Episode 192: Stop designing workshops. Start designing experiences with Tricia Conyers
Tricia Conyers from Island Inspiration shares her workshop experience design methods and facilitation tips on Leanne Hughes’ podcast.
This week, we’re spinning our focus back onto the craft of facilitation with a guest who I so resonate with in terms of her enthusiasm for the work we do, her passion for trying different things and of course, because she throws away those powerpoint slides!
Tricia Conyers from Island Inspirations is a change coach, learning experience designer, trainer, facilitator, meeting designer, remote work strategist and graphic recorder.
She’s passionate about navigating change, making learning experiences powerful, making conversations visual and helping others solve problems by unlocking their best thinking.
And she’s based on the island of Trinidad.
In this conversation, Tricia shares ideas around how meetings drive culture - I could not agree with this any more, how she got her start in facilitation, she share’s a facilitation fail - though in fairness, I think she was set up(!).
All her ideas and ways of working really centre around the idea that we are not in the business of designing a workshop, we are in the business of designing experiences, and our goal is to create active experiences, not passive, and you’ll get a ton of different ideas on how you can do that by tuning in.
About today’s guest: Tricia Conyers
Tricia is the founder of Island Inspirations Ltd., a visual thinking, creativity sparking, graphic facilitation company. She believes that leaders should personify showing Heart, being Human and inspiring Hope in their interactions with others.
Island Inspirations Ltd specializes in facilitation (visual, virtual and in person), graphic recording, meeting design, learning experience design and experiential workshop design. Combing the power of visuals and facilitation to create powerful learning experiences and to accelerate change.
Tricia has 25+ yrs experience in change. She designs and facilitates learning experiences (LE) based on the fundamental belief that the LE is the intervention to unleash the latent capacity and higher potential in others. For over a decade, Tricia has led and supported teams remotely.
Meetings serve different purposes from communication to collaboration, performance management to decision-making, learning to creating. Each requires different protocols, facilitation styles, engagement etc.. Tricia is a meeting designer who designs for intent. She brings to her sessions a wide range of techniques and skills. She is an INIFAC Certified Master Facilitator and Certified Virtual Facilitator, a Certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Facilitator, a Twenty One Toys Empathy Toy® Facilitator and in progress of certifying as a Time to Think facilitator.
Tricia holds a Masters of Engineering, Masters of Arts and Bachelor of Arts with Distinction from Cambridge University, England and she enjoys traveling, pilates and photography.
In this episode, you will learn
Why it’s important to get your meetings right, given their impact on team and company culture
What Tricia learnt when things didn’t work out in one of her sessions
Some of the powerful questions Tricia asks to create new, impactful experiences with her groups (such as, “What can we gain from having virtual sessions?”)
How Tricia weaves in various types of visuals into her facilitation work
How to get your participants shifting from passive -> active participation
Resources mentioned:
Watch the full episode here!
About your host: Leanne Hughes
Leanne Hughes is an international facilitator, speaker and coach who loves creating unpredictable workshop experiences, that predictably work.
She combines her experience in Marketing, with her education in Human Resources and Psychology, to help leaders create engaging everyday experiences - that are so contagious they scale across teams, functions and regions.
Leanne has facilitated leadership, onboarding and team-development workshops across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore and believes in a strengths-centred approach to learning and development. She has over 14 years’ of experience across a range of industries including mining, government and tourism sectors.
She’s the host of the First Time Facilitator podcast and is a finalist in the 2021 Australian Learning Impact awards for Learning Professional of the Year.
Social Media
Follow behind the scenes on Leanne Hughes’ Instagram account
Support the show - buy Leanne a coffee!
Thoughts on the episode? Share your comments below!
Episode 191: An economist’s perspective on growing your fierce facilitation business with Uyen Vo
Uyen Vo sharing an economist’s perspective about building a facilitation business on Leanne Hughes’ First Time Facilitator podcast.
I LOVE THE WAY my guest today sees the world, considers things, and ultimately - operates!
She thinks about things in a very analytical way, completely opposite to the way I interpret events, but it’s with deep contemplation. And not in a black and white analytical way, it’s a very playful way of looking at business and life.
I’m always keen to hear her thoughts on topics and find she asks brilliant questions, which no doubt serves her extremely well as a facilitator and coach, although she calls herself a trainer who facilitates.
You’ll hear that analytical prowess and some great phrases she uses in this one, I don’t want to spoil that for you - I love word play and new concepts, and she shares all of that with you, she also shares the power of relationships, and those key people in your life that can really shape the trajectory of your career, and your life.
Who am I talking to today? Her name is Uyen Vo from Fierce Consulting, based in the UK.
About today’s guest: Uyen Vo
Uyen Vo show people how to get more done, save resources, and reduce employee burnout. She do esthis through delivering engaging workshops on project management, personal effectiveness and leadership.
After graduating from the University of Cambridge with a BA Hons in Economics, Uyen Vo joined Lloyds Banking Group in the City of London.
There, she specialised in delivering technical initiatives across numerous areas including balance sheet management, business banking and capital management.
Needing a change from all those spreadsheets, she made a sideways move into people development and became responsible for a team of over 300 people. She ran all people-related activities including L&D, talent development and performance management.
Since then, she’s been blessed with a really varied career, including corporate social responsibility and technical consulting, and she’s a facilitator, consultant and entrepreneur as the founder of Fierce Consulting.
In this episode, you will learn
How Uyen deliberately planned her career transition, including weighing up the financial risks associated with going out on her own
How Uyen landed on her powerful value proposition
How she re-oriented her time marketing her business from a scattergun approach, to a relationship-centred approach
Some of the economic concepts she uses to weight up her decisions (including opportunity cost and utility)
Quotes of the episode:
“Your facilitation business (and busy-ness) is fully integrated with your life”
“It’s better for you to be a small part of someone’s budget, than a big part of their budget”
“What your client requests, isn’t usually the thing they need”
Resources mentioned:
Uyen Vo’s business: Fierce Consulting
Connect with Uyen Vo on LinkedIn
About your host: Leanne Hughes
Leanne Hughes is an international facilitator, speaker and coach who loves creating unpredictable workshop experiences, that predictably work.
She combines her experience in Marketing, with her education in Human Resources and Psychology, to help leaders create engaging everyday experiences - that are so contagious they scale across teams, functions and regions.
Leanne has facilitated leadership, onboarding and team-development workshops across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore and believes in a strengths-centred approach to learning and development. She has over 14 years’ of experience across a range of industries including mining, government and tourism sectors.
She’s the host of the First Time Facilitator podcast and is a finalist in the 2021 Australian Learning Impact awards for Learning Professional of the Year.
Social Media
Thoughts on the episode? Share your comments below!
Episode 180: How to listen + unlock ideas from 10,000 workshop participants with Juraj Holub
Juraj Holub is the Chief Meeting Designer at Slido. In this conversation with Leanne Hughes on the First Time Facilitator podcast, he shares how he built up his facilitation and meeting design skills, and how he uses Slido to create an engaged company culture.
When I ran my masterclass on booking out your workshops, I used a variety of tech tools to gain interaction from the live audience. I asked you to share your responses in chat, and also to jump into a tool called Slido, to ask your questions, upvote the ones you liked, share where you were joining us from, which facilitator business challenges you had, and more. It’s such a fun tool to use, and I’ve been leaning on it over the last 12 months as I deliver corporate workshops online.
So, I’m very excited to share a delightful conversation with a delightful person who is Employee #8 at Slido. I’m not sure if you’ve heard the news but this company has just blown up in an amazing way and were acquired by Cisco last December.
Today’s guest is Juraj Holub, and he is a Chief Meeting Designer. Isn’t that the best job title?
Juraj is an executive team member at Slido which has made over 800,000 events interactive. He works with conferences like Web Summit or SXSW and Fortune 500 companies helping them transform their meetings and events. He also crossed Iceland by bicycle.
He was also first marketing person to accelerate the company's product-led growth and position Slido as a thought leader in the industry.
When you talk to someone who is like the face of the company, you kinda expect them to go on about how great their work is, how great the tech tool is - and it really is awesome technology but what I love about what Juraj shares today, is how their company became better because they listened to their clients… they sought out amazing facilitators around the world, and asked how they would use a tool in a meeting, or a workshop.
You cannot go wrong with a listen -first approach whether that’s in marketing, or when you host your group experiences tool. I’m sure Slido were listening when they created their Meeting Zombies video which is hilarious, and has been viewed 2 million times on YouTube.
Juraj is also super humble, fun, energetic, you’ll love this conversation.
Oh and I connected with Juraj mainly for the 2021 Slido Trend report Slido - hybrid sessions and their 2021 trend report and launch event, where we explored, “What do our meetings look like in 2021?” Slido asked 1,500 remote workers to find out, the stats are incredibly interesting, a link to the report and the launch details is in the show notes. I also worked with the amazing Sabine and Simona from Slido on a webinar sharing our tips for delivering hybrid meetings.
About today’s guest: Juraj Holub
During his 7+ years at Slido, Juraj has been part of an amazing journey, helping to grow the company form $100.000 to eight-figures in revenue.
He'd had an incredible career trajectory, joining as a content specialist, then he moved to New York City as a marketing manager, later becoming a marketing director and was finally promoted to the VP of brand and communications while being on Slido's executive team.
Over the years, he’s spoken at dozens of conferences in the US, UK and EU sharing thought leadership on meeting design, conversational presenting and audience interaction.
In this episode you will learn:
How you can use tech tools to give your audience a voice
Some fun question you can ask to build a strong culture in your company and recognise the silent heroes in your business
The importance of putting the focus squarely on your customers (knowing that success will follow)
How Juraj learns the most about leading a remote team (Spoiler alert: It’s not from reading books)
How he blends his two favourite passions - content marketing and facilitation/education in the role he does today
…And of course, a couple fun questions you can use w/ Slido during your next meeting, or event!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Connect with Juraj Holub on LinkedIn
What do our meetings look like in 2021? Grab the Slido 2021 Trends Report
Video: The Essentials of Running Hybrid Meetings with Leanne Hughes | MASTERCLASS
Slido’s Meeting Zombies video (hilarious - I love it!)
Leanne’s article for Slido: Facilitating Great Meetings: 10+ Tips That Work
Article: What the hell is a Chief Meeting Designer?
Watch the video now!
About your host: Leanne Hughes
Leanne Hughes is an international facilitator, speaker and coach who loves creating unpredictable workshop experiences, that predictably work.
She combines her experience in Marketing, with her education in Human Resources and Psychology, to help leaders create engaging everyday experiences - that are so contagious they scale across teams, functions and regions.
Leanne has facilitated leadership, onboarding and team-development workshops across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore and believes in a strengths-centred approach to learning and development. She has over 14 years’ of experience across a range of industries including mining, government and tourism sectors.
She’s the host of the First Time Facilitator podcast and was a finalist in the 2018 Australian Learning Impact awards for Learning Professional of the Year.
Social Media
Thoughts on the episode? Share your comments below!
Episode 166: Creating a learning atmosphere of “serious fun" with Dana the Trainer #bestof
Energy is the most important thing when it comes to your workshops, and I discovered this nice and early when I geeked out on an energetic conversation with today’s guest, Dana Jane-Edwards.
This is a #bestof episode - I spoke to Dana back in 2018, when she called herself “Dana the Trainer”. Through a series of pivots and discovering her passion, she is now known as “Diversity Dana”.
Energy is the most important thing when it comes to your workshops, and I discovered this nice and early when I geeked out on an energetic conversation with today’s guest, Dana James-Edwards.
This is a #bestof episode - I spoke to Dana back in 2018, when she called herself “Dana the Trainer”. Through a series of pivots and discovering her passion, she is now known as “Diversity Dana”.
Today’s conversation is as relevant as ever - you’ll learn
Ways to make facilitation more fun, colourful and engaging
How to balance or lift your energy levels when required
What to do when things don't go to plan (hint: prevention is better than cure)
How to create content for new workshops
I want to share her website copy on her About page as a way of introducing her.
Here we go:
My favourite word is the F-Word – FUN
(Wait a minute … what F word were you thinking about?). Seriously!
As you can tell I take an unconventional approach to learning focusing on fun, colour, enjoyment and making things as practical and relevant as possible to make sure that key learnings make it back to the workplace.
What is it that I facilitate? Great question!
I have my fingers in many pies, but my 3 core areas are *drumroll please*
Diversity & Inclusion, Train-The-Trainer (or Coach) and Agile
And if that sounds like an eclectic mix of things that shouldn’t go together and make no sense you’re going to have to read the rest of my bio to find out why and how it all came about. To confuse you even further I sometimes even dabble in some Management & Leadership bits … but that’s a story for another day.
Read the rest of Dana’s story.
What’s new with Leanne and First Time Facilitator?
So excited to share that I’m partnering with Slido on their Online Meetings Revolution trend report. Come along to the launch and hear the interesting data + predictions to make your online meetings as engaging and relevant as possible. It’s on 14 April 2021, here’s the link to sign up.
Join the conversation when the show is over with 1300 facilitators from all over the world in our free group called The Flipchart
Support the show (and my ideas) by buying me a coffee
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Quotes of the show:
"There are so many things that you can do to bring learning, to bring a classroom alive to make things not so painful for people".
Even when you know the content and you're familiar with it, you’re still thinking, 'Who's going to be there tomorrow?', 'What if this exercise doesn't work?', 'What do I have as a backup for this?', 'Did I pack this thing?'
'You cannot be rigid, sticking to your lesson plan. The classroom is a place of surprise. The best facilitators pull the learning out of what is happening in the room, instead of sticking to the script'.
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Dana the Trainer.
#Bestof: Facilitating once in a lifetime workshop experiences with Steve Sims (Episode 165)
Today’s guest runs the coolest workshops I’ve ever heard of, no joke. And how does he embed learning at the end of these workshops? By making people practice the skills they’ve learn, when they rock up to Sir Elton John’s Oscars after-party.
Today’s guest runs the coolest workshops I’ve ever heard of, no joke. And how does he embed learning at the end of these workshops? By making people practice the skills they’ve learn, when they rock up to Sir Elton John’s Oscars after-party.
Not too many people can say that to their clients...But today’s guest, is a one of a kind guy.
His name is Steve Sims. Steve is the man who created Bluefish, a company that makes once-in-a-lifetime events happen for the rich and famous reveals to the rest of us his trade secrets for making things happen. With his help and expertise, his clients’ fantasies and wildest dreams come true.
Steve is the author of the Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen, and he has a podcast of the same name. Steve has spoken at Harvard and the Pentagon, twice. Getting married by the Pope in the Vatican, being serenaded by Elton John, and connecting with powerful business moguls like Elon Musk are just a few of the many projects he has worked on.
I really wanted Steve on the show to talk about a few key things - the assumptions we have about asking for things, how confidence; and your approach can take you far and (literally) open doors. We also talk about the perfectionism beast.
If you’d like to join the conversation when the show is over, join The Flipchart, a free community on Facebook for First Time Facilitator listeners.
About our guest: Steve Sims
Steve Sims Steve is the visionary founder of Bluefish: the world’s first luxury concierge that delivers the highest level of personalized travel, transportation, and cutting-edge entertainment services to corporate executives, celebrities, professional athletes, and other discerning individuals interested in living life to its fullest.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Steve Sims Website
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know your number one takeaway from this episode!
Quotes of the show:
“I'm a great believer in keeping liability low.”
“The greatest growth comes from the greatest accidents.”
“It’s incredible to have people just be able to realize the rich people are poor people with a lot of money; things don't change, just that bank account.”
“I'm a great believer that perfection is a blue unicorn with three testicles; it doesn't exist.”
“I don't believe speakers should give speeches. I think speakers should have conversations with thousands of people or hundreds of people.”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Steve Sims.
Episode 55: Facilitating once in a lifetime workshop experiences with Steve Sims
Today’s guest runs the coolest workshops I’ve ever heard of, no joke. And how does he embed learning at the end of these workshops? By making people practice the skills they’ve learn, when they rock up to Sir Elton John’s Oscars after-party.
Today’s guest runs the coolest workshops I’ve ever heard of, no joke. And how does he embed learning at the end of these workshops? By making people practice the skills they’ve learn, when they rock up to Sir Elton John’s Oscars after-party.
Not too many people can say that to their clients...But today’s guest, is a one of a kind guy.
His name is Steve Sims. Steve is the man who created Bluefish, a company that makes once-in-a-lifetime events happen for the rich and famous reveals to the rest of us his trade secrets for making things happen. With his help and expertise, his clients’ fantasies and wildest dreams come true.
Steve is the author of the Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen, and he has a podcast of the same name. Steve has spoken at Harvard and the Pentagon, twice. Getting married by the Pope in the Vatican, being serenaded by Elton John, and connecting with powerful business moguls like Elon Musk are just a few of the many projects he has worked on.
I really wanted Steve on the show to talk about a few key things - the assumptions we have about asking for things, how confidence; and your approach can take you far and (literally) open doors. We also talk about the perfectionism beast.
If you’d like to join the conversation when the show is over, join The Flipchart, a free community on Facebook for First Time Facilitator listeners.
About our guest: Steve Sims
Steve Sims Steve is the visionary founder of Bluefish: the world’s first luxury concierge that delivers the highest level of personalized travel, transportation, and cutting-edge entertainment services to corporate executives, celebrities, professional athletes, and other discerning individuals interested in living life to its fullest.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Steve Sims Website
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know your number one takeaway from this episode!
Quotes of the show:
“I'm a great believer in keeping liability low.”
“The greatest growth comes from the greatest accidents.”
“It’s incredible to have people just be able to realize the rich people are poor people with a lot of money; things don't change, just that bank account.”
“I'm a great believer that perfection is a blue unicorn with three testicles; it doesn't exist.”
“I don't believe speakers should give speeches. I think speakers should have conversations with thousands of people or hundreds of people.”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Steve Sims.
Episode 44: Creating rewarding workshop experiences: How to apply the SCARF model into your facilitation work
I recently co-facilitated a leadership course for mid-level leaders and as part of that, explained the SCARF mode. This is a brain based model created by David Rock in 2008; a summary of important discoveries from neuroscience about the way people interact socially.
I recently co-facilitated a leadership course for mid-level leaders and as part of that, explained the SCARF mode. This is a brain based model created by David Rock in 2008; a summary of important discoveries from neuroscience about the way people interact socially.
Rock combines all the research and makes it easy for people that aren’t brain scientists, to use the research to determine why we behave in certain ways at certain times.
I thought the application of SCARF could be tremendously beneficial in our role as facilitations. In this episode, I share my thoughts on what we can do, in our role as a facilitators to reduce the threat response for participants in our workshops, and optimise their rewards response.
Here are a couple of updates in the First Time Facilitator world:
I’ll be celebrating my 50th episode which is released on 21 January. If you’d like to meetup and celebrate, I’m going to host an event or some nibbles and drinks in Brisbane on Friday 18 January, probably sundowners around 5pm. Comment below, or email me if you'd like to be on the invite list.
I have a few people asking me about how to start a podcast, so I’m going to run a workshop in Brisbane in early January too, most likely Sunday 13 January. If you’re keen on that, shoot me an email - hello@firsttimefacilitator.com
On this episode, you'll learn:
The three underpinning themes of the SCARF model
Strategies on how you can apply SCARF to create rewarding workshop experiences for your participants and how you can apply this to create a safe workshop environment
Facilitator hacks on how to reduce the threat response of your participants
Resources mentioned in this episode
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Tweet Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Episode 42: Edutainment: How to combine knowledge, wit and interaction in your presentations with Dave Jackson
In this episode, I chat to 2018 Podcast Hall of Fame inductee, Dave Jackson. He’s been podcasting since April 2005, and has been the host of nearly a dozen different podcasts over the last decade.Most people chat to Dave about creating or improving their podcast but I wanted to focus on the fact that he’s been a technical trainer for over 20 years. I also like how he says in his bio that this means that he not only understands technology, but he can explain it in a plain English “geek-speak free” environment.We explore why it’s important to get out of your comfort zone, how Dave has brought his experience playing on bands on stages into the way he presents, what he does to make his presentations more engaging, how he handles his nerves before he presents, and why he is so damn funny.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How having water-cooler type conversations lead him down a new career path
Why it’s important to attend conferences and meet your target market
How he mixes education and entertainment to help make learning stick
How he prepares to speak at conferences
Why it’s important to challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone
Why it’s important to tailor your content and use analogies that fit your audience
About our guest: Dave Jackson
Dave is not only an award-winning podcaster, but he’s a podcasting consultant, teacher, and the founder of the School of Podcasting. A corporate trainer for more than 20+ years, Dave has a Bachelor's Degree in Education and was one of the early early early adopters of podcasting. Starting back in the primordial mist of 2005, Dave began the School of Podcasting, a podcast to teach other people how to podcast.Dave’s show has been described by many as the most entertaining and unique of all the “Podcast About Podcasting” offerings out there. Dave is a master at “edutainment” and has been using analogies to quickly help people understand the nuances of podcasting for over a decade. He has that rare ability to explain complicated concepts and processes in an easy to comprehend way.
Resources mentioned on this show
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Tweet Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Episode transcript
Being comfortable (with feeling uncomfortable): My public speaking journey
This is a transcript of Episode 27 of the First Time Facilitator podcast.Usually on the show I interview amazing facilitators, speakers and leaders but I’m going solo for today’s episode. This is the third solo episode I’ve recorded and these ones are usually spurred on by questions I receive from listenersSo the question this week was from a colleague and it was this:
“Leanne, how did you get the confidence to speak in front of large groups?”
There's a bit to unpack in that question. Its different for everyone. Interestingly, this question is about confidence; not about developing the skill.I'm going to share the real opportunity I had that lead me to feel more confident and now accept opportunities where I do speak in public. In saying that, I’m still human and continue to question my ability before accepting these opportunities. However, after talking to fellow facilitators and speakers on the podcast, that appears to be a fairly normal response. I guess the good thing about type of response, is that it keeps you on your toes and not operating in autopilot.The definition of large group is also different from everyone. I think anything above 30 is pretty large. From my experience, anything above 30 or 40 requires a microphone, probably a stage and some bright lights. I can give you a short and long answer for this but I took this question as a really good opportunity to reflect on the things that I actually did to position myself to accept large group speaking opportunities, with perceived confidence.
It was October 2014
I was living in a small, coastal regional town in Western Australia called Broome. I talk about Broome in a lot of episodes as I have find memories there. Imagine a place where in winter, you can swim at the beach, in summer it’s too hot to do anything. The population is very small, about 15,000 people. The closest town is a 2 hour drive away, the nearest capital city is Jakarta, Indonesia. You don’t really do things there. Your weekend plans are dictated by the tide times, everyone drives a 4wd and you spend most of your time in air conditioning, down the beach camping and fishing, with a cold beer in hand.
It was wonderful! However living there for 3.5 years you can become pretty complacent, and outside of work, I wasn’t really achieving a lot. I wanted to create some more discipline for myself.I thought I would set myself a ridiculous goal, something that would get me out of bed nice and early… literally... and that was to run a marathon. It was a big goal because growing up, I hated running. I loved playing netball, but I loathed the fitness element - I associated running with everything negative in life. However, living in this coastal town, there were no hills, no traffic, and because nothing really happened in town, I had time up my sleeve. This gave me the ultimate entry point to start. So I signed up for the GC Marathon.Not having a clue on how to do this, I enlisted a coach Pat Carroll. He’d won a few Gold Coast marathons. My goal was to simply finish under 5 hours.On a side note, this is a speech I did at Pecha Kucha, Broome about the whole marathon training experience.I’m sharing this story as there were a couple of words of phrases he said, that I think can generally be applied to this question about gaining confidence in speaking in front of large groups.I'm going to drop one of those phrases now and then again later on, in the episode. Pat said that a lot of people approach runs and start cross-training, ie. Do weights, swim or cycle. But HE SAID - and gosh, it sounds so simple - and you’re probably going to think I’m crazy to highlight this as some kind of watershed moment - but it was for me...
He said, "The best way to train for a marathon is, to simply, run".
You need to start banking those kilometres on your legs. You don’t need to do pilates, swim, hike, or play touch footy. Just run. Bank those kilometres on your legs. I loved that concept of banking kilometres. And I banked thousands of kilometre on my legs in those nine months.My most recent podcast guest, Neen James agrees with this. If you listened to my conversation with Neen in Episode 26, you would have heard her mention the phrase ‘Time on your feet.’So my short answer to that question, ‘How did I get the confidence to speak in public?’, well it was really about banking that time on my feet as a speaker.That leads onto the next question:
How do I find time in my feet, so when a marathon-like speaking opportunity comes along, I’m prepared?
If you go through school and Uni, that’s a good start and there are opportunities there, like high school English class presentations or the dreaded group assignment preso at University.I’ve also always loved seeing others kill it on stage. I have always been fascinated by the power of strong delivery, and what brilliant presentation looks like. I guess the difference I brought, was to continually to ask myself, "What can I do that is different? Who is in the audience, what do they want, what is the hook?”When I really think about why I care so much about making sure my message hits… it probably comes back to my philosophy about how life is too short.In Episode 16, I spoke with Adam Mustoe about the Gallup Strengths Finder 2 and my second highest strength theme is Maximiser. The Maximiser theme is really around ‘Do you want fries with that?’ and taking advantage of opportunities…you get caught out sometimes, particularly when travelling as you want to cram and juggle everything into a day. How this theme plays out also is that if I’m given the opportunity to present in front of other people, I want to maximise that moment. I believe you are in a position of great opportunity the second you have more than two people in the room. Life is too short to have your time wasted by boring, irrelevant and un-memorable presentations. When you’re the one in front of that room, don’t waste everyone else's time.And that’s my real driver for doing things differently.
Sport played a role.
I was lucky getting into netball from the age of 10. Through the game, I’ve been given opportunities to speak in front of others at occasions from speaking in team huddles during quarter breaks, to club presentation nights and dinners.In University, I started coaching more junior teams and I believe being a coach had a significant impact on my ability to deliver a message succinctly and projecting my voice - particularly when you have quarter and half time breaks to do that and your audience are 13 to 15 year olds.My first official MC gig was as on-court announcer for the Queensland State League netball finals back in 2003. I called the teams on the court, thanked sponsors, talked through key highlights of the match. Through this, I learned about the importance of time-keeping, how to speak clearly into a microphone, and the realisation that the role of MC is so much more than just the delivery. There is a lot of background work involved in who you need to liaise with, what your backup plans are, etc. Now when you start doing this sort of stuff, the people around you hear about it, and that opened doors as an MC’ing at friend’s weddings.
If you’re ever asked to MC a wedding, please say yes.
For two reasons in particular:
- It keeps you off the booze for a few hours so that you can avoid a painful hangover!
- The skill to being a wedding MC is about really making it a personal experience. So this experience forces you to tailor your message -for the couple, family and friends. Having that first wedding MC gig again opened up more invites to MC other events.
Can you see from this trail how it all works?
If we’re relate speaking back to running, I believe those school, netball and uni presentations were 5km runs. MC’ing a wedding is a half marathon.And unfortunately, similarly to running, you can’t go cold turkey for 6 months and then expect to run at the same pace you did while training.
So how can you continue to get that speaking experience?
I know a lot of the listeners are split, probably about 50% working in a full-time job and 50% freelance. For those working, there are so many opportunities to put your hand up and deliver presentations from where you stand.While I was working in Marketing for a company called Wicked Campers, we were sponsors of the annual Backpacker travel expo in Melbourne. As part of the sponsorship package, the company was offered an opportunity to run some sessions on travelling around Australia.I put my hand up.In my role working in Government in regional Western Australia, we had a fortnightly Friday morning video hook-up with the other campuses in the region called Communication Corridor. 
As I needed to share internal messages, I put my hand up and asked to be in the agenda, pretty frequently. I challenged myself to out-do my previous presentations over and over again.When it came to Friday morning, I also felt like whacking myself on the head and questioning myself on volunteering for these sessions and putting myself under undue pressure. It would have been much easier not volunteering and sitting in the crowd every fortnight, But, when we held a Professional Development week for all 200 staff in the region, guess who was asked to MC the event?In late 2016, I was asked to co-facilitate some leadership training in Brisbane. A few months later and I was onboard a flight to Canada to run the same workshop over there.
Time on your feet matters.
Not only does it give you more time to practice your presentation skills and experiment with content, but more importantly, you also get used to that feeling of uncomfortable-ness. You get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It also leads you to good things and great opportunities that you would never have realised. Every time you step up, it’s an opportunity for you to market yourself and build your personal brand. You get luckier. I think the best analogy that sums this up is the one I heard on Episode #49 of the Jordan Harbinger show. In this episode, Jordan chats to Alex Banayan about mentoring. In fact, its so good, I am going to share it for you below:There's no denying that luck plays a role in anyone's success.But it was in conversation with then-Microsoft executive Qi Lu that gave Alex a real understanding of lucks role in success.Qi Lu had grown up in a village outside of Shanghai, China that was so poor to the extent that there was only one teacher per 300 children and people developed deformities from malnutrition. Being very smart and working very hard, Qi was making seven dollars a month by the time he was 27. Like so many other intelligent, hard workers in China, he dreamed of a better life in America — so, he needed an advantage over the competition.As luck would have it, Qi had the opportunity to speak to a Carnegie Mellon professor lecturing at his local university. The professor had been so impressed by the questions he was asking and the papers he had written about the professor's area of expertise that Qi was offered a full scholarship to Carnegie Mellon.How did luck play into it? Under normal circumstances, Qi would have ridden his bicycle to visit his parents on that particular night of the week — but it was raining, so he stayed on campus, attended the lecture, and happened to be the most well-informed scholar in the room on the topic at hand. Thanks to his extra months of productivity, he was prepared when opportunity knocked.To Alex, Qi imparted this nugget of wisdom: Luck is like a bus. If you miss one, there will always be the next one. But if you are not prepared, you won't be able to get on.This encouraged Alex to do a little more digging into the science of luck, and from the research, it seems one thing is clear: luck is a mindset, not a phenomenon.
When I again reflect on that question, how did you get the confidence to speak in front of large groups?
As you can see, it’s an evolution piece underpinned by three things:
- Bank that time on your feet.
- Put your hand up and find the opportunities.
- Every time you have an opportunity to present, challenge yourself to stretch and outperform your previous presentation.
The second piece of advice from my running coach, Pat Carroll was not to be concerned by the fact that your longest training run does not take you near 42.2km. Save yourself for the marathon. Prepare consistently, stay injury free, and your solid preparation combined with race day atmosphere will allow you to go all the way.Nothing will prepare you for that marathon moment in front of hundreds of people with the spotlight on you, but you’ll get pretty close by banking the thousands of kilometres prior, and you can be confident to accept the opportunity, given the success you’ve had in the past.
I'd love to hear how you got your speaking experience.
How will you find that time on your feet? Where are you banking your speaking kilometres? Comment below!
Episode 26: When you stand in service, you can’t be nervous with Neen James
In today’s episode, I talk to Neen James. Neen is a sought-out, high-energy keynote speaker in the States who challenges her audiences to leverage their focus and pay attention to what matters most at work and in life. Audiences love her practical strategies they can apply personally and professionally, and meeting planners love working with her – they often describe Neen as the energizer bunny for their events. She believes that when you stand in service; you can't be nervous.
In today’s episode, I talk to Neen James. Neen is a sought-out, high-energy keynote speaker in the States who challenges her audiences to leverage their focus and pay attention to what matters most at work and in life. Audiences love her practical strategies they can apply personally and professionally, and meeting planners love working with her – they often describe Neen as the energizer bunny for their events. She believes that when you stand in service; you can't be nervous.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How a happy little Aussie wound up killing it on stages in the US
The differences between Australian and US audiences
Why it’s important to change your focus and stand in service (and how this helps with overcoming nerves)
Understanding the importance of the three types of attention and how you can apply that to your facilitation
Her speaker role models (and the mad genius they focus on)
How the three types of attention drive profitability, productivity and accountability
Tips and tricks on how to contextualise your training content and marketing collateral
Strategies on how to engage with your audience.
About our guest
Neen James is the author of Folding Time™ and Attention Pays™. In 2017, she was named one of the top 30 Leadership Speakers by Global Guru because of her work with companies like Viacom, Comcast, and Abbot Pharmaceutical, among others. She earned her MBA from Southern Cross University and the Certified Speaking Professional designation from National Speakers Association. She has received numerous awards as a professional speaker, is a partner in the international education company Thought Leaders Global, and is a member of the prestigious League of Heroic Public Speakers. Neen has boundless energy, is quick-witted and always offers powerful strategies for paying attention to what matters so you can get more done and create more significant moments at work and home.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Attention Pays Sample Chapters (a gift from Neen)
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode! (or, leave a comment below)
Quotes of the show:
“I want to make sure that every interaction they have, they feel like they are getting the attention that they want and need and deserve.”
“When people are making behavioural shifts, that's far more important to me than a standing ovation.”
“It's not about you and it's not about them, it's simply about a conversation you're going to create in the room.”
“One of the best engagement techniques is to keep it really practical. So as soon as they leave your workshop, they can share with someone else what they learned and they can implement it in their everyday life.”
“There’s always the next opportunity, the next level of performance, the next skill to develop, the next way to challenge an audience”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Neen James.
Episode 25; Split brain workshop facilitation: How to balance the now with the ‘What’s next?' with Mark McKeon
In today’s episode, I talk to Mark McKeon about the parallels between creating high performance on the footy pitch; and high stake situations in a group workshop facilitation environment.
In today’s episode, I talk to Mark McKeon about the parallels between creating high performance on the footy pitch; and high stake situations in a group workshop facilitation environment.
Need some inspiration and motivation? Mark provides that in this episode, along with some extremely practical tips which you can start implementing in your facilitation game. We talk about the practicalities of workshop room setup, how to balance being in the moment with forecasting ahead to drive your workshop outcomes, maintaining energy levels and the key question he asks from client's to determine workshop outcomes.
Listen in to him when he talks about ways you can structure your day to be more productive using his Go Zone methodology.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How Mark pivoted from professional footballer, to high performance coach and facilitation/speaking
Parallels between playing and coaching in high performing footy matches/game day and preparing for a big workshop/stage
His requirements in terms of rooms setup and audiovisual setup (including practical takeaways for keeping your voice in check over a day’s workshop)
Why it’s important to be a little selfish during the day to maintain peak performance
The key question he asks clients to clarify the outcomes of a workshop (and why this is critical)
How to structure your day to get the most sustainable performance (and how we under-estimate the importance of recovery)
Why he channelled his inner James Bond to create a memorable message
What you need to know about using gimmicks and props in your workshops
About our guest
Mark McKeon is one of Australia’s leading experts on leadership, efficiency, productivity, work life balance and team cohesion. His latest book "Go Zone" reinforces all these factors.
He spent 16 years as the high performance coach at Collingwood, with the team also outsourcing their entire fitness and training function to Mark’s team. He was also Club Runner for more than 250 games, an AFL record, and worked with Victoria’s State of Origin Team on five occasions.
Mark previously played football in the VFL with the Melbourne team, and represented Victoria in the VFA. He presents keynotes and tailored sessions, and along with his team, conducts workshops and conference programs in lifestyle, team building and leadership. Mark consistently rates as, ‘exceedingly funny with a great message’ or ‘best conference speaker’. He spends time with delegates, and can MC or facilitate as well as present keynotes and workshops.
Mark has an insightful and engaging style and his uplifting presentations have been a conference highlight with lasting impacts for many years.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Like this show? Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode! (or, leave a comment below)
Quotes of the show:
“You don’t have to be a prisoner to the structure you’ve set for your workshop…I’m forever swapping slides around and stopping, accelerating and changing the times, all hopefully to the benefit of the audience”
“The best clues are always in the audience”
“The best facilitators approach their workshops with an audience-centric mindset’
“Start with the end in mind. One of the great dangers is that your outcomes are vague and you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve.
“Work on your craft. Look for every opportunity to speak in front of a room”
Video: Mark channelling his inner 007
Episode 24: How to develop a workshop using a team profiling tool (while keeping it light and fun) with Sean Lavin
In today’s episode, I talk to Sean Lavin about his experience with facilitation and the team profile tool called the ‘Team Management Profile’. Sean is a passionate, optimistic and friendly personality with a strong background in both hotel/services and open-cut coal mining operations.
In today’s episode, I talk to Sean Lavin about his experience with facilitation and the team profile tool called the ‘Team Management Profile’. Sean is a passionate, optimistic and friendly personality with a strong background in both hotel/services and open-cut coal mining operations.
He is firmly focused on growth and learning, whilst simultaneously gaining as much insight and experience throughout the vast Human Resources sector. Sean’s favourite workshop theme is around networking, and giving people the permission to speak to each other. He believes that a great workshop is the one that is focused on interaction, with a sprinkling of humour and fun.
Listen in to him when I ask him about his experience as a first-time facilitator and how that experience shaped him.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How to craft a team workshop using the Team Management Profile tool
The questions Sean uses to identify learner’s requirements for a workshop
Essential skills of a facilitator
What he’s changed since starting his facilitation journey
How his philosophy saying yes has opened up fantastic opportunities
Sean’s recommended opening icebreaker for a workshops
Strategies to keep a workshop light and fun.
About our guest
Sean is a professional, enthusiastic and passionate HR Graduate. His background stems from a mix of hotel/services management and open cut coal mining operations. Early in 2017, after obtaining his Master of Management (HR), he transferred internally from the coal face into the graduate program to begin his next professional adventure in the vast realm of human resources and facilitation. He's passionate about his family, consistently delivering high quality work outcomes and striving for personal happiness and fulfilment every day.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Like this show? Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Quotes of the show:
“So when it comes to icebreakers, I think you've got all the resources you need in the room and that's just people.”
“The best workshops or the best say seminars and things you go to are the ones that are fun and get you laughing or you know thinking about something that's just completely silly and that's the sort of stuff that you take away. So if you can blend a lot of fun and humour with serious content the stuff that you're actually trying to get across to the audience I think it makes for a really good session.”
“I think the gold is in the conversation. So as a facilitator, it's about you know really trying to steer the ship as opposed to making sure it gets to its destination as fast as possible.”
“If the opportunity comes up or someone asks you if you want to do something, just say Yes!”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Sean Lavin.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Lynne Cazaly (Episode 23)
Here is the episode transcript from my interview with Lynne Cazaly on Episode 23 of the podcast.
Leanne: Welcome to the First Time Facilitator Podcast, Lynne Cazaly.
Lynne: Great to be here.
Leanne: It's so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for giving us your time. I really appreciate it.
I'd love to start just by asking you the question on how you found your feet in the world of training and facilitation. Was it always something that you aspire to or is it something that you fell into?
Lynne: It's definitely something I fell into so my sense is a lot of people don't kind of leave school or during school girl. I'm going to be a facilitator. I think that they've got some capabilities that kind of lend themselves to being great facilitators.
So my background was as a Communications Specialist so I had a background in public relations, I worked in health, sports, art, media government and I did some lecturing at university and communications and consulting and communications and so I was learning a lot about what people think and how they communicate with each other. But the constant theme through all of those roles that I had was that I was playing this interpreter role, I was kind of working for a company, listening to what the management and leadership and the board and directors and everything was saying and then interpreting that for their community and their stakeholders and then I'd be listening to the community and stakeholders and interpreting that for the organization so I became this what I think you could call a boundary rider like in sports, you know it's a person who's got one leg on either side of the boundary lot.
Leanne: Yeah, it’s really a cool time.
Lynne: So yeah, there I was really what I was doing was facilitating communication between different parties and different stakeholders and groups as well as working with communication. And people started asking me, “Oh, will you facilitate our strategy day or our comms plan or our sales plan?” and I thought, “Oh, I'll be able to do that. I’ll have a crack at that.” and that's what I did.
And then in early 2000s, I did an Advanced Diploma in facilitation with the Groupwork Institute here in Victoria and I kind of just topped off my experience with some of the great theory around facilitation. So yeah, it certainly wasn't a planned journey or a planned process but yeah I'm happy I found it. I wish I did know about it in those years when you're trying to make a decision about “What am I going to study? What am I going to be?”
Leanne: Yeah, you’re right because I think a lot of the facilitators that I've spoken to have been launched from different careers and it could be Project Management Communications like you said my background is in marketing as well.
Lynne: Right.
Leanne: We've got people that are Software Engineers.
Lynne: Yeah.
Leanne: And I think, one of the thing is the theme is within their organizations or their own context they are being asked to explain what they know and so they want to become really good at explaining it to people which is why they find facilitation and realize, “Hey, I actually really enjoy this.”
Lynne: Yes. So it becomes less about their subject matter knowledge and more about the act of helping people and helping people get their work done or helping people understand something.
Leanne: That's right. So when you ask to facilitate your first strategy day, we're talking all these years ago because you're very experienced now. I don't know if you can reflect on that time and sort of share what you were thinking or what your strategies were going into that day because it would have been pretty daunting if you had that experience.
Lynne: Yes, it was. Yeah, I was really nervous and you know just the thumping heart most of the day and couldn't sleep well the night before and wondering you know, “Will I stuff this up?” and “What will I do if they don't know what to do?” and “Is my agenda good?” So all of this self-doubt and so I think this is one of the things that is the biggest challenge is that this confidence and we end up being too much worried about ourselves and we forget about actually helping the people that were there to help. So yeah, I had the classic doubt, you know, paranoia- “I'm not good at this.” “I'll crash and burn.” “This will ruin my career.” Okay, I still have some of those thoughts.
Leanne: I was just going to ask you that question. I mean, are there nights where you've got some workshops there and keynote speeches that you've sort of refined over the years. Even with refined content to new audiences do you still sort of think the night before? Like, “Oh, gosh. How am I going to go…?”
Lynne: Yeah.
Leanne: Ah.
Lynne: Yeah and even if I'm not using much content that is I've crafted an agenda with them and so it's about them the participants contributing the content. Yeah I'm still thinking, “Gee, I don't even know these people and I'm going to walk into this room.” and every time I walk into a room to facilitate, a bunch of strangers, every time. So you've got to have this ability to rapidly build rapport and connect with people because you need them to be on your side to trust you really quickly that you're there to help them. Not to tell them what to do but to work with them and I don't think that just comes from cockiness like, “I'll be out of do this.” That gets you into a lot of trouble whereas more of the humility of going “Gee!” and curiosity of “Wow! I wonder what they need help with today.”
Leanne: Yeah.
Lynne: I wonder what I'll be able to help them do rather than “Gee, I hope it all goes well.” It may not go well you know and I'm hanging on to “Oh, it better go well.” Well, it's going to go, it's going to go.
Leanne: So coming from the place of curiosity is what we're experienced.
Lynne: Yeah, definitely! I wonder why that person said that. I wonder where they're going with that rather than “Gee, what a douche.” like “What's he doing and why she being such a…” No! Just going “That's really interesting. Hmm...” So that's some stuff I think that comes from the Groupwork Institute and their philosophy around facilitation which was you know just slowing things down and really being more of service to the room rather than thinking you've got to control everything.
Leanne: I think that's kind of difference between when you're delivering a speech which is a very it's kind of like a solo event and you definitely want to engage people and not want to be arrogant. The facilitation is about drawing people in and like you said make them feel comfortable and I think it is you need to show that authentically you are curious about what's going on for them especially I guess people come into your room from all walks of life and they come in with all different attitudes as well and sometimes it's very noticeable when someone just doesn't want to be there.
Lynne: Yeah.
Leanne: It's that something, how do you cope with that? It's like, I know from my experience when I first started it was my worst nightmare when I knew that someone wasn't interested I felt instantly a little bit anxious but now sought after talking to facilitator it's interesting finding out what their strategies are so how do you cope with that?
Lynne: Well, it happens all the time. Even last week I was facilitating a session and there was someone in the room and they're doing niche most of the time and then they're eating their lunch at the time that wasn’t lunchtime and in and out of the room, kind of going, “Yeah, do they not want to be here?” or you know “What's going on?” and I remember facilitating some workshops for a Logistics Firm and we had a lot of the drivers of the vehicles that would you know they had to come along to the sessions and a lot of the other team you know people working in the warehouse and mechanical people and admin, a customer service. A lot of them were very keen but the people who were driving the vehicles were just, it was totally this every time. They're like “What's…?” They'd look around the room that I'd set up with you know nice post-it notes and markers and stuff and they go, “What's this shit?” Literally what they would say. “This looks like my kid's room. What's this crap, what are we doing today?” and I never engaged in an “Oh, you're here to do blah blah blah…” You know I never went into that parental or teacher mode. I just zip it and think, “Yeah of course, they're going to come in here.” and wonder “What this is? I just want to be in their truck delivering, you know delivering the products and doing that sort of work. I don't want to be in a workshop.”
Leanne: No.
Lynne: So again, I think I'm not here to fix them but I'm here to again build trust as quickly as I can and build engagement throughout the session and time and time again in those sessions around changed. Some of those drivers would come up to me at the end and they shake my hand they go, “Yes, thanks. That was good I didn't fall asleep, yeah it was really good.” So kind of thinking I don't have to win them over at all and I don't have to win them over in the first five minutes but just carry on you know.
Leanne: Steady-steady.
Lynne: Yeah, steady-steady and time and again they kind of came on board throughout the workshop and participated in activities and contributed and yeah we were able to draw them out.
Leanne: Awe, that is a bit of a win. I know you’re not winning them over but you would have been pretty happy.
Lynne: Oh, I look at- Yes!
Leanne: Got a smile!
Lynne: Yeah and as soon as they're contributing you know and participating. Even tiny things like what's your name or how long have you worked here or gee you must have seen a lot of change in the organization you know as soon as someone contributes a story about what they do or what they've seen. I just think, “Yes, great you know, I've got them now contributing to something that this whole groups going to be working on. That's good, it’s safe for them to speak up here.”
Leanne: Yeah, fantastic. So let's just say I'm in a workshop of say 20 people and there is like that one or two to people that aren't engaging at all. Do you try to cook them in it anyway like pay special attention to them or you do you sort of focus on the 18 other people that are engaging? Well, does it depend on the context environment? These are one of the variables here.
Lynne: Yeah, it does. It does depend on that. But I like to look at people's behaviour and think of their behavioural styles not their characteristics or personality but what's the behaviour they're exhibiting at the moment. And if they're quiet and not actively participating then my thinking is “Well, maybe they're thinking. Maybe they're not disengaged.” and I use visuals all the time in my workshops. So you know, here’s a flip chart, you see my office at the moment what's always here but I'll always be using flip charts in my workshops and the effect that visuals have on people, on their eyes, their mind, they can't help but look and engagement naturally, automatically goes up. So yeah, engaging with people when it's all talk is very difficult, can be very difficult. But as soon as you've got visuals there. Bang! Engagement goes up. “I can't help but look at the stuff that you're capturing from around the room.”
Leanne: Yeah. I was just on the back of what you’ve been showing me is a flipchart. Saw your website and a light bulb and like you said “You just can't unsee that, you've seen it, it's in your head.” You've sort of thinking, “What’s that about?” I'm seeing some really beautiful handwriting which I also saw on your website and the way that you draw is its really simple but it's effective and I know what you're trying to convey. Have you always been interested in drawing or as again just a tool that you've brought into your facilitation toolkit because you think yeah visuals are so important?
Lynne: Yeah. I have no art training at all. This is not about art, I say, it’s smart not art. So it's how we’re capturing and reflecting back to people the stuff that they're saying. I don't like the idea of someone sitting in the corner you know typing into a laptop “Oh, you know, I'm the scribe. I'm capturing what's happening today.” I think we don't know what you're capturing and its useless going into a computer so let's make it visible and then people can see and because using the tools of a visual is facilitation. So if facilitation means to make ease, to make easier, visuals do that. They instantly help make engagement easier, communication easier, collaboration easier, impact easier. It makes it easier to get to outcomes by about 25%, recall is easier by about 33%. So if we're not using visuals and we're facilitators we're really pushing sinopia. We're making it harder for us and for the group.
Leanne: Yeah, really good point and then you've written a book about this called Visual Mojo. In that book do you actually explain how we can use visual cues as a facilitator? What’s involved in that book?
Lynne: Yeah. It's Visual Mojo, so that's around the confidence of using visuals because most of us think we're crap at drawing.
Leanne: Yup.
Lynne: So this is about how to capture your thinking, convey information and collaborate using visuals. So I go through how to draw simple shapes and use lines. How to draw people because I think the sooner you put people in some of the pictures and charts you know anytime we capture anything on a flip chart or a whiteboard. Don't just write words.
Leanne: Yeah.
Lynne: We have to work too hard to digest that. So some words and visuals will really help get the message across. So whether you're you know capturing, you're eliciting information from the group and you write some of that up there with an anchor image as I call it. Something that helps people attach that those words with an icon or whether you're explaining something you know you might be explaining, “Okay, now we're going to break into three groups.” and you know those long-winded instructions that facilitators sometimes have. And sure enough someone in the room will go, “What? What’ll we have to do?” So I find that if I sketch out you know groups of three and I'll draw three people, draw a clock fifteen minutes and then a speech bubble and I'll put the keywords what we're going to talk about in groups of three for 15 minutes then that flip chart is there and no one asks you “What are we doing?” They’ll just look at it and you explain it and point to it, break into groups of three, talk for 15 minutes on this topic and I'll remind you know when it's time to wrap up and that just works every time.
Leanne: Where has that information been all my life? Our colleague and I just ran a workshop this morning and it was yeah I was trying to make this very complicated instruction very simple so I was staging it and checking in every now and then. But if I had just drawn it. The time limit and this is where you go. I guess that is something I'm going to start implementing straightaway and I’ll iterate drawing skill if they can draw a circle and letters and numbers.
Lynne: Exactly, that's it. Even keywords if there are three steps to this activity and go, “Here's the first step on the first chart, and we’re doing this. The second steps on the next chart, the third steps on the next chart.”
Leanne: Yeah, fantastic.
Lynne: You can have all three charts pinned up at once. So those that need to see the big picture can see everything and you know compartmentalizes information so we've got information in chunks. All of this is making it easier, that's facilitation. How do we make this thing easier and breaking down something like complicated instructions for an activity is you know we need to be really good at that. We need to have great clarity when we're delivering information.
Leanne: Yeah, that’s right.
Lynne: Yeah. Don't just rely on words for that.
Leanne: No. Thank you. That's excellent! I just wanted to share a quote that you said. So you mentioned that “Every time you're working with more than one other person, it's time to put facilitation skills to work.” So why do you think is the case and I guess the flip side of that, do you think people in organizations recognize that because I think, I mean I'm going to give you my opinion here. I think people think that facilitation is a skill that somewhere else is that the trainer or facilitator needs to have it, that it's not a role of a leader?
Lynne: Yeah.
Leanne: What I'm saying in here is every meeting if you've got more than one person you're going to have to draw on these skills so can you explain that a bit further?
Lynne: Yeah. Well, this is coming from the book called Leader as Facilitator which is about how to inspire, engage and get work done. So this book I wrote in 2016 and this is exactly that point which is helping leaders realize that every time they get the team together or even just have a one-on-one or one-on-two, one-on-three conversation, they need to just switch into the role of facilitator because they've got to make that little meeting easier. We know how much meeting suck so bad, right? They're run badly and that's the main problem, they're run badly. We can talk about lots of other things about them but mainly meetings are run really poorly. So with some facilitation skill, a leader cannot become a full-time facilitator but just swing into that role and think “Okay, how do I need to make this environment safe for these people to speak?” which probably means they need to shut up more. You know, “What are the questions? What’s the topic? What are they actually bringing this group together for?” And every time there's more than one person, they've now got the opportunity to draw that information out of those people because I see it a lot you'll have one loudmouth in a small group meeting and two other people don't feel like speaking. Well, it's the leaders job to you know just quiet in the loudmouth down and help lift up and encourage the other to not shut the loudmouth down and not expect those quieter people like, “Now come on, lean in and speak up!” No, it's not their job. It’s the leader’s job to make the environment great and elicit that information. So yeah I'm seeing more and more workplaces wanting to do this because they realize leadership's changing and they have to create more collaborative, co-created environments.
Leanne: Yeah. I'm looking at leadership in the aspirational requirements of a leader and it's sometimes it seems like it is this unicorn. They've got to be just great people but also have some technical capability, be a great role model listen to people, coach them. It's like wow and especially in the world we're living in now which is just subject to so much change and I was on your website before and I loved there's a workshop that really caught my eye and it was called The Sensemaking Workshop. I'd love to talk to you about that. So you said that the Institute for the future predicts it since making it to be the number one skill we need for 2020 which is only a couple years away. What is the skill of sense-making? I'm sure our audience, it may be the first time I've heard that term.
Lynne: Yeah. It kind of sounds a bit my lab tease the word “wanky”?
Leanne: Of course, this is an Australian podcast.
Lynne: Okay. I’ll probably say that instead of the other swear words that I probably get in trouble for and you know in the States. But since making can sound like “Oh, it's a made-up word or don't you mean making sense?” So sensemaking is when you connect the dots with information and try and work out what the hell's going on and we're often trying to do that in teams and groups. We get people together particularly in meetings and workshops, we're trying to make sense of what's going on, make some decisions and some plans and put stuff into practice and I think challenges come when we bring people together and we just expect that they're going to start collaborating and working well. But if we do some sensemaking, we give them some skills about how to maybe map out their ideas or think or talk together and the facilitator can be a sense makeup. So you can very much use visual skills, you can be a sensemaker using visuals. So it's kind of creating a map you know, whenever we're traveling somewhere or we're looking for a coffee shop, we get our phone out, we're great cartographers, you know we're great users of maps and in sensemaking, maps really are the visual charts it is showing, “This is where we are.” “This is where we want to go to.” and this is “Let's talk about now how we're going to get there.” Because that's kind of the overriding model that most workplaces and meetings are following. “This is where we are.” “This is where we need to get to know how we're going to get there.” So sensemaking helps people connect the dots and see, “What's really going on here?” and then it helps us make better decisions.
Leanne: Yeah, cool. A lot of the time I guess in meetings because we are so time poor and there's a something that's thrust upon us and we need to solve it and nobody goes straight into solution mode.
Lynne: Oh, really?
Leanne: You never really step out and talk about the process of how we're going to solve it because we have no time it needs to be solved and you think but by going through that process, it's very easy to clear and clear to see you know “What are the risks?, What's going on here?”, “Do we agree with that?”, “Okay, this is what will inform our decision process then.”
Lynne: Yes. So now you're uncovering a better process which great facilitation is having a really good process underlying. The work that the team's going to do and you're going to help them you know get through that work easier than if you weren't there in the room or if they had someone else to believe.
Leanne: You made with yourself redundant.
Lynne: Yeah.
Leanne: So you love the variety of workshops that you do offer. I'd like to hear a bit about let's just say you get approached by a client and they want something that's not off-the-shelf not within your range but you know that you can deliver it. I’d like to know, what is your process of putting together a package or a course for someone? They'll give you their objectives. What’s then, what do you do next?
Lynne: So this is probably a little bit more like a training design or learning design which is one of my earlier roles was working in a sales team and we helped all of the business development team that were out there on the road selling. We designed and delivered all of their professional development so I was constantly having to create new programs. So this happened a lot in one of these consulting roles that I had. But what we do is kind of find out those similar questions, “Where's the team at now?”, “Where do we need to get them to?” So what's that gap of performance and until we can identify that gap I think it's all just waffle. You know, if we start saying, “Oh let's run an activity about this and let's get them to read Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why”. Let's get them to watch that TED talk where there's a single guy dancing at the festival.”
Leanne: Oh, the second follower. Yeah, I've seen that everywhere.
Lynne: So I think there's a lot of biggest kind of I'd say cliched tools that we might throw into a training program thinking, “That'll do. That'll make them learn.” But I'd come back and go so, “Where's this team or group at now?, “What are the main things they're doing really well and what's the stuff we need them to either do better?” or “Where's the new capability?, “What's the new thing that we need them to do?” And often I see teams or groups trying to achieve and consultants learning and development consultants trying to fit too much into one day and so we've got “Okay, today here's 15, you know learning at home.”
Leanne: I know.
Lynne: It's crazy. It's not going to happen. So if you can blow that down and go, “Let's just focus on one or two, maximum three.” You know “What are the absolute must-haves?” and then maybe some of those other ones. If you're following that 70-20-10 model of learning on the job and learning through coaching and then for more face-to-face learning then use that as some of the on the job or the coaching like you've pushed some of those other modules or learning outcomes or topics off to other ways that people are going to learn. Not in that 10% when you're doing face to face. So that's how I do, I find out what this gap is that we're closing and try and narrow and get this gap as specific and as miserable as possible rather than you know, “Come and teach us conflict resolution.”
Leanne: We won’t training on communication.
Lynne: So you want to go, “What's going on in communication?”, “Where are the problems?”, “What are the issues?”, “Are these two people aren't talking well to each other?” Okay, well that's not to be covered in the workshop. you know we want something that's going to be and value to the whole group and not just be of value to them but it’s delivered in a way that they actually we've got some chance at making some sort of shift. We're not going to totally change them but some but some chance and that's the visual mojo or sensemaking workshop. I've refined that over a number of years and I just keep the elements that work and that people like and I keep getting rid of the stuff that doesn't work and that people don't like. So every time I run that visual session, I know I'm closing a gap around confidence in people's ability to think and communicate visually.
Leanne: Yeah fantastic. You do, you iterate it over and over again.
Lynne: Yeah. Keep that gap as narrow as possible. Here’s the thing that these sessions going to address. Not all of these 15 things.
Leanne: Yes, it's too confusing, too ambitious. Yes.
Lynne: So if you fluff up for failure like failure sexy. But not that sort of failure.
Leanne: No. I've never had fairly been described as sexy before.
Lynne: Oh, it’s everywhere now. That’s the right thing to do.
Leanne: Oh, I must have been in the cave. Okay. So when you are designing these programs are there any particular ice-breakers or energisers that lean on that you know yet this works every time?
Lynne: Oh, well I could be you know speaking an unpopular opinion here but I don't use icebreakers. So I don't have a go-to icebreaker. I think my view is they’re a little bit dated and a little cliched and lots of people have seen and coached and work with use quite dated and tacky activities that have elements.
Leanne: The “Two lies and one truth”.
Lynne: Oh, please. I am about to just go off my mind about this. Why would you get people together and you're trying to work with them for the day. Why would you encourage them to lie to each other and you’re trying to let things passed.
Leanne: I don’t know. I’ve sat through 15 workshops so that's been…
Lynne: It must be stopped immediately that activity is not good unless you're training for ACO and you're trying to work out, you're trying to catch liars, right? That's a great activity for them. But I think generally in the business world, get rid of stupid activities and anything that involves a blindfold. No! Just don't put blindfolds on people, stupid! We're trying to build trust.
Leanne: I think hopefully. I think that was stamped out in the 90’s because I don’t remember in my adult years. How safe we were in legislation and...
Lynne: Oh no. People still suggest it.
Leanne: Yeah and with big markers trying to people to try out to trust exercise.
Lynne: No. It's not. That is not how you build trust.
Leanne: Setting people up to trust you. Yes.
Lynne: I'm always saying you know “For what purpose, for this activity. Why am I running this?” If I'm trying to break the ice then there are ways to break the ice. The best way to get people to break the ice is to get them start working on something. Like they're probably there for work so let's get them to start working on something. Why make them play some silly game?
Leanne: Yeah.
Lynne: What issue that people have about actually starting some of the work? There are some pieces of work that you could begin working on. The best way to get people working together is to get them to start working together.
Leanne: It sounds so simple.
Lynne: It does, though I think Ben's icebreakers and games are kind of hang overs from the 50’s 60’s and 70’s and they were probably the ways that our teachers were taught and then that's carried on we think, “Oh, that's what you do.” or the training and assessment certificate says you must conduct an icebreaker. But I would say “Well, who decided that?” you know, so there's some of my views on icebreakers. I think it can cause more damage to people by making them feel embarrassed, socially awkward and I think you've got to keep a very safe environment and very low risk early on in a workshop yeah and icebreakers to me most of them are too they're too risky and I think what's the most socially awkward, socially anxious, introverted person going to think about this?
Leanne: Yeah. Completely shut off. Yeah.
Lynne: It's not good. So yeah, a lot of experiencing engagement challenges in teams and at workshops and maybe it could be because we've done some things that are negatively impacting how we're building engagement and building trust.
Leanne: Yeah. I spoke to a guy called Sean D'Souza on the podcast last week and he pretty much said: “No one cares about your bullet points, nobody cares about your content until they feel safe.”
Lynne: Yeah.
Leanne: I was like, “That is such a good point.”
Lynne: Yeah, it's so true. It's like…
Leanne: Yeah, because they're seeing where they are in the workshop, what's comfortable, what's going to happen to them. So, it's all about them. They're not actually looking and seeing what the information is because they don't feel that they can trust the environment yet.
Lynne: Yes, exactly. And some by the end of the day are still going, “No. I still can't trust the environment.” and that's why they've set their arms crossed you know disengaged-looking face. However, they might still be thinking. We think you know we can't lie consumption that someone's disengaged simply on how they look.
Leanne: Yes. I love that mindset. So let's just say when you've gone in, you've identified the gaps, you've written the most amazing content, everyone's engaged, thinking about it taking action. They walk out. How then can you in some way, how can you embed the learning from that day's workshop or what strategies do you have so that when they leave that day feeling inspired and motivated, fantastic that they do something. Well, they change some behaviour following that. So, in three months’ time, I mean this such a tough thing to do and I'm just curious what are your thoughts around that?
Lynne: Yes so three months for me is a long time.
Leanne: Yeah.
Lynne: But how do I get a behaviour change in a lot shorter time? So I'm looking for behaviour change on the day in the workshop. So I'm wanting to see people particularly with my visual thinking, visual mojo, and visual sensemaking workshop. I'm checking and testing throughout the day to see are these people shifting like “Are they getting a new behaviour?” Not waiting till the end and then trying to do some follow-up webinar two weeks later to check in with learning.
I'm looking for little points throughout the day like probably thirty of them and I'm checking have they got that did they get that and then the beautiful task of reincorporation. So then I'll be running some activities later on in the day, “Are they reincorporating stuff we covered in the morning?” So now they're starting to put this stuff to practice and is there thinking shifting, is their behaviour in their team or their group whatever the topic is, is that starting to change? Now they're trying it out, you know they're trying it on. I think we expect a lot that you know “Watch on my PowerPoint slides and now go behave differently.” and it just isn't like that. So what opportunities are you giving people throughout the day to try some new behaviours on.
Leanne: Yeah fantastic. That's so embedding it in the terms of the content and the way that you structured the course of learning.
Lynne: Absolutely, yes.
Leanne: Awe, that's really good. Yep love that.
Lynne: So if you come back to going, well the gap now is a very narrow gap that we've defined now. I can make some really good stuff happen to close that narrow gap rather than having this broad topic of communication. Maybe you know the much narrower gap, I'm covering is delivering 90 second explanations in meetings maybe that's the narrow gap and now I can deliver skill around that and we can practice it and they can by the end of the day they will have new behaviours and they will not want to let those behaviours go because I'll have tried them on they'll go “Yeah, actually that feels pretty good. I've now seen it in other people in the room. I'm seeing how effective it is.” And one of my favourite tasks is just to give people some homework just within 72 hours. So I give them a task that they have to come back to me with just individually. So safe, just come back to me, doesn't support cast to the whole team or group, you just straight back to me. Here’s a demonstration of one of their skills or behaviours connected with the workshop.
Leanne: Oh cool. Yeah.
Lynne: Yeah.
Leanne: Yeah that sounds really fair, 72 hours, a non-confrontational, yeah.
Lynne: Yeah and I found the people who do that go on and do really good stuff with the program and the people who are still don't quite have the confidence. I've got an online program then that I send people in enrolment to and I find that the people who haven't sent me their homework are the ones that go straight in to the online program because they want to learn a bit more or they want to feel it out a bit more and they'll take a little bit longer and then their homework will come through.
Leanne: Awe, that's good at least they’re still completing the homework.
Lynne: Yeah.
Leanne: That’s fantastic.
Lynne: Yeah and majority of people do, “Because I want some feedback.” or “How am I going?” or you know maybe they feel like “Oh, this is looking pretty crappy.” and I’d go, “No, it looks really good.” you know. So you would come back to this mojo, all this confidence not only does the facilitator need it but in a training situation you kind of have to confirm or affirm that when people have got that competency like let them know, you know let them know that they're going well or I might say give them that social proof or I'll go “Look, I've seen you know three and a half thousand people do this program and I can tell you, you're doing really well.” and they'll go, “Oh, okay so compared to others, I'm doing okay.” “Oh, yeah. Yeah you've got this.”
Leanne: Oh that's so, yeah great strategy.
Lynne: With some feedback.
Leanne: Yeah.
Lynne: You know direct feedback to them. “I can see you're doing well with this.” So some of that growth mindset stuff. “I can see you've worked really hard on this.”
Leanne: Yeah.
Lynne: Yeah, it’s like acknowledgement.
Leanne: Yeah. Look we're getting so many practical tips from you Lynne. What is one piece of a practical advice that you could offer to a first-time facilitator or to yourself say you know 15, 20 years ago whenever you started that one-day strategy session. If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice what would that be?
Lynne: As a facilitator I'd say, don't go in thinking that you know the answer and some of the best ways to build engagement in a team or group is to push what we say, “Push the work into the room or push the questions out into the groups.” So rather than you’re playing consultant or subject matter expert or teacher as in “I have the answers to this. I know, I'm going to share.” That that you put the challenge or the questions out to the group and that's the work that they're going to start doing. You know have I said don't play silly icebreakers maybe some of the icebreaking years get them to answer some of the initial questions about this topic: What are their thoughts? What do they know about it? And this get them participating, contributing and you've been more of the facilitator not the person who has all the answers.
Leanne: That's fantastic advice and on that Lynne, I like to thank you so much for all of your time, your insight. I don't know if you've noticed but I've been like scribbling, you can’t read my writing, it's not as good as yours.
Lynne: Did you use any shapes or icon?
Leanne: I did use some circles and I've used some arrows that would sort of link things together
Lynne: Oh, good.
Leanne: Yeah. So some kind of taking some baby steps on what you recommended in terms of your visual mojo. I'm not a mojo level yet.
Lynne: Yeah, but with some, the podcast if you want to put a link there for people to shoot me an email and if they just say, “Look, I heard about, I heard you on this podcast.” Oh, I'll send back. I've got like a PDF with some icons on it that people can follow and draw and practice. So I couldn't send that right on back to them for now you know just a little gift or something.
Leanne: Oh, well gift for the audience. That's the first time we've had a gift from what about. Actually, now sorry, we had a template sent through back in Episode Eight. So Lynne, your website is a lynnecazaly.com and we’ll write that on the show notes as well and you've also got a huge following on Twitter so we'll put your Twitter account on there if anyone starts using questions on that.
Lynne: Thank you. Yes.
Leanne: Thank you so much for your time and all your insight. The stuff that you're rattling off is just it's so yeah, I mean some of the stuff I've kind of heard before but majority of things are just simple tweaks in terms of the way that you can explain an instruction using symbols that's going to improve my game like by 10% straightaway. So I really appreciate that.
Lynne: Yes. You’ll save time. The message will land and they'll go “Wow, she is a smooth facilitator.”
Leanne: Yeah. I love that. Thanks again, Lynne. I'm sure you'll get a bit of a feedback from this one.
Lynne: All right. Thanks. Great to speak to you.
Leanne: Thank you.
Episode 22: What clients really want from a workshop (and no, it’s not information) with Sean D’Souza
In today’s episode, I talk to Sean D’Souza. Sean is a cartoonist, author, online marketing strategist, a pretty good cook (judging from his social media photos) and an energetic facilitator who applies his skills in creating a different kind of workshop. He reads on average 100 books a year. Teaching runs in his blood, as his father, mother and grandmother were teachers too. He's that good, I flew to Singapore to attend one of his three-day workshops.
In today’s episode, I talk to Sean D’Souza. Sean is a cartoonist, author, online marketing strategist, a pretty good cook (judging from his social media photos) and an energetic facilitator who applies his skills in creating a different kind of workshop. He reads on average 100 books a year. Teaching runs in his blood, as his father, mother and grandmother were teachers too. He's that good, I flew to Singapore to attend one of his three-day workshops.
In this episode, we talk about the motivation of the people coming to your workshops… are they really there for the information, or are they there for another reason? We explore workshop design and giving your participants time to reflect on content. We also discuss creating a safe workshop environment - not only for the people in the room, but for you as well…because, as the facilitator - it’s important that you feel safe, too.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Sean’s ratio for instructing vs group discussions and activities
The power of frequent breaks
Why it’s important to create a safe space for your participants
Why he shares his learning materials prior to a workshop
What clients really want out of a workshop (and it’s not information)
A winning formula that features energy, confidence and skill
The importance of feedbacks and testimonials in a workshop.
Tips for facilitators starting their journey in facilitating and leading workshops in their own context.
About our guest
Sean D’ Souza is a cartoonist and an online marketing strategist who runs a zany online marketing site named PsychoTactics. He is also the author of “The Brain Audit” which is about how customers make decisions.
Originally working as a freelance cartoonist, Sean somehow found himself indulging his talent for marketing and understanding consumer psychology by helping out others with their marketing efforts. It wasn’t long before he started writing about his own experiences with marketing and slowly but surely, he began to gather an audience hungry to learn more.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Sean’s online home Psychotactics
Sean's book, The Brain Audit
We Are Podcast conference
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Click here to tweet your thanks to Sean. https://twitter.com/seandsouza?lang=en
Quotes of the show:
“What you have to really work on when you're teaching people is you have to get their confidence up, because when you get their confidence up, they use less energy.”
“You have to understand what causes people to be motivated in the first place and it's not your stupid bullet points; it’s not your content.”
What clients really want in a workshop and that is they want to leave the room and you say, “That's not possible!” Well, do this the next time you're having a workshop tell them, “Look, all of you are here for the information, right? And they'll all say “Yes!” and you go “Okay, so we're going to do this workshop until 9:00 p.m. tonight.” and then watch their faces.
“You have to be comfortable that you're going to goof up 50 to 60 percent of your early days before you start getting comfortable But breaking it up is always good because once you're confident, then you don't have to overcompensate. You don't have to be, ‘“I’m the boss here and you're just minions.’”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Sean D’ Souza.
Episode 20: Turn up early and read the room with Tyson Young
Tyson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Carisma, a digital application that allows your mechanic to provide you with your cars visual service history. In this episode, we talk about using humour in your deliver, adapting to your audience and using different tools and strategies to be a better facilitator. Tyson provides practical tips on calming those nerves before a big presentation and also shares a neat challenge he's been pursuing for the last 400+ days!
Tyson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Carisma, a digital application that allows your mechanic to provide you with your cars visual service history. In this episode, we talk about using humour in your deliver, adapting to your audience and using different tools and strategies to be a better facilitator. Tyson provides practical tips on calming those nerves before a big presentation and also shares a neat challenge he's been pursuing for the last 400+ days!
What you'll learn in this episode:
What Tyson learned from his first pitch
Things you should avoid right before a presentation
Why it’s important to read and understand your audience prior talking to them
Tools and strategies Tyson uses
Why Tyson is mindful of time keeping and respecting people’s time
Advice for a first-time facilitator
Like this show? Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Reach out to Tyson on LinkedIn.
About our guest
Tyson is not only the CEO and Co-Founder of Carisma, he is an accomplished MC, speaker and facilitator who incorporates humour into his presentations and adapts his style by effectively reading his audience.
In his teens, Tyson joined the Army Reserve, he then graduated from the Queensland University of Technology, where he studied business and creative industries, advertising and communication design. Tyson claims that each opportunity leads to the next.
His start-up, Carisma is on a mission to become the leading authority in a new, transparent automotive industry. This application allows you to see exactly where your hard-earned dollars are going.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Quotes of the episode:
"Turn up early and read the room, walk the stage, do whatever you can to feel comfortable in the environment. A big part of that for me is actually speaking with the audience".
"People have this misconception that if it's corporate, it's like, 'Oh, it has to be serious'. At the end of the day, people are still people. People still want to laugh and engage with you".
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator transcript with Tyson Young.