anybody with interest in those spaces too. So yeah, feel free to connect, reach out, come and chat to me. If any of the questions came up, I’m more than happy to discuss. Keep chatting through. Spend time with each of you on these two, so feel free to connect. As we did, as we were talking, this session is so well produced, so well-structured, so intentional in everything. You even get to select your own walk on and walk off music.

(50:55):
I was very tempted to get some musical comedy and meet low for Tom Jones, but I resisted. I resisted the urge. Instead, I think this song Fred again has produced that speaks to this beautifully, this idea of light, dark, light again. There are challenging moments that we go through, whether in society, whether in facilitated sessions, but on the other side of it always exists the lightness. And I encourage us to sit with that, to have those conversations, to find the humanity exists between us, to find those shared experiences, to tell our stories, to listen to stories. And that’s all that’s come up in this space today. So with that, I’d say a deep thank you and enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you.

The post Unlocking Collective Wisdom appeared first on Voltage Control.

The AI wave feels brand new. The problems underneath it don’t. AI’s rapid advances are reshaping how work gets done, what’s possible, and how fast the future arrives. Yet under all that novelty sits something stubbornly familiar. Alignment. Behavior change. Decision quality. Adoption. These are the age-old challenges that have defined organizational life for decades. They’re not new problems; AI is simply putting them under a brighter, hotter light.

Many of the rituals and structures we rely on were inherited, not designed—remnants of Taylorism and top‑down models, with a dash of military metaphor thrown in for good measure. Think about how often we hear terms like action items and ammunition for a pitch. Even if we didn’t consciously lift these patterns from the factory floor or the command center, they’ve seeped in. We carry them from role to role, re-enacting them in new environments where they’re ill‑fitted to knowledge work, creativity, and human-centered problem solving.

Over the last decade, many teams began the long, important shift toward human-centered work. That project isn’t finished. Meanwhile, AI has changed the context around us: more inputs, more interdependencies, and far faster cycles. The result is a tangle of legacy habits, incomplete cultural transformation, and a new force multiplier. The fundamentals of good facilitation and design of team systems still apply. What’s different now is the cost of not applying them.

Speed scales the chaos

What’s truly new about AI is the speed of change and the compounding nature of its effects. The “fast follower” posture that was viable for past technology shifts doesn’t work here. If you wait for standards to stabilize, you’ll miss months (or years) of capability building your competitors are banking. Learning has to become a core organizational muscle, not an initiative. The window between early adoption and obsolescence is narrowing.

Speed can be a gift. AI-enabled teams can spin up prototypes in hours, synthesize complex inputs in minutes, and ship with tighter feedback loops. But speed is neutral—it accelerates whatever it touches. Apply AI to a broken handoff and you don’t fix the handoff; you scale the chaos. Take a siloed process and add automation and you don’t remove the silo; you create automated isolation. The same reinforcing loops that can catapult a healthy system can drive a fragile one to failure.

We often used to meet teams with what we called a leaky faucet problem. Yes, it dripped. Yes, everyone noticed. But you could manage it with a bucket and some tape. You could hide the waste in the margins. AI turns that drip into pressure. It builds behind the surface until one day the levee breaks. What was tolerable friction becomes an existential constraint. When a small leak scales, “business as usual” screeches to a halt.

This is why so many leaders and facilitators are feeling the urgency right now. The problems aren’t new, but their consequences arrive faster and ripple further. It’s no longer sufficient to “know about” the leak; you need to find it, fix it, and redesign the system so you don’t spring another one two steps downstream. If you do this well, AI becomes a amplifier for clarity, flow, and value creation. If you don’t, it scales confusion.

Speed with intention

If speed is neutral, cadence is how we give it purpose. Think of AI as a highly capable teammate that can sprint faster than anyone on your roster. The job of the facilitator is to design the practice field where that speed pays off and doesn’t run the team ragged. That means deliberately alternating between fast and slow modes: call on AI to generate or synthesize quickly, then slow down together to react, refine, and align.

Live synthesis is a superpower here. Many teams lack a consistent, fast synthesis muscle. Even strong synthesizers vary with energy, time of day, and workload. AI can provide a reliable baseline in the moment—capturing themes, options, and decisions while context is warm—so the team can react rather than rehash. You get the benefits of working “while the clay is wet,” without over-relying on a single person’s bandwidth.

Visible work becomes essential in this new cadence. Text alone is too linear and narrow for the complexity we’re navigating. Visual maps, canvases, and blueprints help teams create a shared reality—one that humans and AI can reference. If it’s ambiguous to a colleague, it will be ambiguous to your AI teammate. Tools like Miro let you turn a messy conversation into a shared model in real time; then you can hand that model to AI for targeted processing, scenario generation, or risk identification.

There’s also a delightful side effect: good prompting is just good communication. Teaching teams to brief AI with clearer intent, constraints, and success criteria is the same skill that improves human collaboration. We’ve seen groups adopt prompt hygiene—defining terms, naming assumptions, clarifying audience—and, almost by accident, elevate their everyday cross-functional dialogue. AI becomes a mirror for your clarity. What confuses the model often confuses your colleagues, too.

Ways of Working Assessment

This month we’re spotlighting the Ways of Working Assessment because it delivers what March’s theme demands—a fast, focused way to surface leaks, align on fixes, and set a foundation where AI enhances rather than amplifies dysfunction. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch the quick overview: https://vimeo.com/899513366?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

At its core, the assessment inventories how work actually gets done today. We capture the real rituals, decision rules, handoffs, briefs, and artifacts—not the idealized SOP version sitting on a wiki. We’re looking for two things: the healthy patterns to elevate and scale, and the bottlenecks or ambiguities that drive rework downstream. Artifacts like service blueprints and journey maps emerge, but they’re fed by lived experience, not theoretical flowcharts.

A simple shift unlocks rich insight: instead of asking “How does onboarding work here?” we ask “Walk me through the last time you onboarded someone.” Memory is sticky; it surfaces the tacit steps, workarounds, and unwritten rules that never make it into a process doc. We follow the timeline—who was involved, what was unclear, where the delays crept in, why the handoff failed—and we capture it visually so the whole team can see the same movie, not argue about the script.

From there, we prioritize together. Which one practice, if upgraded now, would reduce the most downstream rework? What would visible progress look like in two weeks? Where does AI belong in this flow—as a teammate, as a co-pilot, or not at all? This is where we start distinguishing human-in-the-loop moments, AI-augmented steps, and no-fly zones. The outcome isn’t a binder; it’s a shortlist of prototypes that teams can try immediately, with crisp measures of success. Culture lives in practice, so we practice differently—on purpose, in small loops that compound.

Three leverage shifts

First, establish a roles and rituals charter that includes your AI teammates. Don’t bolt AI onto your old structure; integrate it into your system intentionally. Identify the core moments in your value stream—discovery, synthesis, decision, handoff, quality—and define who or what leads, who consults, and who validates at each step. Be explicit about what AI does and why. For example: “During weekly intake, AI generates a first-pass classification of requests and a risk heatmap; the PM adjusts classification and confirms risk with Legal for anything flagged above medium.” That level of clarity reduces ambiguity and builds trust.

Second, operationalize decision clarity using consent-based methods. In fast-moving contexts, decisions get stuck between consensus and command. Try consent: “Is it safe enough to try for now, and can we revisit soon?” Pair it with clear decision types (reversible vs. irreversible), a lightweight advice process, and crisp roles (driver, approver, consulted, informed). Write your decision rules down as prompts and checklists. AI can help here by generating the initial decision brief, listing trade-offs based on your criteria, and drafting communication to stakeholders. But you must define the guardrails: where human judgment is required, what risks are unacceptable, and who owns the outcome.

Third, make synthesis and visualization a live team habit. Don’t wait for someone to write a recap doc later. During meetings, have AI capture themes and open questions while a facilitator maps the conversation visually. Close with a quick team review: what’s missing, what needs correcting, what decision is ready now versus what requires another loop. Embed a short “make it visible” cadence into your rituals: if a decision isn’t on the map, it’s not a decision. If a next step isn’t in a public tracker, it’s not a next step. AI is excellent at formatting and distributing these artifacts instantly; your job is to ensure they reflect what the team actually agreed to.

All three shifts share a pattern: intentionality beats intensity. You don’t need to work faster for speed to pay off—you need to work clearer. By formalizing how humans and AI collaborate, you reduce churn, increase throughput, and create artifacts that compound learning. Your team will feel the difference quickly. Meetings stop being places we “talk about work” and start being places we “make work visible and move it forward.”

Measuring what matters 

One of the most reliable ways to break free from legacy habits is to change what you measure. If you’ve been tracking only output (tickets closed, campaigns launched), start tracking flow. Lead time from idea to value. Work in progress per person. Rework rate after handoff. Decision cycle time for reversible versus irreversible calls. These measures surface the invisible friction you’ve tolerated for years and, critically, show whether your new rituals are paying off in days, not quarters.

Set up small reflection loops to create exponential gains. At the end of each sprint or milestone, run a brief retrospective: what worked, what didn’t, what will we try next between now and the next loop? Bring AI into that loop deliberately. Have it extract patterns from your sprint artifacts, flag recurring blockers, and propose two or three lightweight experiments. The team then chooses, adjusts, and commits. Next loop, you measure the difference in flow metrics and decide whether to adopt, adapt, or abandon. This is how practice compounds over time.

As you mature, think system-wide, not just individual or team-level. We often describe an AI maturity path that starts with individual use (personal productivity), progresses to co‑piloting within teams (pairing AI with core roles), evolves to AI teammates embedded in workflows, and culminates in systemic use where cross-functional processes, data, and governance align. Each stage demands new agreements: where humans must remain in the loop, what the no‑fly zones are for AI, how you audit outputs, and how you escalate issues of bias, privacy, or safety.

Governance shouldn’t be a blocker; it should be an enabler. Lightweight policies that clarify purpose and boundaries give teams confidence to experiment. Templates for risk assessment, model selection, prompt hygiene, and result verification help busy managers make good calls quickly. Training facilitators to guide these conversations—mapping the work, designing the cadence, making the trade-offs explicit—is how you steadily raise the organization’s capacity to move at the new speed without breaking.

Closing the gap

The big idea of March can be summed up this way: the problems are old, the speed is new. The fundamentals of how people align, decide, and create together haven’t changed. What’s changed is the tempo and scale at which consequences arrive. That means the gap that matters most is the one between knowing and doing. Everyone knows where the leaks are. The teams who win will be the ones who fix them first and redesign their systems so speed serves them, not the other way around.

If you do one thing this month, run a mini Ways of Working Assessment with your team. Start small. Pick a critical flow, like intake to delivery or discovery to decision. Map the last time you did it together. Find one leak you can patch that would reduce the most downstream rework. Define the role of AI in that moment, teammate, co‑pilot, or no‑fly, and write the decision rule that goes with it. Make the change visible. Measure the impact in two weeks. Then iterate. These steps take hours, not months, and they create artifacts you can reuse and scale.

When you design cadence on purpose, AI stops being a source of overwhelm and becomes a source of momentum. You’ll find yourself moving faster where it matters and slower where it counts. You’ll see ambiguity shrink as your team’s shared models get clearer. You’ll feel meetings transform from status theatre into decision engines. And as your practices compound, you’ll notice something else: the same clarity that makes your AI prompts better will make your cross‑functional collaboration better. That’s the kind of win that compounds quarter after quarter.

You already know where the friction is. The Ways of Working Assessment gives you a structured way to surface it, prioritize it, and prototype something better – fast. Watch the overview, block 60 minutes with your team, and let’s get to work.

The post Problems Are Old, Speed Is New appeared first on Voltage Control.

When Douglas took the stage to open the 8th Annual Facilitation Lab Summit, he did so with a question rather than an agenda: What becomes possible at the edge?

It was the right question for the moment. Over two days, facilitators from across the country gathered to explore what it means to work at the boundaries — where pressure meets reality, where comfort gives way to growth, and where the most meaningful facilitation happens. Douglas framed the experience with a line from Leonard Cohen: “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” That metaphor of cracks, edges, and light anchored everything that followed.

A note on this year’s summit: AI was present in ways it hadn’t been before. Sponsored by Miro, the event showcased how AI tools are reshaping the way we design and deliver experiences — at one point, an AI-generated landing page summarizing a live session appeared in real time. It was impressive, and it raised a question that ran quietly beneath the entire two days: if AI can generate the content, the agenda, even the design, what is left for us? The answer that emerged, session by session, was clear. What’s left for us is presence — the human capacity to read a room, hold tension, and choose what happens next. People won’t remember the activities. They’ll remember how they felt.

Day 1: Edges, Emergence, and the Courage to Stay

Unlocking Collective Brilliance in Turbulent Times — Dan Walker

Dan Walker opened the summit with a session on unlocking collective wisdom in service of a more just and joyful world. His central reframe — from conflict resolution to conflict engagement — set a tone of productive discomfort that would carry through the day. He explored the tension between the urgency of now and the patience required for generational change, surfacing the idea of manufactured urgency: how constant pressure can become an excuse to avoid deeper work.But what stayed with the room was his insistence on centering joy. In conversations about turbulence and justice, joy can feel almost out of place. Dan pushed back on that. Sustaining ourselves, he argued, is not indulgent — it is strategic. We are only good to the work if we remain part of it. He offered a phrase that lingered well past his session: “It is a gift to be raggedy.” Imperfect, in-process, unfinished. Maybe that’s not something to fix. Maybe, as the summit’s framing suggested, it’s simply where the light gets in.

Recalibration and the Paradox of Authentic Facilitation — Renita Smith

Renita Smith explored one of the deepest tensions in our practice: staying true to yourself while holding space for what the room needs. Using the metaphor of Hamilton’s set design — a stage that must expand and contract to hold the story while staying out of the way — she offered a simple but powerful framework for navigating that tension:

Expand — with presence, authority, and direction when clarity is needed.
Contract — with silence, witnessing, and the release of ego when emergence is happening.

Her practical framework: Notice. Name. Invite. Notice what your senses are picking up. Name what the room already feels. Invite courage, because your courage becomes the room’s permission.

Navigating the Unknown — Chris Lunney

Chris Lunney guided participants through sense-making using a deceptively simple model: head, heart, and hand. The heart as compass. The head tracing the map. The hands affecting reality. He reminded us that “in nothingness, there is potential” and encouraged tiny experiments — small, trackable actions taken without judgment, treated simply as data.

In a summit that had already surfaced the pace of technological change, this session deliberately slowed things down, creating space to feel alignment before rushing into action.

Facilitating Innovation at the Edge of Certainty — Shannon Hart

Shannon Hart re-energized the room in the afternoon, literally — participants stood, moved tables, and took the conversation outside. Her session challenged one of facilitation’s most embedded assumptions: that consensus is always the goal. In some cases, she argued, consensus actively hinders innovation. The facilitator’s role is not to drive the group toward agreement, but to create the conditions where something new can emerge.

Her key guidance: slow the rush to certainty, protect the quiet sparks who need more time to process, and stay in the “groan zone” longer than feels comfortable. Creating the conditions — not controlling the outcome. That phrase closed out Day 1 and echoed into the evening, where many attendees extended the conversation over dinner long after the sessions had ended.

Day 2: Voice, Light, and the Rooms We Create

DJing the Room — Joe Randel

Joe Randel opened Day 2 with a session that quickly became one of the summit’s most talked-about. Framing facilitation through the lens of DJing, he laid out two foundational tracks.

Track 1: Find your voice. Preparation. Repertoire. Practice. Interpretation. Two facilitators can run the exact same design and produce completely different experiences. The difference isn’t the framework — it’s the voice behind it. In a world where AI can generate the agenda and the slides in seconds, voice becomes our competitive advantage: tone, timing, humor, instinct, the lived experience we bring into the room.

Track 2: Read the room. Preparation gives you options. Presence tells you which one to choose. The room is alive. Your plans aren’t.

He then described three types of transitions every facilitator navigates: Cut — close the moment and move forward with clarity. Blend — weave what’s emerging into what comes next. Let it end — stay with what’s unfolding, even if it disrupts the plan. Participants practiced these with real scenarios, and the result was illuminating: each facilitator chose differently. No single correct answer. Voice shapes choices.

Illumination — Brian Buck

Brian Buck extended the summit’s central metaphor through an exploration of facilitation identity, offering three distinct orientations:

Ember: Tend my fire.
Kindle: Tend the firebox.
Illuminate: Tend the spark.

He described his own practice as “presence illumination” — not about answers, but about the human beings who carry them. The invitation he left with participants: what might be illuminated through your presence in the room?

The Body Knows — Robin Neidorf

Robin Neidorf brought the afternoon into the body. Working with yoga as her central metaphor, she guided participants through partner exercises sensing energy fields and, in one of the summit’s more memorable moments, through silent eye contact in groups of two, three, four, and five — experiencing firsthand how group size shifts the energy of a room.

Pairs felt vulnerable. Triads felt creative but slightly unstable. Groups of four felt productive. Five introduced diffusion. It was a visceral, embodied demonstration of something facilitators often sense but rarely examine directly. Many participants said afterward they wouldn’t think about breakout group formation the same way again.

Safety at the Edge — Trudy Townsend

Trudy Townsend centered the afternoon on trauma-informed facilitation, grounding the conversation in a layered definition of safety: physical, psychological, social, moral, and cultural. Her core argument was direct — facilitator regulation shapes the room. It is our responsibility to show up regulated, and to remain present enough to hold the space we’re creating.

She also centered empowerment through agency: ask people what they need. Safety isn’t assumed; it’s co-created. And the edges we hold as facilitators are not always theoretical. Sometimes they are deeply embodied realities for the people in the room.

Closing

Eric closed the summit with the poem he returns to each year, ending on the line: “Your edge of darkness is an edge of light.” He reframed edges not as cliffs, but as shorelines — places to stand, to look out from, and to stay long enough to see what might emerge.

The room responded with a standing ovation. It was a fitting close to two days that consistently asked facilitators to do what we ask of others: stay at the edge, hold the discomfort, and trust that presence — not tools, not templates, not technology — is what makes the work meaningful.

Summit Awards

We were proud to honor members of the Facilitation Lab community whose work exemplifies the transformative power of facilitation. The 2026 award recipients are:

Community Award — Reshma Khan This award recognizes alumni who have gone above and beyond to foster connection and collaboration within the facilitation community. Reshma embodies what it means to meaningfully bring people together — in Kenya and worldwide. She has been instrumental to the growth of our Facilitation Lab community over the past year, building bridges across geography and background with quiet, consistent dedication.

Impact Award — Cat Rodriguez The Impact Award honors facilitators whose work has made a meaningful difference in the lives of others — through organizational change, team empowerment, or addressing societal challenges. Cat has brought extraordinary impact through her work at the Anti-Defamation League and beyond, embodying what it means to hold courageous space for the justice conversations we must have.

Growth Award — Brian Buck The Growth Award celebrates alumni who have shown remarkable personal and professional development since completing the certification program. Brian has made extraordinary leaps in both his internal and external growth. As he has built from within, he has simultaneously built externally at Progressive — charting a path toward a facilitation center of excellence that creates growth at scale.

Innovation Award — Chris Lunney This award celebrates alumni who have demonstrated exceptional creativity and forward-thinking in their facilitation practice. Chris has led much of our work bringing facilitation into this AI future — guiding and modeling what it looks like to collaborate with AI as a teammate, and asking the essential questions along the way.

These four facilitators represent the best of what our community is becoming — and we were honored to celebrate them.

Key Takeaways

• Presence — not tools or design — is the facilitator’s deepest competitive advantage in an age of AI.
• Conflict engagement, not resolution, allows groups to do more honest and generative work.
• Joy and sustainability are strategic, not indulgent.
• Voice shapes experience. Two facilitators, same design, completely different rooms.
• Safety is layered, co-created, and often more embodied than we assume.
• Creating the conditions matters more than controlling the outcome.

Join the Community and Stay Connected

Although the summit has ended, the journey doesn’t have to stop here. Continue engaging with facilitators from around the world through our Community Hub. Share resources, exchange ideas, and keep the momentum going!

Join the Community Hub

Looking Ahead to the 2027 Summit

Stay tuned for early bird tickets and announcements for next year’s summit. We’ll see you at the edge.

Get 2027 Tickets Now

Thank you to everyone who made Facilitation Lab Summit 2026 a success. We can’t wait to see you next year as we continue to inspire, engage, and transform through the power of facilitation.

The post Facilitation Lab Summit 2026 appeared first on Voltage Control.

I didn’t always have the language for what I was doing. But when I think back, I can see the early threads. They run through every phase of my career, especially during my decade at National Instruments, where I led teams building robotics platforms for kids in partnership with LEGO. These tools were designed to introduce young minds to science and engineering through graphical programming. It was deeply technical work, but also creative and collaborative. And most importantly, it was human-centered. The kids were our end users, and that meant we had to think differently. We had to step into their world.

I still remember cutting holes in pizza boxes, duct-taping together prototype hardware, and building touchable experiences so we could test usability with kids in classrooms. There was something magical about those messy, hands-on sessions. We were collaborating with designers from LEGO, building empathy for little hands and chaotic play styles. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those moments were my first real taste of facilitation—guiding a group through ambiguity toward something that mattered.

Later, while leading the product team for NI’s academic tools, I ran into a new kind of challenge: distributed product development. Our software came from Austin and Shanghai. Our hardware from Penang and back. Everyone was doing great work, but it wasn’t adding up. It felt like we were all laying tracks from different directions, hoping they’d connect. So I brought the global team together. We simulated the full user experience—hardware, guides, software, and personas—in one big room. We roleplayed unboxing, onboarding, and even teaching with our prototype. That was the moment something clicked for me. It wasn’t enough to design good parts. We had to design the connective tissue. That was design, but it was also facilitation. I just didn’t have the word for it yet.

There was another moment I always come back to—a design thinking workshop at IBM during Austin Design Week. We were challenged to design the worst hospital experience imaginable. It was absurd and hilarious—we imagined zombies in the waiting room, bloodied tools left lying around, terrifying moans echoing down the hallways. But beneath the comedy, something deeper was happening. We were surfacing our collective fears. And from there, we could design better. That facilitation technique—”design the worst” to unlock what’s most important—has stuck with me ever since.

Looking back, the shift was already happening. I started showing up at Austin Design Week. I went to IDEO trainings. I found myself drawn to design thinking. And I began to notice that the leaders I admired most weren’t the ones with the best answers. They were the ones who knew how to guide a group through uncertainty. They could make the murky feel purposeful. When I attended the Voltage Control summit in early 2020—just weeks before the pandemic—it hit me like a lightning bolt: these were my people. I was witnessing the art of facilitation, and I wanted in.

Design at the Edges

My path into facilitation wasn’t straight. It wound through product management, engineering education, and people leadership. But the common thread was always the same: I was obsessed with helping teams work better together. After that 2020 summit, I dove in. I joined every virtual meetup I could. I took Eric’s learning experience design workshop and immediately started redesigning my team meetings. I used mural boards, breakout groups, solo time, lean coffee, and liberating structures to fight the Zoom fatigue that was crushing morale.

There was one moment during those early pandemic months that stays with me. My team was exhausted. The line between work and home had blurred. So I tossed out our regular meeting structure and instead opened with a prompt: “What’s something you’re proud of this week, work or not?” The answers ranged from “I made banana bread” to “I finally got my toddler to nap.” It wasn’t much. But it brought us back to each other. That 5-minute share changed the tone of our meeting. And we got more done. It reminded me that facilitation isn’t always a fancy workshop. Sometimes it’s just holding space for what people need most.

I also started paying attention to the ways people were connecting online. The facilitation community blew me away. In the early days of the pandemic, it felt like facilitators were holding the world together. They were generously sharing tools and frameworks, helping people gather in meaningful ways, even as the world went remote. That inspired me to go further.

By then, I was leading a growing global team of 45 product owners. I started designing experiences that brought our chapter together—deep onboarding, virtual conferences with interactive side chats, hands-on workshops built by internal voices. What started as a few experiments turned into a full-blown community of practice. The feedback poured in. “This is the best internal event I’ve ever attended.” “I learned things here I couldn’t learn in a book.” “Every discipline should run like this.”

That’s when I realized I needed to go deeper. Facilitation wasn’t just something I was doing. It was becoming a core part of how I lead.

Choosing to Say Yes

When the first-ever Voltage Control Facilitation Certification cohort opened up, I was nervous. I didn’t see myself as a facilitator. I was a leader, sure. A team builder. A curious question-asker. But I had only ever facilitated my own meetings. Was that enough? Could I really claim this title?

Something in me said yes.

I joined the cohort.

And it changed everything. The program gave me language for things I was already doing—but more than that, it gave me the tools and confidence to go further. I saw how my approach to leadership was deeply facilitative. How I had always been focused on unlocking the collective wisdom of a group. How I’d spent years creating safety and structure for teams to wrestle with tough topics and push each other toward better ideas.

I still remember one of our cohort sessions vividly. We were practicing feedback frameworks, and I shared a story from my work. Another cohort member reframed it, offered a new lens, and I suddenly saw that situation in a totally different light. It was the first time in a long time I felt truly seen in my leadership. That peer-to-peer reflection became one of the most valuable parts of the experience.

The cohort experience gave me a mirror. I saw my own leadership reflected back in a way that made it real. Tangible. Nameable. And it allowed me to fully own it.

My Leadership Is Facilitative

I didn’t expect the portfolio to be as powerful as it was. At first, it felt daunting. But as I began to build it, something unexpected happened: I started to reframe my own story. I looked back at past projects with new eyes. Suddenly, I could see the throughline. I wasn’t just trying stuff. I was practicing something. My experiments in team culture, onboarding design, collaborative workshops—they were all early expressions of the facilitation competencies.

Through the certification, I found clarity in purpose. I found frameworks to strengthen my instincts. And I found a cohort of others who were stretching facilitation into all kinds of wild and beautiful directions. It expanded my definition of the work. It showed me that this craft lives everywhere.

One unexpected shift came in how I mentored others. I began using facilitation tools in 1:1s—pulling out templates, whiteboards, even metaphor cards. What started as performance check-ins became co-designed coaching sessions. People opened up. They brought their full selves. And we built trust that translated into better collaboration across the board.

Most of all, it helped me articulate my values. I believe in gathering with intention. I believe in designing for belonging. I believe the best ideas come when we create space for every voice, especially the quiet ones.

Everywhere, All at Once

These days, facilitation shows up everywhere in my life. It’s how I lead work in rural Kenya, bringing together organizations to build a robotics program for under-resourced kids. It’s how I design meetings across time zones and shaky internet, using shared artifacts to help teams move forward asynchronously. It’s how I create community among women in my life, hosting wisdom circles and shared reflections.

Facilitation is how I lead as a mom. When my family hit a rough patch recently, we pulled out sticky notes and affinity mapped our way to a shared decision on weekend plans. It was silly, but also incredibly connecting.

It even shows up in the unlikeliest moments. One evening in Kenya, we were waiting for hippos to emerge along the riverbank. I pulled out Rose, Thorn, Bud and invited everyone to share a highlight, a challenge, and a hope from the trip. What followed was one of the most honest and beautiful group conversations I’ve ever been part of. It reminded me that all it takes is one prompt, offered with care, to open up something meaningful.

The skills I’ve gained have become a default lens: How do we create clarity? How do we design safety? How do we move from messy to meaningful?

And I’m not done yet.

Fueling the Future

Science in a Suitcase is my current focus. We’ve rebuilt the organization from dormancy post-pandemic to a thriving initiative reaching over 200 kids annually in rural Kenya. We’ve delivered 65 robots to six schools. We’ve launched tournaments. We’re exploring expansion. And we’re doing it through partnership, storytelling, and deep facilitation.

I’m also dreaming into what’s next. I see robotics not just as a STEM tool, but as a creative prompt—a way to unlock new ways of thinking. We’ve had teens in Nairobi prototype civic solutions with LEGO robots. We’ve hosted sumo bot battles that double as mad lib storytelling games. I want to keep exploring how facilitation, learning, and play intersect.

We’re building a board, deepening our partnerships, and imagining new models for sustainability. It’s not always easy, but the vision is clear: connection, creativity, and capacity-building across borders.

If you’re on the fence about certification, I’ll say this: these skills will change your life. You’ll become a better leader, parent, friend, and collaborator. You’ll learn how to make every gathering more purposeful and alive.

You’ll find your voice. And you’ll help others find theirs, too.

The post From Robots to Radical Connection appeared first on Voltage Control.

The most powerful spaces in facilitation exist at edges—those uncomfortable thresholds where certainty dissolves and something new becomes possible. At the 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit, eight facilitators explored what happens when we stop performing expertise and start practicing presence at these edges. Their collective wisdom reveals a profession in transformation, one urgently needed in a business world grappling with unprecedented complexity.

The Practice of Edges

These eight perspectives converge on a profound reorientation of facilitation practice—one that mirrors broader shifts in leadership and organizational thinking.

The traditional facilitator arrived as expert, controlled the process, directed attention, and evaluated contributions. Success meant achieving predetermined outcomes efficiently.

The edge-practicing facilitator arrives as presence, creates conditions for emergence, distributes attention, and illuminates participants’ latent wisdom. Success means unlocking collective intelligence and building capacity that persists beyond the session.

This shift requires practicing specific edges:

From certainty to curiosity: Acknowledging “I don’t know” becomes strategic rather than admitting weakness. Dan Walker showed how embracing collective wisdom means releasing the need to have answers yourself.

From expertise to authenticity: Bringing your whole self rather than just your professional persona. Renita Williams demonstrated how being “real enough” creates permission for deeper engagement.

From analysis to integration: Trusting multiple forms of intelligence—somatic, emotional, intuitive—alongside rational thinking. Chris Marquez’s “whole intelligence” framework provides pathways through true unknowns.

From structure to exploration: Designing for discovery rather than predetermined outcomes. Shannon Berg’s “expedition facilitation” allows breakthrough thinking to emerge.

From voice to listening: Finding your unique facilitation voice while staying exquisitely attuned to what the room needs. Joe Dager’s DJ metaphor shows how preparation and presence dance together.

From expert to illuminator: Seeing participants as “already worthy” and tending conditions for their brilliance to shine. Brian Formato’s fire framework shows how facilitators ignite rather than instruct.

From thinking to embodying: Engaging the full physical presence and recognizing how bodies regulate (or dysregulate) together. Robin Goodwin brought facilitation into flesh and nervous systems.

From control to safety: Understanding trauma lives in every room and creating multiple dimensions of safety so people can move from protection to connection. Trudy Duffy provided the neurobiological foundation for why edges feel risky—and how to make them safer to explore.

The Edge of Collective Intelligence

Dan Walker opened the conversation with a deceptively simple premise: “The smartest person in the room is the room.” Yet in practice, this belief requires facilitators to abandon the comfortable center of their own expertise and venture toward an edge where outcomes cannot be controlled.

Dan described this tension beautifully: edges exist “distant from the comfortable space at the heart of us.” They represent the challenging spaces we must move into, even when—especially when—”the world itself feels like it’s at an edge.”

His insight cuts to the core of modern organizational challenges. When business leaders face problems too complex for any single expert to solve, the facilitator’s role shifts fundamentally. The value isn’t in having answers but in unlocking the “collective brilliance that exists and is so heavily needed.”

Dan introduced another critical edge: the tension between urgency and patience. Organizations demand speed—”we need this yesterday”—while meaningful change operates on generational timescales. “How do you balance that tension between urgency we need this now… with actually the quality work takes time?” he asked participants.

This isn’t an edge to resolve but to hold. The wisdom lies in recognizing when to honor both forces simultaneously.

The Edge of Authenticity

Renita Smith named what many facilitators feel but rarely articulate: the exhausting gap between who we are and who we think we should be professionally. “Outside of work walls we’re having these conversations,” she observed, “but when it comes into the corporate spaces we clam up.”

Her framework for being “unmasked” offers a provocative alternative: “Being real enough so the room can be real back.”

This isn’t about oversharing or abandoning professionalism. Renita distinguished between performing personality “for its own sake” versus bringing genuine presence that creates permission for others to do the same. When she started showing up fully—sharing her welcome slide listing “oldest daughter, naturally an introvert, ADHD/autistic, diverse group of friends, does improv, loves unicorns, queer as hell”—her facilitation transformed.

“The more that I pushed myself, the more the room opened up,” she reflected. “The more unhinged I was… the more conversation got deeper.”

For business leaders struggling with authentic leadership in polarized times, Renita demonstrates how vulnerability isn’t weakness but strategic invitation. When facilitators model wholeness, they create conditions for participants to bring their full cognitive and creative capacity to complex problems.

The Edge of the Unknown

Chris Lunney introduced the concept of “whole intelligence”—integrating analytical thinking with somatic awareness, emotional intuition, and subconscious insight. In practice, this means trusting more than your head when navigating uncertainty.

Through a guided visualization, Marquez led participants to access what their hearts longed for in an unknown situation, then translate that into “trackable experiments”—small actions aligned with head, heart, and hand.

This approach addresses a fundamental business challenge: traditional analysis fails when facing true unknowns. “When we’re in the unknown and we only rely on analytical and relational thinking,” Marquez explained, “it’s like using a map without a compass.”

The facilitator’s role becomes helping groups access multiple forms of intelligence to chart paths through terrain that cannot be mapped in advance. This proves essential when innovation requires not just solving known problems but discovering which problems need solving.

The Edge of Innovation

Shannon Hart translated this into practical innovation facilitation, distinguishing between “tour guide” sessions—structured, predictable, with predetermined stops—and “expedition” facilitation that ventures into unmapped territory searching for “hidden unknown treasures.”

“True innovation is a concept that is non-linear, iterative, and relational,” Shannon emphasized. It requires “less like this [tour guide] and more Indiana Jones style expedition.”

Her framework addresses why so many innovation sessions disappoint. Organizations want breakthrough thinking but design workshops that minimize uncertainty. Shannon advocates for deliberately holding the “diamond open longer”—resisting premature convergence that kills emergent possibilities.

“The rush to certainty” she warned, particularly when teams are depleted, causes groups to settle for safe solutions rather than transformative ones. The facilitator’s job is “protecting the quiet sparks”—the fragile new ideas easily drowned by louder voices or habitual thinking.

For businesses seeking competitive advantage through innovation, Berg’s message is clear: you cannot mandate breakthrough thinking in containers designed for control.

The Edge of Voice

Joe Randel explored how finding your facilitator voice requires balancing preparation with presence. Using the metaphor of a DJ, he demonstrated how “voice is pattern choice”—the unique decisions you make about how to guide group energy moment by moment.

The DJ metaphor illuminated facilitation dynamics beautifully. DJs come with repertoire and plans but succeed through reading the room in real-time, choosing whether to cut, blend, or let a moment end based on what the space needs, not what the setlist demands.

“Your voice is your competitive advantage,” Dager argued, especially as AI tools can generate session agendas and activities. What remains irreplaceable is the human capacity to sense energy shifts and make judgment calls that serve the group’s emerging needs over the facilitator’s prepared plan.

This resonates powerfully in our current technological moment. As automation handles routine tasks, the competitive advantage lies in distinctly human capacities: reading subtle cues, holding complexity, making intuitive leaps, and building trust through authentic presence.

The Edge of Illumination

Brian Buck reframed the facilitator’s fundamental stance through fire as metaphor. Rather than being the flame everyone follows, skilled facilitators tend conditions that allow others to ignite.

His framework moved through three stages: Ember (internal self-work and regulation), Kindle (creating the container), and Illuminate (igniting others’ potential). The crucial shift happens in moving from Kindle to Illuminate—from “I am the content driver” to “I ignite the fire of other people.”

Brian drew on David Brooks’ work on belonging: “The ultimate gift you can give another person is to see them deeply, to understand them, and to make them feel known.” When facilitators see people as “already worthy” with depth and mystery rather than problems to manage, belonging deepens and collective intelligence emerges.

“Illuminators don’t spotlight answers,” Brian explained. “They spotlight people who have the answers.”

For organizations concerned with engagement, retention, and high performance, this reframe is crucial. Belonging precedes performance. Psychological safety is felt, not declared. When people feel seen and valued, they bring energy and creativity that no amount of expert advice can generate.

The Edge of Embodiment

Robin Neidorf brought facilitation into the body, drawing on 30 years of yoga practice to demonstrate how physical presence shapes group dynamics. Through exercises exploring energy centers and group sizes, she made visible how “embodied sound and vibrations… regulate your nervous system and put you quite literally in harmony with” others.

Her insight challenges the cerebral approach dominating professional spaces: “If we don’t bring ourselves fully as bodies into the spaces we’re working in, participants won’t.”

Robin demonstrated how different group configurations create distinct felt experiences. Pairs generate vulnerability and deep connection. Threes enable creative rhythm. Fours feel solid and task-oriented. Fives create space for people to pull back when needed. Understanding these dynamics allows facilitators to design activities that serve emotional as well as cognitive objectives.

In an era of Zoom fatigue and screen-mediated work, Robin’s emphasis on embodied practice offers a corrective. The body holds wisdom that thinking alone cannot access—wisdom increasingly essential as work grows more complex and demanding.

The Edge of Safety

Trudy Townsend closed the summit by naming what underlies all other edges: trauma exists in every room we enter. Drawing on the landmark ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study, she explained how trauma isn’t the event but “the experience of that event living in your body.”

Understanding nervous system responses—the rapid “flipping of lids” when people feel threatened—reframes facilitation challenges. That quiet person isn’t disengaged; they may be in freeze response. The person making jokes isn’t being disruptive; humor may be their protection mechanism.

Trudy identified five dimensions of safety facilitators must consider: physical, psychological, social, moral, and cultural. “Safety is a fundamental antidote to trauma,” she emphasized. “When the nervous system calms down… we naturally shift out of protection mode. Our breath changes, our jaw loosens, muscles start to soften, our attention widens.”

This matters immensely for business. Innovation requires psychological safety—the felt sense that you can take interpersonal risks without negative consequences. But safety isn’t one thing. Different people need different conditions to feel safe enough to contribute fully. Trauma-informed facilitation means continuously noticing signs of activation and adjusting to support regulation.

Why This Matters Now

These insights arrive at a critical juncture. The business world faces challenges—climate crisis, technological disruption, social polarization, unprecedented complexity—that exceed the capacity of traditional hierarchical problem-solving. Organizations need their people’s full creativity, wisdom, and engagement. But accessing that requires fundamentally different approaches to bringing people together.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how quickly certainty evaporates. The rise of artificial intelligence challenges assumptions about expertise and knowledge work. Social fragmentation tests our ability to work across difference. These conditions demand facilitators who can work at edges—holding space for groups to discover what they don’t yet know they need to know.

The facilitation practices explored at this summit offer more than techniques. They model a leadership paradigm urgently needed: one based on presence rather than control, on illumination rather than instruction, on collective intelligence rather than heroic expertise.

When Dan Walker says “the smartest person in the room is the room,” he articulates what complexity science has shown: emergent solutions to complex problems cannot be designed by individuals, only discovered by collectives. When Renita Smith invites us to be “unmasked,” she addresses the authenticity crisis in leadership. When Chris Lunney teaches “whole intelligence,” he provides tools for navigating irreducible uncertainty. When Shannon Hart advocates “expedition facilitation,” she enables the innovation organizations desperately seek. When Joe Randel explores “voice through metaphor,” he helps us find authentic expression in professional contexts. When Brian Buck shifts us from expert to illuminator, he addresses engagement and belonging challenges. When Robin Neidorf brings embodiment forward, she reconnects us to wisdom beyond thinking. When Trudy Townsend teaches trauma-informed practice, she provides the safety necessary for all the rest to be possible.

The Invitation

These facilitators invite us to explore our own edges—the places where our facilitation practice feels uncomfortable, uncertain, vulnerable. Not because challenge is virtuous but because edges are where growth happens. For ourselves and the groups we serve.

The world needs facilitators willing to release the comfortable center of their expertise and venture toward edges. To trust the room’s intelligence more than their own answers. To bring authenticity that creates permission for others to do the same. To access multiple forms of wisdom. To design for discovery. To find voice while reading the room. To illuminate rather than instruct. To embody presence. To create safety for the difficult work of collective sense-making.

This isn’t naive idealism. It’s pragmatic response to genuine need. Organizations filled with brilliant people achieving mediocre results don’t need better experts. They need facilitators who can unlock the brilliance already present—by practicing presence at edges where control dissolves and collective intelligence can emerge.

As Brian Buck observed, reflecting on his journey from expert to illuminator: “What I’m excited about is… the one I’ve gone to illuminate and I’m like what just happened… suddenly the fire makes the whole darkness around you lights up that you didn’t see before.”

That’s the work. That’s the edge. That’s the practice these facilitators invite us into—tending the conditions that allow groups to illuminate themselves, discovering together what none of us could create alone.

The edge between what we know and what wants to emerge is where facilitation becomes truly transformational. And in a world at its own edges, that transformation has never been more necessary.

The post At the Edge of Facilitation: Eight Voices on Letting Go to Lead Forward appeared first on Voltage Control.

Enterprise AI adoption isn’t a roadmap problem. It’s an edge problem.

Across organizations, AI initiatives are accelerating — pilots are multiplying, tools are proliferating, and policies are emerging in parallel. Executive teams are crafting AI strategies. Boards are asking about posture and readiness. Departments are experimenting with copilots and automation.

Yet many leadership teams feel the same tension: adoption is uneven, alignment is fragile, and anxiety lingers beneath the surface.

What’s often missing isn’t strategy. It’s a way to navigate the edges AI creates.

Edges aren’t problems to solve. They’re thresholds: places where something new is trying to emerge. When AI enters workflows, it doesn’t just add capability; it reshapes roles, decision rights, operating rhythms, and expectations. That reshaping generates friction. And friction, when unnamed, becomes resistance.

When named and structured, it becomes movement.

At our February summit, we debuted a simple tool called the Edge Maps and used it live with 150 leaders, many of them navigating AI adoption in their organizations. In eight focused minutes, the room surfaced present realities, named thresholds, and committed to small, reversible experiments. The energy shifted from ambient overwhelm to organized momentum.

This article explores why enterprise AI adoption stalls at the edge and how a lightweight, structured approach can turn tension into forward motion.

Predictable Change, Unpredictable Edges

As February winds down, I’m reminded of a rhythm my wife lives with every year. She runs a garden center, and each spring the staff nearly triples. The ramp-up is expected. It’s seasonal. It’s planned.

And yet, every year feels different.

The mix of people shifts. Regulations change. Customer behavior evolves. Some seasonal employees return; many don’t. Training needs are familiar in shape but new in detail. Even when the pattern is predictable, the edge itself is not identical.

The edge is recurring, but never the same.

Enterprise AI adoption operates in much the same way.

You know AI waves are coming. You anticipate expansion. You build pilots. You set budgets. You hold strategy sessions.

• A new team integrating AI into a legacy workflow.
• A new compliance interpretation that shifts what’s permissible.
• A new executive expectation to demonstrate measurable ROI.
• A new tension between efficiency and craftsmanship.
• A new layer of role ambiguity.

The edge isn’t a surprise.

The shape of it is.

And because the shape changes, organizations can’t rely on static plans alone. They need a navigational practice — something that helps teams repeatedly step into uncertainty without freezing or overcorrecting.

Why Enterprise AI Adoption Stalls

Most AI strategies begin with tools, policies, or training plans. Those matter. But they don’t address the underlying edges teams are standing on.

Common enterprise AI edges look like this:

• Human vs. AI decision authority
• Tool sprawl and workflow fragmentation
• Governance bottlenecks
• Ethical ambiguity
• Role rebundling and job anxiety
• Measurement confusion — what does “AI success” even mean?

These aren’t purely technical issues. They’re transitional states.

And transitional states create psychological and operational edges.

At the executive layer, enthusiasm is often high. AI is framed as a competitive necessity or strategic imperative.

At the middle layer, uncertainty surfaces:

• Who approves experiments?
• Which tools are sanctioned?
• How do we manage risk?
• What metrics matter most?
• Who is accountable if something goes wrong?

At the frontline, experimentation frequently happens quietly. Individuals test tools on their own, unsure whether their usage is encouraged or merely tolerated.

Legal and governance teams, tasked with managing exposure, can become perceived blockers, not because they oppose innovation, but because there are no structured lanes for safe exploration.

Without a structured way to name and navigate these thresholds, organizations default to one of three patterns:

• Debate hypotheticals endlessly.
• Freeze in policy design.
• Launch large initiatives without safe learning loops.

The result? AI remains either an isolated productivity hack or a top-down mandate — not a coordinated, trust-building transformation.

What’s missing is a navigational layer.

Reframing AI as a Shoreline, Not a Cliff

When we hear “edge,” our bodies brace for a fall. It feels like a cliff that is irreversible and risky.

But what if enterprise AI is more like a shoreline?

Shorelines are dynamic. They shift daily. They invite navigation. They require rhythm, awareness, and adjustment — not panic.

This metaphor matters because it shifts energy from fear to curiosity. From avoidance to orientation.

Leaders can accelerate this shift by explicitly naming AI-related edges at the start of a meeting:

“We’re at the edge of redefining review workflows with AI.”
“We’re at the threshold of clarifying human vs. AI drafting roles.”
“We’re navigating the edge of safe AI-in-use.”

Naming the edge normalizes uncertainty without amplifying fear.

From there, you invite a consent-based experiment: time-boxed, safe-to-try, and small-but-real.

That move alone often transforms a session from:

“We might break something.”

to:

“We’re here to learn together.”

Closers matter just as much as openers. If you name an edge and run an experiment, close by harvesting learning, confirming ownership, and setting the next check-in. In this way, AI adoption becomes rhythmic rather than episodic.

Decision rules and working agreements become critical here. Edges produce ambiguity; decision rules clarify how you move within it. Working agreements make safety visible: how we’ll speak, pause, decide, and adjust.

Together, they form the container that makes AI transformation navigable.

The Missing Layer: Navigating AI Edges

AI is reshaping work in real time, and many organizations are experiencing multiple edges simultaneously:

• Tool selection and integration
• Policy and ethics
• Training and enablement
• Role evolution
• Operating rhythms
• Measures of success

For many teams, AI has become background anxiety, visible but hard to grasp.

The solution isn’t more slides.

It’s structured, small-scale experimentation.

It’s useful to treat AI like the weather. You forecast, prepare, and choose your route accordingly. Some days you sprint. On others you seek cover and regroup.

Practically, that means:

• Define the edge AI is presenting.
• Name it clearly.
• Identify the minimum viable experiment you can run to safely learn.

Minimum viable experiments create maximum alignment because they replace speculation with shared evidence.

Language is a lever here. Instead of “AI risk policy,” try “Safer AI-in-use.” Instead of “AI productivity targets,” try “Co-shaping AI-accelerated workflows.” Verbs like “co-shape,” “test,” “pilot,” and “harvest” nudge teams toward progression rather than perfection.

And while naming matters, don’t let it delay action. Begin exploration and refine language as you go. A named threshold becomes a door people can walk through together.

Introducing the Edge Maps: An 8-Minute Adoption Accelerator

This is where the Edge Maps comes in.

At the summit, we used it to help participants surface AI-related edges and convert them into tangible next steps. In eight minutes, participants lined up present realities, named a threshold, envisioned the near future, and identified the smallest real actions to cross it.

The room’s energy shifted from overwhelmed to organized.

When edges become visible and legible, they become navigable.

After two days of deep practice and dialogue, participants were already holding powerful insights about facilitation, emergence, and AI-shaped work. The Edge Maps offered something different — a structured moment of reflection. It created space to pause, assess what was emerging, and decide how these ideas would translate into practice. For some, that meant facilitation experiments. For others, it meant operational shifts. And for many, it meant clarifying how they would bring AI adoption back into their teams with intention rather than urgency. Within minutes of mapping Present, Threshold, and Future, something tightened and clarified. Edges that felt expansive became specific. Possibilities became prototypes. Energy became ownership. Participants weren’t solving AI adoption in eight minutes. They were converting insight into commitment. That’s the difference.

Here’s the essence of the tool:

• Use one row per edge, up to four.
• Move left to right through three fields: Present, Threshold, Future.
• Diverge in Present. Converge to name the Threshold. Close with tangible Future actions.
• Keep it fast — eight minutes by design.

In the Present field, begin with strengths, resources, and curiosities. This regulates the nervous system, especially when AI carries risk or ambiguity. Then acknowledge tensions and constraints.

That pairing — strength plus reality — creates confident curiosity rather than brittle optimism or fear.

Naming the Threshold is the fulcrum. Give it a discussable name. Then define small but real actions to step into and through it. Keep steps reversible.

In the Future field, articulate how it will feel once crossed, what you’ll be doing differently, and how you’ll know you’re there.

The result is a compact artifact that converts ambient AI worry into a trackable learning plan.

Applying Edges Thinking to Enterprise AI Adoption at Scale

Enterprise AI adoption isn’t a single edge. It’s a system of nested thresholds.

Strategic edges sit at the leadership layer.
Operational edges emerge in divisions.
Workflow edges surface inside teams.
Identity edges show up at the individual level.

The Edge Maps cascades effectively across levels:

• Leadership maps organizational edges across policy, enablement, ethics, and operations.
• Divisions map local thresholds shaped by their workflows.
• Teams identify role-level experiments that are small and reversible.

Balance top-down clarity with bottom-up learning.

Leadership sets guardrails:

• Data privacy boundaries
• Ethical commitments
• Reporting expectations

Teams co-shape experiments within those guardrails.

As local experiments produce wins, codify them into shared rituals, templates, and case studies. Innovation spreads without chaos.

Role clarity becomes a multiplier:

• Who owns AI enablement?
• Who stewards policy evolution?
• Who curates internal case studies?
• Who unlocks scale resources?

Consent-based trials reduce fear and increase participation. When people know experiments are time-bound and reversible, they’re more willing to engage.

Visibility accelerates adoption. Choose harvest formats that travel — brief write-ups, short demos, annotated templates. Make learning public and portable.

We’ve seen enterprise AI efforts transform simply by making experimentation legible.

From Map to Movement: Prototyping the Smallest Real Step

A map only matters if you move.

Convert at least one Future statement into a prototype this week.

Small. Real. Reversible.

“Pilot a daily AI stand-up for two weeks” beats “launch an AI initiative.”
“Draft a one-page AI-in-review guideline” beats “complete enterprise framework.”

Before starting, define:

• Safety signals: What tells us this is safe and responsible?
• Success signals: What tells us this is useful?
• Pivot protocol: How will we decide to continue, change, or stop?

Agreeing on pivot rules in advance reduces emotional friction and strengthens trust.

Book the next check-in before leaving the room. Close each session with owner, due date, and smallest viable action.

Rotate an “edge steward” role if helpful — someone who keeps the threshold visible and curates learning. Over time, experimentation becomes habit rather than event.

That’s when AI adoption shifts from initiative to capability.

Crossing the Shoreline

Enterprise AI adoption isn’t about eliminating uncertainty. It’s about building capacity to move within it.

Edges are invitations. They mark the place where capability wants to grow.

The Edge Maps provides a lightweight navigational layer — one that makes tension legible, experiments safe, and learning visible.

Name the threshold. Build a container. Take the smallest real next step together.

The shoreline is in sight.

Now move.

The post The Missing Layer in Enterprise AI Adoption: Navigating Edges appeared first on Voltage Control.