First Time Facilitator podcast transcript (Episode 15)
Leanne: Our guest today is a leadership and engagement coach, workshop facilitator, speaker, executive coach, and psychologist with a simple no-nonsense approach to building leaders and businesses. Her natural way of engaging with people means that she's just as comfortable in the boardroom as she is on the factory floor. That's a fantastic description. Welcome to the show Therese Lardner.
Therese Lardner: Thank you so much for having me.
Leanne: It's great to have you here. Now, Therese and I met each other as we were both speakers at Disrupt HR last year. I completely agree the way that she comes across is effortless and completely natural. Now, Therese that's I know a bit about you, but I'd love you to share with our listeners. How did you enter the world of this career in terms of training facilitating and working with businesses?
Therese: Sure. I started out straight from school, going into psychology. Not really knowing exactly what it is that that meant, and what that was going to entail, but knew that I always wanted to work with people and loved working with people. Fast forward through my degree and getting out into the workplace as an organizational development consultant, one of the first things that I was tasked with doing as a recent graduate was facilitating workshops and training. Which for a new grad was completely nerve-wracking, but I was still talking about topics that I really enjoyed.
Things like change management and leadership. Back then it was the multi-generational workforce, which is gained a lot of pace these days, but 10 years ago that was a really big topic. I was thrust into the world of facilitation you could say, [laughs] but have always enjoyed being with people and being in front of people as well. I don't mind being on a stage that's for sure.
[laughter]
Leanne: That would have been very daunting. Did anything in university prepare you for actually stepping up in front of corporate people and trying to communicate, or change their opinion, shift their behavior?
Therese: In small ways, yes. What I really learned in terms of the transition from university into the workplace is that I almost had to forget all of my academic training, how we would structure arguments. It was all around what will happen as opposed to what may happen. May is a big word in psychology.
[laughter]
We like to catch all kinds of things, but the language that you use presenting to a corporate audience is very different. As I said, how you structure the argument is quite different. I really had to navigate my way through that vocabulary and that structure to be able to connect with the corporate audience. I think one of the best pieces of advice I was given when I was starting out and facilitating, rightly or wrongly, was that you know more about this topic than your audience will. If you use a wrong word here or there, if you mark up the order that the content is meant to be in and you revised version three instead of version two, they're not really going to know.
What they're going to remember are the key objectives that you were going to take them through. The key elements that they had to walk away with, as opposed to a misstep here and there. That really took the weight off my shoulders as I was starting out.
Leanne: That's really good advice. It's all about what's the end goal here, and the journey, you might have an idea of what that map looks like, but I think you do find in facilitation depending on where the conversation goes or what stories are brought up with your group, instead of going from ABC, you might go AC through to B and--
Therese: It's absolutely okay. [laughs]
Leanne: I'd love to talk about the language. Coming from an academic background you talk a lot, might use some big words or talk about statistic. I really need to back up a lot of what you say with facts and evidence. It's a very evidence-based approach being a science. How did you lose that, not armor, but that vocabulary and switch over to more of the corporate talk where you could relate to more people?
Therese: I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you were talking about outcomes. It really is about what is it that this person will walk away with, as opposed to what will make me as the facilitator seeing the smartest person in the room, and what's the biggest word I could use to possibly describe that. In terms of what problem you're solving and the outcome that they need to walk away with, that's what you really focus in on when you're shifting that language away from the very scientific or the very academic.
Leanne: I love it. You've come from this background and now you travel quite interstate, to mine sites, construction sites, but you're also very comfortable in boardrooms. When preparing for the different types of audiences. Do you do anything--? How do you prepare for that? Do you dress differently? Do you come in with different approaches? What does that look like for you?
Therese: It will vary depending on the client and what it is that I'm doing. Sometimes I will dress differently. Particularly if I'm out on site if I'm out in a rural or remote area. If I'm wearing PPE, there's no use wearing high heels, it's just not going to work. [laughs] Sometimes I do dress differently. It's really about understanding what the drivers and motivators of my audience are?
What's important to them? What drives, what motivates them? What do they need out of the communication? Then, going from there. Sometimes that might mean me using slightly different language, different ways of explaining things, and sometimes in multiple ways of explaining things if I've got a wide variety of people in the room. It would just depend on who I'm speaking with.
Leanne: Now, you mentioned earlier that you're very comfortable on stage. That came across with your speech last year. You absolutely killed it. laughs]
Therese: Thank you.
Leanne: Have you always had that confidence? Have you always felt comfortable presenting in front of people growing up, or is it something that now that you're doing more of it, it's just evolved and now over the course of the years you've got this great experience under your belt?
Therese: A bit of both. As a fairly young child, I was involved in lots of choral work. Lots of choirs and voice work and singing. That just gave me a natural level of comfort with being in front of potentially thousands of people and that being okay. As a young kid I heard that, but then moving into the workplace you have this extra pressure of judgment that you don't necessarily have outside of that environment.
I certainly had to overcome what do they think of me or I've said the wrong word or I'm losing track of this. Certainly had to overcome that but have always had that level of confidence in terms of being in front of people to fall back on. There's always been a bit of a performer and me. [laughs]
Leanne: That is so cool. I never knew that about you. It's just fascinating.
Therese: There you go.
Leanne: I think the best thing about this is that it doesn't matter what industry you're from, there's always something to take away that will give you that confidence. Love that, Now, I'd love to talk about an upcoming trip that you have on. Would you like to share that with the audience?
Therese: I'm off to New York shortly to speak at a World Summit on positive psychology, mindfulness and psychotherapy. It's a very long title.
Leanne: Tell us, how did you score that gig? I'd love to hear that. Also, what are you sharing with the audience over there?
Therese: Sure. The story behind this is very serendipitous. I had started out in the land of Twitter, which I don't still really understand. I'm not big on tech, but I'm getting there. I had accidentally followed a conference. Then, they got in touch with me, obviously having seen my website and looked at some of my work on LinkedIn externally and said, "Would you like to present?" I submitted an abstract, they loved it and the rest is history. [laughs]
Leanne: Congratulations.
Therese: Thank you.
Leanne: I could virtually give you a high five now. Love to hear what you're sharing with them.
Therese: One of my biggest areas of passion is around employee engagement. I'll be talking through the future of employee engagement and how what we'll be doing for the last decade or so really isn't working and some different ways forward. I've done some very cool research and partnered with an organization here in Australia to do that and to trial an awesome app that has just come onto the market as well, based on my research so yes.
Leanne: Nice. Now, a lot of our listeners, they aren't actually full-time speakers, they all work in-- Well, the most of them that I've heard from, work in organizations, a lot of them and are in HR roles. I'd love to hear what's one take away regarding employee engagement? I guess that we've done wrong. That we can change for the future.
Therese: Yes. I don't know that we've done it wrong, but it's not working. If we keep on doing the same old thing, we're going to get the same old results. In my mind, the biggest thing is that we're focusing on head engagement. We're focusing on are we giving people interesting work? Are we giving them the right salary, the right benefits? Have I communicated a compelling vision? Which is all very important, but what the research is telling us and what we know from our experience as well, is that we need to engage people's hearts. We need to provide that inspiration.
We need to make sure that the work they're doing is energizing. That they have that sense of flow and connection to what they're doing in their team. That's the future of engagement is head and heart engagement. In the context of leading from an area of growth. Making sure that we're investing in our people. My real passion is that head and heart engagement.
Leanne: That is such great terminology. Head and heart. From what you're saying, I think you're absolutely right in terms of creating that flow in your work because you can work on some assignments and it plays to your strengths. If something isn't-- You're not losing time involved when you're actually working through it and time just seems like it goes on. It's gone so quickly. You're not actually structuring that work in the right way. That's really interesting. Are there any sort of practical takeaways that a leader, who's out at say a project or at a site knowing that, what's something that they could do to start bringing in the hearts of their staff?
Therese: It might sound very simple, but the simplest things are often the most powerful. It's having real conversations with people. Not the superficial stuff. Not the, "Hi. How are you going?" It's, "What's going on for you at the moment?" Really getting to understand some terminology that I used earlier. Understanding what drives and motivates them. What gets them out of bed? What puts fire in their belly? Because it might be their work or it might be something else.
Even if it's something else, you can't hope to connect someone to their work unless you understand what drives and motivates them. I think that's the essential part that's missing from engagement as well. There's real conversations that backs up all the surveys and all the steps that we do to really understand what makes people tick. How we can connect what they love into what we would love them to do.
Leanne: That sounds very similar. You recommended a book to me when I last saw you. That was Simon Sinek's, Find Your Why, the workbook. I have started reading that. It's very similar. I think he starts off with everyone has the right to wake up in the morning and feel motivated to do something that means something for them. Links it all really nicely. Now, you spoke about the practical tool which is shifting the language and saying-- Instead of asking, "Hey, how are you going?" You think something a bit more substantial.
That leads into the talk that you did at Disrupt HR last year which was amazing. We'll link to your video as part of the show nights for this episode. Can you share with our audience why you're so passionate about this topic? Why leaders of today need to really work on their emotional vocab?
Therese: Yes. At Disrupt HR, I spoke on this topic of leaders needing emotional vocabulary. The reason I'm so passionate about that is I see so many leaders who have the internal drive to have conversations with people. They know that they need to have these great conversations, but they don't necessarily have the vocabulary to have those conversations. They don't have the words to use. What I spoke about at Disrupt HR is if you track that back, it can go back to childhood. Not from Sigmund Freud, "Let's lie down on a couch" type thing.
We don't encourage even babies to express how they feel. We shush them up. We tell them that we don't want to hear they have to say. As kids grow, we're not, again, encouraging them to use nuanced language. Does a child know the difference between being angry and frustrated? A simple example, but that then translates in to schooling. That translates into the workplace. If we're not encouraging people to express themselves and we haven't given them the tools to do it, then they pop out the other end of high school, go into uni, go into the workplace and, all of a sudden, we're expecting them to have these amazing human conversations and they struggle.
I also know that the HR systems and trends of the '90s had a lot to do with that as well. When we're telling people to leave their baggage at the door, and not to speak about themselves at work, then we've created this whole-- Well, a range of generations who are in the workforce who can't be themselves. They can't be whole human beings at work. It's compacting in terms of not being able to express yourself. Not knowing how to express yourself. Then, it not being appropriate when you go into the workplace.
Leanne: Wow. Let's just say an organization has recognized the need for this and they've called on Therese to come in and help them, what is your approach to helping leaders and managers develop this vocabulary and really recognize how their feeling and how they should communicate?
Therese: Yes. I think a lot of it is actually breaking down the barriers that are there to having the conversations to begin with. That's the most uncomfortable part. [laughs] It's the part that lots of people like to skip over and "Let's just go and do the workshop. Let's get on with it." Unfortunately, you need to unpack some of that stuff and understand how it is that you've arrived at this spot of not being able to feel comfortable having those conversations. There is a certain element in--
That's done 101 because it needs to be done in a very safe, sensitive environment because folks are pretty vulnerable having those conversations. What you can then do is back that up with some group work or small team work around pure vocab. Introducing people to new phrases, new terms, new perspectives on situations. You also need to back that up with giving people an understanding of the physiological reactions and feelings that they have that connect to those words, so that when they start to actually experience them in their body, they have this new nuanced, subtle, lots of detailed language they can use to describe what they're actually feeling because again, one without the other is useless.
If you have the words without actually knowing what that attaches to, it's useless. If you go, "I'm feeling that my heart rate is going up. I've got a frog in my throat. I'm starting to get a headache, but I can't describe that." Again, useless. They need to go together.
Leanne: Wow. That's so fascinating. You do this 101 first, then-- That makes so much sense. Because it is, it's quite a delicate topic. You possibly are uncovering some things that have happened in their past which have led to that. Then, do you start to get-- I'm not too sure what you do. Do you get them to start thinking like, "If I was angry, how would I react?" Or getting them to think of a time where they think they were frustrated and what that felt like?
Therese: Yes. It needs to be very relatable because otherwise, again it's too theoretical and people just don't understand it. Emotional vocabulary is one very specific part emotional intelligence. It's a tiny subset of it. Recognizing that if you start then to increase emotional self-awareness, that has a flow-on effect to the other parts of emotional intelligence which is exactly what you're talking about. Now that I know this about myself, how does this relate to how I regulate my emotions? How do I manage the ups and downs as part of my day?
How do I use that information in decision making really effectively, in a way that makes sense for me and my organization and my team? How do I manage very strong emotions like excitement, passion, anger, in a way, that again, is appropriate? Because I've got this awareness to fall back on, it's the first building block that has to go down before the tower can start getting stacked on top of that.
Leanne: Such a fascinating topic. Your organizational psychology is also huge. It covers so many different things. What really attracted you to the emotional intelligence space when you could be working on motivation or team dynamics? What was it about this in particular for you?
Therese: I was introduced to emotional intelligence fairly early on in my consulting career. Number one, just found it fascinating. I find feelings and emotions fascinating. Another area that I had been involved in more recently though is working with the fly-in fly-out workforce. A lot around mental health in that type of workforce. Again, given that it's a male-dominated environment, one of the things that is really predominant in that type of work is helping, particularly males, to identify what it is they are going through and be able to have conversations around that, so they can either support each other or seek support for themselves.
That really prompted that passion again. Even more recently because I have two children, my first is a girl and my second was a boy. Lord help them both, they have a psychologist for a mother. I've recognized that how people were interacting with him and his emotional expression was different because he was a boy. I thought, "There’s something here." Then, I started to really look into, again, emotional expression as a child, and how we foster that as a society or we don’t foster it as a society. Then, it built from there, or in the last two, three years.
Leanne: That bit of a merger between what you're noticing in the workplace as well as family life. You could bring into the niche that you're now doing really well in and presenting in New York on. I love how that all integrates together.
Let’s just say, you come in, you’ve done some intervention work one on one, then in little groups. Let's just say then you have to lead the organization. How do you feel, how is learning transferred or embedded into their behavior change once they get back to work? Are there any great strategies that you could recommend or--?
Therese: Because as you and I know, the transfer of knowledge from pure classroom learning to the workplace is pretty ordinary if you don’t manage it really well. One of the things that I really like to do, again depending on the culture of the organization, is sustainability sessions. After the one on one coaching is finished and the small group work is finished, actually going back on a regular basis and holding sessions to allow people to brief and then debrief on what it is they are implementing.
They have an action plan. How are you going to implement that? How have you implemented that so that there's this ongoing check-in supporting their learning back in their workplace? As opposed to, "Here's an action plan. See you later." Best of luck.
[laughter]
Leanne: I love that action plans keeping everyone accountable, especially if you’ve got peer support and you've made these commitments to check-in following that. Nice idea. Love it. In your observation, what are the skills that every good facilitator needs?
Therese: That’s a big question, Leanne.
Leanne: It is.
Therese: Funnily enough, I think that one of the first things to cover off is the capacity to listen because folks think that particularly facilitation, which is quite different to presenting, facilitation is just talking. It’s not just covering off content because you need to be able to facilitate those back and forth group discussions. You need to be able to pick up on the cues of all the different people in that group to see number one, "Are they getting it? Are they engaged in the content? Is there a different way that I can explain something? Do I need to draw someone out a little bit more?"
The only way that you can recognize that is by listening and observing because if you just talk at them, it's about you and not about them. It’s a presentation and not a facilitation.
Leanne: That is such a great point. I think it really relates to what you’re doing in the terms of emotional intelligence space. Actually being aware of firstly, that you need to hold back and listen but also observe and say, "Okay, that person, their physiological response is this. I feel like they might be getting a bit nervous about the subject." As a facilitator, you really need to be aware yourself.
Therese: Yes. I think the other element of being a facilitator is just being switched on the whole time which can be exhausting if you’re doing lots of facilitation, which I have been recently. You do need to be present. You need to be switched on because the group or the team is relying on you to connect dots for them. Again, if you're just throwing content out there and you’re not connecting what Sue said in this morning's discussion with the piece of content that we're discussing this afternoon, then you’re not drawing them in and engaging them in that discussion.
You're not connecting the dots for them and helping them to understand how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Being present and being checked in, I think is super important for facilitators. That’s where I see some fall down is that they just don’t understand the need to just be in the room and not thinking about everything else that's going on.
Leanne: It’s so hard but it’s also a relief to hear that other people are getting really tired after running a workshop because I thought it was just me. It really is. At the end of the day, you're like, "I need a glass of wine, I need to put my feet up, and reflect back on what could I have done there?" Every time it’s a learning opportunity, every time you’re in the room, I think.
Therese: Absolutely. I’ve had periods just recently where I’ve done a number of workshops, I’ve done recently four days of facilitation in a row. You’re right, the only way that I was able to stay present and mindful through that time is, as soon as I've finished, I put on my running shoes and went for a run. Even though I was exhausted, it still allowed me to disconnect from what had happened during the day, get some fresh air. Then, later on, come back, circle back and reflect, as you said, "What could I have done differently? What do I need to focus on tomorrow knowing what I’ve seen and heard today?"
If you don’t allow yourself that space and you just keep on pushing through and chugging through, you can’t be present. It’s just not physically possible.
Leanne: It is. It really is. A fellow facilitator I spoke a couple episodes ago said, "It is actually a really physical job." We can’t just remember it’s all just a brain, we actually have to prep ourselves. Physically, we're walking around, we're listening, we're focusing. It can be exhausting. Not to put any facilitators off because it's a great career field to head down. [laughs]
Did you find in those four days that you were actually modifying some content, like shaping it because you heard some things, or was it just quite structured approach?
Therese: A bit of both actually. It was two two-day workshops back-to-back. I had two different groups. I was delivering the same content twice to summarize. There was a certain level of needing to be able to get a certain amount of content across to both groups because there needed to be quite a lot of overlapping similarity in terms of what the two groups were hearing. I subtly took the learnings from previous workshops because I think that was the fifth time that I had run that particular workshop for that organization.
I was subtly taking the learnings from each one, and modifying as I went depending on who was in the room. How they were feeling. Were they very chatty? Were they quiet reserved? Skipping over content that I knew wouldn’t draw them out. Focusing on content a little bit more if I thought it'd be more engaging. That type of thing.
Leanne: That’s great. Great advice for facilitators on how to modify, or what you need to do to modify some of the content. Especially when you’re delivering to the same company’s similar workshop material. You’re just learning every time and going, "Okay, I think they know this, so the next group will.” Nice one. You've offered a lot of practical advice for first-time facilitators. Is there anything else you’d like to add as a piece of advice for them?
Therese: I wouldn’t downplay some of the fear that folks have around facilitating because not everybody feels as comfortable with public speaking as we do. What I would say is if you’re able to prep yourself, be mindful and in the room, what you might get out of facilitation can be quiet amazing.
You get such a buzz from being in a room with a group of people getting a message across and them just really getting it. No matter how scared you are, no matter how underprepared you think you might be, just give it a red hot go because odds are on the other end of that will be such an amazing feeling for you and a group of people who have learned something they've never known before.
Leanne: That’s very powerful. In fact, if I wasn’t a facilitator-- I'm already like, “Yes, I want to go and facilitate again.” It’s so true that amazing feeling that you get, the adrenaline, but also to know that you’re actually on that one-to-many ratio, just impacting so many people. When the lights switch on in their eyes, and they brighten up, and they start using the language through the workshop, there's nothing better.
Therese: Absolutely.
Leanne: That’s great advice to finish on. Now, Therese, where can our listeners find you?
Therese: Sure. You can find me by my website mindsetcoachconsult.com.au, or places like LinkedIn and Facebook, Mindset Coaching and Consulting or Therese Lardner on LinkedIn.
Leanne: Fantastic. Therese posts up some incredible words of advice, some wisdom on her LinkedIn page. I do recommend that all our listeners follow her on that. I love seeing all your updates. Therese, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. I've learned so much from you. I can't wait to share this chat with our listeners. I also wish you the best of luck. You're flying out to New York on Saturday morning. I can't wait to hear how that goes.
I think they've done really well getting you on the speaker card. This is going to be such a huge gig for you. Congratulations.
Therese: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a wonderful experience.