Episode 8: Storytelling works! (Because no one's ever asked to see a Powerpoint presentation twice)
In this First Time Facilitator episode, internationally bestselling author Matthew Dicks shares why storytelling so important, and how telling stories is not simply sharing a series of events; it’s the manipulation of emotions.
In this First Time Facilitator episode, internationally bestselling author Matthew Dicks shares why storytelling so important, and how telling stories is not simply sharing a series of events; it’s the manipulation of emotions.
It’s a skill that can be taught and he shares some of the techniques he uses to engage his audience, whether they're 10 year old kids, or politicians.
In this episode you’ll learn:
What a story is (and what it isn’t)
The details you should leave in your story and more importantly; the details you can leave out
How you can become more memorable by sharing things that are vulnerable, amusing or embarrassing
That it’s important to assume that no one wants to listen to anything you have to say
How to start collecting your own stories by reflecting on everyday moments
About our guest
Matthew Dicks is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, Something Missing, Unexpectedly, Milo, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, and the upcoming Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling. His novels have been translated into more than 25 languages worldwide.
When not hunched over a computer screen, Matthew fills his days as an elementary school teacher, a storyteller, a speaking coach, a blogger, a wedding DJ, a minister, a life coach, and a Lord of Sealand.
Matthew is a 35-time Moth StorySLAM champion and 5-time GrandSLAM champion. He has also told stories for This American Life, TED, The Colin McEnroe Show, The Story Collider, The Liar Show, Literary Death Match, The Mouth, and many others.Heis also the co-founder and creative director of Speak Up, a Hartford-based storytelling organization that produces shows throughout New England.Matthew is the creator and co-host of Boy vs. Girl, a podcast about gender and gender stereotypes.
Resources
Grab his new book! Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
Video: Life lessons learned while pole vaulting told by Matthew Dicks
Transcript
Read the full First Time Facilitator transcript with Matthew Dicks.
Thoughts on the episode? Share your comments below!
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Matthew Dicks (Episode 8)
Storytelling works! (Because no one's ever asked to see a Powerpoint presentation twice)
Leanne: I’d like to introduce today’s guest. He fills his days as a school teacher, storyteller, speaking coach, blogger, podcaster, a wedding DJ, minister-life coach, and a rock opera author. His upcoming book, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling, is his first non-fiction title. His other novels have been translated into 25 languages worldwide. Plus, he's a 35-time Moth StorySLAM champion and 5-time GrandSLAM champion. Welcome to the show, Matthew Dicks.
Matthew Dicks: Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.
Leanne: It's great to have you here. I'm like, look, what a crazy and full repertoire of things that you do. You must get that comment a lot.
Matthew Dicks: I do. My wife is not a huge fan of that list.
[laughter]
Leanne: I hopped into YouTube last night to watch some of your videos. The first one was the Moth story about you as a pole vaulter in high school. I know there's--
Matthew Dicks: That was the first story I ever told.
Leanne: I can't believe that was your first one. You looked so seasoned. My husband and I were laughing out loud, watching that.
Matthew Dicks: Thank you.
Leanne: Well done. Switched over to your TEDx talk about making decisions based on what your hundred-year-old self would say, and I got to say there were a few teary moments watching that. I think your video hit home for me.
Matthew Dicks: I'm so glad. Thank you.
Leanne: I shared it on Facebook straight away. I've got to ask, how did you become so good at telling stories?
Matthew Dicks: I used to say that I was just fortunate that I found this thing that I was able to do, and then my wife told me, "You're an idiot. It wasn't because of that." What it turns out to be is that I've been sort of prepping for storytelling for a very long time through a bunch of things. The DJ-ing was great because for 20 years, I learned to speak extemporaneously in front of large groups of people. I was comfortable in front of a crowd the first time I took the stage, and that helped a lot.
I'm a novelist, so I'm accustomed to sort of the shape that stories should take. I never really understood that that would play a role until I started working with people on their stories, and I realized how people just don't really have that fundamental understanding all the time.
I've been blogging since 2006. I've discovered through the process of blogging that the more I reveal about myself, the more vulnerable I'm willing to be, the more I'm willing to tell on myself about the terrible things I may do on a daily basis, the more attention I would get from my audience. I think those things sort of combined that night at The Moth when I decided to tell my first story, the idea that I was comfortable in front of people and I understood that they wanted me to be honest and as vulnerable as possible.
Leanne: What was the first vulnerable thing that you did reveal to people? Was it that story, the part that you're this mediocre athlete at high school? Was that an embarrassing thing to share with the world?
Matthew Dicks: I guess the part of that story that I'm really trying to express that I think people feel but never say is the moment where you occasionally root against your teammates because you want to be perceived as the best person on the team. That's something that I think a lot of people feel but would rarely speak aloud. That was what I was trying to go for that night when I was telling that story.
Leanne: Back to storytelling. I know this from my experiences. There's [sic] some people that I've-- I've talked to some friends, and they're just natural at storytelling. They break into telling at something that happened in their holiday. It's really funny, and it seems effortless. There's also, on the other end of the spectrum, some people that can tell you a story, and with the first two sentences, you're switching off. Do you think it's something that's natural, or is it something, a skill, that you can learn, and is it an easy or difficult skill to appreciate?
Matthew Dicks: Well, I teach it a lot, so I have to believe that it can be learned. I've been teaching it now for about five years. I have taken people who are truly terrible at telling a story, got them on a stage in a very short period of time, and had them perform really brilliantly, so I do believe that can be taught. I do believe it can be learned. I think a lot of is just the ability to listen to stories. I think the people who are natural storytellers, the ones that don't need to work with me, they're just good listeners. They've picked up this craft along the way that they're not even aware that they picked up. Others just need some help understanding how a story works, really what is a story, and what isn't a story because that's often half the battle.
Leanne: How do you define what a story is, then?
Matthew Dicks: I always say that a story is not a series of events. Someone may come to you and say, "Let me tell you about my vacation." No one's really ever wanted to hear the next sentence of that story because what they're really saying is "I'd like to run through the itinerary of my vacation with you so I can relive it again. I'll insert good meals along the way." That's not something that's going to move us.
For a story to really be a story, it needs to be something in your life that happened that caused some kind of change in you. I usually say are transformation or a realization. "I was this person, but now I'm this person." It can be a negative transformation. It could be, "I used to be a decent human being, and now I'm not." Something as simple as, "I used to think my mom was an idiot, and now I understand that everything my mom has ever told me was absolutely true. I really can't believe it." There has to be that arc, that journey from "I was one thing" to "Now, I'm another," which people tend not to understand. They tend to tell stories which are just series of things that happened to them, but in the end, they're fundamentally the same person. Those stories aren't memorable, and oftentimes, they're not very good to listen to.
Leanne: Is there a secret structure to telling these stories where you talk about the shift in behaviour or your thoughts around something?
Matthew Dicks: There's a lot to it. I say there's a lot of secrets, but the big secret I often tell people is that every story is about a five-second moment in our lives. It's really that moment of realization or transformation. I call it a five-second moment because I really believe it takes place over about the course of five seconds where you suddenly, for whatever reason, shift into a new person or shift into a new understanding.
Once I'm able to find one of those moments, the moment in the story we were talking about, the moment I realized I'm rooting against my teammate because I'm a selfish jerk who wants to be perceived as better than everybody else-- As soon as I find that moment, I know that's always going to be the end of my story because it's going to be the most important thing I say. If people would just do that, if they would just ask themselves what moment of realization or transformation can I talk about and make that the end of my story, they're going to be better off than most storytellers already.
Leanne: Why do you think it is important for people to share information using stories?
Matthew Dicks: I think it's the best way to share information. It's the most captivating way. I often say that I'm a fundamentally unlikable person who tells a good story, and I manage to get through life on that tree. I'm a horrible golfer. I am really the worst golfer of any golfer I've ever played with. Yet, I'm asked to play constantly, almost daily. The people who play golf with me know that when I hit the ball into the trees and we go looking for it, I'm going to entertain them on the way.
That ability to grab attention, and through a story, you can just get people to do a lot of things that they might not normally do or convince people to think a certain way that they might not normally think. I often say no one has ever asked to see a PowerPoint presentation a second time or say, "Wow, that graph was so amazing. I'd love to see it again." We'll watch the same movie that we have watched ten times, an 11th time if it randomly comes on the television one night because we love stories so much more than anything else.
Leanne: So true. In the work environment, you'd recommend instead of dolling up the PowerPoint/presentation with the corporate template, would you just recommend launching into a story about how your new idea will shift the organization, and would you make it personal? How do you start even mapping out what that story would look like when it comes to, say, in business?
Matthew Dicks: I always start with a story. I have to do presentations as a teacher, and I'm often doing presentations now with corporations and non-profits for storytelling. My first goal is to tell a story that's going to relate to the goal of the day, but also going to reveal something about me. I don't want to be a presenter that's forgettable because most presenters are. You'll go to a conference, and you'll hear some information, but you won't remember the person three days later, which means you haven't made a meaningful connection. If I can share something that is vulnerable, or amusing, or even embarrassing, I've now established myself as someone who is memorable, or entertaining, or someone who you just want to know a little bit more about. I'll always start with that. Eventually, I may work into a PowerPoint, or into a graph, or into that more traditional presentation style, but I always want to start with a story. I always want to connect with my audience so that they will believe the things that I am saying.
Leanne: That's very authentic as well. Like you said, it does create that personal connection. It's so different to what everyone else is doing because most people, I guess, they expect to go into a board meeting, for example, switch on the computer and fire it up, and that's the way it goes. I guess, by using that story, you're automatically hooking them in.
Matthew Dicks: Yes. If you watch any of my TED talks, actually, I always open with a story. The story is going to inform what I want to talk about after the story, but I want that story to be something that causes people to feel connected to me and relate to the content I want to present. I'll often end the TED talk with either another story or I will finish off that first story. We begin with story we end with story. People feel entertained and fall. They feel moved and connected with me and then the content that I sandwiched in the middle, manages to get in there, sort of sneaky. They don't even notice it's happening.
Leanne: Yes, you're right. Because when I put on your second video last night, my husband was like, "Let's play something else." But then, I think in the first minute, you've hooked him in and he was there watching it for 15 minutes which was awesome. [crosstalk] Thank you. [laughs] I'd love to hear about the level of detail that you go in. Sometimes when you're describing an event, you really describe it quite evocatively and outline like the greasy tiled floor that you were lying on at McDonald's. I guess, in my experience hearing stories, some people give too much details, some people not enough. Where's the fine line in providing detail?
Matthew Dicks: I always think it's not how much, but where it should be and where it shouldn't be. There are moments, like the moments you've spoken about when I'm in a robbery in the back of a restaurant and there's a gun to my head. I want you to be on the floor with me and I want you to feel the grease in the barrel of the gun. I want you to see and smell everything because it's such a unique situation and it's the most important moment in that story. I want you there with me.
Quite often, I will tell people don't include any details. If I'm telling a story about-- I'm working on a story right now about my grandmother and I open with her in the garden. I will just say the word garden because it's irrelevant what type of garden it is. If I just say garden, you just automatically fill in a garden of your choice. You end up doing a lot of work for me, without me wasting any words, without even knowing it.
If I say the word garden to you, you automatically choose the season, you automatically choose the weather on that day, you choose what is in that garden, and as long as it's not pertinent to the story, those details, I want you to do the work for me. It will also create a landscape that you are more familiar with. So that, when you put my grandmother in your garden, you feel like you're a little bit at home because it's a sense of like, "I understand what that garden is." Even if the garden she happens to be in is full of corn and carrots and you put her in a flower garden, that's fine. I love the fact that you've created the garden that you are most comfortable with.
It's all a matter of choosing which moments need to be described and which moments can be let go. I think people either describe everything or they don't describe anything and they don't find that moment where, "No, slow it down here and give us the detail that we need because now we've hit a critical moment." Or a moment that people really can't visualize without words.
Leanne: Let's talk about storytelling and facilitation and particularly, in workshops. Sometimes, I definitely think it's a useful tool to explain whatever you're trying to get through to your audience. With your stories, do you actually have a bucket of stories that you have which you can lean on and go, "This one's a great one to use when I want to explain leadership. This one is about integrity." Do you have an Excel spreadsheet or how do you store that information? [chuckles]
Matthew Dicks: I do have an Excel spreadsheet. It's fairly insane. It's a crazy spreadsheet. It has a dozen of tabs and it really is insane. What happens is, if you build up enough stories, that's what I encourage people to do is keep telling stories and keep crafting them, eventually, when I am asked to speak on a topic, it is never relevant what that topic is because I will always have a story for it.
I had to do a talk in a human trafficking conference one time. They asked me to close out the conference with an inspirational story related to human trafficking. The conference organizer called me a couple of days before and she said, "Have you researched human trafficking?" I said, "Absolutely not. They've just spent three days hearing about human trafficking. I'm going to tell you a story and then relate it to the importance of battling human trafficking." She was very worried about how that talk was going to go.
I told a personal story about my life and how I failed to act quickly when I could have helped the student. I related that back to the importance of when it comes to things like human trafficking, we can't allow politicians to say that, "Change takes place over time and big ships are slow to turn because these are human lives at stake and not making widgets." It really went well and it was completely different from anything else said in the conference. I'm just able to do that with every topic now because I have 150 stories that I've told on stages over the years and I can apply any one of them to any topic whatsoever.
The trick is to be a storyteller with a large amount of content and then the topics are irrelevant because you can always match what you have to what they need.
Leanne: Do you collect those stories in real time, like you just, "Wow, that's interesting.", and you get out your phone and go into Evernote? Or, is it something at the end of the day? What's your process?
Matthew Dicks: I actually have a TED talk called Homework for Life that you can go and get a lot of detail on it. What I do essentially is at the end of every day, I sit down with my spreadsheet and I ask myself, "What is the most story-worthy moment of my day?" If I had to tell a story about something that happened today, even if that moment is fairly benign and irrelevant, I still write it down. I put it down in just a few sentences in a spreadsheet. I don't make it so on a risk that I won't continue to do it day after day.
My goal was to get maybe a story every couple of months to add to my lists of stories. But what happened over time is really remarkable. I've developed this lense for storytelling. Such that, I can see stories where other people don't. My wife says, "Matt can turn anything into a story." And that's not really true. My friend tells me, "Matt can pick up a rock and make it into a story, The Process of the Rock." That's not true either. What I try to explain to them is, I just see stories where you don't because I've developed this lense overtime by continually asking myself this question. I've discovered that the smallest moments in our lives make the best stories.
Even though I've died twice and been brought back by CPR. You know about my robbery. I've been homeless for a period in my life and arrested and tried for a crime I didn't commit. All of those things aren't my best stories. Really, my best stories are tiny little moments that I experience and then I see because of this process that I've been engaged in for the last three or four years.
Leanne: Do you think those little stories are good because they're probably more relatable? Because I haven't had two near death experiences-
Matthew Dicks: [laughs]
Leanne: Do you think that's why they are so good, those little ones?
Matthew Dicks: Exactly, yes. Exactly. When I tell my near death experiences and I've told those stories, you can see them on the internet, I always have to find the tiny, little moment in the big story, so that I can connect with my audience.
When I was 17, I was in a car accident. I went through the windshield, died on the side of the road, but the fact that I die on the side of the road and get brought back to life is almost irrelevant to the story. It's not the point of the story. The point of the story happens later on in the emergency room when my parents fail to show up. They go to check on the car before they come to check on me when they hear I'm in a stable condition. But my friends show up. My 16, and 17 and 18-year-old friends show up in the emergency room, unexpectedly. They fill in for my family and really become my family until I meet my wife.
That is something people can connect to you. You can't connect to me going through a windshield, but you can connect to the idea that parents sometimes let us down. Or, that friends sometimes pick us up, when we feel alone at points in our lives when we really shouldn't feel alone. You find the little moments in the big ones, but the easiest stories to tell are just, start with the little ones, then you don't have to play with them.
Leanne: It's a pretty powerful skill you have, in terms of the way that you can transition emotion. Last night, I was saying within five minutes, we were laughing and we watched the second video and it was like, "Whoa."
[laughter]
How do you feel that having that kind of responsibility?
Matthew Dicks: It's a trick of storytelling, really. My favorite story and the ones my wife likes the best are the ones that are, laugh, laugh, laugh, cry. I get you laughing at the beginning of the story and not realizing the horror that is to come. I always say it's better to make people laugh before they cry because it hurts more that way. [laughs] Part of storytelling is the manipulation of emotion because the ultimate goal is, I want you to feel the same way I felt, or as close to it as possible. So, if I'm surprised in my real life, I want my audience to experience that similar surprise as I tell the story.
I'm constantly asking myself, "How do I want my audience to feel at this moment?" So, if my story is very heavy at the end, I want to balance it with humor at the beginning if I can. It's just that manipulation of emotion that a storyteller inevitably does, in a way that it's [unintelligible 00:18:44], but it really is the satisfying way that people want to hear stories.
Leanne: Cool. Let's talk about your transition. You're doing a lot of keynotes, speaking, presenting and then you're running workshops, do you think there's similar skill-set that you brought over. I know you're a teacher as well, so you've got that as a background. Obviously, teaching has really helped you, having the storytelling as well. How have you used those skills, in terms of getting engagement in workshops?
Matthew Dicks: I teach fifth grade. I teach ten-year-olds and I've been teaching for 20 years. I often say they're the worst audience in the world. I've really learned that you have to engage your audience. I so often, I am in workshops in professional development or listening to speeches, and I'm astounded that the speaker doesn't attempt to do something entertaining or different. I think so often we assume that adults are willingly engaged in what we are about to present. Like your husband, actually.
When I do my TED Talk, I don't assume that the person who is even chosen to listen to it, wants to listen to it. So, I'm always thinking about, when I'm beginning a workshop, when I'm beginning a keynote, I assume that no one wants to listen to anything I have to say. The first thing I have to do is hook them. I have to find a way to get them to care about me and care about what I'm saying, and I just see so many people assume the opposite that everyone wants to hear them, so they have to make no effort to be entertaining and engaging in the beginning. Kevin Smith, the comedian wrote a book, wrote a biography and then he says that speakers have an obligation to be entertaining regardless of their topic every time they take the stage, and I believe that and I believe you have to be entertaining initially and not assume that people want to hear anything you have to say.
Leanne: That's amazing and how do we create a movement, I completely agree with you as well, but it just seems like, we're being overwhelmed with people that do operate off that assumption. How do we change this? I know you're starting out by writing a book about it, you created these videos, we really need to start just the revolution somehow.
Matthew Dicks: Part of it is just rejecting what people are doing you know, if you're not entertaining I just reject your content I reject what you have to say, part of it is giving feedback as well, it's so often and when I'm in a professional development situation, and I've asked to give feedback at the end of it. I believe that there's this desire to be kind to the person who took the stage because they were brave enough to take the stage and so people avoid being honest with a speaker or a presenter about what they've actually done they just think, "Well, they were kind enough to come here, we have to be nice enough to say something nice".
And I think be honest in our feedback and if they don't ask for feedback, they don't solicit it, we have to be willing to send an email the next day saying, "Hey here's a couple things you should think about", until these people understand that we are not engaged in their material, they will just continue to do what they're doing.
Leanne: Yes, you're right, no one's really brave enough to tell them, a little bit scared. That's really good advice I think we'll link to your videos, that could even be away, so providing feedback to someone, "Hey, nice attempt yesterday, maybe you should watch this video and get some tips".
Matthew Dicks: Yes, I had a politician recently, a guy I know pretty well he's trying to get a program cut in our school system and it was a program that may be needed to be cut, they were trying to save some money and he said he did a year's worth of data collection presented a beautiful PowerPoint with lots of charts, lots of evidence that showed we should cut this program and move the money somewhere else. Then he said one mother stood up and described how the program saved her son's life and he said, "I always lose to the anecdote."
I told him you took a knife to a gunfight, you thought that a PowerPoint was going to change the hearts and minds of people when a mother with a child is gonna change the hearts and minds of people. So I'm working with politicians now, telling them you have to tell a story like nobody cares about your facts and figures that you have to be a personality who is engaging and who tells a story. I think starting to understand that to a great degree.
Leanne: Yes, I think so too. So in terms of your workshops, they're engaging, interactive and then the participant walks out and leaves the workshop, what is the best way to embed learning, do you think? Following a workshop when someone leaves that environment and just goes back, back to their day to day, how do you make sure that something has changed?
Matthew Dicks: Well, hopefully, they can buy my book and that will help a little now, but what are the things I do is I call it homework for life, the idea that you're going to look for stories every day. I say for life because I really do mean that that if you're going to start doing this, you'll do it for the rest of your life. I believe that when I teach my goal is to take a large and complex process like storytelling and break it down into the smallest possible parts. So that even if you spend eight hours in a workshop with me and you pick up just five small things that you can begin doing immediately, that are easy to implement and can be repeated over and over again, you'll begin doing that and you'll notice the changes in yourself as a storyteller. Then you're going to be more likely to maybe come watch one of my videos, or come to one of my advanced workshops to learn even more or to pick up my book now and read more about it.
I think that so often it when I'm in a workshop nobody is looking to sort of break things down into tiny concrete parts and maybe because I'm elementary school teacher for 20 years, that's what I understand about curriculum. So I really do try to teach in the smallest possible terms and I scale it so that the first things I say are always going to be the most important. As we get through the day I'm going to become more and more nuanced and the things that I'm teaching are going to be less important, although still important. So that when I have them at their maximum attention and maximum energy I'm teaching the most important things and truly things that are going to be so simple that they can go home and start doing immediately.
So don't teach big things, just like in storytelling we're looking for five second moments to tell a story, I'm looking for tiny bits that kit that people can use.
Leanne: Yes, great so let's talk about your book. It's coming out in June, I've already pre-ordered my version off Amazon. So you've written novels this is your first non-fiction book, what made you decide to pick up the pen and write something and share this experience with the world?
Matthew Dicks: Well, I did workshops for about four years and over the course of those workshops actually started grudgingly, people kept asking me to do it and I said no, and eventually I agreed to do one and done that's what I said and I fell in love with the teaching of storytelling. But over the course of that time, I really began to refine what I was doing so if you had taken a workshop with me in year one versus now, it would be entirely different. As I began to develop that curriculum in a way that people responded too positively and I saw them implementing really effectively, I realized that I can't reach everybody by having them come and join me on a Saturday for eight hours.
I started to get quite a bit of demand from around the world really from people who would either say, "Can you please fly out to LA and teach a workshop or do you have some material you can provide for us, a book and things like that". So my goal was to take the workshop that I teach really this weekend-long workshop that I teach in various places and turn that into a book. So if you can't join me for a weekend, if you can't make it to where I am and I can't make it to where you are, you'll have this to get you launched into storytelling.
It's not going to be the same, it's not going to be as interactive, you're not going to laugh, you know I try to make people laugh throughout all of my workshops. There are funny moments in the book but my goal is if you can't make it to me you can start with this and then maybe we can talk later on.
Leanne: How does the book work? Is it sort of like a sequence of you start with lesson one and then you build up over the course of it or is it just different tips and tricks you can start pretty much anywhere?
Matthew Dicks: No, I've designed it like my workshops so the beginning chapters are going to be more important than the later chapters, big fundamental, the big fundamental building blocks are in the first few chapters. I've also embedded lots of stories so that they can serve as models for what you're learning and I've crafted in a bit of memoir as well so that you can sort of watch my journey on storytelling as well.
I love Stephen King's book on writing. I think it's brilliant for writers and I love it because I learn a little bit about the writer's life in the process so my goal was to write that version for storytelling. It's going to be instructive but you're also going to go on my storytelling journey with me and you're going to meet some of the great storytellers that I've met along the way and learn some of their craft tips as well.
I'm hoping that even if you're not terribly interested in storytelling the book is going to be entertaining enough that you'll read it so even storytelling for dating has become really popular for me now. It's always guys who can't get a second date so they come to my workshops. So it's not just the idea that presenters or performers are going to be using this book, but really almost anyone can benefit from storytelling and I'm hoping the book is entertaining enough that it holds their attention and that they'll get through it.
Leanne: Yes, cool, just good opening that front cover and making the effort. Storytelling for dating, what's that workshop about? I have to ask.
Matthew Dicks: It's my regular workshop although I have a couple set up where it would be exclusively dating and we'd have like a meal and things. But essentially it's the idea that on your first date, it's your opportunity to communicate to people with whoever you're with. And so often, people don't know what to say they say the wrong thing all the time, they don't tell a good story or they're not willing to be vulnerable in front of someone. They brag, they just awful people on the first day, oftentimes they're the worst version of themselves because they're not being themselves.
So I teach them that tell the story about the embarrassing moment you had this week and tell it well. Someone once asked my wife, someone said, "Why did you first fall in love with Matt?" and I was so happy I was there because I sort of wanted to know what that answer was. I figured it would like, "Look at him, you know obviously I fell", but she said, "It's never been what I looked like". She told me about a night when we were still just friends and we were teaching together, and we went to a restaurant while we were waiting for a school talent show.
And it was the first time we ever really sat down together and had dinner and she asked me questions and if you ask me a question I'm always gonna tell you a story and she said,"That was the night I fell in love with him even though it took us another six months to get together". She said, "Listening to him tell stories was the moment I fell in love because I wanted to hear more, and I loved listening to what he had to say". So storytelling got me the best wife ever and I really believe it can at least get you the second date, I can't guarantee anything after that, now you're on your own. But if you can really speak well and represent yourself well on a first date, I think you can get a second date fairly easily.
Leanne: Yes, I think so, that's the beautiful story that your wife told as well.
Matthew Dicks: Yes, I know I just, I was mad at her actually when she told it because I was into like year three or four of workshops at that point, and I said, "You never told me that, that fits my personal narrative so well like I can brand that and she said, "I’m not really in the business of making sure your personal narrative is up to par."
Leanne: Just to watch out what she says around you sometimes a bit.
Matthew Dicks: Yes. I have to run things by her sometimes when the story involves her.
Leanne: Yes, I bet. Mathew, where can people find you and find your book?
Matthew Dicks: You can find me at Mathewdicks.com and you can find my book everywhere. It's on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, your local independent books store will have it. You can pre-order it or get it there when it comes out in June. There will be an audiobook, I’m actually going to be narrating the audio book. It will be my first time doing that. All of my novels are in audio but then they've been narrated by other people so that will be a first for me.
Leanne: Wonderful. I've heard that process is pretty interesting. It’s pretty intense, isn’t it?
Matthew Dicks: No, I haven’t done it yet but I have been told this is going to take at least three days, which sounds terrible to sit in a little booth for eight hours a day for three days reading words that I wrote a long time ago.
Leanne: We can’t wait to hear it. Mathew, it'd be great to have you down to sometime I’m sure after the release of this book. Maybe there'll be some opportunities there, but I just loved-- I can’t believe everything that you've done, but just watching all your videos and hearing from you as well today is just so exciting. I think this is really relevant to all our listeners and they will be championing this episode. I think it’s really a good one.
Matthew Dicks: I’m so glad, thanks so much.
Episode 7: Preparation: It's the security blanket for facilitators with Sue Johnston
In this First Time Facilitator episode, Sue Johnston from the Artemis Group shares practical facilitation advice from an introvert's perspective. She talks about how she ‘accidentally’ wound up as a facilitator after working on strategies to make weekly teleconferences more effective.Sue also emphasises the importance of preparation, and why it’s critical to revisit and communicate the purpose of a workshop.
In this First Time Facilitator episode, Sue Johnston from the Artemis Group shares practical facilitation advice from an introvert's perspective. She talks about how she ‘accidentally’ wound up as a facilitator after working on strategies to make weekly teleconferences more effective.Sue also emphasises the importance of preparation, and why it’s critical to revisit and communicate the purpose of a workshop.
In this episode you’ll learn
An introvert’s perspective on how it takes courage to step up in the room
Why it’s important to ‘call out’ behaviour in the moment and reinforce the purpose of your workshop
Why preparation is critical and how it works as a security blanket, particularly for first time facilitators.
Why you need to bring your authentic self to your facilitation
How to incorporate SCARF, a neuro-leaderhsip tool to engage your participants.
About our guest
Sue Johnston founded Artemis Group in 2000 as a vehicle for her professional services work with clients and entrepreneurial adventures.She’s a registered nurse, public sector advisor, health sector strategist, manager, entrepreneur, and now an advisor, facilitator and leadership coach.
Her clients include public sector organisations, private sector businesses, non-government organisations, and individual leaders and entrepreneurs.She’s a certified Daring Way Facilitator Candidate, a Results Based Coach with The Neuro Leadership Institute and a member of the International Coach Federation.
Resources
Sue's book recommendation: The secrets of facilitation by Michael Wilkinson
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript (Episode 7)
Preparation: It's the security blanket for facilitators with Sue Johnston
Leanne: Our guest today is very clear about what drives her in her work and it's all about making you better. This theme has played out through her career, previously as a nurse, and with her work in both the public and health sectors. Now she's an adviser, facilitator, and leadership coach, and her job title is both Executive Director and very useful person of the Artemis group. She is on the line, across the ditch in New Zealand. Welcome to the podcast Said Johnston.
Sue: Thank you so much Leanne. What a wonderful introduction.
Leanne: You're very welcome. I would sa,y every time I interview a guest on the show I hear that they've come from a range of backgrounds, and industries. Yours is in nursing and policy work, so I'm curious as to how you entered the world of facilitation.
Sue: I suspect I entered the world of facilitation in much the same way as other facilitators, and that's almost being pushed into it or it just happens. It's not like I said, "Right. I'm ready to be a facilitator now." I look back. You've made me reflect on -- So this is about 10 years ago now. In my reflection I can see that it started with things like running a project where we had a teleconference of people from around the country, and they needed someone to run the teleconference.
I don't know if you've ever experienced those sort of situations where there's lots of silence, and no one's really sure about how we managed the process of what we do, and I can see that that's where I cut my teeth if you like on facilitating. It was basically because I wanted an outcome from the meeting. I wanted a good outcome from the meeting, so I thought, "Well, I will lead this, and let's just get on with what the purpose of this, us getting together is." That's how it started really.
Leanne: Where did you look for sources or information on getting those outcomes on your teleconference? Yes, you're right, I have been on those phone calls where you put a question out, and no one really responds. I would love to know what strategies you have for that environment.
Sue: How did I learn? For a start, I learnt by experiencing both good and bad in person, and teleconference type meetings. I thought, "God. Why is the person doing it this way? Why don't they do it this way?" Then you say you see someone do it well. So you go, "That was good. I could try that it."
For a start, it was very much around just by example seeing how other people did it. At that stage I wasn't going, "Right. I'm going to be a facilitator." I wasn't naturally going to look for those sort of tools and techniques. I was still very much embedded in my analytical and my policy process environment. That was my key thing, and this was a sideline of how we get the work done. If that makes sense.
Leanne: That's interesting, because you mentioned in one of our earlier chats that you are a bit of an introvert, and so did going through this process give you some tools to be more confident to then make the step of running workshops in front of groups? How did you make that progress in small steps?
Sue: How I made the progress, I think it always takes whether you're an introvert or an extrovert a bit of courage to stand up, and say you're going to facilitate. For me I was very aware that I had to have my security blanket of preparation with me. I learnt how to -- If I was prepared, and I had thought through what I needed to be able to do in the meeting, that helped, and my key tool that I used every time I facilitated is that I spent time before the facilitation, quite a bit of time investing in understanding what my client needs in terms of the purpose of the day.
Once I'm clear with that I can manage whatever goes on in the meeting. There's a mental process for me. The more prepared I am, and the more I understand the purpose of the day, then the better it runs. I have to say in that process it's probably not a surprise to facilitators to discover that sometimes they want you to facilitate something, and they are not clear about the purpose of the day. They're not clear what they actually want. They just want something. By doing that process with them upfront, we get very clear about the purpose of the day, and I make it clear back in my proposal in my brief to them that this is the outcome you have said you want. This is the purpose of the day, and that's what I'll be aiming to give you. Is that right?
Once I have that, the introvert in me has a process, has a thing to put the whole day around, and that makes it so much easier for me.
Leanne: Yes. I have been in situations where I've been approached to run something, and they have said, "Hey, look, we just want a team day. We just want to get along better." What kind of questions do you ask to really dig down, and get to the root of the problem or what they're really wanting to achieve?
Sue: Very good question. If I see them in person, all the better, but if not, it's a phone call, and we start by saying -- I start with really big questions like, "Why do you want this day?" It's things like, "We've go to redo our strategy."Or, "We've got to get people together in a room, and we're a bit afraid of how they will, but they need to," or something along those lines. There is the types of questions I ask are, "Why do you want this day?", "Imagine it's the end of the day. What would make you think this day's being worth it?" I get them to imagine what it's like. I get them to imagine that, "Yes. This has been a good day." I say, "What has happened for you to feel that way?"
That's usually quite a good way of getting them to focus on what they want out of us, and therefore who they need in the room, and how much time we might need, and all those other sort of questions that we ask after that.
Leanne: I guess you get that information, and over the 10 years of being a facilitator, do you have a bucket of resources or are certain models that you always lean on? Do you have any favorites?
Sue: I do have favorites. If they're wanting to do strategy, et cetera, I might go to is a strength based approach. In fact, all my facilitation is based on strength based work. In this case it's using Appreciative Inquiry. It's a usual strategy day. We'll say, "Let's look at our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats." In the strength based approach that becomes strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results. What that does, it takes their brain to a much better place to do the strategy, and the dreaming.
Without fail I have to say, the outcomes of the day, they love. They're surprised where they get to, the conversations that they have. Strength based approach would be definitely one, and that using Appreciative Inquiry. That's a big one for strategy.
Leanne: I've run some strengths workshops previously, and it's all about maximizing your potential, and really doubling down on what makes you unique and great. The feedback I sometimes get in those workshops is, "What do I do about my weaknesses?" Do you get that question a lot? What do you respond with?
Sue: [chuckles] That reminds me of a strategy day I did with with a board of a Tech company, and one of the members, even though I had requested that they put away their laptops and stuff continued to look at, and really wasn't engaging. We got to the part of the day where we were doing the aspirations, and it's all about giving them a future scenario, and saying, "Imagine that you're reading, that you've done this in the Financial Times. What does that look like, and what are your clients saying?" He just went, "It's saying that we're bankrupt, and we've gone under."
Leanne: Wow.
[laughter]
Sue: I went, "Okay." He is determined that we go there, and I said,"What happened for it to get to that point? What did you do? What did your company do?" I still made him go back, and think about what was happening in their world. What happened in their company to get to that point. That was a bit of a -- Some people would go, "Why aren't we doing it? If we don't understand our threats, and we don't understand this, we're not going to get there."
Actually, once you've got your aspirations, and you go to your results, and you have a look at what you need to stop doing, you'll identify your weaknesses. You'll say, "We can't carry on doing that in this way." It's a different way of getting there, and it keeps the brain in this lovely place of still going out to solve problems, and still being able to get the stuff out of the strategy there instead of going down holes. You have seen that right?
Leanne: Yes.
Sue: You've seen someone starts a, "Remember that time that that happened?" and everyone goes, "Yes." Suddenly they're off, and you're, "My goodness." It's not going to help them get to the purpose of the day which is to look at something new and different.
Leanne: That's a really great example. How do you steer them in the right direction if it does -- if there is a turning point in the room, and the mood changes? What do you do as a facilitator?
Sue: I call it. I notice it, so I just say, "I'm noticing that there is a bit of hesitancy in the room." If they've got a particular issue, I'll say, "Let's have a board." I use things like questions boards or holding pages. I can go and put their questions up there, because it's important to get it out and put it up there. Then I'll come back, and I'll say, "The purpose of the day is this. If we go there, I'm concerned we won't reach the purpose of the day," and then depending on the size of the group and who the client is there may be a follow up discussion just with the with one person, and saying, "You've got options here. What do you want to do with it?"
You can't ignore it. Otherwise it just just gets out of control.
Leanne: That's right. So you're recognizing it, and calling it at the time is probably a really great lesson learnt. If you ignore it, what can happen?
Sue: [chuckles] If you ignore it, and that has happened to me in early days, because I didn't have the confidence to do that. What happens is your day gets hijacked by some frustrated or angry individuals in the room who perhaps don't want to be there, or who perhaps are actually a bit afraid of what might happen. Don't trust the process for whatever reason or they have been made to come or whatever it is.
That can be hijacked, and you can end up having the sort of meeting which I've been a participant of which is that you don't achieve what you think you've come there, and and taken a day off work to to do, and that just ends up bwing frustrating to everybody.
Leanne: Absolutely. I guess the confidence to call it is a really important skill. In your observation what are some other really critical skills for facilitation?
Sue: The one that I mentioned earlier is to be able to think of the fact that you have -- it's not just the facilitation on the day. That you actually start the process, and get the purpose really clear at the start. I would say doing your preparation, and being clear about the purpose would be the thing that drives everything else.
Another key skill would be your ability to read what's going on in the room, and pick up the temperature. You'll know when you are having your -- If there's small group discussions, if there's not much noise coming as opposed to a lot of noise. You know what what's actually going on.
To react and change depending on what's going on. In my head I might have sorted what I think decisions might be in what order they might go, but then when the group comes together I may need to change the way that I do that. I still have exactly the same purpose clear in my head, but I may need to change the way that I do it. I may need to put bigger groups together or smaller groups together or mix them up or play some music or something.
Leanne: Just like a trigger point-
Sue: Yes.
Leanne: - to change the mood. When you run sessions you facilitate to a variety of different audiences, what do you actually change when it comes to pitching to a different type of audience? Do you change anything at all? Or is it just the way that you deliver the material? Does the material stay the same?
Sue: I do mix up the material. What doesn't change is the process to get to the purpose, and the outcome in terms of asking the questions that I ask like what do want out of the day? That remains the same. What I put together is customized for who's in the room, so if it's a group that know each other well, that's completely different from a group that don't get together or you've got a group of stakeholders who've never been together on their own before.
The types of things that I might do in that situation are different, and the way that I might design the day will be different than an in-house team, for example.
Leanne: I really like that you keep referring to the preparation, and I think you should write a blueprint on this. I would find it really useful.
Sue: I'm happy to share. After I have been to my initial meeting with with a client I do a note back to them, and I use the same template which talks about first of all what I do, and it makes very clear, because often, there's a lot of them invisible stuff that goes on for a facilitator in terms of preparation and design of the day. I make it very clear in what they're buying, and they're buying my preparation design and planning as well as the facilitation of the day, and follow up and potentially.
Then I outline in dot points what the current situation is, so what heard I repeat back to them, "This is the situation you're currently in. This is the outcome you want from the day, and the purpose. This is the number of people that will be in the room, and how long we've got, and this is my fee." They get a one page, two pages max back which I say, "I want you to check that I have got this right. Have I got this right in terms of your current situation, and what you want out of the day, and are you saying yes to this?"
That then leads into the the next part of the process which is the co-design of the work with them. I'm happy to share that. Happy to share that template.
Leanne: Yes, great, I would love to. Awesome. If you link it to your website we can pop a link on our show notes to that template.
Sue: Sure.
Leanne: Just the questions that you ask could be really useful. Talking about the group of stakeholders you mentioned before when we're talking about diverse audiences, and there is some people that are coming to these workshops, and they've never met each other before. How do you get them to start working together? Do you use a particular icebreaker? How much time do you give them to start talking and engaging in the workshop?
Sue: I don't know if you find this Leanne, but often my clients want a lot done in a short space of time.
Leanne: Yes. [chuckling] I think that's universal.
Sue: Yes. Whatever I can put, and whatever preparation I can do before they'll get in the room I will do. I will send things besides the agenda which I send to everybody before the meeting. I will send a note to people. If I think they're going to be particularly tricky, I will have conversations with people or I will give them the opportunity to talk with me or to the various participants in the room if that's what they need. They often don't. They just want to know what's going to happen in the day.
My agenda says, purpose of the day at the top. It then has an outcome for each session. What the result of each session is going to be? The timing for it, so they can see really clearly how it all relates back to the purpose. That helps before they come into the room. If they don't know each other, we can do something like just an introduction.
The particular icebreakers I use, I sometimes around clearing the space which is a neuroleadership one which is making sure everyone's brain is ready to come in so we talk about turning off the other apps that might be on. Actually going through, and talking about what those apps are that are open. In terms of I'm thinking about a paper I've got to get finished by the end of the day, I'm feeling nervous about that, but I'm willing to put that aside, so they they do this very quick process where they clear it.
For people that don't know each other at all, I sometimes use the different things that are in the room. Like the situation that we're in, so they might be if they're in a room that has lots of books I'll get them to pick a book that they think is the title of their life or something.
Leanne: Nice. I like that.
Sue: It just depends. Or if they were a song what would they be? It really depends again on the group. There's some groups that there's so much potential to turn it into a threat response to do anything like that. It's just about introducing them to the person next to them and that's it for a start.
Leanne: I know I've been in environments where the facilitator would say, "We are about to do an activity," and you can see people get a little bit anxious about, "What kind of icebreaker are we doing this time?" and [crosstalk]
Sue: yes.
Leanne: - those environments, so I think it is important to really recognize the characteristics of your group, the dynamics and which icebreaker, if you do use one will be most appropriate, and how came out or open up with each other?
Sue: That's true, and that brings me to the groups that I that I'm really lucky to facilitate for CQ; Collective Intelligence. What they do is they -- because they meet three times a year. They're from all different industries, ages, and stages in their world, and when someone new comes into their groups they do this really cool exercise where we get them to draw a line on a whiteboard with one end being the day they were born, and the other end being today, and then they basically put dots or lines above and below the line to highlight the key things in their life that have created who they are now. The things above the line are the positive things that have happened. The things below the line have been the tough stuff that has happened. That's a really nice way of doing us a succinct this is me, but that's in a group that there's -- they're building high trust, and they know that they get together in this high confidentiality. I wouldn't do that in one of my strategy days with a team that don't know each other.
Leanne: Can you tell us a little bit more about the CQ, your collective intelligence group that you have in New Zealand?
Sue: Yes, sure. Collective Intelligence have about 200 members, and teams of about eight or nine and see CQ's purpose is around growing the effectiveness of leaders, and using using diversity, and different ways of thinking about the will to get that. For example, we might put together --People in the group might be from a construction industry, the wine industry. They might be a C.E.O., they might be a new entrepreneur with a start up tick, and I think that's part of why the magic happens. What they do is they sometimes focus on someone's business, and that person will have a key question for their business that we'll all go in and facilitate -- our facilitator session around interviewing maybe their clients, maybe their business partner, people in their business. It might be about them personally as a leader, it might be about them as a person in terms of how they show up at work and at home. It can be anything.
It's the most wonderful landscape to facilitate, and because the people have already signed up for vulnerability. The members are all there because they want to know their blind spots. For me, it's just such a privilege to facilitate in that sort of group, I have to say.
Leanne: It sounds like a really great group, and I'm wondering if we have an equivalent over in Australia. I will have to look into it.
Sue: I'm not sure. I don't think so. CQ and the way that it operates that it keeps the groups going because some of them are in their five years or so. I don't think so. I think the closest would be mastermind groups.
Leanne: Yes. I've heard of that concept.I notice that you mentioned vulnerability when you were talking about CQ, and that you're also a Brene Brown certified Daring Way coach. Can you share with us what is does that actually mean? What do you cover in your workshops?
Sue: During work stuff it is as a huge part of what I bring to my work now either directly talking about it or what's [inaudible 00:22:59] the background for me. It's around understanding vulnerability and courage, looking at issues around authenticity, how shame shows up in our world, and I'm talking about the leaders in the leadership organizational development space. About professionalism and what stops us doing, and vulnerability which is about risk uncertainty, and emotional exposure, and how we deal with that it in a work environment.
My work is around those sorts of issues which is big.
Leanne: It's pretty deep.
Sue: Yes, it is.
Leanne: How did you -- I guess it is part of the certification. Do they teach you how to work with people that discover things for the first time in your workshop, and it's a bit of revelation, and they don't know what to do with that information? It could get quite heavy. I guess you're nursing experience would help then. How do you work with someone that's really just discovering -- It could be the shame or just information about them they didn't know before they walked into your room.
Sue: With care, and with understanding that I'm not working in a clinical environment with them. That it is not therapy, and so very much in the leadership space. It is around getting the concepts of what it means to them as leaders. In our certification process it's very much about us being very comfortable, and having gone through our own work to do the work, so it's very much about us understanding the concepts, and having a facilitation practice that we can put that into.
The facilitation training that you do to use Brene's research assumes that you have a practice already, and that you understand the issues around how to keep a group safe ,and work with them, work with leaders. In terms of how I deal with that, I use it in the same way. I wouldn't, for example, for effect, we've got another facilitator and I are doing a weekend workshop for women around authenticity and leadership and how they show up at work. We won't be going straight to shame. [laughter]
We won't be going there. We'll build up to that. The first things I'll be looking at are there values and trust? Then moving into how they show up at work, and talking about their arena at work, and the armor they need to take off, so there is this beautiful use of metaphor in Brene's work which people connect with.
Again, it's just in the way -- Well, I say just. It is in that you care for the person to get there, and make sure that they don't have a threat response, and then can contribute and participate in the work.
Leanne: I'm just curious, what if -- I don't know if you have run this workshop before, but I'm interested in hearing what are the barriers that you do see about people not being authentic in the workplace?
Sue: The authenticity place, we've all grown up, in fact we do it as facilitators. There will be identities that we want people to see [unintelligible 00:26:39] like we want to be seeing as a confident ,competent, can do it, take care of them facilitator. We want to [crosstalk] Yes. We want to be that. That is an identity we want to get . The unwanted identity is, I don't want them to see that I am peddling so hard under here. I don't want them to see that it's just been a shame trigger for me, and I'm wondering what the hell I do about that? They have got all this unwanted stuff.
Somewhere in between these identities there is us. The authentic Leanne that is the facilitator or, so in the room it's the same thing, whereas a leader it's the same thing. It's about recognizing what gets in the way of our authenticity, and sometimes it's those identities. Sometimes it's our own shame about what we are -- keeping us small and not wanting to show up. Sometimes it's the fact that we just don't have the capacity to deal with that uncertainty. We won't go there.
The types of conversations you can have with leaders are absolutely around that stuff. Getting them to reflect on and understand what is their own story around -- that gets in the way of their authenticity, be it shame, be it not wanting to put ourselves out there, wearing armor.
Leanne: I was reflecting on that right now, because even during this podcast, not this episode in particular, but when I first started out, I had come from listening to a podcast. Really professional ones where the interviewer had been doing it for decades, and I expected myself to swoon in, and be the same way. [chuckles] That's an identity I forced upon myself, but I think this is about keeping it real, and enjoying the conversation, and just learning from the people that I'm talking to. Keeping it real.
Sue: Yes, absolutely. The authentic Leanne.
Leanne: That's right, as someone who does stuff up, but can have a laugh.
Sue: Exactly right. I think that's exactly what for a first time facilitator is the toughest thing to do, but the authentic you is the one that you need to bring to the room. Whatever it takes as much as I'm talking about the prep, and whatever I do. Figure out for you what is the authentic facilitator.
The authentic Sue is different from the authentic Leanne in a way, but what we bring, and what we show up is the stuff that people will connect with.
Leanne: That's right, and different groups might take out different strengths from either of us as well.
Sue: Yes, absolutely.
Leanne: You mentioned the word threat as well quite a bit in our conversation. Does that link into David Rock's work, the SCARF theory?
Sue: Yes. That's the other part of my work, and that is around coaching. I'm a result certified coach with the NeuroLeadership Institute, and that's David Rock's research where he takes the latest neuroscience, and applies it to leadership and what that looks like, and what I love about that work, and how it fits with my daring way stuff is that there is actually quite a lot of common threads, but one has come from quite a sociological model, which is Brene's work, and the other has come from our brand. What he, and that work, points out is that if we go into a threat response, which we're much more wired to do, then we can't do the thinking and the problem solving, we can't use that part of our brain. It becomes a lot tougher to do.
He has this wonderful SCARF model, which I run through and make sure when I'm facilitating that I am addressing these things in the way that I design, and do the work. He points out that the five things that can lead to a threat response, status; people's status not being recognized, and for some people this is far more important than others. It can happen if something uncertain happens in the room. If you suddenly have someone going off on a tangent, or you suddenly change something from the agenda, for some people that will SCARF them, that will make them go into a -- I wasn't expecting that. My goodness, what else is going to happen?
Leanne: My gosh. I was in a boot camp yesterday just on that, and there's just this boot camp, 6:00 in the morning. We're assigned at our stations, and then the personal trainer is like, "Sorry, you're meant to be in group B. I stuffed up." She was really, "Hang on. I'm meant to be here. This was the station you assigned me," and I recognized that. I was like, "That's so interesting. She wants that certainty." She thought she was right, and then very simple mistake, but it did put her offside.
Sue: Absolutely, yes. As soon as it happens, we can't problem solve. We can't contribute in the same way that we could if we weren't SCARF'ed. Status and certainty. Te next one is autonomy. That I feel like I have some choice in the matter, that something that's important to me, I can make a decision about that. The way to bring that into a facilitation might be if the group have all the stuff they want to do, you might say, "You can choose between doing A or B. Would you like to do this in smaller groups or bigger groups?" That gives a sense of autonomy. There's still something they have a choice about.
The next one is relatedness, and that is that there is a sense that we are all in this together, and that I am part of this, and I'm not being isolated. If there's something going on in a group over here, and there's someone over here thinking, "I'm not participating in that. I don't feel like I'm part of that. I'm isolating." We can definitely go into a threat response around that.
The final one is F; fairness, and that is what's going on is fair. That's a pretty strong one for me, I have to say. If I think something's not fair, then I get a bit up in arms, and an example from yesterday actually is I've been watching a nurse's blog. I'm interested. There's a paid talk going on on the moment, and a couple of nurses had set up a Facebook page called Nurse Florence. The most wonderful nursing stories that come out. The nurses are telling these stories about their work, and they put up a thing yesterday to say that someone had been trying to shut them down, had gone onto Facebook and say this shouldn't -- that Nurse Florence wasn't an actual person, so they shouldn't have this website. The fairness thing in me is strong. That's just not right. These guys need to be able to tell their story, and it's important, and too bad for whoever is wanting to shut them down.
In terms of a facilitator in SCARF, keeping people away from a threat response is making sure when you design and run the day, that you are acknowledging each of those things and in fact, moving them into a reward state where they will use their brain. Giving them a lot of positives about working together, and making decisions, and that they're bringing knowledge to the room, for example, will acknowledge their status. It's not just about the threat response, and not getting there. It's also about acknowledging that to keep them in their lovely moving toward space.
Leanne: How do you find out which -- out of the S-C-A-R-F, how do you find out which ones the strongest for you? Is there an assessment, or do you -- because I was listening to what you were saying, and I think I'm autonomy, but is there a quiz that we can do? How do you figure it out?
Sue: I know in my coaching notes there is a -- in what I use with my coach clients, there is a SCARF, "Let's Think about it" model. It's pretty simple in terms of just going through and defining which each of them are, and you going, "I can see that in me, and I'm more this, but status is not a big one for me, but it can be sometimes. It's a great one to reflect on, and also then to notice when you have been SCARF-ed. Like, "I can see that there's an autonomy thing here. I need to have some choice. I can see that I've been SCARF-ed."
Leanne: Or consult. I'm going to start thinking about that this week. See where things trigger me. You've mentioned Brene Brown and David Rock. Are there any other books or resources that you could recommend to someone that's starting their facilitation journey?
Sue: I sure can. There is a book that I found once I moved from just occasionally running meetings or teleconferences, and someone actually asked me to facilitate, and I had that word connected with whatever I was going to do. I found a book called Facilitation Secrets. It's by an American guy called Michael Wilkenson, and it was like, "Oh my goodness, this is just the best." The thing that I still carry from that book that I learned very early was getting clear about the purpose of the day, and then using a lot of meta communication through the day to make people clear where you are in that purpose. You're saying, "We've just done session one. The purpose of that session was this. It ties into that. We're now moving to this part. The purpose of this, and how it attaches to the bigger purpose," to give people confidence. Again, it comes to SCARF doesn't it? A certainty around where they are and what happens. That book there for me was a bit of a game changer in terms of giving me the tools to make this rather shy, introvert, feel that I could confidently step forward. It was pretty important to me in those early days.
Leanne: It's probably a bit of a dog eared version at the moment, or have you-- [crosstalk] the latest version?
Sue: No, it's an old version, and it's just covered in -- I've got so many of those sticky things sticking out the side, those tabs. There's too many, really. [laughs] There's just so many of those little tabs in the book.
Leanne: [unintelligible 00:37:31] highlight. Well, we'll have to link to that book in the show notes. Hopefully it's still out, and being published. Maybe one day I'll get to interview the author of that book if it was so influential.
Sue: Wouldn't that be great? I think it would definitely be out there, because he has a company called, I think it's called Leadership Strategies. They have a website, and they offer courses, and I know they offer courses in Australia. Definitely there's an opportunity to use his work.
Leanne: We'll check it out. It's been so wonderful hearing from you today about your journey, the models that you use, the vulnerability, SCARF, books that you recommend, and really all leading back to how you prepare for your workshops in terms of the questions that you use, and finding out what the purpose is. Finally, where can people find you if they'd like to hear more from you?
Sue: Look, can I just say thank you Leanne for the opportunity to talk with you?
Leanne: You're very welcome.
Sue: The fact that I had to reflect, and think about what had been going on. If people want to find me, I'm on LinkedIn, and I have a website, which is artemisgroup.co.nzd in New Zealand, and I'm on Twitter, although I'm a pretty bad tweeter. LinkedIn is a pretty good way to find me.
Leanne: Awesome, and just a quick question. Final question. Why did you decide on the name Artemis?
Sue: Because I'm into a very -- from about 15 years ago, I was very much into goddesses. I thought woman should be -- all women are goddesses, even if they don't know it. I wanted a goddess name for my company, and I chose Artemis, because she is a warrior goddess, but she's also known as a nurturer. She's got a tough, can get out there and do the work, but she's also a nurturer of plants and animals, and she's the sort of patron goddess of midwifery.
Leanne: Perfect. That's sounds exactly like you. [laughter]
Sue: Yes.
Leanne: What a perfect match. Look, Sue, thanks so much again.
Sue: You're welcome. Thanks Leanne.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript (Episode 6)
We need more mindful leaders (and we need them right now) with Rachel Grace (Episode 6)
Leanne: Welcome to the First Time Facilitator Podcast. My friend and fellow facilitator, Rachel Grace.
Rachel: Good day.
Leanne: Hey Rachel, we spent 2003 in a group together studying statistics. I know you were probably the brains of the group and the hardest working of all of us.
Rachel: That's a big accusation, mate. I don't know about that.
[laughter]
Leanne: Hopefully the other two aren't listening into this.
Rachel: Yes.
[laughs]
Leanne: [chuckles] Tell us, we haven't seen each other for 15 years. What has happened and what brings you in this room now talking to me about the world of facilitation?
Rachel: Yes, cool, good question. Good to see you too, mate. After I lost track of you, we lost track of each other, around that time I finished up with psych a few years later. Then after that, I went and I did research in social psychology. That's about trying to understand behaviour, what drives behaviour at a group level and trying to look for good ways to intervene to change behaviour. For example, the first job I got at a uni was for the Red Cross looking at how to understand and increase blood donation behaviour. That's an example of what social psychs do. I worked in a team there then I went from there to CSIRO and worked with a team looking to decrease water use because it was at the time of the drought so it was about how do we understand the way humans relate to environmental stuff including water. That was good.
I wanted to get more from the research side of things more into the people stuff. I started to tour with the idea of being a therapist so I went to London and I worked for the National Health Service there at a big hospital in London in a sexual health clinic.Where part of my week was about looking at compassion in nursing, how to understand, what drives it, and how to increase it. Also, in using mindfulness as a tool to help people with anxiety, relationship problems, sexual dysfunction, and pain. It was really interesting but then I got a bit disillusioned with how little impact you could have in big organizations sometimes.
I got a bit frustrated so I bailed on it, left London, came back, and found myself in the hills of Byron Bay, doing permaculture and organic farming for a long time as a way to reconnect with Earth and look at actually doing stuff that felt really tangible and pragmatic. I'd also realise that as much as I knew how to do a T-test and even trickier stats things after I left you.It was like I didn't know how to grow a carrot and I didn't know how to connect with Earth. I felt that there was something wrong with that so I rectified that by doing years, doing farming and permaculture. Because I don't muck around, so I got used to it. It was really great. After that, I realised that as much as I loved working with the Earth and working on farms, it wasn't really my calling because I like talking too much and I was a bit slow, I was probably better off working with people which is my real gift and passion.
I returned to the city and started to work with people again. This time it took a different shape. I wasn't researching about stuff or researching how to design interventions to change behaviour. I started working directly with people. I think that bridged the gap between the world of understanding psychology and human behaviour and seeking to have a practical impact, which is what I was looking for through doing farming. I got to bring those things together when I started to do coaching and mindfulness training and that kind of stuff.
Leanne: When you actually moved back from London and to Byron Bay, did anyone say, "Hey Rach, what are you doing? You're throwing your career away?"
Rachel: Yes, for sure. People were like that but there's something in people these days where they get the desire to live a simpler life and to connect to the Earth. Maybe it's a function of the type of friends I have. There was an understanding of that. There was definite concern about why would you walk away from an amazing trajectory. When I went to London, I wanted to go to Oxford and I got the prerequisite job for that and was months away from going for the interview to go to Oxford, doesn't mean I would have got in. It was looking quite good because I got the job at the hospital in London out of 650 applicants. It was at the peak of a global financial crisis. To go to Oxford, you had to get this prerequisite job so I was on an amazing trajectory from one standpoint but I knew in my heart I needed to do other things and I'm glad I did.
The people around me also were concerned, they also accepted that in some ways, our world's a little bit upside down with what we prioritize. We've lost the connection with the Earth, we've lost our connection with a lot of connections to nature even and the seasons. How to do some of these fundamental things that we need to have a fulfilling life like have time in our day to reflect after sweating and grow our own food and understand how to take care of our own waste and a whole lot of things. Sometimes people do that when they've retired. They go and have the tree changed or they buy a hobby farm. Well, I did it mid-career and I did it for many years and I'm really glad.
Leanne: It's really interesting. I think with all these inventions and gadgets and things out now, which are meant to save us time, now we can connect not only via email, via phone but there's Whatsapp. If you're off that, then there's Messenger and all these different tools.
Rachel: Yes,
Leanne: Just moving straight over to mindfulness, what are you noticing about society? Do you think the problem's getting worse or, like you said, you recognize that some people are now going, "Hey, it's okay to step back." Where do you see it heading?
Rachel: That's a good question. The thing I noticed about myself and I noticed in others too is it's one thing to go, "Look, I need to create a gap in my life because the pressures of modern life with its non-stop demands through apps and emails and work pressures and all this." It's great to go and have a weekend away. It's great to have a holiday. It's great to take four years, five, six years out to go and do farming. That's great but it's not always functional to leave the coalface of life to almost have that gap. It's really necessary to have a tool on hand as life unfolds to create a little internal gap, like a little internal holiday.
Mindfulness really is a tool that allows us to notice just how demanding stuff is. Notice how we're reacting to it. Through practice and knowing what to do with your mind, you can actually start to create a little gap where through being present and observing yourself, you're able to not take on the pressures of life. Therefore, you don't need to necessarily rely on leaving the situation or waiting for the holiday before you can feel relaxed because otherwise, it's a long time between drinks. If people are waiting for retirement before they can chill out, well that's a pretty sad circumstance really. It's also pretty sad when people only get to chill out on their holidays a few times a year. Mindfulness is a tool that helps us to chill out in the midst. There's a part of us that can chill out even in the midst of life being full of pressure, so that's one of the main benefits of it. I see just an enormous need for it particularly as you race with the amount of the apps, the intensity of the accessibility and stimulus from those. Like they call it the "attention deficit economy" where there's so much demands on our attention, it wears us thin. It's really important more than ever to have the internal tools to manage that.
It's about having a number of tools in the repertoire and I don't think society has, up to this point, equipped us with the tools to manage our minds well so that we know how to do that and yet it's a learnable skill. In our modern day and age where the economy and our productivity and our income, for most of us relying on our minds and the quality of our minds, the quality of our thinking, the quality of managing our stress and our emotions, it's like the time has come for us to not just let our minds operate on default. In the hope that we'll get through a career that's so demanding. It's time for us to, as a society, step up to recognizing that our minds are a tool that we can actually sharpen and have them performing optimally if we take the time to train them.
Leanne: When people have deficiencies in, say, technical skill, "I can't run this report in Excel. I'm going to need to do an Excel training course." we go straight to a training course. When it comes to mindfulness, people are a little bit vulnerable or don’t really talk about things like, "I actually need to work on how I'm going to cope or deal with this." In saying that in the last couple of years, there's been more discussion around mindfulness. It's coming out but there's still these connotations of, "I'm weak." if I do the meditation, it's a bit woo woo-ey" What do you say to that when you hear that?
Rachel: I understand that. There's a lot of misconceptions about what mindfulness is, yet at the same time, mindfulness has become such a buzzword so it can easily be discounted as being a fad. The way I deal with that is I try to educate people about what mindfulness is. Mindfulness, for example, we're talking about, would be it's about bringing our full attention into this moment and accepting this moment as it is. There's these two components to the definition of mindfulness as I use it, which is drawn from the literature. It's about being present, having your mind where your body is, which is not as easy as it sounds of course, but to be fully present here and now, just to accept that whatever's currently going on in the environment around you or within you, this is the reality right now. That's the definition of mindfulness. That's really important for me anyway. I clear that up as quickly as I can with people because a lot of times people have the misconception that mindfulness is about having a blank mind and no thoughts. I hear this all the time, "No Rachel. That's fine. You're into mindfulness, but I couldn't do it because you don't understand my mind. I'm a thinker." This is the way it goes.
[laughter]
Rachel: "I'm a thinker and because I've got one of those minds that races." This is the way people always say and I'm like, "Okay. Cool. I hear that," I can see you're laughing because you're relating. The reality is that in truth everyone has a mind that races all the time. Everyone has a mind that is swinging wildly between thinking about the past, thinking about the future, evaluating what's currently happening. Everyone's mind pretty much, I think.
If you're listening and that's not you, then no offence intended, but for the majority of people, their minds are all over the shop. That's nothing to be ashamed of, but we need to face up to that and acknowledge and call the elephant in the room, that we're all wondering around with a mind like that. I just say to people, "Look, mindfulness is not about having a blank mind."
If you hold that misconception, you'll automatically think it's not for you because you'll think it's unobtainable. That's a real shame because in fact, mindfulness is exactly for the people who find that they're getting kicked around by their minds, that are worrying about the past, worrying about the future, judging stuff about themselves and others that are around them and just giving them no peace really. I also do try to share that. My own journey was one of thinking that mindfulness was rubbish. When I was 20, I got chronic fatigue and I went to a GP who was a western medical doctor but also trained in traditional Chinese medicine. Then I came to understand he was a meditation master. I didn't know. In my first consult with him, he examined me and I thought he was going to give me drugs to get me better. That's what I wanted, but what he did was after examining me he said, "If you don't learn to focus your mind, you're never going to recover your health."
I was shocked, then I was angry and then I was disappointed because I was, "What's my mind got to do with it mate? I don't know where you're from, but just give me the drugs."
[laughs]
"Hust give it to me. I didn't come here to tell you all I need to calm my mind. I've got a physical problem. Give me something to--" I was desperate right? He actually wrote on a prescription slip. He wrote on the prescription slip the pattern to Meditation Center which is not there anymore, but he sat across the table to me. He said, "You need to go there and you need to learn to meditate," and I thought, "What does he know?"
I went because I was desperate. When I sat down in that first class and I paid attention to my mind like they instructed me to, I quickly found out that he had a point. That my mind was not focused. It was all over the shop. It was racing, reliving stuff from the past, worrying about stuff from the future. To be honest, I thought, "No wonder I'm tired."
That's not a clinical diagnosis for anyone out there with chronic fatigue, but that was just my recognition and I stuck with it. I did get better and I ended up getting instruction from him personally on how to do all different kinds of mindfulness and meditation techniques over the course of over a decade. Studied Psychology during that time where I met you hon and increasingly got to see the benefit of it.
I've gone from thinking it was rubbish to not only having a personal journey that tells me that it's not only helpful, it's probably helped save my life. It's actually transformed me as a person. Then as I got more into Psychology and I understood the way the brain works, I could get how the structural function of the brain operates, I could see why mindfulness has an impact.
Over the last six years is there's been enhancements in technology in studying the brain. The Neuroscience literature has given rise to over 6,500 peer-review general articles on mindfulness. It's like my personal journey for 20 years of mindfulness has paralleled the technological enhancements that has allowed the peer-reviewed literature to increase, which has given an evidence-based mindfulness, which means that I now have the benefit of not only being able to speak for my own personal journey, but I have the scientific literacy thanks to the side training to understand what the peer-review literature says.
It's like it's all come together now. Now, I can stand in front of people. I have a talk, a signature talk I call it, which is “Mindfulness is not just hippy, fluffy stuff.” It's a one-hour talk and I do it sometimes out in the public, but generally, it's in corporate situations where I basically take people on that journey. I share a little bit of my personal journey thinking it was hippy, fluffy stuff. Then I speak to the peer-reviewed literature, the evidence base for how we now know that mindfulness absolutely is transformational and changes people for the better. Then I guide everyone in that process for a 15-minute practice.
That's the cool way. I've delivered this talk so many times now that at the end of guiding people through a 15-minute practice, I always ask, "Can I see an honest raise of hands who's got benefit from that practice?" I say, "You don't need to do it to stroke my ego. I can get that done in other ways, but can I see an honest raise of hands?" Every time, every hand in the room maybe by one or two goes up.
I've done this full of rooms of people up to a hundred and not just the people who you think would be into it. This is a corporate situation in the middle of a workday, with a lot of alpha males in the room. Yet it's undeniable, time after time, that mindfulness practice that's based on what the evidence says is a good mindfulness practice, because mindfulness can mean lots of different types of techniques, but I do one that's based on what the bulk of the literature says is useful and has impact, it works.
Leanne: Great. What do you cover in the 15 minutes?
Rachel: Yes. The way I train people in mindfulness is what gets called an embodied practice. That just means that the training is about training our awareness to be present in the here and now by virtue of getting it to pay attention to sensations in the body a bit. Specifically, for example, I start the practice by asking people to pay attention to the sensations in their feet. I'll get you to do that right now. If you push your feet into the ground and create a bit of pressure, can you feel any physical sensations in your feet like warmth or coolness or tickliness or hotness or pressure or?
Leanne: Yes, I feel pressure. I feel warmth.
Rachel: Yes, okay so they're physical sensations, right? The moment that you do that, you are drawing a part of your attention in from maybe whatever it was before. Perhaps it was preparing for the next question or whatever. From where you've drawn part of your attention, from wherever it's traveling, right into the here and now by doing something very specific. If you say to people, "Bring your attention into the here and now," it's a little bit abstract. There's nothing to anchor it to, right? It's like saying, "Tie down the tarp over there." It's kind of, "Where?"
Leanne: Where is it? Yes.
Rachel: Unless you can see where you're going to peg that thing down, it's really hard to actually pull down a tarp, especially if it's flapping in the breeze. You're going to know exactly where to tie it down. That' the first thing. I just get people to pay attention to the sensations in their feet. That has the effect, is I can see maybe it's unfolding on your face, of just drawing a bit of our attention into now. Then as the 15 minutes unfold, I essentially use that same practice of guiding people to feel sensations in their feet and sensations in their hands.
Then we get to the destination place, if you like, of focusing on sensations connected to the breath. In doing that, then I start to use the instruction of, "If you notice that your mind has wandered, the moment that you notice that it's wandered, just bring it back." I often use the analogy of a puppy. It's like training a puppy. A little puppy, when we put it on the mat and we ask it to sit, no sooner have we asked the puppy to stay than it's wandered off.
[laughs]
Right? Hasn't it? It's wandered off the mat. It's like," It's wandered off the mat." But we don't yell at the puppy. We don't beat the puppy. We don't get disappointed, frustrated at the puppy. We just know that for this moment the puppy has yet to be trained to stay where we want it to be, but with every moment that we notice that and we bring our attention back and we come, "Yes, attention you've wandered off, but now come back and be with your sensation in the body."
Every time we do that, we're building our mindfulness muscle to return from wandering off out of this moment to returning to being in this moment. It confers benefits for the nervous system and of course, once we're in this moment then we can pay better attention to what's going on around us. It doesn't take that long until one day we start to notice that, "Hey, I'm able to actually listen to my partner better. I'm able to stay focused on this task without getting distracted as much. I'm a bit calmer when stuff happens."
I've trained a lot of people in mindfulness and these type of benefits, they start to happen pretty quickly. It's after the first few weeks of training. The benefits of mindfulness are accumulative. The more you practice is a direct relationship. You practice a lot, you get a lot of benefit, but it's a little bit like exercise. You don't have to have run for six months before you get benefit. You get benefit the moment you start to go for your first walk.
Leanne: That's right.
Rachel: Do you get more benefit if you've walked every day for six months than if you did one month? Yes. You can't trick it. That's what I like about it. It's an honest-
Leanne: Yes, I was going to ask you, are there any hacks, but it's basically-
Rachel: Yes, but the hack is to focus on feeling a physical sensation in the body. Give that a go yourself. If you have a mind that wanders, you find it difficult to be present. Berating yourself cognitively or going into battle with that and going, "Come on just focus." It doesn't always suggest it doesn't work. Check it out within yourself. If you go into a language-based battle, "Don't wander" or "Be now" or "Come back" or "Focus", it is tiring and it's like hacking at the leaves of a weed. Whereas, if you can get your attention to come into the physical sensations in your body, it gets to the root of the thing. Gets your attention back here and now without going into battle, it just goes all around that system. It calms you down, brings your attention into the moment and then you're halfway there.
Leanne: Yes, that's right.
Rachel: It's always with you, and you can do it when you're talking to someone. You don't need to go, as I often say in my classes, I draw this story where I say, the reason I teach the way I teach is using the physical sensations we're talking about and not a coloring book or an app. I've got a coloring book for mindfulness, fantastic, but if you and I start to have argy-bargy, Leanne it gets heated. The night before the assignment's due for stats and everyone's getting a bit tired and grumpy, it's no good if I know that I'm starting to act like a pork chop because I'm starting to get low on resources. I might be starting to get snappy with you and we're having a tense conversation about which stats test to do, it's no good for me to go, "Mate, just hang on. I got to do my mindfulness practice. I just got to get my coloring book out." Hold on. It doesn't work.
Leanne: No.
Rachel: You haven't empowered yourself to know how to use mindfulness in day-to-day life-
Leanne: When you need it.
Rachel: -when you need it. We need this as things are going on.
Leanne: It's funny, you're talking about apps on mindfulness. I've actually got this new Apple Watch which I love, but it's got a breathe app. It basically forces you for a minute to breathe, in and out. It vibrates and things like that.
Rachel: To a certain regular rhythm or something?
Leanne: Yes.
Rachel: Is it working?
Leanne: Sometimes I look at that and I say, "I don't have time to breathe."
Rachel: Yes.
Leanne: I'm probably a key candidate for your mindfulness training.
Rachel: Yes. You're welcome to do it. We can do it for sure. I've done yoga teacher training. In yoga there's a practice, it gets called pranayama.
Pranayama is about controlling your breathing to bring stillness to your mind and calm your nervous system. It's a brilliant practice. Mindfulness, as I teach, is different from that. Mindfulness, as I teach it in terms of noticing the sensations that come with your breath, is very much about just leaving your breath as it is. Sometimes if we're stressed that will mean it's fast. Sometimes if you're really tired or sleepy will mean it's slow. Again, it's not to disparage the app or to control your breathing using pranayama techniques, or whatever or apps in general, they can be useful. The question I would encourage people to ask themselves is the thing that I'm training myself to do when I'm dedicating time to try and do a mindfulness practice or whatever, is what I'm learning to do readily applicable? Can I do it in my day-to-day life?
We don't have very much time. If we're dedicating resources to engage in mindfulness practice, I'm of the perspective anyway, we need that to give us absolute maximum benefit. It needs to have the highest leverage possible for influencing and impacting our lives in a positive way. That's why I'm pretty passionate about teaching what's called in-body practice.
I follow on, or stand on the shoulders of many giants who do this. Jack Kornfield is one of my favorite authors on mindfulness. He points people towards feeling physical sensations in their body as does Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson. These are leaders in the field who do this. Essentially, it stems from a very ancient practice, but it's born out through the modern day research that says tuning our attention to a fixed thing that's related to a sensation, does have a lot of benefit. That's my hack.
Leanne: Thank you.
Rachel: Yes, no worries.
Leanne: Let's talk about, you had a career and you were researching, doing a lot of your work, not having that direct impact with people. Then you make a pivot through to farming and then pivot again through to teaching other people. You spoke about creating actual tips that people can implement straight away. I also want to talk about your progress from behind a computer screen, or behind the research and now in front of a workshop, in front of people. Was that something that came natural to you presenting in front of people or was it something that you've had to work out?
Rachel: To be honest, I think it came naturally speaking in front of people. I've always loved talking, as you can probably tell, you know me well enough. I love speaking in front of people. Actually, while we were still at uni, I started to do tutoring and fill in lecturing sometimes. I remember, I was still a third or fourth year at uni, and I filled in for a lecturer, and I did a lecture to 400 people. That was the largest group I'd ever spoken to at that point. I remember that day feeling very, it's a flow experience, but feeling absolutely grounded and present in an effortless way.
It was a sign to me that that's where I belonged, was up in front of people conveying information, looking for those Aha moments, and really seeking to turn academic knowledge into digestible stuff that lands with people that they can use. I got it that day. It was brilliant. I recognized in that moment that that's why I belong. I felt very calm. I know a lot of people find public speaking or training a lit bit stressful.
[crosstalk]
I loved it and I felt like I was in my power when I did that. To be honest, it was a bit of a relief when I went from being behind the scenes, researching, crunching the numbers, writing the articles all that stuff, to actually coming into a place where I truly belong. Which is to be able to turn that stuff into stories that impact people and practices that people can use? Essentially, that's what I do. Even I was doing it this morning before we came, and I'll do it this afternoon too. I'm looking at the literature. I'm turning that into stories to convey information because stories is how we learn. It's always been that way, and always will be. Turn it into stories that land, and practices that arise from that, that people can do.
It was a joyful transition. I wish I had recognized it earlier. Now, I look back on that and I think, I didn't expect it, but inadvertently I think having had that background as a researcher in psychology, now gives me a credibility that I wouldn't have had. I understand statistics, I understand science, I understand psychology. It's not pretend, it's real and I've been on the research side of that. Now when I talk about things it does have that benefit that people think, "Well, she hasn't just washed down the river and read a self-help book. She's actually got some-"
Leanne: Credibility, validity.
Rachel: Yes.
Leanne: Throwing in a statistical term there.
Rachel: Yes, nice.
Leanne: Thank you.
What kind of workshops and services do you offer now? How have you seen what the problems are in society? I was on your website, rachelgrace.com.au. I think your name as well, just sounds like it belongs to a famous speaker - Rachel Grace. You see what's happening in society and we're going through something that's a VUCA. Do you want to explain what the VUCA environment is?
Rachel: Yes, sure. VUCA is a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. I'm glad. I felt like that was a little test then. Good, nailed it. [laughs]
This is an expression, an acronym because business loves acronyms and that's cool. That's a way of saying in a nutshell, "Hey, things are changing really quickly now." What that means is, as conditions, largely because of technology, as conditions in business and organizations change rapidly, it means that it's no longer okay for organizations to operate like a huge ship that takes ages to adapt and change direction. It's not working. Organizations that don't know how to adapt quickly, even if they're big, they will quickly start to struggle because disruptive technologies like Uber and Airtask and all that, it's changing the way our whole economy is, right? The marketplace is characterized by this VUCA, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The thing that strikes me is that it's one thing to expect our organizations to adapt to that kind of marketplace, but unless we have people in those organizations who have the psychological internal capacity to adapt quickly to change, it's not going to work. There's going to be a lack of validity if you like, between how we are as humans and what the marketplace is demanding of us.
One of the key things that I am very passionate about which comes into the neuro-agility work that I do, which is a little bit of a jargony term. Basically, it relates to the fact that if we're to be agile as organizations, if we're to have agile businesses, then we have to have agile minds. Agile minds are minds who can notice change, deal with that reality quickly and make a value-based, strategic decision based on their values and where they want go, without having to resist the change. Without having to get caught it, "It shouldn't be this way. I don't want it. It wasn't like this yesterday."
I'm not the only one who's singing from that songbook. There's a Harvard researcher called Susan David, who's written a book called Emotional Agility, which is all about the same thing. She calls it emotional agility, I call it neuro-agility. Russ Harris, who's a very famous trainer in ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy. It's the same body of work. It gets called by different names, but it's all about creating, the internal skill set for humans to have, so that they are well-equipped to deal with this VUCA world does that make sense?
Leanne: Yes and then how do we just drop that and become more agile? What do you cover in that coaching space that helps people adapt?
Rachel: That's a question because evolutionary-wise if you like, there's a part of our biology that's attuned to recognizing threat with change. That's our amygdala will go off like a firecracker anytime it detects a rapid change in the environment. That was historically designed to ruffle in the bushes to the left, get prepared right now to fight, flight or freeze. It's highly attuned, it is designed to pick up emotionally salient information from the environment to protect us, really important.
But the thing in modern day and age is that part of our brain is going off like a firecracker to changes that aren't biological threats. There's a lot of literature now that talks about how the constant notifications on our phone are stimulating that response at some level because it's an emotionally salient stimulus that triggers a response from the amygdala and if we're not mindful, to come back to mindfulness for a minute. If we're not mindful enough to notice that that's unfolding to be present with it.
If we unconsciously and habitually react to notifications on our phone we will constantly potentially be getting almost like under a threat response.
Leanne: If we don't check.
Rachel: If we're not aware enough to notice that it's not a threat, it's like we have to be present enough to know what's a threat. In the workplace, I had this classic one not long ago I was working with some people and he yelled at colleagues which isn't a cool thing to do right? You can't be yelling at your colleagues and losing your stuff although we both would know that happens in organizations all the time, right? Now, what had happened to him was he'd got negative feedback about something he'd written. Now, why did he respond like that?
Well, one way to look at that or work with that or one perspective one is that he interpreted that negative feedback about what he'd written as a threat because when people lash out with fright, flight, or freeze it's a signal that something in their system has perceived that as like a threat to their very capacity to survive. I know it sounds funny but we're complex human beings and we have the prefrontal cortex and all that that's rational and gets things and is aware and can work through. "Just because I got negative feedback about that report doesn't mean I'm biologically a threat."
But if we're not present enough to notice all of our internal habitual reactions sometimes we can come out swinging because we've actually come under threat if that makes sense. The thing is that to the extent that we're able to be aware of our biological predisposition to perceive threat through emotionally salient information but to then, and this comes back to what we're saying before. To have trained our awareness to be present and observe and go, "Hey I'm not under threat I know that this is Hard Yakka, but I can sit in the center of this and I can actually respond to this criticism in a way that leaves me feeling good, leaves me outside of a performance review process [chuckles] and it's like values-based."
Leanne: Yes. I'm thinking of so many examples here, when people receive an email they don't like. The first response is you can physically get your back up and then reply and then bash out an equally not as useful email. But then strategy is a"I'll just wait overnight, wait 10 minutes," and that's all the space that you need to really reflect and think, "I don't need to respond in this way."
Rachel: The waiting can help, it depends what you do in the waiting. If in the waiting you bail you made up at work at the water cooler and relive it with them and it escalates and you get angry and then you wake up at three o'clock in the morning you think it through and you think about. It depends what you do with the waiting so I just kind of push back against that. The concept of pause and have a considered response is valid but I would say that it depends on what people do in that pause.
I'm an advocate for the pause don't get me wrong[laughs] but I just think not all pauses are created equal and the habit pattern of your mind will come into play in the pause. You'll either blame yourself a lot or you'll blame others, your habit pattern of getting angry and blaming others and wanting to discharge your pain onto others will come up, or you'll internalize it and you'll get down in the dumps and feel depleted and disempowered and like a victim. People have their habit patterns and so use the pause but use the pause in a self-kind way.
I often encourage people to take that with them mindfully out into the workplace because that will have an impact on those around them. Just like when someone's really angry intense it affects those around us. We're empathic social beings that feel what's going on and I don't think there's anything wrong at all with sharing what's going on because that's part of how we do. We want to share stuff but there's a quality to what we share and is it relaying what's happened in a way that's truly trying to work through it and taking responsibility or is it maybe a toxic way of dealing with it. Where you're spraying venom about the person or the situation or you're overly blaming yourself.
It's a fine line and this is the practice and the path of mindfulness. It's about not disowning those things that are less than optimal about ourselves. It's about having a healthy relationship with whom we're able to observe them while still taking full responsibility for how we are, understanding that we impact ourselves and not others by our choices. It's this nuance thing.
Leanne: What kind of workshops and services are you offering people in the public?
Rachel: Well, at the moment I'm doing a public program which is at Sanford as it would turn out that's an eight-week mindfulness training program, it's booked out and that's underway. That's going really well. I also have mindfulness training programs that operate in the corporate space which I've done for a while now but I've got those running in a few organizations around the place. They're eight-week programs that are an hour session every week and they comprise of a 20-minute intro talk which is about a little bit of storytelling, a little bit of philosophical framework and a little bit of neuroscience literature about mindfulness to give the intellectual part of ourselves something to hang all this off.
The important core of it is a practice and then I guide people through a practice that varies a little bit each week and we build up the mindfulness skill because there's a number of different micro skills in the mindfulness practice. There's a 20-minute guided practice and then there's a 20-minute debrief. Those hour-long sessions fit into an eight-week program I'm doing those both publicly and in organizations at the moment. But once we're aware we also need to be able to manage our conversations and our thinking in a way that's really optimal and going to get great performance and so that's where neuro-agility and performance coaching and strategic storytelling which are the other things I do really come into play.
It's almost like from the inside out work, so mindfulness about working on the inner landscape being present in the here and now. Neuro-agility is the next level up which is about how to observe the internal stuck loops of our mind. You know how an internal stuck loop it might be, "I'm not good enough so I won't speak up in this meeting." That gives rise to the behaviour of always shutting down your voice in a meeting, that's one example.
If someone does that over the course of their career they will probably get really frustrated themselves and they won't have had professional impact because they'll have kept their ideas for themselves and they'll probably be disempowered. Often when I work with people around neuro-agility stuff in the coaching process it's about going. Why haven't you reached this goal that you want to attain, what is getting in the road of you achieving that in your thinking pattern?
They get called stuck loops because typically when people have professional aspirations that they haven't been able to achieve or personal aspirations once they're getting to their late 20s early 30s range and you know that it's actually not the external stuff all the time anymore. It's something in you that keeps coming with you everywhere.
Then it can be really useful to go, "What is it that I'm telling myself?" I shied away from doing this kind of people work for a really long time because I told myself that I was worthless. That's really honest that was an internal stuck loop I had for a variety of reasons. But the work that I do doesn't get into why you might have those stuck loops, it goes well, what are you telling yourself?
Why do you shy away from shining brightly? Well for me, it was worried that I was worthless or that I'd be laughed at. It would stop me from using the training that I had in psychology to help people, it would stop me from speaking up and sharing my stories, it would stop me from being who and what I wanted to be in the world.
Neuro-agility is about from a basis of mindfulness being able to notice those and notice the content of them, "I'm worthless, not right now, I might lose my job," or if it's a fear pattern or whatever it is that stops you because when those stuck loops, those internal thoughts come up typically it will drive behaviour in a direction that takes you away from who and what you want to be in the world.
Leanne: Because it keeps looking for reinforcement and you feed that assumption that you've got in your own head.
Rachel: Yes, well thoughts drive behaviour, so you behave in alignment with your thoughts. But if you're not present to the thought, if it's operating on autopilot you're not even in the game which is why people's lives unfold and they don't get to reach the goals that they want because they haven't actually been able to hack that weed out at the root system because it's been unfolding outside their conscious awareness if that makes sense.
Leanne: Yes.
Rachel: Neuro-agility is about being able to spot those things and know what to do with them. I see you thank you very much in a voice that says," You're useless," or whatever the stuck loop might be.
I see the way that's affecting my behaviour. I see the way I shut myself down and I don't speak up and that's why no one respects me and I never get my plans through at work because I actually don't speak up about them. If I'm going to do something different I'm going to have to first of all notice that thought pattern and then I'm going to have to have the resources within me from that place of awareness to choose a different thought pattern and a different way of behaving. That's neuro-agility.
Then performance coaching is really about working with people to identify a goal that they want to achieve. Help them break that goal down into meaningful steps and then hold them accountable to that. Then strategic storytelling which is the fourth part is once you have had impact how are you going to share that with people in two minutes to basically go, "This is what I stand for, this is the challenge I faced, this is what I achieved will you follow me?" It's like a leadership tool.
For too long we have relied on people having content knowledge and technical skills expecting that to be enough for them to be good leaders and it doesn't work. If it does work it's by accident. But leadership is a people-based skill and it requires enormous emotional intelligence to manage ourselves, to manage our relationships well, to manage our communication well. I think that this is the time when emotionally intelligent leadership is not just optional it's absolutely necessary to deal with this VUCA world that you talked about because that requires an enormous emotional capacity for change, for agility, for noticing your habitual reaction patterns that get in the way of you being a great leader.
The truth is that people who are exceptional at managing themselves, and exceptional at managing their relationships and are exceptional at managing their communication, if they've got that on a basis of having their technical skills nailed, they're going to be the most amazing leaders. They're the leaders that the world needs. They're the leaders that we are crying out for, leaders who are authentic and who can manage themselves beautifully and they manage their relationships beautifully.
My work is largely with people who have their professional skill set down. I work with a whole range of professions from lawyers and medical people and policy officers, rangers, salespeople. To me, I don't really care what the profession is. I rely on people you've done your degree, you've done your stuff you've got experience. But I work with people where they start to recognize that unless they learn to manage themselves, handle their teams better that they're not going to achieve their goals because as I go around the place the single most common thing I find where teams or organizations aren't achieving their goals it's because they're leaking resources, time, capacity, energy, talent to people stuff.
Leanne: Through all your workshops and coaching you must experience moments where your participants had that lightbulb moment where they finally realise, "This has been losing my career and my personal life for so long." How does it feel as a facilitator when you see that experience?
Rachel: Well, it's really moving actually. It's interesting, it's probably I would respond to that in two ways. One is, typically at the end of the first mindfulness practice I do with people which sometimes comes through this one-hour talk. Mindfulness it's not just hippy fluffy stuff or it might come in the first week of the mindfulness program, my week program. At the end of that session what most people describe is they almost look a little bit shocked.
It's like they've actually sat for a moment and seen what their mind is like in terms of its inability to stay focused. It's like they actually get to see it rather than being in it, they're watching it. For me, that's a really mixed thing to unfold. On the one hand, I'm really happy because I know that once you can see stuff you can start to change it that's the first step on the path. But I also I feel compassion because I know I almost feel the pain of that because I know what it's like when you sit and you watch your mind and you go, "Oh my goodness, this thing is all over the place."
It's shocking and I see that in people's face. I just had someone who gave me feedback from the class last week they said that they felt like facing their own mind was like realizing that it was harder to get it to stay still than trying to stuff an octopus in an onion bag.[laughs] I thought that was a classic. This humor something in that that's some pain, right?
For example, the second week of training in the mindfulness program is about acceptance. How can we accept that this is the reality as it is? There's this sense of joy in seeing that they've got to see something, but it's a little bit like if your weigh-in at Weight Watchers and you watch someone weigh in and they're 20 kilos overweight, that's hard. It's a mixed feeling.
Leanne: Reality is dawning.
Rachel: Yes, but then when I also see that in people's eyes at the end of that first class obviously something [unintelligible 00:45:33] and when I ask them did they get benefited and they put their hands up, the room is qualitatively different. The hands going up is evidence that impact occurred and there's something different in their eyes where they look a little bit lighter and that's so heartwarming. Then at the end of the program well once we've done a few sessions together people's eyes it's like they're happier. They start to report how they're managing themselves better, they're not reacting as bad or as quickly, they're more present.
It's like this weight is lifted off them and it makes me so happy, it's really moving because people's weight of pressure that they feel is so evident on so many people's faces and to just see that lift, I'm so glad that I was called to do this work because that's what it feels like. I feel like this path of mindfulness and coaching it picked me I don't feel like I picked it. I was reluctant about it for a long time so I feel very grateful because I know that when I guide people on the journey of mindfulness and I work with them in coaching they're not as stuck in the stuff that's been weighing them down. That's an enormous privilege to have.
Yes. It makes me really really happy all of it.
Leanne: I know that we've focused on the now but I'm interested in hearing do you have any grand plans for the short-term future, long-term future in taking this message and where do you see it going?
Rachel: The path ahead will definitely be one characterized by speaking to large groups. I see speaking as a way for me to get the message out there to thousands of people. Interestingly enough I was only reflecting two weeks ago I think it was, that I'd learned some stuff that would help me to get my message out from hundreds as it is right now to thousands and the next day someone booked me in to do a talk to 1,500 people.
I'm very keen to speak in front of large groups of people and to use technology if I can learn how to use it properly to start to leverage that. Speaking is a powerful presentation as per TED Talks right? If you can nail a message from the stage you can influence a lot of people and I'd love to refine my presentation skills to be able to influence people positively through speaking. I see myself continuing to train people in mindfulness and turning that into a digital or a recorded training program so that I can share that with more and more people because at the moment it's reliant on me physically being present in the room.
I think that's probably always going to be the best way I don't want to depersonalize it but the reality is the appetite for the work outstrips my capacity to be in the room every time and continuing to work one-on-one with people in coaching because it keeps the skill sharp. I get to like see how mindfulness and these other tools actually apply to individuals who are making changes. I'll write a book at some point for sure because that's always been in me to do but not just yet.
Leanne: Sounds like you'll be really busy.
Rachel: Yes flat out.
Leanne: Super exciting. Where can people find you, Rachel?
Rachel: If you want to check out what I'm up to you can go to my website, it's my name so it's just www.rachelgrace.com that I use. It's R-A-C-H-E-L-G-R-A-C-E.com.au. I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. I don't have a lot of presence on there because I'm still learning to do that. At the moment all the way from doing is relied on word of mouth and all that kind of thing. I was in the hills farming when social media and smartphones took off so I'm behind the eight-ball on that stuff but I'm trying to catch up.
Leanne: It's been so great reconnecting and hearing about the last 15 years and now your exciting plans for now and the future. I've certainly learned a lot that I can share with people, even if I share this podcast it's one step in building up that awareness of being mindful. Thank you so much, Rachel.
Rachel: My pleasure.
Leanne: It's been awesome hearing from you.
Rachel: Thanks.
Episode 6: We need more mindful leaders (and we need them right now) with Rachel Grace
In this First Time Facilitator episode, we hear from consultant, Rachel Grace, on how she facilitates and leads mindfulness workshops; and coaches people to adapt to the rapid change of modern day work-life and society. Rachel believe the world needs more mindful leaders and they need them right now.The skill of mindfulness isn't only important to our leaders. It's an essential skill for a facilitator to remain present in their training/group workshop environment, and to not think about what's going on in the outside world; or worry about what's ahead. It's about listening, staying focused and tuning in to the non-verbal 'clues' in the room.
In this episode you'll learn
The definition of mindfulness (Tip: It's not about having a blank mind)
Why mindfulness isn't just hippy, fluffy stuff
How you can start gaining the benefits from mindulness after 15 minutes
Why businesses who want to be more agile need to start developing agile minds
Why mindfulness and neuro-agility is a key skill set in navigating a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world
About our guest
Rachel has first class honours degree in psychology and over 10-years experience in researching, understanding and working with individuals and organisations to change human behaviour. She's paired her formal training and work experience in psychology and leadership coaching, with a long stint working on permaculture and commercial organic farms.She has worked with individuals privately and with leaders in organisations from across the public, private, higher education and healthcare sectors. In amongst all of that, she has strung together serious training in meditation and now has 20-years experience on the path, a daily personal practice and the scientific literacy to know that the benefits of mindfulness is not just hippy-fluff. It’s an evidence-based skills with an unbeatable capacity for transforming people, their work and organisational impact.
Resources
Transcript
Click here to view the full First Time Facilitator transcript with Rachel Grace.
First Time Facilitator podcast: Transcript (Episode 5)
Episode 5 transcript: How to use humour to deliver x-factor presentations (and laughs) with Andrew Tarvin
Leanne: So excited to have you on the show. I heard your story on Chris Guillebeau's Side Hustle School podcast. and thought your story was fascinating. I’d love to start with that story. Your job title is Humour Engineer. Tell us about yourself and how you ended up with that title?
Andrew: Yes. So, for people that are surprised by that title, it didn't exist before I made it up. As far as I know, I’m the leading humour engineer in the world because I'm the only one. But it is basically an intersection of my background. I have a degree in Computer Science and Engineering and I've always been an engineer, I've always been obsessed with efficiency.
I went to the Ohio State University here in the states and started working at Procter & Gamble as an IT Project Manager after I graduated. When I was at P&G, I started to realise that there was a difference between being efficient and being effective. I was always obsessed with how I get the most results with the minimum amount of work. And I realise that you can't be efficient with humans because humans have emotions and feelings and they get sick and tired and all these other things that robots and computers don’t get.
I didn't really have the skills that I needed to be effective with humans. You have to be effective and so, luckily for me in college I started doing Improv and stand-up comedy. My best friend wanted to start in Improv comedy group. They needed people and they forced me to join. I realised that the same skills that I was learning to be effective as an improviser on stage, were actually the same skills that were helping me to be more effective with my teams. I started to explore the intersection of humour in the workplace with business and ultimately ended up building g a company that was my side hustle for a while until it became my full-time job and that's why what I do falls under the category of Humour Engineer if that makes sense.
Leanne: Yeah, it does. I'm interested in hearing about this Improv school. I did improv in high school and it's pretty scary. Was it easy for you or did it take you a few months to really get in to your groove?
Andrew: For sure, it took me sometime - when we first started we were not very good. We had no formal training, we’re just some college kids. A couple of people in the group had a little bit of improvising experience from watching ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?” and we tried to copy what we saw. I was never the class clown or the life of the party type person. I’m an introvert. In my senior year in high school, I was voted as “Teacher's Pet."
Leanne: Wow!
Andrew: I was very much on the academic side. When I first started on a new crowd, I was nervous the entire day before the show, to the point that, like I couldn’t eat anything and then after a few shows, after some practice I couldn’t eat for the entire half-day. Then, I ate in the morning, but not in the afternoon. And the same thing with stand up - it became a process which I learned, where I was constantly nervous, but as I got better and better, I became more and more comfortable with it.
Leanne: So, you sort of, introducing what you’re doing outside of work into your workplace. When you started incorporating humour, what was it that you were bringing in to a meeting? What were you noticing with people in the meeting - was there great response first up, or were people a bit confused or shocked, thinking, “Hey, this isn’t the way we operate in corporate America?!”
Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I do think people were a little bit surprised with the way I introduced humour. For meetings, I would start every meeting as a project manager like with an interesting question, a simple question like, “Go around the room and answer, what’s the first thing you remember buying with your own money?”, or “What is something true for you that you don’t think it’s true for anyone else in this room?”
What we found out was that as we get to know each other more as humans, we started to have better team dynamics, we started to respect each other more. The thing is, that when we think of humans as resources, it’s simply resources of people who are going to work for us. We forget that they are humans and that sometimes they may be a little bit late getting back to you - not because they secretly hate you but because they have a sick child at home, or they’ve been going through some extreme challenges; or work is really stressful for them. By bringing back the human element into the meetings, it helped us improve our relationships.
With my own presentations, I started to add a little bit of humour, adding more images. I remember reading one of those trivia things that said Alfred Hitchcock would put himself in almost every single one of his movies - even if he was like just in the background or silhouette, or something. I thought that sounded cool so decided I was going to start doing that in my presentations.
Leanne: [laughter]
Andrew: Some of them were obvious, and some of them were hidden. It became kind of a game for the people in my meeting to see, okay, when is the picture of Andrew going to show up? Small things like that. There was never a thing that was too extreme and I think people started to open up more. People started to actually attend to my meetings because they knew that it was going to be fun and engaging. I got positive feedback from people saying, hey I just want to let you know that I really enjoy coming to your meeting. I enjoy the humour that you use. I’ve even started to use humour in my meetings as well.
Leanne: Wow! That’s a great knock-on effect, I mean that’s how you create a positive company culture, by starting something organically like that. Well done!
Andrew: Yeah! And I just kind of built on that because one of the things that I think is important about when I’m working with organisations, I’m talking to them as individuals. You decide every single day on how you approach your day, so, you know you can make the choice to use humour. I kind of likened to Zombie Apocalypse, right? That change is kind of like the Zombie Apocalypse. It starts with a patient zero, a single person with a disease or hopefully more likely a good idea.
When that goes out, that spreads to a couple of people that they interact with, then it spreads to a couple of more. Ultimately you change the entire culture, but it comes from individuals’ choices that they make.
Leanne: Yeah. I think that’s really empowering to people at all levels in an organisation that this is in your circle of control and influence. When you started including images in your presentation the first time, was it very obvious or did people pick it out - they started to notice this pattern?
Andrew: Yes, it was. I mean, the first picture of me was very obvious. I think it was a picture of me as a kid - and that's one of the ways to immediately I feel like you’re almost getting an audience on your side.
If you show a picture of you, either as an adorable child or a Wonder Years type of photo (where it’s like I can’t believe that my mom let me go to school like this )– it immediately creates a little bit of a human bond because everyone has those cute photos. The first couple were kind of like that and then people start to pick up like, wait a minute there’s one in every single of one of these presentation.
Leanne: [laughter]
Andrew: And that's where it became fun.
Leanne: Were people in your organisation responding to these challenges and starting to innovate their presentations because they saw the results? Or were there people, still saying ‘No, I don't have time for this. I’m just going to stick to the traditional method and throw a bunch of texts onto my power point slides?’.
Andrew: Yeah. I mean there are some people who will stick to the way they've always learned it. I’m really talking about effectiveness. My training company is a training company in human effectiveness and you recognise that, yes, creating a presentation that has more images adds a little bit of humour isn’t as efficient - but it is more a lot effective. As someone wanting to get results,as an engineer, that's what I'm all about, solving problems and getting results, I’m willing to take a little bit more time to do it so, that in the long run I’m actually saving time.
Leanne: Sure.
Andrew: Because if I go into a meeting and I use a little bit of humour, and I get people to pay attention and they actually remember the message, that means I don’t have to send as many follow-up emails. It doesn’t mean that I have to do another presentation where I give basically the exact same talk, and for me, think over the long run, I actually save a lot more time because I am being more effective rather than focusing more on efficiency.
Leanne: So in these workshops that you run relating to human effectiveness - what kind of strategies do you teach people?
Andrew: Well, I have to start with the why. You have to understand you know the “why” in terms of what you are working for and the results you want. When I want to talk about humour I use ‘MAP’ and that stands for your Medium, Audience and Purpose.
Leanne: Nice.
Andrew: Medium is all about how you are going to execute your humour - is it in your email or your presentation? A is for Audience - who is your audience? What do they know, what do they need, what do they expect and what is your relationship to them? Because your relation to them dictates the type of humour that you can use.
You recognise the humour, that you can get away with a good friend is different from the humour you can get away with someone you just met for the first time. And then finally and most importantly is the Purpose. What is your reason for using humour?
I don’t teach humour just because it’s fun. It’s nice that it's fun. But I teach you because it works. So, are you trying to use humour because you want to get people to pay attention or are you using it so they'll remember something longer? Are you using it so that you'll build a better relationship with them or that you help them solve problems more effectively, like what is that specific goal you are going for? From there you can pick the right style. That’s what I teach - that’s the key to effectiveness… because it doesn’t matter how fast you run, if at the start of a race, you run in a wrong direction.
Leanne: Yeah. Absolutely! I really like that acronym MAP. That’s easy to remember - I the Medium, Audience and Purpose. How do you end up choosing your medium - does it relate to your personal brand, or is it like, okay here are some funny images, a cat meme always gets a laugh; or do you refer back to the person who's presenting to figure out their strategies?
Andrew: I give some recommendations based on some different styles for different purposes, different reasons, but yeah it ultimately comes down to you and your sense of humour. Your sense of humour is your ability to appreciate humour and what you find funny… that dictates your skill of humour because that’s what you are going to talk about.
For me, I love puns, so, I started to introduce humour pretty early on at P&G at the end of every single of my weekly status update meeting e-mails, I would send a couple of puns based on the subject matter.
And a lot of times, I would get e-mails back that were like, “Hey, this was a good pun”, or a lot of time they were, “Hey, this is a terrible joke”, kind of like in a playful way, but what they told me was that people were actually opening my e-mail. And scrolling until the bottom of it to see the pun.
Leanne: Yeah.
Andrew: And that’s for me because I love puns, but if you are not a very good joke teller, but you are pretty good at telling stories then you would probably tell more stories
Another thing that I talk about is that you don’t really have to be the creator of humour. You can be the shepherd of humour. You can find interesting pictures and as long as you, you use Creative Commons, you can put them in your presentation. Or, if you find a TED talk that you like, then you can share that out with people; or if you listen to this podcast and you think it is great, and you want your team to start to embracing humour a little bit more, share this podcast with them.
You know, there's a lot of things that you can do to get started. It’s a balance of what is your sense of humour, your style, and also some strategies that maybe work really effectively for or getting people paying attention.
Leanne: Yeah, that’s really cool. We do something called a pre-start talk and that’s when the leader gets up the front of a room and talks about what’s happening that day, assigning people tasks that sort of thing. I sort of liken it to the pre-flight safety briefing in terms of,, it's kind of like ground hog day. So something like this, bringing a joke, showing a funny image, whatever it is can mix it up.
In your example, we mentioned that at the end of your email, you wrote a pun. I’m also going to ask you a question about the online learning environment. Sometimes, it might be easier when you're face to face in a workshop to introduce them but I guess that’s one strategy that would work online when running online training. Is there anything else you can incorporate online?
Andrew: Absolutely! Well, yes, I think one thing I just want to touch upon the idea of what you said in these pre-start meetings. One of the viable things about consistently using humour is that it changes people's expectations and their behaviour in a good way.
When I started using humour in meetings, people would actually want to come to my meeting because they knew they are going to be more fun. When I started using humour in my emails, people are wanting to read my emails because they knew they are going to have a little bit more fun.
And so, if you take something that people have to go to, and then add your own style to this pre-start meeting, what it’s going to do is to change people behaviour to actually look forward to the meetings. That's part of the value of incorporating humour consistently and it changes perception and engagement long term. I think that is a great example of an area where humour is to be added.
Jumping over to online learning - certainly, puns work. A lot of times in online learning you try to listen to someone and it's easy to alt tab into a different program, or kind of daydream or look at something else…But if you have images that are interesting, you are going to stick to the screen itself because you want to see what other interesting image comes up.
If your goal is to help people remember something longer, then that’s a great opportunity for an association, connecting whatever it is that you are training to something else that is interesting. For example, when I was at P&G, I was tasked with teaching a three day project management course in three hours for interns. And so, with that I wanted to create an association and ultimately decided to associate project management with a wedding. If you understand the basic set up of wedding, then you can have basic understanding of project management (so, the engagement is like the project charter and the parents are like the stakeholders).
And there's a schedule, there is a budget and the vows are like the scope of what you're talking about and then we would also end with a joke that fifty percent of both marriages and projects fail.
Leanne: Yeah, I see. That’s clever. So, you talked about condensing this three day workshop into three hours. In your book, you list five hundred one strategies to use humour in the workplace. I’m interested to hear which one item has received the most feedback, or maybe it’s been controversial.
Andrew: I think one that people really like but it’s hard for them to grasp is related to subject lines - probably email because we spend too much in email.
One way you can encourage people to use it, is to use humour in the subject line, so, I think people are really interested in that but it’s a little bit of a challenge. Think of a normal subject line that you are going to use and then pick one or two words and find a unique and interesting way to say those words.
I think that's one that I've gotten more clear on - I do suggest that if you are going to read e-mail and you're starting to get bored suggest start reading the different e-mails with a different accent in your head.
Leanne: Awesome. I'm actually going to work a little later today so, I'm going to use an interesting subject title and see what the reaction is!Andrew: Yeah, the key to this is to start. The reality is that humour is a skill and that means it can be learned. I know that because I'm someone who's had to learn how to use it. It really starts in with the choice in trying things out - trying a handful of things that are within your comfort zone.
Maybe it is like you said, just an email or maybe it’s just listening to a comedy podcast on your way home to relieve some stress. It starts small but then as you start to think about it more and you see more opportunities it starts to become more second nature and you start to add it and so, it doesn't feel like you have to do as much prep time for executing some of these in your ideas.
Leanne: Yeah, that's what I love it sounds like I can implement it immediately and I can send you some feedback if I get any interesting responses. What comedy podcasts do you recommend if any?
Andrew: It kind of depends on your style, there's a plenty that are talking about comedy and how people create top comedies. The Mark Maron podcast has a lot of comedians on and they end up talking a little bit about their process and how they create comedy.
Comedy Bang Bang is more of the kind of sketches very, very popular with people in a good way to listen and there's certain personalities - I think if you start to study a little bit more, you can start to pick-up on things that can help you to be more comedic yourself.
Leanne: Yes, you do believe there's really strong parallel with being a comedian and also facilitating a workshop?
Andrew: I think so, I mean I still do stand up to prepare for speaking events because I think that stand up would be one of the hardest form of public speaker I'll ever do.
My thought is just like an athlete goes into a weight room and stresses his muscle far beyond what they're going to actually use in their sport- it's the same way with joining in. Stand up is like that, if you get comfortable doing that or get comfortable doing improv -doing a presentation where you have slides behind you and the expectation is not to be funny becomes a lot easier.
Leanne: Yeah, for sure, oh I can't even imagine getting up on a stand-up stage, that's huge. Talking about big moments on stage, you delivered a TEDx speech at a Ohio State university. I was flying back from Sydney the other day and I was watching it in the airport and just laughing- it was really funny. When preparing that speech, how much time did you put into actually getting that all together and memorising it, it's about 20 minutes long, how much time did you give yourself to do that?
Andrew: Typically, that one is a little bit hard to remember because it's a little bit further back - I also did a new TEDx speech last year which is a little bit more present in my mind.
Typically, you get a four month lead time where you get selected as a speaker. The thing that I realise for me is that I joke that I don't procrastinate but I don't do something until I have to Parkinson's law [inaudible].
So, four months leading up to knowing that I was going to do this talk, I booked myself for stand-up shows and worked on jokes in different ideas of what I was going to tell, explore the idea.
I started to book in with friends. I would say, “Hey can I come in and talk to your team about the skill of humour so, that I can practice?” I don't know the actual number of hours that I put into it but it's definitely, I think at least 5 or 6 run throughs of the 20 minute version of the talk with private groups just to get feedback; and then I did a bunch of other stand up shows to get there.
TedX is a very specific environment where if you're doing that -that's probably going to be more rehearsed in almost any other thing that you're going to do.
Maybe the first time when you're first creating your first draft, you write it all out and then as you write it out, go back and there are certain things you can look for to add humour to it.
So, anytime that you have a list you can look into turning that into a comic triple. Every time you express an emotion you might give kind of allegory for another time that you might experience that emotion in a funny way.
Anytime you're teaching a point you might use an association.
After you have that draft you can build it into bullet points. As stand-up comedians we call them a set list and you have a name for each piece of your bit and then you practice it -not worrying about getting things right or wrong but just about getting the overall ideas across.
When it comes to a presentation the only time that an audience knows you messed up is if you tell them you messed up. If you kind of skip something you can bring it back a little bit later, or you can decide to ignore it completely. I get the best performance right now in this moment based on how well I prepared.
Leanne: I heard a lot of people say that it’s really important to over rehearse so when you deliver it comes across very natural - which sounds counterintuitive but I delivered a similar type of speech (it was only five minutes) last year and I over-rehearsed. It came out effortlessly so, yeah, that's really good advice.
Andrew: Seinfeld talks about it - he says that when he's learning his material he wants to be so rehearsed, so that if someone's slapping him in the face he would still be able to perform. That’s a bit extreme for me but I like to think of the same thing - that I should be able to do a basic task like work on my speech when I’m running or washing the dishes… simple task s where you're kind of slightly distracted are great times to actually work on your presentation.
Leanne: Interestingly you talk about writing your script and bullet-points and then thinking about associations. Do they come to you in a moment, or do you you sort of think about it in the shower one night - do these associations come to you at times when you least expect it?
Andrew: It's a little bit of both. If you want to be a comedian or if you want to learn from comedian, there's a couple of things that all comedians do.
Number one, just about every comedian (unless they have a fantastic memory) has a humour notebook. That might be a physical notebook or it might be Evernote on your phone, or the notes app…but they have something where- when they're in the shower, or when they're walking along they have this idea. And so, then they write it down, right? You write that down in your notebook.
Then when you want to explore some humour or working on this piece from my talk or I want to tell a story, then you into your humour notebook and that gives you your inspiration, gives you ideas to play with.
The second thing that comedians do is that they write a lot. Within comedy we say there's something called the rule of 90 which is that 90% of what you write is going to be crap only 10% is really going to be the stuff that's really, really good that's going to get laughs on stage.
I tweet almost every day- a pun or one line, just to force myself to get stuff out there and usually at the end of the year I go back and look at all the tweets that I had and what are the best engagement -what had the most re-tweets and I will sometimes use those in stand up, or I find ways to use that as speaking engagement and stuff like that.
The difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional is able to work even when they don't feel inspired. The way that you do that is by giving yourself structure by doing certain exercises and then giving yourself forms of inspiration like, ideas that you've captured in your notebook.
Leanne: Yeah. I guess by doing that tweet a day you’re sort of developing a discipline and a habit so, at the end of the year you got 365 puns a day - you could probably sell one of those daily calendars! How do you even think of a pun a day, do you sort of batch it on the weekend, or do you actually just every day get inspired by something that's going on?
Andrew: It depends on the week and I do a little bit both. As you start writing humour you start to see the humour in more places. As you start to do storytelling you start to realise, Oh, wait this random experience at the grocery store could actually be a pretty interesting story.
I don't know if it's actually good or not but I put this one up 30 minutes ago - my mom sent me an article about the ten most confusing emoticon or emojis and so, when I was thinking of a tweet for the day I was like, oh what's related to emojis? What's something that I could say about emojis? So, I started to explore and then my thought for the day- I don't know if it's good or not is that, is that people make fun of emojis but the truth is that they introduced emotions to a whole school of engineers had to program them in.
Leanne: [laughs] That's good, yes, I like that one. [laughs]
Andrew: Right and so, that's just me -that's a process from the day- it's what happens in my life that I can kind of look back on and explore to see if there's anything interesting to talk about.
Leanne: Oh, love it yeah, really great tips and I think as presenters and facilitators, we know that stories really help in terms of reinforcing a message but it's hard to sort of look back on moments in your life and think of that moment to reinforce a point. So having that notepad and taking notes of everyday things, can really help - in maybe three or six months time you think, well that could actually be useful in demonstrating this points. It is a much easier process for sure.
Andrew: The hardest way to add humour is to sit down and be like, alright let’s try to be funny. It’s much easier to look at existing content and then look for triggers. It’s easier to go in that direction with something funny and making it relevant than it is to come up with something scratch.
Leanne: Yeah, for sure and on that note - what is the best advice that you could offer someone that's turning from a technical expert and they want to start sharing their knowledge with others- they want to be a first-time facilitator. What would you tell them?
Andrew: I would say that certainly taking Improv classes is usually beneficial in facilitation, right? Because facilitating is different than speaking in that sense- speaking is a little bit more like stand up; Facilitating a little more like improv.
The beautiful thing about taking an improv class is that you get to practice these skills in a safe environment where the stakes are incredibly low. You don't want to read about facilitation and go facilitate your first workshop with someone, where the stakes are higher.
Leanne: I think it's about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable because I know when I deliver workshops this times the content in the audience so, it's pretty easy but then other times where one of those things will change, the nerves sort of creep back in again. Do you ever get nervous delivering anymore?
Andrew: I get nervous every now and then so, I just did a talk in Baltimore. There's an organisation here in the US called The National Speakers Association. There’s a conference on the Future of Speech which is like, what do we see speaking being looking like in ten years .
I gave a talk that was a very different that my traditional style - I wanted to show and not tell and so, I did a scene with someone else acting as a voice assistant; basically what I think content creation would be like in the future with creative machines. I was nervous for that because there was a different style of presentation and it went really, really well. A bunch of people came up to me afterward and like, you need to invent what this thing that you're talking about because I want to use it, I want the structured creative process that I can go back and forth with the machine to help me be more creative.
I've done over a thousand shows now between stand up and improv and over 500 events, so I need to trust my ability to react and perform.
Leanne: Oh great so, apart from that the voices assistant project what else are you working on?
Andrew: I'm continuing to build out training programs so, with my training company ‘Humor That Works’, the focus is on building out workshops that target very specific problems. What we're doing now with our workshops is working with smaller teams, 10 to 30 people on a specific challenge that they have - so, there's a stress management workshop there is a presentation workshop and there's a job satisfaction workshop =, I’m focusing more on keynotes to speaking and building up some creative tools that help people solve these problems. This is what I love about engineers is that it actually gets results and so, I want to help people to not only embrace and have more fun at work but for them to get better results for doing it.
Leanne: Yeah and we'd love to have you or whatever you preach, Down Under! I think your humour really relates to the people in Australia, so it would be great to have you here sometime.
Andrew: Yeah we'll have to make it work. I've been to all 50 states I want to do all the continents and so, I got to get there at some point.
Leanne: Awesome. It'd be so good to see you down here. Thank you so much for all your advice and I think the best thing about this conversation is that I could list at least 5 practical things to implement straight away. Finally, where can people find you?
Andrew: If you're a fan of puns you can follow me on Twitter, if you like more image-based stuff you can follow me on Instagram- all of my social media is @drewtarvin so, you can also follow me on Facebook, Drew Tarvin,
I have a newsletter through Humor That Works, where we share something related to humour every Friday. They can also find more either on specifically the humour site humorthatworks.com or more about me at Andrewtarvin.com
Leanne: Wonderful. Thank you so, much for your time, Andrew! Learned a lot.
Episode 5: How to use humour to deliver x-factor presentations (and laughs) with Andrew Tarvin
In this First Time Facilitator episode, we hear from Humor Engineer, Andrew Tarvin on how he crafts and embeds comedy into his presentations and work life. Andrew provides simple, actionable tips on how to do this; and why it's important to brings laughter into the workplace.
In this First Time Facilitator episode, we hear from Humor Engineer, Andrew Tarvin on how he crafts and embeds comedy into his presentations and work life. Andrew provides simple, actionable tips on how to do this; and why it's important to brings laughter into the workplace.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Simple hacks you can use to add humour in your workplace
Why using humour consistently can change behaviours (people start to perceive meetings differently and creates engagement in the long-term)
How to start introducing humour by trying one or two things with your emails
How Andrew developed and rehearsed his TEDx speech
Why he suggests first time facilitators should take improv classes
About our guest
Andrew Tarvin is the world’s first Humor Engineer, teaching people how to get better results while having more fun. He has worked with thousands of people at 200+ organizations, including P&G, GE, and Microsoft. Combining his background as a project manager at Procter & Gamble with his experience as an international comedian, Andrew’s program are engaging, entertaining, and most important, effective. He is a best-selling author, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and TEDx, and has delivered programs in 50 states, 18 countries, and 3 continents. He loves the color orange and is obsessed with chocolate.
References
Transcript
Episode 4: Why drawing together can help solve complex problems (and change the world) with Marcel Van Hove
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams everyday.
In this episode you'll learn:
How drawing for others shows participants that you value their time
Why drawing on a flip-chart is more authentic and human and invites feedback, over a pre-prepared powerpoint presentation
The four-step system they teach, so that anyone can walk out of their two day workshop with the skills for visual facilitation
About our guest
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams everyday. He likes to share his experience in his trainings, as a speaker at conferences and as the host of a user group. He produced several videos explaining agile practices, principles and lean thinking using visual facilitation techniques. When he is not drawing he loves to meditate and travels around the world.
References
Show transcript
Leanne : I'd like to introduce you to our guest, who believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can solve complex problems and change the world. He's on a secret mission to bring visual thinking, visual facilitation, and story-telling back to every human on earth. He's the co-founder, visual facilitator, and agile coach at Visual Friends and he is on the line all the way from Germany. Welcome to the show, Marcel van Hove. How are you going?
Marcel Van Hove: Thank you very much. I'm going very well, thanks for having me.
Leanne : Thanks for joining us.
Marcel: What a great introduction, thanks for that.
Leanne : The introduction works really well because your mission is really unique; believing that people drawing together can change the world. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up in the world of not only facilitation but visual facilitation.
Marcel: Going back a couple of years, I worked in a-- well, maybe go even one step further, I have been a geek, a software guy, my whole career. I've studied information, technology, and all those things. Then over time, I learned that I really prefer to work with people and to facilitate meetings.
With the agile movement, I got exposed to in 2003. I became an agile trainer very soon, Scrum master and agile coach in 2008. One day, it was one of our tuning days, which is like a get-together of the whole company in Hamburg, one of the co-founders came back from a training and-- That was a training at Neuland with the Bikablo academy, which we train today in Australia.
We just looked at him, he explained Scrum to us in a stick-figure drawing. We just couldn't believe what we were seeing because we would never expect that this normal guy could surprisingly draw like a pro. That was amazing.
Leanne : That is amazing. I guess a lot of people, maybe your colleagues as well in that room, would have seen it and been pretty stunned and surprised by how amazing this technique was. What lead you to then pursue it further and say, "I actually want to learn this and I want to teach other people?" Did you know straight away? Or did you have to go think about it, or did it come back a few years later? How did that all work?
Marcel: From the minute I saw it, I knew that this would be the thing that I want to do going forward. It was so amazing because one of the principles in agile way of working, for example in Kanban, is that you visualize your work and you should visualize all the policies. This means by drawing it up on a flip chart paper and putting it up on the wall that everyone can see it, so it actually radiates information back to you, you can't really look away.
This principle is called a visual, like an information radiator. When we saw him drawing Scrum to us in a ten-minute session live, I knew I want to learn this too. I want to learn this and I changed-- We all went to this training, we invited the whole people on board and just went to this training for two days. I and another couple of people from IT agile in Hamburg, we stick to it and we just use this going forward.
Whenever, I was running an agile training, I was instead of using PowerPoint, using pre-prepared flipcharts or drawing live for the people, which created a whole different experience in the training room.
Leanne : Okay, in what way did it create a unique experience compared to what you'd done previously?
Marcel: At first, when you draw for other people in a nice way, even just a clean, neat handwriting, it shows: that you value their lifetime, that you value their time to be in a training room with you, that you show a bit of respect that they share with you time.
The other thing is that it's actually very handy, you can rip off the flipchart page, put it there on the wall, and when the conversation comes back; let's say to agile manifest or values, you can point to this flipchart that you draw there and say, "What are you referring to, this one or that one?"
With PowerPoint, you press spacebar and the slide is gone and you have to go back. What happens in an agile environment is that you load up the room with all the information needed. That's not new, that is known from Cape Canaveral shooting a rocket to the moon, where you have these big monitors giving you all the information you need around, in the room. In software teams, it's a marker and a piece of paper, it's enough, or a whiteboard.
Leanne : I'm really curious, how quickly did you pick up this skill? Were you channeling anything from your childhood in that you loved being artistic? Or do you think that even if you weren't artistic as a kid, this is something that you could better at?
Marcel: Yes, I absolutely have no artistic skills whatsoever. [laughs] As I said, in the beginning, I'm an IT guy. I can program a bit and then people put me away from the keyboard because I destroy more than I could do well. Really, I'm not a creative person. It's a craft I learned over the years from Martin Haussmann, from the Bikablo guys in Cologne. Then, when I moved to Australia I asked the guys, "Hey, would you like if I start translating and do it in Australia?"
Leanne : You mentioned that what it does-- and I saw this in one of your videos, what it does is by drawing on a piece of paper, you're kind of directing a conversation to that page and not at the person, particularly in complex situations where you're trying to solve a problem. Would you say it is disarming or--? Then it doesn't get personal because you're both just talking to a piece of paper that can't argue back? Is that the main premise behind this?
Marcel: This is one of the strongest reasons why visualizing together is so powerful and improves the collaboration so much. First, exactly as you just said, you point to the wall and this is not-- You can do this exercise where you stand opposite of each other and you just say, you repeat-- Again, I learned it from a guy who does service design thinking. He would repeat like, "This is crap."
The other person shouts at you, at the same time, directly opposite of each other. If you repeat that it becomes actually very quickly like, "This is shit. This is shit." You repeat this back and forth, back and forth and it becomes very, very aggressive, even if you are in a very happy mood a second ago.
That's very surprisingly [sic], and when you do the same again, pointing towards the wall where you imagine a whiteboard and you do repeat the same exercise, you'll look at this wall and just say, "This is shit." The other person says, "Yeah, this too." What happens is you just laugh at the wall, you just look at it and see, "Yeah, it's just a wall, it's just an idea." The same happens when you draw with people on a whiteboard.
I had this experience when I worked at MYOB, for example, as an agile coach. I had situations where they were struggling to figure out how to best build API's, interfaces to talk like two systems to each other. They had like strongly disagreements in how they can best do it; just by drawing them up, just by visualizing on a whiteboard, it became instantly like a collaborative standup meeting with everyone drawing together and scratching out.
It was amazing; you could walk away, as the coach, and leave them alone after five minutes. Normally, it would have been like a conflict management situation where you had a workshop where you hold your hands and learn to be nice to each other. You could really see that just this setup of how you draw in a standup mode on a whiteboard or flipchart changes the whole situation.
Even more, we actually learn faster. When we listen to someone, we learn what-- in the same time when you use all four modalities like your auditorial, your visual because you see it. When you have done something in your hand, you have kinesthetic experience. Depending on who's in the room, people learn differently and they understand the other person faster through that, just by finding their way to understand. If they need to draw something up to get an understanding, they can do it. Otherwise, only the speakers in the meeting are the powerful people.
Leanne : Just reflecting on meetings that I've been to, in my corporate history as well, sometimes when you explain something to someone, you've got a very clear idea of what that looks like in your head. You don't understand why they don't understand it eithe because our perceptions and beliefs and everything else that make us who we are, create that idea of what it looks like in our own heads, and when you assume that everyone else has that same idea.
It can be frustrating when you try to explain that. You think that you've been very clear and like, "Why are they not picking this up?" I can quickly understand then, if you were to draw it, very quickly you go, "Oh, I get it." I can almost see myself nodding as they're drawing because when I can see it illustrated, it just makes more sense and I can see where they're coming from.
Marcel: Absolutely, and actually it can add a little game to it, which we often run to introduce visual thinking in the meet-up that we have around Australia.
The thing is like imagine the following three things: a dog, a cat and now a mouse. Now, I draw them in front of you. I draw a dog, I draw a cat but now I draw an old school computer mouse. I had biased you with the first two animals and you were assuming that the last one is a mouse animal as well.
It is actually, when you draw we were going down this path and then assuming that the next idea is related to that, but it wasn't. It was a new thought that comes from a different context. Only if you visualize together, you actually can see that that's where this misunderstanding appeared.
This is a very simple example but in complex problem solving, this is very often the case that you just have a discussion around, as I said before, some interfaces, some API's, some technical stuff. Another person says something and it's not the same idea.
Leanne : Yes, definitely. You start questioning all those assumptions because it's clear to say-- If I ever go to one of your workshops and you do that dog, cat, mouse thing, I would probably pass the test.
[laughter]
Marcel: One thing I want to clarify, it's not my workshop. It's very important to say that Bikablo is around for more than 10 years. It started in Cologne by a couple of guys. I only have helped to translate it partly and I probably have opened up the market since the last four years in Australia and New Zealand. The training, it has been proven for over 10 years. It evolves over and over again through now over 30 trainers around the world. We are just four trainers right now in Australia, running trainings but the group is even bigger.
We have a Skype gathering tomorrow for example, where we get together and talk about different trainings that have been run in Japan, in Singapore, in Us, was a tour last year. The Bikablo group is actually a much bigger group of people. The vision of France is just Australia and New Zealand, that's one thing. I'm very grateful and thankful for this training, I learned-- Yes, Oh my gosh, it's almost 10 years ago as well.
Leanne : Wow, there's [sic] a lot of good things that come out of Germany. I'm a big fan of the thermo mix too.
Marcel: [laughs] Thank you for that but I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions about German engineering. That might be true of Bikablo but if you want real precision you go to Switzerland.
Leanne : Good to know. The word Bikablo, for our audience, that's spelt B-I-K-A-B-L-O. What does that word actually mean?
Marcel: It actually is like three syllables put together of three German words. Which is build our carton block. If you take the first syllables of those words and put them together it’s Bikablo. If you translate those three words, build our carton block it means picture card pack.
This is like what it was, the first product. It was some pictures with a description, let's say a finish line and you see there, underneath, is the word go or deadline. Those pictures were mounted together to a pack. You had a visual dictionary like words to pictures, let's say that.
This one was the Bikablo one which is around for over 10 years as well. It was the first product that the guys from the Bikablo academy created.
Leanne : Interesting to know that it's based on an acronym of some German language, picture, card, pack, if that's easy to remember. We spoke about visual facilitation, helping you disarm it in terms of a conflict resolution. What else are the positives in terms of meetings? What other outcomes can it drive?
Marcel: One of the things is that I struggled with or I noticed that a manager struggles with. He only has the tool of PowerPoint and created like-- I have see this so many times, he created a re-structuring for example. It was his announcement but it was announcement. It was his draft and he wanted to have feedback. Because he put it in PowerPoint, it looked almost like locked in.
Because he used a corporate template, it looked even better and cleaner and that created stress or conflict because the people wanted to have input in that re-structuring of the department, for example. When you do the same with posters on a flip chart and you present the same information, maybe on a flip chart, on a white board. Maybe you bring a pre-prepared poster along with gaps in it.
You just have a headline and it is restructuring for this department and then you put posters underneath. The people are much more open to say, "Can I make a suggestion?" You might take this poster off the wall and rip it apart and say, "This team should be out here and out there. We don't need this team because it's not a feature team or something".
If you see the same thing in a PowerPoint, it feels like it's a written book, you can't change a thing anymore. This is dangerous because the good people with the strong brain might stop adding an idea to that which is the sugar coating on the top which makes this idea that's wrapped awesome.
Leanne : The professional image of that information shared even just by looking at it. Without even looking at the data, you've all ready assumed in your head, "Yes, interestingly enough that this is locked in." Whereas if you bring a piece of paper and you're working through and talking through the decisions that are being made. I can absolutely see why they'd be an opportunity in that room to lift up your hand and be more confident to say something.
Marcel: It's more human because you bring more to the table of yourself. Again, if you have to polish PowerPoint Deck, it's very neutral of any emotions. If you bring your own hand writing and write something on a white board in a neat hand writing, it has to look neat.
Otherwise, it's like why you're not using the PowerPoint. I suggest you bring in a flip chart paper or a poster that is pre-prepared because then you don't lose time. If you bring that it is like, "Oh my God, did you do that for us? This is so nice." You show yourself.
If you think of an iceberg, you lower the water level and you see who you are a bit more, which gives the people a chance to connect better with you. If you just see a polished PowerPoint Deck, it's just-- there's no personality in there. It is just a corporate look of you, which is very boring often.
Leanne : I'm all ready sold on this idea, to be honest. I've got a few meetings tomorrow, so I'm going to give it a go. On the night of-- You mentioned, you need to have really neat hand writing. I'm a very quick messy hand writer, normally and in front of a classroom, when I'm delivering a workshop.
I'm left handed too, so one of the time, I'm scrubbing out my own writing. When I look back at it later I'm thinking, "How did anyone even read that?" Is there a solution for that? How can I make my handwriting better?
Marcel: First, left or right handed is not advantage or disadvantage. For example, Martin Haussmann, who started Bikablo, is left handed as well, and has a very neat handwriting when he works for people. On the flip side, I have seen his handwriting and my own handwriting is not nice when we write for ourselves. I have two handwritings. This is like two modes.
I have a handwriting for others and I have a handwriting for taking vision notes. It's probably worse as my doctor's that I go for. The thing is first, slow down. If there's one thing you can do is slow yourself down but of course, not to a point that people look at you and say, "What, you actually doing here"?
It has to be a lot like maybe some bullet points, you write neat and then underneath, you still keep this first handwriting. Another thing you can actually think of is why are you running this workshop? What would happen if you stand at the back of the room, which is actually a technique?
You stand there and let the people work and you facilitate the meeting only. It means probably, instead of you write, the person who said it writes a neat poster, if you hand out big posters like A5 size which is like a half of a normal paper. It's like if you hand out this and a big marker, actually everyone can read it even from five to 10 meters away.
Then, it brings back this task to everyone to write neat. Then, you have this agreement that you actually should slow down and wait for Steve for a second who writes his poster. Then you put it up and read it out again, "Thanks for your contribution, a great idea". You're just a person, basically like hanging up the washing, hanging up posters on the wall with prompts.
That's not magic. You actually can do that and ask someone else, "Hey, could you maybe--" just yes. Or maybe yourself come to the front and present your idea. You make everyone write that you don't have to rush. If 50 people shout at you what you should write down at the same time, of course you have to be very fast. So they are the two ideas I have on that.
Leanne : Yes, and they are very practical tips that I hadn't really thought about. It's really good for a couple of reasons, one, it gives ownership to the person suggesting the idea, which is quite nice, also just an engagement strategy that they're actually moving around posting something up. Also, that the facilitator doesn't have to do everything. It can be shared within the room. Yes, really great techniques there.
Marcel: Maybe one thing, like if you do that for the first time that you change from a normal PowerPoint meeting to a more participative post it or whiteboard-driven meeting with flipchart paper and you have those things, like have someone in the room who backs you up. This is this classical first follow. You need to have someone who validates that your new approach is okay for the team.
That would be very helpful and my suggestion is, it should not cost more time than the PowerPoint Deck, so pre-prepare all those things. Like you have, for example, the slide deck you had before, but now you bring it in as a flipchart paper pad and have some sticky tape, a blue tape ready not a row. You have sticky tape ready, cut it off, so that you can do just one, two click and to the wall and you refer to that information and then you move on.
The people actually automatically put out stress in your system. You don't let the people wait so long. It's all about handling paper. For me, the next step would probably be that you ask the people to join in like, "Can you take off the paper and hang it over there?" If you-- that-- If the people agree to that and help you because it's natural to every human being who hadn't-- who grew up in Australia particularly, I would say.
It's like helping others, is very clear to us. I then just ask the people to help and what you create just by you running the meeting is a team. It just comes as a side effect that you create a team. You start directly into forming a new team just for this meeting but they will laugh together when the flipchart, falls down or they [laughs] It's not-- They can't rip off sticky tape.
You just have those moments of them, fun together and everyone was like helps each other, so if you can do that. I have done this with senior leaders. I have done this in big corporate. They're all humans. It's all good. We are over estimate or over think the-- like meetings in general that there are so difficult or something.
Leanne : Okay. Yes, you did-- On your website you mentioned that you also do visuals summaries at events. From what I can tell, they're like those-- There a lot of videos like that on YouTube where they're explaining videos with concepts of different things. It's really quick; the guy's just drawing on the whiteboard. Is that actually what you do at big events?
Marcel: The graphic recordings, let's say, the conference, round table or something, yes. That's amazing, that's makes actually a lot of fun to record them. You learn so much as a graphic recorder. You listen to the conversations, to the talk and you have to honor to summarize it on a big sheet of paper, on stage or on an Ipad and we can watch it on a data projector or you print it out on cards afterwards. We've all done all those things.
Leanne : That's such a way to get your participants engage in the conference as well. As their person drawing, how do you pick out what concepts to actually put on the board? I'm sure there's [sic] lots of ideas going around the room at different times. How do you know which concepts to focus in on?
Marcel: You learn that overtime. We trained it-- Actually we practice it on the second day of the training, of the Bikablo basics, where we focus on finding the right keywords. My first suggestion would be, don't write down capability or capability uplift. That's not an insight. Add a verb to the term and voila you have a full sentence. We need to uplift our whatever drawing skills.
That's now something meaningful. Otherwise, it becomes a buzzword bingo in speech puzzles. Make sure that you, when you write down something that you have real information there on the whiteboard and not just one word. You just need to let go. We compare it in Bikablo with a diver who goes down diving under the water, when you are from Brisbane, you'd probably know it very well. I have been diving on the Great Barrier Reef near Kens.
When you go down there, it's a different world. It's very silent. You have-- your-- the world-- All these noise, whatever happens on the deep end, you don't care anymore. You're just there with yourself. The same is true for drawing. When you hear on stage an amazing insight, you need to say, "Okay. I captured that. I make this decision which is like this moment of going down underwater."
From there on, you write this down neat, in a neat handwriting and you will miss out, while you are in this drawing mode or in relation to that like underwater, all these noise that goes around. Then, you come back up and you listen again to the conversation that happens on stage and you find the next thing you would like. The next jewel you would like to capture. Then, you go down again and be with your marker alone for a moment.
Of course, this up and down, like this mode, are very professional graphically callers, they swap instantly. They know what time you practice and your short term memory improves. In the beginning, you just need to relax and just let go that you will not capture everything and that's okay.
Leanne : I liked your analogy of going underwater and being in the zone. I want to talk to people that are fairly new this skill and probably when they start drawing, they're not in the zone yet. I love that you write a LinkedIn article with the following title; why start drawing today and become a visual facilitator tomorrow. How can you promise the people that come into your today workshop, walk out with those artistic skills? How does that work?
Marcel: They don't learn any artistic skills. They learn a craft. I promise it or we, the visual friends, we promised it because it happened to all of us, every trainer of us. As I said before, when I went to this training, I knew I can draw now. I was thinking like, "I can't draw." We visualized. We always put the words first. We have a direct colored out liner to write the words first.
Then we add an icon to it which is step two and then we frame it was a nice pitch fur which we call containers. With that, we overlap with other shapes, which bring and hold information together. Through that you create like this mind type, I'm feeling or you create a timeline along this and you see where this conversation went. Those things, you actually can learn because you can just follow a template where this is all ready solved.
It's like a writing-- we compared with writing sentences. In the morning, we-- you learn how to hold a pen. That's the step one thing on-- we'll not move on until everyone knows how to draw a line. This is how simple we start. Through that we basically go one gear up over, over, next step, next step, next step.
After they won, they often take a picture of what they did and say-- Coming back the next morning, they say, "My wife or my husband can't-- don't believe that I did this." We once had a guy in the training who did like say-- we call this in the afternoon, the celebration piece of day two.
He did a drawing actually after they won; look we have on both days, the celebration piece. He took a picture of that. He visualized the process of how he met his wife. An amazing, very nice and funny drawing with stick figures, how he met his wife. He actually put this on his widget because he was from China.
He got over hundred replies from this whole big family telling him how amazing this is that he drew this for his wife. He-- they all didn't got the point that it was actually in a training done.
Leanne : Oh my gosh.
[crosstalk]
Marcel: He was so happy with that at the end. For me, it was like, "This is cool." You can use it actually for-- not only for meetings. For me, it's a skill. Where would you use another language? You can use when you can speak French, I don't actually. If you speak another language, you can use it in every context. This is a lifelong skill? This is also true for all the visual facilitators that teach Bikablo around the world. They come from different areas. Some are working like Martin Ruckert
or I, we work in agile coaching but others work in psychology and use it for family therapy or for visual coaching. It's very diverse and you can use this language for whatever you need it for.
Leanne : If I ever did come to a workshop, I wouldn't want to tell anyone, I'd just go, "I'm going away for a couple days." Then maybe a month later, bring out this amazing drawing as part of a workshop and just receive all the love. It's like having a secret kind of super power. What participants do you get at your workshops? They come from all sort of industries and different roles, facilitators, project managers, who are they?
Marcel: They come from all directions and it's for me often hard to understand like, "How did you actually hear about it in the first time?" There are some groups of people, one strong group of people just because we have this network in the tech industry are probably business analysis. They participate to a huge percentage in it. Another one, are consultants and facilitators trainers who use this to replace-- it's not replacing by the way, it's using as well, replacing PowerPoint.
Having like a different way of conveying the message. Surprisingly, a lot of people from HR, just see it as they want to present their ideas in this way and in general every leader, manager, facilitator which is for me today the same, like a good leader is a facilitator. Actually, while I say this list it's actually not true because they come from all directions.
I'm very happy about this because you actually bring very diverse group of people together in a training and you have-- Those people would not have met before in any other way, they're not from the same industry in general, completely mixed, it's very nice.
Leanne : Looking ahead to the future, what projects are you working on now or in the short term?
Marcel: For us, 2018 is about on boarding, having a couple more people because we have so much demand in the trainings. That we bring like two more trainers on board and we probably, with that reach now enough momentum that we bring the whole Bikablo curriculum over from Europe.
Which is four different trainings that belong to the Bikablo curriculum, which is meeting facilitation, it's visual consulting, it's a visual storytelling, it's graphic recording. Those four subjects in itself are two days training but compared to Germany where we train over 2000 people every year. We don't have this step two yet, and I hope for 2018 that we have more advanced trainings.
For me personally, I enjoy producing a podcast like you as well, and bringing people together and building the visual friends as a team of people, we enjoy working together and just uniting a nice group of trainers to, to work together.
That's my biggest goal, my main job which is I am the father at home and I'm very happy with that. I take care of our little son, Liam, who is now 7 months old, most of the time you might hear him in the background. This is my goal for 2018, bringing a group of trainers bringing the visual friends closer together and growing the market, growing Bikablo in Australia and New Zealand.
Leanne : Congratulations on your growth and for being able to scale in such a way that you can let it run in Australia and New Zealand, while you got your family back in Germany, that's really exciting, well done on that.
Marcel: This is something that is only possible because it's such a systematic approach, if you learn Bikablo from Martin or from John or from all other trainers who come on board, it's not different to when I run the training.
It's actually a very scalable model that can be rolled out across a company, similar to the Scrum framework or safe or less or can run or something. For me, it's important that you don't see it as a skill that one person has and he's like this craft or this artist, it's just another skill under your belt and you can just learn it in two days.
Leanne : Finally Marcel, where can people find you?
Marcel: When you are in Australia, the best website will be visualfriends.com. You just go over to the website and follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn or Twitter. Here in Europe you go to bikablo.com, like B-I-K-A-B-L-O.com, that's the website of the Bikablo Academy. We run monthly trainings in all major cities around Australia and we are very happy to finally have our first Auckland training locked in and confirmed in a couple of weeks.
Leanne : You’re taking over the world, one drawing at a time, it sounds. That's fantastic. I really appreciate your time and all your insights, as well as some practical tips and just hearing about the benefits of drawing things in a meeting and how profound it can be for getting really great outcomes. It's something that I'm going to share with everyone I know and I hope you are enjoying that German café.
Marcel: Absolutely, thank you very much, but I actually miss Melbourne coffee right now. It's like one of hardest things for me over here, is Melbourne Coffee is not here.
Leanne : Maybe that's something else, you can move between countries.
Marcel: Yes, the other way around.
Leanne : That's all.
Marcel: Exactly.
Leanne : Thanks Marcel.
Episode 3: Conquering your fear of public speaking with expert trainer and facilitator, Nikki McMurray
Nikki McMurray has over 25 years experience in the adult education industry. Her roles ranged from managing registered training organizations, managing the training function within organizations and facilitating.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL FIND OUT ABOUT:
How she used to throw up before speaking in public and how she overcame that fear
How she manages the participants (and her own) energy levels over a five-day workshop.
Why it’s important to shut the world off (and your phone) when you’re in a learning environment
Why you need a sense of humour when working on the road
Her strategies for ensuring introverts are heard in a group workshop
Her simple hack that ensures participants grasp the instructions of a group activity
The two things she would do differently if she had to start her business again
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Nikki McMurray has over 25 years experience in the adult education industry. Her roles ranged from managing registered training organizations, managing the training function within organizations and facilitating.Her facilitation style is respectful to the adult learner’s past experience and qualifications with a hands-on, highly interactive approach with a focus of connecting theory with practice.Clients comment that programs and personal coaching conducted by Nikki are high quality, very practical and personally challenging.She has a diverse background that includes consulting in a training and on the job coaching capacity to Mining open cut and underground (coal and hard rock), Rail, Water, Gas, Manufacturing, State and Federal Government industries as well as many others.
REFERENCE
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Leanne: I'd like to introduce you to our guest today. She has over 25 years experience in the adult education industry. And as a facilitator, she's terrific at really honing in, and evaluating the dynamics of a group. She ensures that all of her sessions are hands on, and interactive with the focus on connecting theory with practice. Her background expands consulting, training, and coaching for industries for a company called ‘Corporate Learning Partners’. And she's worked in open cut and underground mining, rail, water, gas, manufacturing, and government. Welcome to the podcast, Nikki McMurray.Nikki: Thanks LeanneLeanne: Nikki, 25 years is a long time to be working in education and learning in development. Have you ever had a career outside of that industry?Nikki: Yes, in the very early days, I was in IT and then I went into Marketing. And I happened to get a job in the world of corporate adult education, fell in love with it, and haven't left it since.Leanne: So do you think some of the IT, and marketing skills helped you where you are today?Nikki: I think absolutely, absolutely. And you know even though you're in the industry of adult education, you're actually in everyone else's industry. It's not just adult education in its purest form like a university. You're in and out of different industries, and that's what makes it interesting and exciting.Leanne: How did you actually get into the world of facilitation and education?Nikki: I took on a job as a coordinator of P&O and it was in their training and education area. I really enjoyed the vibe, and the excitement, and the enthusiasm, and the fact that when you partake in skills or knowledge there’s a certain amount of excitement for the participants, and sometimes even nervousness.From there, I went to uni at night, and then studied adult education. And I was actually not a facilitator for a very long time. I stayed in Administration, and I worked my way up to being a site manager for a computer training firm that concentrated only on corporate. And about 12 years ago, I walked away from corporate, and started my own business. And that was the first time I ever facilitated full time. So it was pretty scary, and exciting.Leanne: So you came from an admin background and then to managing client training in organisations, do you think that helped you when you became a facilitator?Nikki: Oh absolutelyLeanne: In what way?Nikki: I think it’s because I focus primarily on leadership workshops and I have been a manager for many years. Therefore I have a really good understanding of a lot of the issues, and the challenges leaders face in the workplace. And most of those challenges don’t vary from industry to industry. So I can relate. I'm very empathetic and compassionate for all the leaders I work with now as a coach and a facilitator in their area of leadership. Because there probably isn't a challenge that they're having that I haven't had myself in real life, where I tripped and stumbled as well.Leanne: I guess it helps because you can talk the language when it comes to feeding back information to clients about what's going on in the training environment too. And then provide feedback on what they can do to continue building on a person’s ability after you’ve left.Nikki: I think that's what good adult education is all about; sustainability, making sure that things are handed over in a manner that is easy for the individual to contextualise back in the workplace. For them to be out and go back and know “I can do this” and “I might probably trip and stumble little bit”. But I was warned I was going to trip and stumble, but I want to do it bad enough that I'm motivated to push through.Leanne: Yeah, that's really good insight into embedding all those learning strategies. Any other tips on doing that? Because I think it's an area where companies struggle. You can go in with approach of…, oh we're going to run this workshop, and then we expect people to change instantly. But we know that's not the case. What do you recommend to a client?Nikki: The number one best way of getting a return on investment when it comes to adult education is ensuring that before the individual goes to whatever the learning is - a meeting occurs between them and their one up. A discussion occurs about the workshop objectives and what do you personally need to get out of this. And then a follow-up meeting. That is the number one way of getting a return on investment.Participants walk into my learning environment with all different expectations. Some purely for lunch. Let's get serious - unfortunately, that is true. A day off work and I should get a really nice lunch here.Others come in with no real idea, but just happy to be there. You know I’m a new people leader, and I just need anything you can give me. The ones that get the most out of it actually come in with very specific challenges. You can't remember everything from a one to even a three day workshop. You're only going to really remember what's relevant, and what you need.So if you come in without anything really in mind, you probably walk out going, “Wow that was really interesting and I met some nice people.” But none of the tools will have really stuck for you because there was nothing in it in the first place, unless a challenge through the workshop comes to mind, and then you start zeroing in on how you can fix that. But it's amazing how many people come into a workshop with no understanding of even what we're going to be covering. That one-on-one meeting with the boss before and after is important.Leanne: Okay, so let's just say that you do have participants in the workshop, and they've got no idea why they're there. As the facilitator, you expect there has been some sort of conversation. How then do you manage that and bring them into the learning journey?Nikki: I think that through activities and discussions you start getting an understanding of where they're at in people leadership, how much experience they've got, and the confidence level. And normally by that confidence level, you can probably guess the areas that they probably find challenging. It’s probably not even on their radar because they're avoiding it.Leanne: So you talked a lot about the participants pre-work. But I just want to talk about your preparation before a workshop. And I know in our work together, we'll have a workshop that starts at 10:00 in the morning and Nikki will show up at 7:00 in the morning to get the room ready. Is it sort of like a ritual that you've had over the course of your time in this environment - that it's really important to prepare?Nikki: I like at least an hour and a half, and if I have more, I’ll take as much as I can get. I think it's really important to be very familiar with your environment, with the technology that's available, and also the way in which you want the room set out. The way in which the room set out, the music that you've got playing all set a tone for when they walk in the door, and that also includes your own preparation. I am a huge prepper. People ay to me all the time, “Oh I just wing it.” That might work for them but I would never ever do that. I just can’t.I do a lot of preparation even if I'm running the same program over and over again. And the room and making sure that it set up the way you need it be, to work the participants is really important. You've got to be thinking ahead of the types of activities you’re doing, type of space that you've got available, and be able to utilise everything that you can; the best way you can. That might be walking in and rearranging the whole room that someone has so kindly set up for you - because we thought there were going to be 16 participants and now we find out that there's going to be 12. It's nice that it's cozy and intimate if we have smaller numbers. But it also it's important that they're comfortable if there are large numbers, and there's always enough space for everybody. A lot of the organisations I work for are very male dominated. Girls/women I find don't find it too hard being a bit more squashed in; where the guys like a little bit more space.Leanne: You did mention earlier that some people are there just for the catering. I find that really interesting. A lot of the feedback sheets we get back, if the workshop has delivered the comments are about the catering. Is there an ultimate menu for workshops?Nikki: It's like air-conditioning. It'll never be perfect for everybody! And most organisations these days don't even do catering. Most people bring their own when it's in-house. So if people are lucky enough to actually get the company to provide the catering it’s normally a nice lunch because it's a free lunch.Leanne: The only feedback I have about that is I made the mistake once of serving cakes and sweet food at morning tea and hot savoury items that afternoon. And I didn't really hear the end of it! So switch those two around they will love the catering.Okay, so let's talk about energy. And a lot of workshop you facilitate run up to five day workshops. I’ve never done anything like that. Even after one day it can be pretty exhausting. How do you keep your participants moving along over the course of five days?Nikki: The course design is really important in regards to energy levels. As you know, I like to have them up and moving around approximately every 20 minutes to 30 minutes because I think that most of the people I work with don't actually sit at desks full-time. So they like sitting down but they're not used to it, and find it really hard to stay focused. If you have them moving around to doing activities or even just standing, it can make a huge, huge difference to the energy levels.For me personally, I'm pretty passionate about what I do. So I think it's important to shut the outside world off. You know everyone has things going on outside the learning environment. And I think it's really important as a facilitator that we're able to just to shut down turn our mobile phones off, as well as participants. Create that environment that's going to be best for them to get something out of the program. I am naturally pretty high energy.Leanne: I agree with that!Nikki: I do know a lot of people that are extreme introverts that do what I do, and they really work themselves up. That might be with coffee or a sugar hit first thing in the morning, a Coca-Cola, or something to just get themselves fired up. I don't need that. I just drink green tea. You don't need me in a learning environment with coffee. I’d be climbing the walls.Leanne: That's a really sort of great lead into a facilitation, and getting up in front of a room. Was that something that came naturally to you; public speaking, presenting in public?Nikki: No, I was petrified of presenting in public. Physically used to throw up.Leanne I think our listeners are grateful that you've said that. Because people that I've spoken to don't really have the confidence, and think that it's something that they can’t overcome. Obviously, you're one example of someone that's overcome it. What were the steps you took - how did you actually work your way up to becoming a facilitator you are today?Nikki: My father was very insistent that all of his children speak in public. He felt that if you had the confidence to speak publicly, you'd have the confidence to do anything you want in life. It wasn’t really about necessarily publicly speaking, and the skills about it. It was about having the confidence. Because if you look at what is the word people's biggest fear in the world, it's public speaking; next to spiders, and heights I believe.I did join the debating team, and I made a complete idiot of myself every single time I got up; that’s if I got up. Most of the time I was down the girl's toilet heaving. And when I did get up, I would go into flight; fight; freeze. I would freeze, and make squeaking noises. So every time I ever decided to join the debating team, there was always this huge sigh. “Oh my goodness she's doing it again. We've got no chance to get to the finals this year.” I left school knowing I would never speak in public. It was absolutely physically impossible.Very soon after I got a job, and I was asked after a few months working there if I could do a presentation to the board - that I was to walk in, there would be some questions, I would answer them, and then hop out.I was really honest with my boss and said, “Look, I can’t do that, and this is the reason why…”. They made it really clear it wasn't negotiable. And dad at times was asking me, “How’s your job going?” I said, “I love it, but I'm leaving.” And he said, “Why?” And I said, “They want me to talk, stand up and talk to board members. We all know what's going to happen.” So I'm just going to resign now. And he said, “Oh look, if you’re going to resign then you might as well give it a red hot go.”I went in with my resignation in my back pocket thinking you know, maybe I could throw it over the mess I might make. I did a lot of nodding and shaking my head trying to answer their questions with yes and no answers. After a while, one of the board members just said, “Look, you're wasting our time. Do you want to leave?” I just shrugged. I was going to resign anyway. I gave it a shot, and I walked out. One of the board members came up to me in the afternoon and said to me, “Are you scared of public speaking?” I said, “Petrified.” And he said, “I can help you with it.” And I said, “All right, it's okay, I’m resigning.”Dad kept saying to me, “You know how long are you going to run from this?” And I was like forever sounds good. There are plenty of jobs around. I'm not worried. I’m really skilled.And the board member talked me out of resigning, and took me under his wing. Over the following months, I got more and more confident. And it's something, even to this day that if I do not get up and do public speaking at least once a month, I go through all the nerves all over again. It's still there. It's now it's about managing it. So when people talk to me about their fears of getting up in front of a group of people oh, I can relate very well. I'm very empathetic.Leanne: So what would be your advice to someone that is a first time facilitator or wants to make that transition from subject matter experts to sharing their knowledge?Nikki: The more you do it, the easier it gets. Everyone that first rides a bike will fall off. Every time anyone gets up to publicly speak, they're going to make mistakes. It’s about motivation. It's about wanting to do it bad enough that you got to put up with the trips, and the stumbles, and the scrapes, and the bruises.If you really want to do it, you just need to practice just like when you rode a bike for the very first time. And public speaking is the same.You do it often enough, you can walk away from it. You come back you might be a little bit wobbly, but you're find your feet a lot faster. So practice makes perfect. I had plenty of people that I used to watch. Either for my own professional development, or watching someone before hiring them. So I know what made a good facilitator.It’s about using every opportunity you get to speak in public. Most people that don't like it when they're offered to do it, will run a mile. I did it myself. So the idea of it is is feeling motivated enough to get good at it to throw yourself in every opportunity you get and jump on board. It's not something you can read about and go, “Okay, it'll be like reading a book on how to ride a bike.” And then thinking, “After I've read the book, I can go and jump on the bike and I'm not going to fall off.”Leanne: You just absolutely have a great presence when you're in a workshop. And you look across participants, and everyone's really listening on your every word. If you had to pick one unique skill or superpower that you bring to the role of facilitator, what do you think that is for you?Nikki: Well I'm going to actually ask you. You've watched me a few times facilitate, so can I ask you what you…What do you think my superpower is?Leanne: Ok this is my observation as a client. When you’ve been running a session for a couple of hours I'll just drop in at lunch; or at the end of the day. I’ll ask you how the course been going with your participants. And very quickly you can go around the room and talk about each participant - pointing out things like ‘That person's not engaged at the moment’; ‘This person's a little bit quiet’; ‘I think the three sitting here is probably not a good idea, I'm going to split them up tomorrow’.You know exactly how each participant in that room is feeling, thinking, and their level of engagement in the workshop. But not only that, you've got solutions on how you're going to fix that, and make it better for them.. I think that's an impressive thing I’ve found about your facilitation style - identifying what’s going on in that room to an amazing level of detail. Would you agree with that?Nikki: It's my responsibility to ensure I have engagement. These people need to walk away with particular skills. And they’re not going to walk away with everything. But they should be walking away with two or three things that they can feel comfortable enough to use back in the workplace tomorrow. It would be very poor of me not to understand where my participants are going. And there's certain activities that I do first up to get a little bit more of an understanding of them, and give them the opportunity to talk about what they want to talk that about. There are certain icebreakers that I like using due to the effect that you get a little bit more of an understanding of why people are here, why they are in front of you and how much experience they have.Leanne: You mentioned a couple of icebreakers that you use to let down their guard, find more information about them, reasons why they're in the room, levels of experience. Is there a particular icebreaker that's your go-to one to find that information out?Nikki: I like to line them up in order of how long they've been a people leader for. Make a little bit of fun, you can’t open your mouth when you do it. Make sure that those hand signals are kept nice and clean also. From that, get them to then go down the line and introduce themselves. Ask them ‘Who are you, what's your role around here, how long have you been doing people leader’? Then I get them to team up, pair up with those that are least experience with those that have got more experience, and talk about what's their number one leadership challenge. And that's where we we find out who came in with something on their mind, and those that are just there not sure even what they're there to learn. But I think all senses are on high alert in that first one hour of the workshop as a facilitator.You’re really watching, and observing, and listening even when you're getting them to do an activity - you're listening to who's being more dominant than somebody else in the activity, who's being supportive of each other in the activity, who's sitting there doing absolutely nothing and looking a little bit concerned. You know because at the end of the day, we're going to have introverts, we're going to have extroverts. And we don't want the introverts walked all over.So in that first the first hour, I use the DISC model and I normally within the first hour will be able to work out who is where on the DISC model. That also allows me then to know what's the best way of communicating with them and where their stretch places would be. So I consider how far I can stretch them before they get us feel a little bit uncomfortable because you want a little bit of a stretch, but we certainly don't want to break anyone. We want them to be supported.Leanne: How do you then manage then bring in people that might be more quiet or reserved? How do you bring them into the workshop, and engage them?Nikki: With Dominance, we normally find they’re quite vocal. Not all the time, but quite often. They also they want to share their experiences and their stories. It's about allowing them the space to. But also making at times drawing the line and at times saying, “You know I think you're working too hard. Jeff I've heard from you for the last four times. I think you might want to have a break now. You’re carrying the load for all these other people. Let's hear from someone that hasn't said anything yet.” And it's about being polite and respectful - but also with a bit of fun. There's a little bit of tongue in cheek in being able to manage those personalities.Leanne: We spoke about earlier, there are certain skills of a facilitator - preparing is really important for you and making sure you use all of your senses, to see what’s going on, and then listening in to create a good dynamic. Is there anything else that a facilitator really needs in their back pocket?Nikki: I was thinking about this on my drive in this afternoon, and there are so many. And for every facilitator you asked that question to, it'll be something different. Now I am extremely high energy, so I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea. I can be quite overwhelming if you're a real introvert, and it's working out who is who in your zoo. You then moderate yourself of what's appropriate for this learning environment.But by really being prepared with your material you then have the energy, and the headspace when you’re facilitating to change very quickly on a dime.If you have’t prepared and you are facilitating, and things aren’t going well, the energy levels aren’t right, or people are becoming argumentative. It's very hard for you to throw in other strategiesIf you’ve got the content in your head, you can be quite flexible. And you can introduce different strategies all the time because you know your content well enough that it happens no matter what. You can then, in your head, while delivering the content be thinking about other strategies, and things you've got to do. That was probably a really long winded.Leanne: Aha! I love it. Long winded is good. Nikki: Because if you were to get up, and say the same thing. Like for instance an induction. But I can imagine if you ran inductions you would get to the point where you would memorise it. You would actually be able to think about other things while doing it. And you will notice other things because you know the content so well. Your head doesn't have to be all in the content.You'll be noticing people leaning forward, or arms folded, or looking at the window, or having a chat with the person next to... You'll notice all of those things because you know you material so well.Leanne: Yeah that brings me into an interesting story. Nikki kindly asked me to co-facilitate a session last year and it was part of a leadership course. So I studied, and studied, and studied on this model. I'd been working at a TAFE for the last six years, and I walked into Nikki’s workshop, and I delivered this session like it was at a TAFE. And after the workshop, Nikki said to me ‘You’re training them, and you’re not facilitating”. And I didn’t understand what she meant. I thought that was what I was meant to do. I was meant to train them, and teach them in this model. Then you explained that training and facilitating are two different skill sets. Do you want to expand on that a bit more?Nikki: Yes, so when you’re training someone; in something, you can work out their current skill and knowledge and then you feel that gap in a very quite structured manner.When you facilitate, there’s more of an expectation of these people are coming in with this certain amount of experience, and knowledge, and skill already. They’ve already got a fair bit, and it's about really pulling out what they already have in their heads.And so you will have someone that's got a lot of experience. You'll have someone in your learning environment with 20, 30 years experiences, and then you'll have someone with none. It's about managing the dynamics of the group - that those people who have got the experience are able to share it, and give those who have got no experience the opportunity to share how they would use that, and have a feel about it, whether they could see themselves using it, and then filling the gaps.Leanne: All right, so we've spoken a lot about activities, and energy levels. Let's talk about staging an activity. Do you go through a specific process when you do that?Nikki: I'll give you an example. I've been working with a company recently with people who are people leaders that have actually been chosen to co-facilitate with me on a leadership program.We put them through some facilitation skills to prepare them to be shoulder to shoulder with me in a learning environment doing certain sections of the program. And interestingly, they always choose flip chart activities. And they go, “They look like the easiest. I’ll do these.”It never ceases to amaze me how much chaos can be created in the manner in which they set the activity up. I'll give you an example. When I get people to do a flip chart activity, I first off show them each of the flip charts; Then I say to them, “In a moment I'm going to get you to stand up in four groups, and I'm going to give you one of these flip charts each. I'm going to get you to work on it for two minutes, or three minutes. And then after that, I will rotate your group to the next flip chart.”It's amazing that with these kind of facilitators they’ll start the commencement of the activity with, “We’re going to do an activity I'll get you all to stand up.”It never ceases to amaze me that when you get people to stand up, they automatically will start talking to the person next to them, wonder whether they meant to take a pen with them, or… And they don't even know the activity, but chaos has already being created.So it’s really simple things which are one of those things where we trip and stumble a lot. We'll throw at an instruction and everyone will go, “What did that mean, or what did she say about this, or what are we meant to be doing next?” And it will create this chaos, and you've got to bring them all back to the centre of the room, and then explain it again. And sometimes again.Leanne: So I guess you're saying prevention is better than cure here.Nikki: It isLeanne: Say, “Hey we’re going to do an activity. I'm going to explain it now.” Try and prevent them from standing.Nikki: I say that the moment they stand is the moment you will have them disengaged. They will suddenly need to go to the loo, get a cup of coffee, check they’re phone, be on their way to their activity. So it's best while they’re seated to give them as much information as you can. Then before they stand, let them know what's going to happen next. That's why I say “In a moment I'm going to get you to stand up, and I'll get you to work in groups; four groups. And each of the groups will be given a flip chat”… If you start the activity with, “We’re going to an activity I'll get you stand up.” The moment they stand up, it is so much more difficult to get them reengaged in finishing what instructions you need to do.Leanne: How do you manage preparing with flying, again keeping the energy levels, responding to e-mails, running a business on the road for most of the week? How do you do that?Nikki: You can't take yourself too seriously. When you work and live on the road, you've got to have a sense of humour because Murphy’s Law is just sitting there on your shoulder. You can have a whole week of what could ever go wrong, does go wrong. If you don't keep your sense of humour I think and if you take yourself too seriously you could end up being a very stressed, cranky, angry person.Leanne: How long has Corporate Learning Partners been operating?Nikki: About 13 years now.Leanne: Okay, and you mentioned that was the first time that you made into a full time facilitation role.Nikki: Yeah, so I went from managing training organisations, and walked out the door, and went into developing leadership programs, facilitating leadership programs.Leanne: So making that step from I guess full time employment to running your own business is a huge step. You have no idea how it's going to go.Nikki: Massive step.Leanne: Why did you make that step? What propelled you do that? Did you have any clients sort of on the books? Or you just thought you could do things better?Nikki: I actually felt that it was my natural next step. I'd been in the management area for a very long time. For those that are people leaders out there, you will hear know what I mean by you know, you get to a point where you go is this something that I want to continue doing. I got to a point where I was at the level of general management by the time I left. It was getting more and more paper orientated, not people - and I like being around people.So I thought, “Why not give it a go?” And it was a huge risk. I had no clients. I did have a very strong network of colleagues because I had for so many years worked with other facilitators I’d hired as contractors to do work for me. So I had a wonderful network, and an incredibly supportive network. There's a couple there that used to receive phone calls every night after I finish my day going, “I think this is wrong. And what do you would you do about that?” That network was absolutely crucial.Leanne: Looking back at starting a business, would you do anything a bit differently?Nikki: As mentioned before, you can't know everything when you take the leap of faith to do something. You've got a bit of knowledge about what you're doing. At the end of the day, I knew a lot about adult education, and I knew a lot about how to manage clients. I knew a lot about how you know, people would come to the training when I was a manager and say, “Look we think we need these, and this is the reason why”. I was already quite good at being able to interpret concerns, and put them into practical ways of moving forward.So it took a lot to the table from my experience. But you know registering businesses, organising GST etc when I had a mortgage and a kid in a private school. So you’re really juggling that. One moment I'm developing, the next moment I’m presenting, the next moment I’m invoicing then I'm having to follow up; juggling all of it. It was a huge learning curve. Yeah, so having a good accountant would be believe it or not right up there. And if I had to have a second one, it would be have a great network. Sometimes it's just nice to have a sounding board.Leanne: Will definitely put those two recommendations in our show notes for this episode. Where can people find you?Nikki: www.corporatelearningpartners.com.au has all the details. Plus a little bit about what we do, the tops companies we work for, and the work that we've done in the past.Leanne: Absolutely recommend Nikki, and her team. They do a stellar job in delivering anything that you've got.. So Nikki, thank you so much for coming on the ‘First Time Facilitator Podcast’. I've definitely learnt an awful lot to up my facilitation game. And I've already had some great feedback from you over the last year and a half. So thank you for that.Nikki: Thank you Leanne for the opportunity.
Episode 2: It’s not about you: Diversity and Inclusion expert, Teagan Dowler shares why listening is the #1 skill of a facilitator
Teagan Dowler is the Founder of The BCW, Treasurer of the Diversity Practitioners Association, Author of Rules of the Game and Organisational Development and Leadership Coach.Teagan has worked across a range of industries including Civil Construction, Iron Ore, Coal, Financial, and Health in the areas of Organisational Change, Human Resources, Learning and Development and Human Behaviour Coaching and Psychology.
Welcome to the second episode of the First Time Facilitator podcast.
Episode 2 First Time Facilitator podcast with Teagan Dowler
Teagan Dowler is the Founder of The BCW, Treasurer of the Diversity Practitioners Association, Author of Rules of the Game and Organisational Development and Leadership Coach.Teagan has worked across a range of industries including Civil Construction, Iron Ore, Coal, Financial, and Health in the areas of Organisational Change, Human Resources, Learning and Development and Human Behaviour Coaching and Psychology.She is the author of Rules of the Game: Women in the Masculine Industries, which provides recommendations from her own experience and those of over 50 women and men to achieve success in traditionally male-dominated industries.As a leader in the area of diversity, inclusion and leadership, Teagan and is regularly asked to comment on industry developments. She has been quoted in The Australian House of Representatives, featured in a range of magazines (including OK! Magazine, The Collective, CLEO) and interviewed on live breakfast radio for 4BC Brisbane and ABC Radio Gippsland.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL FIND OUT ABOUT:
How an interest in nutrition lead her to a career in psychology and human behaviour
Her strategies for answering questions in your workshop (when you’re unsure of the answer)
Why flexibility and listening are critical strengths of a great facilitator
Why you need to embrace fear and step up in front of a workshop to share your wisdom
The importance of authenticity - particularly when things don't go to plan in the training room
How organisations have changed in their attitude and response to Diversity and Inclusion initiatives and approaches
RESOURCES
Social Media: The Blue Collared Woman (Facebook) and TheBCW (Instagram)
Find Teagan on LinkedIn.
TRANSCRIPT
Leanne: Thanks for tuning into episode two of ‘First Time Facilitator’. I really appreciate your support. I'm also interested in hearing what you think about the show, so shoot me an email any time with your feedback. I'm at firsttimefacilitator@gmail.com, or leave a review in iTunes. Let me know if there are specific aspects of facilitation that you'd like to learn more about, or feel free to recommend guests that I can interview on upcoming shows. I met our next guest through another facilitator, and she focuses in on the diversity, and inclusion space. I have to say I think she is one of the most relatable people I've ever met. She has an effortless, and natural way of making you feel really great after you chat to her. And I think that's her unique facilitator superpower. So, let's hear from her in episode two.Our guest has worked across a range of industries including civil construction, iron ore, coal, financial, and health in the areas of organisational change, human resources, learning and development, and human behaviour, coaching, and psychology. She's the author of Rules of The Game: Women in the Masculine Industries, and this book provides recommendations and how to achieve success in traditionally male dominated industries. She's the founder of the Blue Collared Woman known as the B.C.W; the Treasurer of the ‘Diversity Practitioners Association’ as well as an organisational development, and leadership coach. Welcome to the show, Teagan Dowler.Teagan: Lovely, thank you so much for having me today.Leanne: It’s so great to have you here. Our audience may or may not have heard of you. I'm curious to hear a bit about your career journey, and what brings you here today.Teagan: Yeah, it's a funny one Leanne. I grew up in a really small country town down in Victoria. And I actually originally wanted to be a nutritionist; funnily enough. So when I was going through school, I then realised the reason I was interested in nutrition was actually all around the psychology. Why did people have certain approaches to food? And I was interested in understanding the relationship in the mental aspects around that - then that led into psychology. Loved learning about psychology, but when I went through psych at uni, the new wave of positive psychology was not actually in vogue at that time in university.And as a young 20-year old I just thought that's a heavy industry to go into. You're dealing with the darker side of human nature, and I wanted to have a little bit more a lot of experience before really going into that space. So maybe it's something I'll do later down the track. But I then thought, “Oh well what's another avenue? I'll segue the psychology into business.” And started looking at organisational behaviour which then led to a masters in human resource management. Finished that and thought, “Well what industry do I want to go in to?” At the time my dad had built a very good career in the mining industry. So I've been around the culture, I understood it, I liked it for its frankness and its directness, and thought, “Let's give it a go”.Leanne: Wow! And did you get to travel to mines around Australia?Teagan: I've been to a lot. So WA, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland. I think the only states I haven't worked in is Northern Territory and TassieLeanne: Okay, so your dad had worked in the mining industry.Teagan: CorrectLeanne: Did he prepare you for that first day out on the mine site?Teagan: Prepared is a really interesting word. So it's a very dynamic industry and the sheer experience of circumstances that you can find yourself in are varied. I suppose in terms of the preparation aspect, it was an understanding of the culture, and I'd grown up in that environment. So in essence, I was prepared for what to expect. But in terms of some of the unique experiences and circumstances you find yourself in probably not. Which is hard for him to be able to prepare a young female to handle those scenarios when he himself may not have experienced it.Leanne: Yeah, that's right. That's really interesting, and we’ll talk a bit about diversity later on. So when you're at the mine site you're working in a HR role?Teagan: It's more of a broader strategic pace. So we work mainly with mine leaders in regards to a range of operational discipline aspects. So leadership is one of them. How they look at their planning, their production is another aspect, how they communicate as well. So it's HR/strategy/operational.Leanne: I guess one of the things I notice from you is that you have a very natural way of presenting. And I'm wondering if that was hard over the years and do you sort of reflect back on previous workshops, and from years ago and think, “What was I doing”? Or do you actually just always been that natural and authentic in front of an audience?Teagan: That's lovely of you to say; thank you.You always do a bit of a self-critical reflection to think, “Gosh! Am I coming across the way I'm hoping I am”. I think for me, what has enabled me to be the facilitator I am today is probably watching other facilitators. And from a very young age, I always got involved in public speaking. And the fear that that brings is somewhat addictive in a way, scary upfront, but when you finished, it's really exhilarating. And I quite like that feeling of conquering something that you were nervous about. And it was through watching other facilitators, and other speakers in the techniques that they would display, and how they would talk; that's what's enabled me to take pieces from that and build my style today.Leanne: You talked about having fear. Is that something that you still go through when you deliver workshops?Teagan: Yeah, definitely. I think every group I have a little bit of a nervousness in my stomach because you don't know the people necessarily. It's a new group of people, age or time. And with the variety of people that you have, you've got to be on your toes. So for me personally, there's always the feeling of gosh, will I actually be able to answer their questions, will I be able to manage the group dynamics affectively, will they be interested in the content, or more so, how can I make the content interesting and relevant for them? So yeah, I'm always still nervous.Leanne: So yeah, me too as well. I think it’s easier when you deliver the same workshop a few times but then when there’s a new audience, it throws you back and you really need to prepare again. So what are new strategies when working with groups? Do you have anything in your back pocket for those experiences?Teagan: Yeah, I think what's helped me the most is definitely know your content. And I would suggest knowing your content beyond just what's in your resource guide, or what's on the slides, or the handouts that you're giving. Because the real richness can come through conversations more so than that content. And it's been helpful to be able to tap into external knowledge, or external understandings of research, or stories, or real life application that can help you in the moments where you think, “Oh gosh! Maybe I'm losing them, or maybe they throw a curveball question.” In that moment where someone is asking you a question and you think, “I have no idea what to say or how to respond.”Leanne: Do you have any strategies for working with that one that you can pass on?Teagan: My go to is, “That's a great question. What do you think?” And then I open it up to the group or the individual, yeah. And sometimes saying, “Look I'm not sure.” can be very useful as well because the way I set up my sessions is that I'm not the be all and all. I'm not the Oracle. I don't have all the information. This is very much a collaborative learning approach where I learn from the participants just as much as I hope that they will learn from me.Leanne: Yeah like that it's a two way sort of learning curve. So do you think there is a difference between being a facilitator compared to just being a trainer. Are they two different skills, or are they one in the same?Teagan: That's a good question. It's actually something I probably haven't thought about, and it might come down to semantics in a way. In my perception of a trainer is very much around I give you information. This is the information, and we run through in a very structured way. For me, the concept of a facilitator is a lot more as you said that two way, give and take. We're all here on the learning journey to use a cliché.Leanne: So in your observation, what are the skills of a great facilitator?Teagan: I can probably speak for myself around my perception of great. Because everyone will have a different version of great, and certainly a comfort level of what feels great when you're facilitating, or what you might observe. And certainly energy is something that is important, and body language aspects. So that very simple concept around openness, and engagement, small nuances around how you use your body when you’re facilitating, and engaging in conversation is very powerful. I also think one of the important aspects as a facilitator is listening just as much as it is talking, and giving information.Because we're probably all been in that circumstance where someone's asked a question, or they've made a statement. And you can see the facilitator didn't really get it and move on, and give an answer that might not actually align with the person. And that's a risk of turning someone off when that happens. So I think not only the concept of energy no new content, but also very much listening and observing what you people need. And maybe it's that flexibility aspect as well.You are going with the mindset of this is how it's going to run, this is what I need to say. But there's been times where you need to go off script because you can say there's a need in your audience, and that's going to give them better value than what you had originally anticipated. So that flexibility, tapping into print, your knowledge around what you're talking about is really useful.Leanne: So flexibility, we need to listen, and be adaptable. It sounds like a pretty exhausting profession. How do you feel at the end of a big training day?Teagan: I’m wiped to be honest. I'll be frank about it. It then makes me think around, “Geez, am I an extrovert or an introvert?’ Because they say that when an introvert is being quite energetic it's exhausting and gosh, in some of my hardest workshops which funnily enough have been the diversity and inclusion workshops which we’ll talk about. I've had after a full day of that I’ll go home, and go to bed. Because I'm so tired of just the process, and the mental fatigue around keeping up with a very challenging topic for some participants.I honestly feel shattered after a day, and I think is it just because I'm standing up all day or… But I think it's all about that sort of worry management, and always having a Plan B, C, or D that you could go to.Leanne: What is the best advice that you could give someone? To a technical expert or someone that works in HR who sits in that room and thinks, “I could actually get up and deliver something. But I don't really have that confidence.” What advice could you give to them?Teagan: Embrace the fear. That's a mantra that I try and live by. You just sometimes have to think, “What's the worst thing that can happen?” If you have knowledge that is important and someone else will benefit from you sharing. So have confidence in that, or faith that you can deliver the content, and that you will do it well. And if you walk away, and you think, “Oh I could have done that better”, that's a great learning opportunity. So really I think, what's the worst thing that can happen, and just go for it.Leanne: That's right the sun will still set and rise the next day.Teagan: It’s exactly right. Even as a kid I used to have this weird thing that if I had something scary to do during the day which was usually school sports or school swimming. I remember waking up in the morning and thinking, “Next time I'm in bed tonight, it'll all be over. Time is a finite thing, and in a few hours the scariness will be done.” So it's the same concept as an adult.Leanne: In the lead up to a workshop say it's a speech or workshop with a big client for example. How much work or prep time do you put in? So it's a 2-hour workshop. Do you really have a ratio, or how do you…?Teagan: It really depends on how comfortable I am with the topic, and whether I've done it before, what the client is expecting, very much depends upon the info on delivering.Leanne: Tell us the time where things didn't go so well in a training workshop. What happened, and what did you learn from that?Teagan: Yeah, look it was actually quite recently when I was delivering an inclusive leadership workshop. And as I alluded to before, it can be a topic that's quite confronting for people. Because we start talking about concepts such as self and identity, and how our identities lead to different outcomes such as the identities of others leads to different outcomes for them. And we are in a time at the moment where a lot of organisations are having these conversations which previously have been more social broader conversations, and then they are now coming into the workplace, and putting additional pressures on leaders.And one of the leaders in these workshops was having a difficult time being able to… not understand the concept. But it was misaligning with his existing value set. And what had happened was one of the other participants had said something which had upset the other participants. And it was about lunch time I think when this one participant came to me and said, “Look Teagan, I'm just gonna let you know that I'm gonna leave”. And I thought, “Oh my gosh! Oh no, what have I done?” Initially immediately I went to what have I done, I failed, I haven't been good enough in this. And so there was this little conversation in my head going just be calm, listen, don’t over-react. And so I started asking him questions to understand what was going on.And we talked around his discomfort with what the other person had said. And I didn't challenge him in that moment for his desire to leave. I gently asked him to think about it. Maybe go for a walk around, cool down a little bit, or have a drink, decide if he wants to come back. He did do that and he said, “No, I still want to leave.” And I said, “That's fine, completely understand.” So he went and I thought, “Oh dear, that's terrible. I've never had anyone walk out of a training session before.” And so went back to the group, carried on. They were all fine. I explained that we all need to be respectful about what we're saying in a group forum, and finished the session off.That night, he actually called me back. He sought out my personal number, and he called me at about 7:00 at night. And I thought, “Oh gosh! Oh no! What happened here? Is he completely upset?” And what was really lovely is that he actually said, “I've had a think about it, and I understand now what you were talking about, and I probably didn't need to leave. But I did at the time, and I'm just want to let you know that it wasn't anything you did…” So that was a really interesting experience because as a facilitator, you're always conscious of delivering value to each participant, and value is a different thing for each person. And I felt that I had failed for this individual at the time. And then you're also conscious around your brand as a facilitator as well.And being able to make sure that you’re delivering what an organisation is wanting you to deliver, or a team, or manager; whoever it is. And I guess the thing that I learnt from that experience was in a way, you've got to make sure as a facilitator that you are managing all those different needs of the group as much as you can. But if you find that at the end of the day you can't for whatever reason, that's okay too. And you're not going to please everyone all the time. I suppose if you come from as a position of integrity for yourself, and you know that you've done all that you can do. And if you reflect and realise, “Oh, I could have done that better than that”, that's a learning. That's all you can really do.Leanne: That's yeah really good advice. I had a similar situation, and I mulled over all evening. I was thinking, “What could I have done better?” And I sort of went through the similar process as you, and I asked a few questions, or let's have a break. And yeah it sort of just come down to personal accountability, and being respectful. We’ll move on to the topic of diversity. What compelled you to write your book, ‘The Rules of the Game’, and what's their response been to the book?Teagan: Yeah, ‘Rules of the Game – ‘Women in the Masculine Industries’ was written back - gosh, I think it was about two years ago now. And it came from the desire to share the stories, and share them in a truthful manner. So when I first joined the industry, there was not a huge focus on diversity. There was a few women in mining, women in construction groups, and what not.But they seemed quite external to organisations. Organisations will send women off, but they weren't really integrated into how we do business. I started actually the ‘Blue Collared Woman’ or the BCW as a blog. And it began very much around me just sharing experiences of myself and others and some strategies that we've all used to try and work our way through it. And it started to gain popularity. And I thought, “Well how can we reach more people, and how can we really give a handy resource for people in the industry and women for to learn from other women, but also for men to understand experiences of women in an unfiltered way?”And so I started the writing process, and it took about two years, two and a half years to collate all the interviews, and the research, and many weekends spent on the computer. But I wanted to write it just to really help other women. When I was telling people that I was writing this book, one of my mentors actually said, “Don’t do it”. They told me not to release it because they were very worried that it would isolate me from the industry, and cast me as a troublemaker.Leanne: ...Which is completely unlike you Teagan. Absolutely not your brand; troublemaker! I've really enjoyed reading it. I found the steps very actionable and practical because you tell real stories of people working on site. I found it very useful, especially as I was new to the mining industry, really had no idea. And going through that was just lovely to see I guess in practical solutions, and how to navigate your way through it.Teagan: Oh great!And that's really sort of the focus of the audience was people who were women who were new to the industry, young, coming in perhaps maybe, or those that had changed from one industry to another because they're awesome subtle nuances in the traditionally masculine industries culturally. And coming in with eyes open, and learning from the experiences of other women is really helpful. It puts you on a… I guess a few steps ahead really to be able to be successful.Leanne: It's like I've got this secret book. I know exactly what I need to do. You spoke about diversity ten years ago, and how people in roles were external to companies, and now we see a lot of diversity advisors. It's a real focus. It’s about KPIs, and business strategies. On the ground have you seen much of a change in terms of cultures in those industries?Teagan: I would say yes. The mere fact that we're talking about it in industry is a really big thing. Even numbers, it's different. So being able to walk into a workplace and see a woman out in the workshop, or even driving trucks, and operating machinery now; it's changed. It's no longer the rarity. It's more common to start seeing women in those roles. So a lot has changed very much. And in fact I was just talking with Alina, and she was explaining that she's got two workshops. That one has about 40 percent diversity, one has ten percent different locations. And she said, “It's so evident when you walk in to those workplaces. There's a different vibe, there's a different culture, people are more receptive to different ideas. It's changing, it really is.Leanne: That’s so encouraging to hear. What you think the greatest opportunities are in the diversity space, in the next one to three years. Where do you think we can grow? I'm talking about Australian industries in particular.Teagan: Yeah, I really think it's important that we don’t forget the conversation about everyone in the workplace. So a lot of organisations are really focused on KPI diversity metrics. At the moment we focusing on smaller subsets of characteristics. What I am finding now though is that… and in fact someone this week said to me, by doing that we're actually creating exclusion for the majority of our employees. And when you think about it workplace is the majority of our workplaces are males. And so it's really important that in the conversation around diversity and inclusion that we very much have a conversation around how is inclusion beneficial and incorporates the male population in our workplaces.Leanne: So those conversations that you're talking about; being inclusive. How does BCW help clients, or sites, of projects embrace or is it through workshops coaching variety of mediums?Teagan: All of the above. We do a range of things from helping organisation set strategy through to diversity inclusion audits. We do inclusive leadership workshops we do coaching. There's a range of I guess different services and support that we can offer really depending on where an organisation is at in terms of their maturity along the D&I curve.Leanne: Do you know a lot of companies saying, “Oh we’re not ready for this yet”, and if so what's your response to that?Teagan: Good question. I would say two years ago it might have had a few companies in that space. Now most organisations realise that they have to be in the game. Yeah, because society is changing, the pool; the talent pool that they'll be looking for is also highly competitive as well. So if they're not seen to be an employer who is really open and inclusive in in their workplace, they will get left behind of talent. And there's actually a great organisation called DCC who actually screen employers on their female supportive work environments. But in general those organisations are also very good around the whole inclusive characteristics. So you can actually go onto that website, and see which employers have been endorsed.Leanne: We’ll put those in the show. Interestingly with the increase of technology, we find a lot of companies are relying on online learning and technology to really spread a message. I know that you offer online courses. Do you think it will replace the face to face experience, compliment it? Where do you think it sits in terms of learning, and embedding culture change?Teagan: I may be unpopular on this one perhaps. My answer is I hope not to be honest because of the feedback that I'm currently getting certainly from the industries that I'm working in is that online just does not hit the mark particularly with your operational space. So having the ability to whip out say a smartphone, or a log in via a link on a website; that works for some employees. And so I do think there's a space for online training.But in terms of being able to hit others, you've got to always consider what's the best medium for being able to connect, impart, information, and also create a shift. I think that face to face space is ideal, it's irreplaceable. But there is a space sometimes when you might need to do online training. So it's around understanding what's the outcome that you wanna achieve from that training and that content you wanna impart, and then deciding what medium’s gonna be best.Leanne: And I think the value in running these workshops is not only the delivery, but I guess each participant sharing their information...Teagan: AbsolutelyLeanne: …and their storiesTeagan: YeahLeanne: You wear so many hats. What keeps you driven, and how do you wake up in the morning, and balance all these different roles that you have?Teagan: Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think I'm not balancing these roles very well to be honest. And I have to remind myself to make sure that I'm not spreading myself too thin. But really you've got to find your passion. And for me, diversity and inclusion has been this burning passion deep within me that I want to see change. So it's more than just a job for me. I love it, and I'm motivated intrinsically by what we are trying to achieve. So that helps immensely. But yeah, you got to watch you don't put too much on the load.Leanne: I bet there's so many exciting opportunities waiting for you, and it's hard to say no sometimes.Teagan: Thank you, I'm trying to learn how to in a way that doesn't disappoint anyone, or lead me to run myself down.Leanne: Thank you so much for being on the show. Where can people find you?Teagan: They can jump online. So my website is The BCW, or they can jump on to the social media channesl. I'm on Facebook; the Blue Collared Woman, or Instagram. They can search thebcw.Leanne: Perfect! We'd loved hearing you tips, and tricks, and strategies for becoming a first time facilitator, and thank you so much again.Teagan: It’s been such a pleasure. Thanks for having me Leanne.Thanks very much for tuning into First Time Facilitator. If you like the episode, please share it with your mates, or subscribe to the podcast feed in i-Tunes.
The First Time Facilitator Podcast: Presentations | Workshops | Training Sessions | Speaking | Presence
Whether you’re a first-time facilitator or a seasoned pro, listen in for tips and tricks to make a bigger impact at the next workshop you deliver.Leanne Hughes from the First Time Facilitator blog reveals all of her group facilitation, training and workshop tips and tricks so you can be ahead of the curve the next time you step out in front of a group.Discover how you can tweak elements of your facilitation style, or incorporate new techniques to engage your audience and leave with lasting impact (and 5-star feedback).Icebreakers, leadership, group interaction, preparation, games, conflict, props, flip-charts, delivery, voice, body language, confidence, discussions and everything that works (and doesn’t work) to help you better understand how to deliver and connect with your audience, every single time.Coming soon.
Episode 1: Just Rock It! Facilitation and training tips from leadership guru Sonia McDonald
This podcast is for those of you that are experts and want to share your knowledge and skills with others. In my experience, it can be difficult taking that first step to become a facilitator.Today’s guest, and our very first, Sonia McDonald, will share some amazing advice and some tips and tricks on facilitation and training.
Welcome to the first ever episode of the First Time Facilitator podcast.
Episode 1 First Time Facilitator podcast with Sonia McDonald
This podcast is for those of you that are experts and want to share your knowledge and skills with others. In my experience, it can be difficult taking that first step to become a facilitator.Today’s guest, and our very first, Sonia McDonald, will share some amazing advice and some tips and tricks on facilitation and training.Sonia was recently named in the top 250 influential women across the globe by Richtopia. She’s an entrepreneur, though leader, a keynote speaker, executive coach, board advisor, and author. She’s the CEO and founder of Leadership HQ and is launching her latest book ‘Just Rock It’ in February.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL FIND OUT ABOUT:
Sonia’s response when someone asked if she knew anything about leadership.
How she was unprepared for what was to come when founding Leadership HQ.
Her success expectation after she created the leadership blog.
An insightful piece of advice to people that need that extra push or courage to stand at the front of the room.
How she’s able to fill the room with immense energy while presenting.
Key skills you need to learn so as to engage people in a workshop.
Skills she’s improved over the years and how she did it.
How she’s able to communicate in different styles to different types of audiences.
Best way to embed learning after a workshop.
The biggest challenge in the leadership space.
Why you should read Sonia’s new book, 'Just Rock It', and the motivation behind writing it.
Best advice to a first time facilitator.
Her go-to icebreaker.
RESOURCES
Video: Your body language may shape who you are by Amy Cuddy
Websites: Leadership HQ and Sonia McDonald
Book: Just Rock It by Sonia McDonald
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Leanne: Hi I'm Leanne, and I live in Brisbane Australia. I've created this podcast to really help those of you who are experts - or look if you don't like that word, you’re pretty good at what you do, and now you wanna take that leap, and share your skills and knowledge with others. From my experience, I remember that it's difficult taking that first step to become a facilitator. So through this show, I'll be interviewing some amazing guests who will share their tips, tricks, and give you actionable advice. Also from time to time I’ll record some solo episodes that really hone in on specific training, and facilitation skills.Interviews and links that we talk about on the show can be found at firsttimefacilitator.com, and I’d love you to support the podcast by subscribing to it in iTunes. Now let's move on to our very first guest Sonia McDonald from Leadership HQ. She's an absolute power house. And I hope you feel inspired to take the leap into facilitation after hearing her story.Welcome to the show Sonia McDonald.Sonia: Hello lovely Leanne. How are you? I'm so honoured. Thank you so much for asking me.Leanne: It's an absolute pleasure. I’ve attended some of your workshops, and it's so true about the energy that you convey.Sonia: I am very passionate with what I do in the leadership space. Thank you very much for the lovely words.Leanne: I wanted to start with a bit about your story. And I’ve heard this one in of the workshops that you've run for us. You were working in HR roles overseas, and returned back to Australia. And you were given a start by someone who asked you if you knew a bit about leadership. What was your response to that?Sonia: My response was I know so much about leadership, and I faked it. I completely faked it. Look I wasn't faking that I could do brain surgery. However, I did have some confidence in my ability obviously with my background, and people, and culture in HR. However, I did have that belief in myself that I could definitely learn it to get myself up to space. So I did fake that I knew a lot in the interview.Leanne: I love that. How did you prepare with what was to come?Sonia: That's a great question. I think for me… I saw the opportunity was going be a great opportunity. I was on the train travelling home to the Gold Coast and I thought, “Okay, what's my plan?” And I just went online and I bought every single book I could on Amazon on leadership. And I just read, and I researched, and I read blogs, and I read articles.And I just kind of put my hands on everything that I could read, and watch, and research. And I also think the thing that also made a big difference is that I made sure that I put it into practice, and learnt by doing. I also started writing a blog called ‘Leadership HQ’ to help me learn. So I thought all it really helped me learn not only by doing that by writing about my learnings, and my insights.Leanne: Yeah, I’ve heard that quite a bit. A lot of people say that the best way to learn a new skill is teach someone else. So with your leadership blog did you have any idea it was going to turn into what it is today?Sonia: No, no, not in a million years. If you had said to me, ‘If we had a time machine. Sonia, we're going to go ten years in the future and this is where you’ll be…” I would have said “No, you're on some sort of drug.” It’s amazing how the world works. I feel so blessed that this is what I'm doing today.Leanne: That’s so great. And look I work with colleagues and sit in workshops with them and hear them say, ‘Oh! I could have run that workshop.” But they never actually take that step, and stand in front of a classroom. I know that’s a bit daunting. What is your advice to people who have the knowledge, but need a bit of a push to get up to the front of the room? What would you say to them?Sonia: Oh gosh! I mean I suppose this is what leadership is about. I think leadership is sometimes about doing things that make you feel uncomfortable, that take you out of that comfort zone - where you have the courage to just give it a go. And also leadership for me is about making a difference. I do that through developing and encouraging others. So I get a lot of people that say to me that they would really love to be able to stand up in front of a room, and be out to do I’m doing, or be able to public speaking, or run workshops. I think the only way you can do it - is do it.I suppose it helps if you watch by others, and figure out what works for you, what doesn't work for you. Also maybe even look online, or watch videos on YouTube, or TED talks. By having the courage to stand up and do it, and even going go to things like Toast Masters. And you know you and I spoke at that Disrupt HR, and you just rocked it. I was like sitting there going, “Oh my gosh! I mean Leanne you just rocked it.” And it takes a lot of courage to get up there.I imagine how it's going to feel when I get up onstage, and or I've stood up in front of that room, or I've presented some knowledge, or some insights; How I'm going to feel that I could make a difference, or help someone else in that room.It’s focusing on the feeling after you do it. And go you know what? I did it. I had the courage to do it. And also learning from it. I mean I remember the first couple of times I started presenting and speaking on stage, and doing workshops. Oh my gosh! There was so many these things I stopped. But it was so good for me to stuff up because I thought, “Well this is what I’ll do differently next time.” And I didn’t let the stuff-ups stop me because it is the best feeling, Leanne. I mean Leanne how did you feel after you…?Leanne: Yeah, it's such an amazing feeling. I sort of likened it to… I used to play netball quite competitively when I was a bit younger - that adrenaline that you get before a big match. It was the same feeling, and I hadn't had that feeling in quite a while. Yeah obviously time, blood, sweat, and tears went into that Disrupt HR speech. And afterwards, all the speakers are floating, and high five-ing, and I felt that feeling for days. It was great- definitely worth it.Sonia: Yeah, it is. Isn’t it?Leanne: Just do it, absolutely. So I guess what you're talking about in terms of attitude and having that confidence to be a leader - well that's what I learnt when I went to one of your breakfast events last year; the Leadership Attitude workshop. And I remember walking into the room. It was about 7:00 in the morning. Looking around - well, no one has been caffeinated yet. It's pretty quiet.When we left an hour an a half later, the volume of that room was amplified, everyone was talking to each other, there was really great energy in the room. And I think that reflects on your style of presenting and providing that energy. How did you learn to do that? Is this something that is just Sonia? Or, did you have to learn that skill?Sonia: I’d have to say maybe a little bit of both. It was more around again trial and error and putting myself out there, and kind of getting a sense around what worked for me in terms of my style. I think it is because I'm so passionate about this space - that for me to be that authentic self when I’m presenting and speaking it… it’s because I'm so passionate about it, I let it come out.And I’m not afraid to be vulnerable, and to kind of make a fool of myself if I need to help inspire others to get that sense of purpose and passion within themselves. So I think it's a combination. I think it was much of our successes and you know lots of failures to find my style.Leanne: Now I’d like to delve into some information on how to help others become facilitator. In your observation, what do you think the core skills are that someone needs to learn to be good at engaging people in a workshop?Sonia: I think you've got to put your ego aside. Like put it at the front door when you walk into a room. It's not about you. It's about them, and their experience. Practice is really important.. When I was facilitate all workshops understanding what the client wants, what the audience wants in terms of action - what do you want them to walk away with? How do you want them to feel, or how do you want to make them feel? What sort of key things do you want them to take away? It's important that you think about the end goal and what outcomes you're wanting to achieve; but not bombard them with too much information - think about the top five things you want them to walk away with. Obviously energy is really important; the energy that you bring to the group.Also think about your audience. For example, I’ll adjust my facilitation style to say a group of emerging leaders versus an executive leadership team or a CEO.Also I'm very visual. So for me, it's making sure that I blend anything that I facilitate. I bring in lots of a lot of visual pictures, particularly if I show slides.. I won’t stand in front of them and go blah, blah, blah, blah. Thanks very much, okay bye.I’ll share a couple of slides, share a couple of key points and ask, “Okay, how does everyone feel about that? Let's talk about that talk to the person next to you. Let's share those insights”. In this way, they are thinking about what I've said and what it means to them.So I think those sort of things work really well. Also not being afraid. I think some people in times when they facilitate they are, “What if I say something stupid, or what happens if someone disagrees with me?” Gosh, that's happened to me.Leanne: Oh has it? What did you do?Sonia: I just hid under the table. I’m not kidding; oh!Leanne: I think that is a huge fear.Sonia: Yeah look I always thank people like oh wow okay thank you, that's a really interesting insight - tell me why, let's talk about that. And again, it’s ego out to the door. It's not about me, it's about them.It's about you being the facilitator and saying, “Okay, all right. Let's talk about this. What's the rest of the group think about this?" And sometimes I've even been in workshops or I’ve facilitated, or when you’re running a type of team-building or high performance team, where the group dynamics, or teams disagree.Sometimes people have become quite aggressive and you have to say, “Hey look, let's not go down that road. It might not be taking us in the direction we want to go. Let’s park it and talk about it another time.”That's where the facilitator is really important. You're checking in with the energy of the group, and you're watching body language. So with facilitation there's more to just getting up in front of people, and showing slides, or talking, or sharing insights of learnings.It takes so much out of you because you've also got to be listening to the group, but also looking at the body language of the group. If I feel that the group, or the energy is feeling a little bit low, or this is getting a little bit too much, I'll say, “Guys let's take a 5-minute brain break. Let's go out, let's stretch. So reading the energy, and the body language of the group is really important too.Leanne: I mean that's really great, and really comprehensive. I’m just curious about the picking up on the dynamics of the group. Would you say that something that you've improved at over the years?Sonia: I think that's where you just need to be really present. So when you are presenting, you’re also reading the room (and not sitting there thinking “I don't know what to make for dinner tonight”). If you are noticing something you’re not afraid to say “Mary, or Jim. I've noticed that your energy is changing. Is there something that you'd like to share?” It could be even in the break, you might go up to someone and say, “I have noticed something with your body language - is everything okay? Because nine out of ten people say, “Hi thanks for asking me - yes, I wasn't comfortable with this, or I wouldn't mind sharing this next. Is that okay?” Yeah of course, I thought I'd check in with you.Leanne: Yeah this is something I experienced something last year. You're absolutely right. It's all about checking in, taking breaks, and just making sure they’re comfortable and that you can bring it together. Because one person can have a huge impact on the group dynamics.Sonia: Yeah that's a really good learning for you as well. So thanks for sharing that.Leanne: You mentioned before that you run sessions for a diverse audience. Sometimes you’re delivering workshops for teenagers, but equally you can feel very comfortable in boardrooms. So what is it about your communication that changes - what do you pitch differently?Sonia: That's a really good question. Last week, when I walked into a room with over 200 teenagers, I walked into the room with a lot of energy. I was wearing jeans, and a suit jacket because I wanted to relate to them. I didn't want to go in there too corporate. I watched how I was presenting myself. Because I have a teenage daughter I also adjusted my language slightly. It was really important for that I connected with the group.I was also probably be a little bit more relaxed with a group of 200 teenagers. I was running up and down the room. First is I'm probably a little less formal. I did use the word friggin’. They were looking at me going, “I think you friggin’ understand this.”. They all just laughed. I was able to laugh, and make a joke about my slide - I put a picture up of myself when I was 15 with like pants, and big blue glasses.So I try to see how I could connect with them. So then they would feel comfortable that, “Oh my gosh! This is the CEO of Leadership HQ talking. But if I was working with an executive leadership teamI probably wouldn't put a picture of myself, and I probably wouldn't go, “Hey, how are you all friggin’ going today” I would be more polished and structured while still being my authentic self. So I do have a style which I know you've seen it. So I think you do need adjust your style depending on the audience. I think that's really important.Leanne: So, you see people enjoying a workshop and they have learnt all this great information and leadership tools. Then, when you check in a couple weeks later, and they’re not implementing them. What's the right way to embed learnings following a workshop?Sonia: Wow that is… Isn’t that the zillion dollar question? I always say to groups, “What do you really want to get out today? Why is today important?” And at the end of the workshop I also ask “What are three things you've learnt today? What are three things that you could change? What would happen if you did change these three things, and what would happen if you didn't change these three things?”I always follow up especially if I'm doing a leadership program, or where I’m spending a day with the team. I always follow up and say to the stakeholders, “Look can you send these article on, or can you send this video to the participants.”Even in between workshop program when I roll out 12 month leadership programs, I always keep the learnings front of mind. I email participants and ask, “Okay, tell me what did you get from that. Tell me what you've done differently, what actions have you implemented, what successes have you had?”. Let's share that with the group.If it's front of mind and the more seriously you take your self-development, the more serious others are going to take you. I find the coaching really transformational because we’re meeting with them once a month. And each month, we're having a conversations, they’re going off to put it into action. We send them their goals or what they need to do. Like to focus on here’s an article you could read, here’s some resources on a platform you could look at.They're actually seeing the change because they're actually focused on it, and they're committed to it, and they want to do it. And that takes champions. It takes people like yourself or myself to go out there and keep them engaged. Does that make sense?Leanne: Oh, absolutely. It’s completely right in terms of just having that frequent kind of touch point, but also the accountability. I think all of us kind of need someone to be accountable to - there's so much else going on in life and at work. It’s hard to keep focused on some of these things.Sonia: This is why when I do any sort of leadership program, or coaching, it's about having the managers involved. I say to them, “Can you please have conversations with your people around what they're learning, and what they got out of it.” You can also have an accountability buddy, someone on the program that you meet once a month.Leanne: Yeah, really good tactical advice about the accountability buddy and the importance of the line manager and their involvement.I'd like to quickly to segue on to leadership, and I this is probably a really open question. But what do you think the biggest challenge is in the leadership space? What are you finding?Sonia: This is what I am out there pretty much standing on top of the mountain screaming about; you know trying to influence others and inspire others. Leadership isn't about a role title - it’s an attitude, mindset, and behaviours. The other thing that I'm seeing I suppose it that there’s so much going on in the world today. We're kind of looking at leaders to have more resilience, and being more agile, and being more vulnerable; and we need more great examples of leadership.I’m seeing people having more discussions around not willing to accept poor behaviour, and poor leadership, and I'm wanting more. I'm wanting stronger leaders out there. I’m wanting to see more examples, more leaders that we can follow, more leaders we can learn from, or more leaders we can see as showing the way that what makes a great leader. What I'm finding is a lot of people are wanting not only to step-up and be that great leader, but they're looking for more great leaders as examples.Leanne: When you ask, “Who are the famous leaders in the world?” We always sort of go to the Nelson Mandela’s, Oprah’s and the Mother Theresa’s where leadership seems unattainable. So it's really good that we can identify people around us who can aspire to.Sonia: Yeah, it is. It's just that's what I think sometimes because we make leadership bigger than what it is because of those examples. You know we kind of go, “Oh man, we can never amount to that.” Well leadership is fundamentally about making a difference, and helping each other shine.Leanne: We do and that leads me on to the question of the premise behind your latest book; ‘Just RockIt’. What's it about?Sonia: ‘Just RockIt’ is all about helping everyone step up and stand tall and go for what they really want. Whether it's to be that best version of you; to a great leader; to start a business; to step up in your career…Whatever you want to do in terms of taking on the world.The last decade I’ve been working in the space. And you know how passionate I am about mental health especially the younger leaders, future leaders. We’re still afraid to put ourselves out there.I want people to start to go ‘You know want? I only have this one life. I don't want to get to that day where I look back on my life; and didn’t lead the life I wanted to lead”. I want people to get out there and work it, and help others work it as well. I want help you be the best you can be as well.Leanne: That is such a great message. I'll definitely get a copy and I'll be at your launch!Sonia: Oh thanks!Leanne: Yeah, I do hear people say things like “Oh I can’t do that”. They have limiting beliefs. And I say “Yes, you can. You can absolutely do it.”Sonia: I don't want to hear "I'll try/I should have/I could have". I always say, “If I can do it, you can too.” I started a company from a blog, and I came back to Australia as a full-time mother with only 2,000 dollars in the bank. And I had to move back in with my parents, and I was like oh boy.And I'm not saying that I dance on rainbows every day. We're all human. I definitely have my ups and downs, and my knocks. However, I focus on what makes me rock.I focus on how I can make my life rock, and help others rock it. One of the chapters in my book is not to give it crap. And it's… you know, I know how it's difficult. And some days I go, “Oh my gosh! I do give a crap about that.”But it's about caring about what, or giving a crap about what really matters to you, and only focusing on that - focus on what makes you beautiful and unique.Leanne: That’s lovely. I couldn't have said it any better myself. So, what's the best advice that you could offer to someone; to a first time facilitator?Sonia: Other than the fact that it’s awesome that you doing this, I would just say, “Think of the end in mind, and think about what outcomes, or think about the audience and what do you think they’ll need. So think about what outcomes or key messages you wanna get across to the great, and then work backwards.When I first started, I would get the flip chart out and think, “Okay, this is what I want them to walk away with" and then I work backwards and then I'd start to map it out, like chapters of a book. What do you want each component of the workshop to entail? What key messages, what sort of learnings can you bring to the group, or to the workshop? What sort of methods could you use? Like videos, brainstorming. What sort of creative stuff could you bring in?I always say that when you're a first time facilitator to not be afraid of being creative. Bring in play-doh, big coloured pencils, crayons, or stickers, or paper. Think about thing that can bring out the creativity in the room. Begin with the end in mind and then work backwards.Leanne: Recently I was looking through some old workshops notes I presented a few years ago and reading through my facilitator notes. I had even written down my own name (like hello, my name is Leanne), c’mon! My notes were written to a tee. It’s really funny looking back and comparing it to what I do now, today I don’t script the detail. I know what the idea is, but it's really about creating that interaction. So you definitely have to start from somewhere. And you're right, it's about the audience. What's your go-to icebreaker?Sonia: A go to icebreaker? Look there’s so many different icebreakers. There's lots of different things I bring - I’ve got an activity or a nuclear bomb exercise which is quite fun, and quite funny, we use body language to decode a code. I also love to get people up and I say, “Okay, brainstorm. What are your top three strengths? What are your three passions? I call it the strengths sharing super-fast session. I think we did that in Leadership Attitude which you came to the last year.Leanne: Yeah, that was really fun. Yeah everyone was buzzing and it's so positive people can't wait to share their strengths. It's a good one.Sonia: Yeah, it is a good one. There’s also these great websites where you can pick up different resources cards. I'll put the cards at the table, and go, “Choose a card, or a quote, or a word, that resonates to you. Now let's go out go and talk to people around the room Why did you pick that card?Leanne: Sonia you absolutely rock. Thank you so much for all of you insights on this interview. I've learned a lot and I hope our audience has as well. Finally, where can people find you?Sonia: Where can they find me? They can find me on social media. You know I'm pretty active on that - LinkedIn or Facebook - also leadershiphq.com.au, or soniamcdonald.com.au as well.Leanne: Fantastic! Thank you so much for joining us on ‘First TimeFacilitator’.Sonia: Oh, you rock. Thank you so much.
How terrific is Sonia McDonald?! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this podcast episode, please comment below.
The 7 attributes of a superhero facilitator and how to rescue a workshop or meeting from a fate worse than death.
It’s Monday morning and you’ve donned your day job attire. You’re sitting in your cubicle, minding your own business, when suddenly a civilian colleague approaches. You chat about your respective weekends, then they pause and ask “Hey, what are you up to next Thursday morning? Can you facilitate our team meeting?”You feel surprised (and flattered) and accept. Moments after they walk away, you think to yourself “Why did they pick me? Why on earth did I say yes? I have no idea what to do!”Firstly, congratulations on saying yes! That’s a big win. Superhero facilitators are often caught off guard but are always up for the challenge. So it’s time to bust open the button-down shirt and reveal the proverbial multi-colour Lycra suit of Super Facilitator.For the purpose of this article, let’s define the responsibilities of a facilitator. A facilitator is there to:
- Guide people with different work styles, personalities and values through a process to reach the meeting objectives.
- Ensure active participation from all members of the group and draw out their opinions and ideas.
- Keep the group focused on the agenda and moving forward.
So, how does a facilitator carry out these responsibilities like a superhero (Lycra optional)?
1. A superhero might be able to see through walls, but they can’t see into the future. A superhero facilitator must predict and prepare for a number of possible outcomes.
Most skilled facilitators spend 2 to 3 times as long preparing than the amount of time they spend at the actual session. I think that’s a great ratio to work with, particularly if you’re just starting out.So, how on earth do you spend that preparation time? Superhero facilitators don’t leave any scenario unplanned for and they always have a plan B, C, D and E.
Who’s who in the zoo?
Dig into the details of the group, such as the individual personalities, their motivations, and the overall group dynamics. What’s the history of the group? Why are they seeking an external facilitator? Have they tried to achieve these meeting outcomes previously?
What does the successful superhero mission look like?
Examine the group’s objectives. What will it take from you to get them there? Do you think the allocated time is sufficient? What will you suggest as an option if an outcome can’t be reached in that time?
Is the space fit for purpose?
The environment and general climate of a meeting or planning session sets an important tone for participation. Is the site accessible to everyone? Is the space the right size? Is the audio-visual equipment a breeze to set up?
Make a checklist of everything you will need, down to the last minute detail.
I recently ran a session which required a deck of card to be cut in half. Ten minutes before the workshop commenced, I realised my laser vision was playing up and I didn’t have a pair of scissors handy. It was a stress that was neither necessary nor fun. Save yourself the drama and write down all of the resources that you’ll need.
Even everyday facilitators should have a structure and an idea of the general direction the session should take. Superhero facilitators however, know that nothing ever goes to plan. Having plenty of options to draw on will provide you with flexibility and allow you to change things up based on the group’s needs.I have been leading one-day induction sessions where a variety of speakers deliver consecutive sessions. As you can imagine, over the course of the day, there are times where we gain or lose time against the loose schedule. The first time the session ran I had only planned one back-up activity, which we used before morning tea. Lesson learnt. The second and subsequent times, I had five games up my (Lycra) sleeve and associated resources. Having that flexibility is important, will give you confidence and your future self will thank you for it.
2. A superhero facilitator never underestimates their audience’s basic needs.
Civilians, I mean participants, get hungry and lose focus and enthusiasm. Catering is important. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read through feedback sheets and over 50% of the comments relate to food. I’m serious. From my experience, keep the hot savouries for morning tea and the sweets for afternoon tea. Grumbling stomachs take your participants’ minds off the meeting. Oh, and bad coffee is like kryptonite. Ensure good coffee, every time (or, at the very least point the participants in the direction of a great café and give them time to grab one). Sometimes this decision is out of your control, but a superhero facilitator will influence the decision.Speaking of distractions, you don’t need to use your x-ray vision to scan for non-verbal cues from the group. Hone in if someone appears to be disinterested and watch to see how that effects other members in a team. Are people shifting in their seats? Are they bored or looking confused? If they seem restless, either take a break, speed up or slow down the meeting pace.Sometimes you will need to match the activity you have in mind with the energy in the group (another reason to have a variety of them in your kit). Other times, you’ll need to find a new way to boost a low-energy group’s enthusiasm. Take care, notice your group’s energy levels and inject interest when it’s needed to help them operate at their best.
3. A superhero facilitator can segue like a boss.
Groups have a tendency to roam far from the original agenda and often need rescuing to bring them back to the core discussion. When you notice them wandering off, bring it to the group’s attention by saying something along the lines of “That’s interesting – perhaps we should get back to the original topic”. Bonus points if you can somehow segue the distraction into the next agenda item!Many groups will discuss an outcome for far longer than they need to unless you help them recognise that essentially, they’re agreeing on the point. If you pick this up, ask someone in the team to summarise the points of agreement.If one or two individuals disagree, state the situation as clearly as you can: “Lex and Lois seem to have other feelings on the matter, but everyone else thinks [insert statement here]. Perhaps we can decide to go in the direction that most of the group wants, and they can get back to us on other ways to accommodate their concerns.”Be wary when deciding where the meeting should go. Check back to see if there are questions and then summarise and provide the next steps or actions for the group.
4. A superhero facilitator has a sixth sense for group dynamics.
You need to find ways to ensure the entire group is on an equal playing field, and inclusivity is the name of the game. Sometimes you’ll need strategies to deal with disrupters, and like most potentially dangerous situations, I am of the firm belief that prevention is better than cure.At the beginning of the workshop, gain agreement on the agenda, ground rules and desired outcomes. Also cover what’s not in scope and highlight anything that’s not covered in the meeting. Building a relationship with a new group requires you to find some common goals and interests, shared values and outlooks. If power players are in the room, acknowledge their influence and role. Empower them by giving them a role to play during the meeting.Using this time at the start of the meeting will also allow you to get a feel for the individuals in the group; wall flowers who might need extra support and big hitters who may need to be managed.The ‘dominator’ is the most common workshop villain (aka disrupter). They try to steer the discussion away from what you’re meant to be talking about, have side conversations with the person sitting next to them, and attack others’ ideas. As a facilitator, your first step is to recognise that the floor needs to be shared around.
5. A superhero facilitator knows the right questions to pitch, at the right time.
Facilitators ask questions primarily to help participants clarify their thoughts and evaluate information. Use a combination of open-ended and closed questions. One framework you can employ is the APPLE technique:
- A – Ask the question.
- P – Pause to allow participants to comprehend the question and formulate an answer.
- P – Pick a member to provide an answer.
- L – Listen to the answer.
- E – Elaborate on the answers obtained.
Some good question-starters include:
- “Tell me about…”
- “What would happen if we…”
- “In your experience…”
- “What do you think about…”
6. A superhero facilitator draws on extraordinary interrogation tactics (Active Listening).
Mirroring, paraphrasing and tracking are three tools you can leverage to help you with active listening. Mirroring is when you repeat back the speaker’s words verbatim. It helps the speaker hear what they just said, shows neutrality and can help to establish trust.Paraphrasing is a way to show the speaker and the group that their thoughts were heard and understood. Unlike mirroring, paraphrasing is using your own words to explain what you think the speaker said. For example “It sounds like you’re saying [insert paraphrased content]. Is that what you mean?”Lastly, tracking is when you’re keeping track of various lines of thought that are occurring within a single discussion. It helps to summarise the different perspectives and show that multiple ideas are equally valid.
7. Superhero facilitators must bide their time – they have unwavering patience.
Like most missions worth embarking on, becoming an effective facilitator takes practice. The good thing is, you CAN learn all of these skills (and laser vision really isn’t essential).Remember, each group is different and as you sharpen your skillset, you’ll intuitively figure out what works best for the team, the meeting and the organisation.I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article. Do you think any superhero facilitator attributes are missing? Comment below.