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

Start your year by crossing thresholds with intention. This January edition of Edgework explores how facilitators and leaders can recognize the signals of being “near an edge,” create consent-based stretches, and turn momentum into durable habits. Learn how openers, working agreements, and small prototypes make brave work feel safe and actionable. Plus, try the Activity of the Month—What, So What, Now What—a lightweight retrospective to reflect, align, and commit to next steps. Step into Q1 with clarity, cadence, and meaningful action.

Antonio Iskandar, a former Venezuelan attorney and longtime international development leader, reflects on how facilitation became his strategic “throughline”—from early human-rights restructuring rooms (and a formative fishbone diagram) to leading high-stakes governance, anti-corruption, and citizen-security work across 20+ countries. When a sudden career disruption hit mid–Voltage Control Facilitation Certification, the program gave him sharper language, practical methods, and a supportive cohort that helped him name his craft: designing inclusive processes that build trust, clarify decisions, and move stakeholders from noise to shared direction. Now he’s applying strategic facilitation to public consultations, multi-stakeholder dialogue, and nonprofit board work—bridging institutions and communities with clearer frames, fair decision structures, and next steps people truly own.

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab Podcast, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Renita Joyce Smith, CEO of Leap Forward Coaching and Consulting. Renita shares her journey into facilitation, emphasizing the importance of authenticity, humor, and humanity in meetings. She discusses how facilitation bridges structure and human connection, offers practical techniques for engagement, and highlights the transformative impact of skilled facilitation on organizational culture. Renita also explores the role of technology, the value of adaptability, and the need to prioritize human connection in the workplace, leaving listeners inspired to lead with empathy and authenticity.

Make AI a visible teammate in 2025—not a side tool. This article shows how to move AI from “nice-to-have” prompts to the operating core of your team: weaving it through meeting arcs (open, explore, decide, close), speeding decisions with AI-generated options and consent-based methods, and building trust through clear working agreements and verification habits. You’ll learn how to redesign whole workflows (not isolated tasks), create living memory that reduces churn, and prototype AI-centered rituals you can test in two weeks. Includes an AI-at-the-Center Bingo diagnostic to assess maturity and pick January experiments that boost clarity, alignment, and throughput.

Shannon Hart traces a 30-year journey from writing procedural binders to designing human-centered learning and facilitation experiences. After discovering accelerated learning, playful simulations, and the power of “the container,” she moved from teaching content to helping teams collaborate, decide, and connect—often virtually across time zones using tools like Mural, SessionLab, and ChatGPT. Voltage Control’s Facilitation Certification (Foundations and Master) became the jolt that helped her name her craft as “bridging structure and heart,” build a portfolio and website, strengthen boundaries, and bring ritual, equity, and courage into every room she leads.

Joe Randel never planned to become a facilitator—he was already doing the work, he just didn’t have the word for it. In this alumni story, Joe traces a winding career across arts, education, philanthropy, and music (especially jazz improvisation) to show how listening, shaping space, and helping people think together became his throughline. Discover how Voltage Control’s Facilitation Certification gave him language, frameworks, and tools to design more intentional sessions, trust the “groan zone,” and step into facilitation as a craft and professional identity.

From middle-school tower challenges to large-scale light installations and systems-change workshops, Voltage Control alum Chris Lunney shares how facilitation became the bridge between art, strategy, and collective action. He traces his path through product design, experiential art, and innovation consulting to founding Togethering, a facilitation practice that helps teams sense, decide, and act together. Discover how Voltage Control’s Facilitation Certification and Master Certification helped him turn lifelong curiosity into a grounded craft for guiding groups through ambiguity, conflict, and change.