Episode 52: Creative facilitation (and why doing gives you the greatest learning) with Dr Cathryn Lloyd
Dr Cathryn Lloyd is a facilitator, educator, researcher, arts practitioner, and creative development coach. She describes herself as a ‘bricoleur’ in the way she brings together different methodologies and processes to help people work well with one another. Dr. Cathryn brings in ‘Artful Inquiry’ processes and facilitation to move creativity into action and to create positive change.
Dr Cathryn Lloyd is a facilitator, educator, researcher, arts practitioner, and creative development coach. She describes herself as a ‘bricoleur’ in the way she brings together different methodologies and processes to help people work well with one another. Dr. Cathryn brings in ‘Artful Inquiry’ processes and facilitation to move creativity into action and to create positive change.
She loves working with others to develop collaborative, experiential and reflective learning environments and her clients include Govt agencies, academic institutes, corporate, and arts organisations.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How 'being', 'doing' and 'reflecting' help grow your skills and experience as a facilitator
Techniques on how to help create a shared group environment (and why it's important to understand that each group has their own energy)
Why it’s important to be sensitive to the environment, and how you can gauge the environment by using questions
Key questions to ask when you reflect on your practice at the end of a workshop
Why being creative helps you become a better leader (and facilitator!)
About our guest: Dr Cathryn Lloyd
Dr. Cathryn Lloyd is a facilitator, researcher, creativity coach and educator. She is Australia's first certified creativity coach with the Creativity Coaching Association. She is the Founder and Director of Maverick Minds Pty Ltd. Maverick Minds specialises in creative learning experiences designed to shift your thinking, gain new perspectives and create positive change.
Dr. Cathryn’s experience across design and business offers an eclectic approach to her facilitation and workshops. She loves working with others to develop collaborative, experiential and reflective learning environments.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Attend one of Cathryn's upcoming events in Brisbane (co-hosted with Andrew Rixon)
Stories and Narratives for Organisations & Community Building: Workshopping the Story Cookbook
Book launch: Andrew Rixon and Cathryn Lloyd - The Story Cookbook
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know your number one takeaway from this episode!
Click here to tweet your thanks to Dr. Cathryn Lloyd
Quotes of the episode
“As a facilitator and or a person working with people, it's really about being sort of sensitive to the environment and trying to gauge and understand where people are at; rather than sometimes assuming things.”
“I think first and foremost, you have to be doing; and it's in the doing that is the greatest learning, ultimately.”
“I think time spent in building relationships is really important; and people often don't realise that. If you spend time doing all the other stuff, it will probably happen a lot more easily because those relationships are there and you've built community and a sense of ownership.”
“You've got to have creativity and you need to have people thinking creatively and owning the idea of creativity if we want innovation to actually happen. Innovation won't happen without creativity.”
“If you do want people to think differently or to be differently, then we have to be doing different things in order for that to actually happen.”
Episode 51: PowerPoint tips every facilitator needs to know with Thomas Krafft
Our guest today knows that in every poor presentation, there is a brilliant presentation waiting to be unleashed.
Our guest today knows that in every poor presentation, there is a brilliant presentation waiting to be unleashed.
A wizard of PowerPoint design and presentation physicality, Thomas comes with a deep understanding built from dedicating years to the art of presenting. Fun is his primary weapon and he uses it to break down all walls of nervousness and doubt.
As a member of Toastmasters since 2008, Thomas Krafft from Presentation Boss has given hundreds of speeches, facilitated many workshops and also been the Master of Ceremony for small groups, to hundreds of people.
Thomas and Kate from Presentation Boss are also offering an incredible tool for listeners of the First Time Facilitator audience: PowerPoint tips that every facilitator needs to know.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Why people struggle with using Powerpoint (and why you shouldn’t blame the software for ‘Death by powerpoint’)
Tips and tricks on designing PowerPoint preparations (Hint: Less, is more)
Why you need to consider all of the elements on stage, and whether they're attracting, or detracting from your presentation
Questions to consider while creating PowerPoint slides
Keys to develop your confidence as first-time facilitator
About our guest: Thomas Krafft
Thomas Krafft is the presentation strategy guy and PowerPoint wizard. He does not know a life without public speaking, having spent his entire adult life (plus some) speaking to various audiences.
Fun is his primary weapon, though he comes armed with deep presentation knowledge and understanding built from years dedicated to presentation skills, PowerPoint design and coaching others to improve their skills.
He is a speaker, an MC and co-founder of Presentation Boss; a presentation skills coaching business.
Thomas has spent countless hours specialising in effective design and use of PowerPoint. He needs no excuse to share his passion around the software and champions its proper use to enhance your next presentation. He knows that in every poor presentation is a brilliant presentation - whether it's a talk, keynote or workshop.
Presentation Boss hosts training workshops for corporate teams and groups, provides one-on-one consultation and provide keynote speakers to events.
Fun facts about Thomas:
He is a licensed pilot.
He has a deep fascination for shipwrecks. Deeper than is socially acceptable.
He's tall. 6’6’’. Yes, really. Yes, the weather is lovely up there. No, he doesn’t play basketball. really. Yes, the weather is lovely up there. No, he doesn’t play basketball.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know your number one takeaway from this episode!
Quotes of the show:
“Death by PowerPoint is a user-error; it's not the software's problem. It's doing exactly what it’s told to do.”
“That's what PowerPoints for: we are visual creatures and PowerPoint is a visual tool.”
The slides need to complement what is that you're saying. You need to make your communication more efficient.”
“When you're designing those slides and reviewing those slides and rehearsing, ask yourself all the time- ‘what can I remove from this slide and it still makes sense in the context of my presentation?’”
“Everything that happens on a stage is either attracting or detracting. So it needs to not detract from your presentation and distract from what it is that you're saying.”
“Whatever the presentation is, be at workshop or a main stage presentation or a meeting at work, is that the slides come after the script.”
To me, it's all about communication. It’s all about the art of taking an idea that's inside my head and transferring it inside your head. And I love being able to do that and especially when you're helping people to do something.”
“I always have the goal of people leaving the room is to think about what we spoke about today and try it.”
Episode 50: What I've learnt during 50 episodes of the First Time Facilitator podcast
In this episode, I sit down in the guests's seat, and reflect on 50 episodes of the First Time Facilitator podcast. Sean Lavin guides a great conversation on what I've learnt from my guests, what I've learnt about myself in the process, and what's happened as a result of launching the podcast.
I can't believe we're here!
In this episode, I sit down in the guests's seat, and reflect on 50 episodes of the First Time Facilitator podcast. Sean Lavin guides a great conversation on what I've learnt from my guests, what I've learnt about myself in the process, and what's happened as a result of launching the podcast.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported the show, and helped me continue the momentum of bringing out episodes every week. I truly appreciate your feedback, questions, reviews and shares , so thank you!
I'm also grateful for the variety of guests who have dedicated an hour to fielding questions on their facilitation tips and tricks. All of the guests on the show have been incredibly open in sharing their practical tips and recommendations for First Time Facilitators.
Resources mentioned in this show
My new website - LeanneHughes.com (it's still a work in progress!)
Join 'The Flipchart' a community of First Time Facilitators on Facebook
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Episode 49: Great facilitators notice patterns in the room with Oscar Trimboli
There’s really common theme when I ask facilitators what skills they think are necessary for facilitation. The answer? It’s about the ability to listen. Not only to the words, but listening in to what’s happening in the room, listening to what’s not being said, listening into the nonverbal cues. Knowing this, I brought on a listening expert for today’s episode, to hear his perspective on ‘Deep Listening’, and also his tips for First Time Facilitators.
There’s really common theme when I ask facilitators what skills they think are necessary for facilitation. The answer? It’s about the ability to listen. Not only to the words, but listening in to what’s happening in the room, listening to what’s not being said, listening into the nonverbal cues. Knowing this, I brought on a listening expert for today’s episode, to hear his perspective on ‘Deep Listening’, and also his tips for First Time Facilitators.
On this episode you’ll learn
When and how he realised he had a knack for listening
What he describes as Deep Listening, and his definition of the five levels of listening (hint: Great facilitators need to be at the third level of listening)
His Big Hairy Audacious Goal for changing 2% of the world’s population
The 125:400 rule (and how this can be used to explain why we get so distracted)
Why breathing can help you listen at a deeper level
His never-fail pen for post-it notes in workshops
How he uses a colour scheme for sticky note activities
About Oscar Trimboli
Oscar Trimboli is a coach supervisor, speaker and author of Deep Listening: Impact beyond words, The 125/400 Rule: The Art and Science of Listening and Breakthroughs: How to confront your assumptions.
Through his work with chairs, boards of directors and executive teams in local, regional and global organisations, Oscar has experienced firsthand the impact leaders and organisations can have when they listen beyond the words.
He consults to organisations including Cisco, Google, News Corp, PayPal, Qantas and TripAdvisor helping executives and their teams listen to what’s unsaid by the customers and employees.
Giveaway alert!
If you’re interested reading a copy of Oscar’s book, Deep Listening, we have an awesome surprise for listeners. Oscar is kind enough to have donated 5 books for a First Time Facilitator giveaway.
To go in the draw to win, I’d like you to upload a screenshot of this podcast episode into either your Instagram feed, or Instagram stories, and tag both @leannehughes and @oscartrimboli.
I’ll give you util Friday 8 February to be in the run to win a copy!
Resources mentioned in this episode
What’s on in First Time Facilitator land?
The 50th episode celebration is on this week, Friday 18 January. Find out the details on the First Time Facilitator 50th evepisode Facebook event page.
Finally, if you want to connect with listeners following the show, join our community on Facebook it’s called ‘The Flipchart’. Once you’re in, please introduce yourself, where you’re from!
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Tweet your thanks to Oscar
Episode 48: Don’t sell the plane, sell the holiday: How to demonstrate your credibility to others with Petra Zink
In this episode, we talk about building your credibility as a facilitator when you’re first starting out, and how to market yourself without feeling like you’re bragging about you. Petra also shares some key questions you should ask yourself to help develop the self-awareness required to effectively market yourself, and your services.
Her alarm is set for 3.45am every week day. Meet Petra Zink, a Coach, Speaker and Consultant on all things Career & the Future of Work. In this episode, we talk about building your credibility as a facilitator when you’re first starting out, and how to market yourself without feeling like you’re bragging about you. Petra also shares some key questions you should ask yourself to help develop the self-awareness required to effectively market yourself, and your services.
On this episode you’ll learn:
How Petra pivoted from a role marketing in the FMCG industry, to her current role in talent management and personal branding
The platform she uses to drive 80% of her business
How to build credibility when you’re just starting out as a facilitator
Why it’s important to build your self-awareness and figure out who the charges vs the drainers are in your life
Some key questions you should ask yourself when either starting a business, or going through a career pivot
Ideas on how to promote yourself on social media (without feeling like a show pony)
How group fitness helped develop her confidence as a public speaker
Why she gets up so early, (and how this helps you to avoid burnout)
About our guest: Petra Zink
Petra Zink is a Coach, Speaker and Consultant on all things Career & the Future of Work. She helps companies and leaders to build and use (Personal & Employer) Brands to build successful Careers and Businesses in this fast changing new economy.
Petra runs two companies that help individuals and organisations to not only survive but thrive in the future world of work:
impaCCCt is a talent development consultancy, working with highly ambitious people to pivot by creating a career that aligns impact with income; inside and/or outside their current organisation; within and/or outside their existing experience.
The360Talent.Co helps companies to rethink the way of Talent Attraction, Acquisition and Retention for the future of work. The 360 approach helps to align the business goals with the talent strategy and tactics of today and tomorrow to not only hire the best Talents but also to keep them. We focus on preparing organisations and their staff for careers that don’t exist yet by recruiting for potential rather than proficiency and ongoing coaching to align passion with profit.
Connect with Petra on LinkedIn, Instagram (@impaccctful), Twitter (@petra_zink) or Facebook!
Resources mentioned in this episode
What’s happening in First Time Facilitator land?
We are two episodes from releasing the half century of First Time Facilitator episodes and I’ll be celebrating by hosting a meetup in Brisbane on Friday 18 January. If you want to join in, shoot me an email hello@firsttimefacilitator.com or a DM in Instagram @firsttimefacilitator.
Want to start a podcast? Come along to my workshop in Brisbane on 13 January: 2019: The Year you launch your podcast.
Finally, if you want to connect with listeners following the show, join our community on Facebook it’s called ‘The Flipchart’. Once you’re in, please introduce yourself, where you’re from!
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Tweet your thanks to Petra
Episode 47: Reflect, refocus, reset: Simple tools to make 2019 your best year ever
This episode is coming to you on 31 December 2018, the last day of yet another year. I know it’s cliche setting new year’s resolutions and I don’t really do those, but I do find that this time of the year is really great for taking the time out to reflect, reset and refocus for the year ahead.
This episode is coming to you on 31 December 2018, the last day of yet another year.
I know it’s cliche setting new year’s resolutions and I don’t really do those, but I do find that this time of the year is really great for taking the time out to reflect, reset and refocus for the year ahead.
It’s like that analogy - you’re too busy driving to stop and refuel...So at some point, you need to stop at that service station, get out and fuel up, and I find this time of the year is the best time to do that but hey, the lessons I’m sharing can apply at any time, so if you’re listening in the middle of April it’s all good!
If you’re like me, you may be spending this time away from work, and getting your brain all charged up and inspired by burning through podcast episodes and books. At the same time last year, 31 Dec 2017, I did a lot of work to set my 2018 up, and all I want to do on today’s episode is to share some of the cool tools, processes I used to do that, and really highlight some key podcasts and books that have helped me, and you may resonate with too!
I’m really excited to make it the best year ever. If you work through this process, I’d love to hear how you go! Shoot me a DM on Instagram @leannehughes and tell me one of your goals, or simply one thing you learnt from this episode that you may use in future.
In this episode you’ll learn:
The tools I use to reflect on my year and how you can use these when you work on your projects for 2019
The questions I ask to recognise what I can build on in 2019
How to set up your theme of the year (and how this plays out in setting criteria for what to say yes/no)
Why you need to spend more time defining the right questions
Resources mentioned in this episode:
First Time Facilitator events
2019: The year you launch your podcast. Join me on a one day workshop where I’ll take you through the steps by launch your podcast from scratch! It’s on Sunday 13 January in Brisbane
50th episode meetup: Friday 18 January in Brisbane (email me if interested, hello@firsttimefacilitator.com
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Episode 46: Learning is not a stand-alone event with Kerry Brocks
Happy Christmas eve to all of you, and I hope you are taking the time to relax with family and friend’s and also recharging for a big 2019.
Happy Christmas eve to all of you, and I hope you are taking the time to relax with family and friend’s and also recharging for a big 2019.
Today’s guest is Kerry Brocks, and she is the CEO and Founder of the Institute for Learning Professionals. We met up over a coffee in Brisbane around May this year, and I remember our infectious conversation. We could not stop talking about the struggles that facilitators have, and how it’s so important to support the community of learning professionals, so that we stamp out boring and stifling workshops forever.
I walked back to the office after meeting with Kerry feeling super excited to know that we’re on the same war-path. I invited her on the show to share with you her experiences as a facilitator, and the great work she’s doing for facilitators through the Institute for Learning Professionals.
About Kerry Brocks
Kerry is the Chief Executive Officer & Founder of the Institute for Learning Professionals (ILP). She strongly believes in actively involving participants to develop skills and knowledge, keeping them focused, interested and willing to learn in an interactive and highly productive workshop environment. The ILP offers a range of blended learning programs and qualifications based on the latest research and techniques.
Kerry has worked in various management training positions over the past 12 years, including Education and Development Manager for the Australian Institute of Management (Qld and NT), National Learning and Development Manager for BDO Kendalls Chartered Accountants, and as the Network Training Manager for Metway Bank (Qld, NSW and Vic). She has vast experience in designing, developing and conducting training initiatives across a range of industries and for all levels of staff.
Resources mentioned in this episode
What's on in First Time Facilitator land?
We are 3 episodes away from releasing the half century of First Time Facilitator episodes and I’ll be celebrating by hosting a meeting up in Brisbane on Friday 18 January. If you want to join in, shoot me an email hello@firsttimefacilitator.com or a DM in Instagram @firsttimefacilitator.
Want to start a podcast? Come along to my workshop in Brisbane on 13 January: 2019: The Year you launch your podcast.
Finally, if you want to connect with listeners following the show, join our community on Facebook it’s called ‘The Flipchart’. Once you’re in, please introduce yourself, where you’re from!
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Episode transcript with Julian Treasure
Here's a transcript of my First Time Facilitator conversation with Julian Treasure.
Here's a transcript of my First Time Facilitator conversation with Julian Treasure.
Leanne: I would like to welcome to the First-Time Facilitator Podcast, a guest who was spoken on the TED stage five times. But look! This is his first appearance on this show. So thank you for joining us today, Julian Treasure.
Julian: Well, thank you Leanne. It's my pleasure to be here.
Leanne: It's great to hear your voice. I feel like I know you because I've watched all your videos. Your voice definitely resonates with me and I think it's what makes your speech is so powerful. I always like finding out from our guest what kind of career pivots led them to the role that they're in. So you're now a world expert in communication, in listening and speaking. How did you get to this stage in your career?
Julian: I think probably I'd say there were two pivots. I started out in advertising sales. Well, actually media buying originally in the early ‘80s and advertising sales in computer magazines. And I launched my own company in ‘88 and that went for 15 years it became very successful. It was a contract publishing company in the UK producing customer magazines for brands such as Microsoft, Orange, Apple, Lexus, Toyota and so forth. So global magazines for their customers which is a huge industry now. It wasn't when we started but it is now the biggest part of magazine publishing actually. So it's “branded content”, that's the word for this kind of thing now. High-value content produced by brands or produced on behalf of brands to engage their customers without they're just going over and over again on their basic sales message. I sold that business in 2002- 2003 and that was the first pivot.
All the way through that I've been a musician all my life and all the way through that I was playing gigs in the evenings and listening to the world. Musicians listen to the world in a slightly different way. To know musicians I think that's not to say they're better. But if you're a musician, you have to listen in a multitrack way. If you're playing in a band or an orchestra, you can't be a good musician if you're not listening to everybody else at the same time. You need to respond to everybody. So you develop this kind of multitrack very sensitive listening and I was going around listening to the world like I was thinking the world doesn't sound very good and then they occurred to me that most of the noise around us is made by organizations and by brands indeed.
So with my experience of dealing with brands and helping them to serve customers better, to engage customers. It wasn't a huge step to think, “Hmmm. I wonder if there's a business here helping brands to ask and answer the question, ‘How does my brand sounds?’” So I started researching that and found that there was basically very little of that going on and I formed the company called the Sound Agency with precisely that message. The idea was good sound is good business and that was a theory then and it's now a well-proven thing. There are now hundreds of audio branding companies around the world operating in pretty much every market you can think of and it's become almost the rigor to think about your brand in all five senses not just one.
When we started, it was almost all a marketing money was spent on the eyes, very little on the ears. So the sound agency has helped, brands all over the world to become conscious about the sound they're making and that has been a good thing. We've improved the sound and lots of shopping malls and airports and so forth. Lots of it by removing mindless music actually. People always think, “Oh, you do background music?” No. Actually we do a lot of removing that because very often that's inappropriately chosen or badly played in bad quality or just an irritating noise and I speak there is a musician.
Now, the second pivot I think was along mat journey of helping brands to become conscious that the sound they make affects people. It occurred to me that, “Well, hang on. This isn't just about brands, it's about people.” and so my TED Talks which started with the one about how sound affects us moved into how sound is being created by individuals and consumed by individuals. So we have responsibility for the sound we make as people and the sound we consume as people and that is about speaking and listening primarily.
So I did a TED talk about the health effects of sound and then one about conscious listening which probably to me is still the most important one and then followed through with one on how sound in different spaces is badly designed, how architects designed for the eyes not for the ears and that affects us in places like schools and hospitals and offices and hotels and all sorts of different environments.
And then, finally the TED talk that went completely ballistic is the one about how to speak powerfully. So it's called How to speak so that people want to listen and that one's now in the top ten of all time and I can't believe it. But the interesting thing is that TED talk has got something like six times as many views as the one on listening.
Leanne: Yes. I actually had written down a stat and I was going to say is that the problem with our society right now. For the batch that start right there is that more people are interested in the one about speaking.
Julian: Yes. I mean, this is the old adage. You have two ears and one mouth.
Leanne: Yes. [laughs]
Julian: You should be listening twice as much as you speak but most of us have that round the wrong way. We're very focused and I should say not just individuals but also organizations. We're massively focused on outbound communication. So speaking overrides listening almost every time. We like sending. That's true of what I call a personal broadcasting using the tools that we've now got on social media to be tweeting. You know tweeting- “I'm on a train.” Who cares, really?
Leanne: Yes. [laughs]
Julian: But we have this fantasy that there are thousands of people out there hanging on our every thought and movement which is of course not true but we like the idea of broadcasting. It makes us feel more important. And speaking I think, I mean speaking is incredibly important and it forms the core of my book How to be heard and that indeed the whole book's title is for people who struggle to be heard in life which is an awful lot of people.
Nevertheless, you can't be a good speaker if you don't learn first to be a good listener. So that is also in the book and really at the core of my work is this theory that speaking and listening are in a circular relationship. That's true for organizations which are terrible at listening generally and put all their effort into broadcasting their message and it's true for each of us as an individual as well.
Leanne: Actually, I really-- that whole thing about how to be a good speaker is it's important to be a good listener where I really sort of seen this play out actually it was on the weekend. I was at a conference and I was watching the emcee the master of ceremony and after every speech he just come on and to say thanks for the speech and then move on and he didn't really acknowledge what the previous person had spoken about and I feel like that was a really lost opportunity because I just don't have a sense that he was listening to their content. It was more about, “Thanks for that. Now we're going to move on.” and I think the real value that great emcees have- Have you done some emcee work as well?
Julian: Yes. I have over the years done some of that.
Leanne: Yeah.
Julian: And you always want to reflect off what somebody said to give it continuity and sew the whole thing together otherwise it becomes just lumps of content and unfortunately, I mean that's a kind of listening or a kind of communication which you would call faux listening or I call it “speech writing” where you're not really listening to that person at all. You're preparing your next brilliant piece of dialogue and it's all about what you're going to say, not what somebody else is going to say. So that might be the kind of person who would in conversation be doing a lot of “Anyway!” and overriding the whole thing you were just saying and moving on to what they want to talk about which is a disconnect. It is also, it's demeaning to the other person. It leaves them feeling not appreciated.
Leanne: A hundred percent. I also want to go back to “Look there! I've done it.” But I'm going back to one of your earlier points about being a drummer in a band and how it really, you really tuned into all the different sounds. And I was listening to your Ted speech about listening and how you said listening in mixer mode is so you're actually paying attention to everything that's going around you. So I woke up this morning and I was tuning into the birds, my dog was outside I was hearing him breathing, I was breathing and you're like, it's really interesting because you can go through life without acknowledging any of those sounds just the ones that drew your attention at the time, the beep of a phone or whatever. Today that you felt very present. Well, I did. I did this morning. It's a really cool, cool tool.
Julian: Yeah. Well, listening is a skill, that's the whole thing. So you can improve any skill and we take it for granted. We teach reading and writing frantically in schools. It's a scandal of a child leaves school unable to read or write. We do not teach speaking and listening or if we speak teach-speaking tool, it's minimal. We certainly don't teach listening skills which is tragic because it's our primal form of communication. It's so much more powerful than reading and writing to be direct, to be there with your voice in the world.
You can convey so much more emotion. It's a much more influential form of communication if you're going to lead people or in the case of this conversation train people. It really behoves you to take on that you're playing an instrument here. We're all playing this amazing instrument- the voice and you need to train that and just at the same time, we're doing a thing which is called listening. It's not a passive activity, it's not like hearing. You don't have to do anything to hear stuff, you hear everything. Listening by contrast is a skill. It's a two-stage skill. You select stuff to pay attention to and then you make it mean something.
So my definition of listening is making meaning from sound and that colours your whole perception of existence. I mean as you said, you paid attention to some things this morning that you had never really paid attention to before or generally didn't and we can do that anytime. We can change the searchlight of our listening, focus on different things. So that would give us a different reality because we're then associated with different things going on around us and they affect us in different ways and of course we are able to direct the meaning making.
We can challenge the meanings that we associate with various sounds. So it is a conscious process, it's a skill that can be improved by practice and that exercise I gave in that TED talk is a good way of starting that process of improving listening. And the better we make our listening, the more we understand other people and the more powerfully we can speak to them.
Leanne: Yeah and actually that's the reason why side of this podcast is there's a lot of podcasts out there that really focus on public speaking and giving great keynotes and being a great presenter. But I believe that facilitation, it's really harnessing what's going on in the room which is then listening, linking that back to stuff that's been spoken about to the content. You've got to be really flexible but it's actually really exhausting too because you have to pay attention and doing that extra listening. At the end of a day it's quite tiring.
Julian: I think it is, you're right and it's worth it because what you get is a much better result at the end of the day. For everybody, it's more satisfying. It does get better with practice I would say. I mean, in the book and I didn't have time to do this in the TED talk, actually. But in the book I distinguish three different kinds of listening and the one we're talking about is really important. I call it “created listening” and that is around the concept that you always speak into a listening.
So if you've got a room full of people, all of those people have got unique listenings. Every one of us has a unique listening. Your listening is different from mine because we listen through a set of filters and those filters are different for each individual. That's the culture you're brought into, the language you speak, the values, attitudes, beliefs that you create along the way from parents and teachers and role models and friends and so forth. The emotions and intentions and expectations with which we go into any conversation or situation, all of these things affect the way that we listen at this moment in this situation.
So you have a room full of people with that going on. The important question to ask yourself is, “What's the listening I'm speaking into?” and just by asking that question, you will become more and more practiced at spotting it and it becomes an automatic process eventually. So whether I walk on stage and I'm speaking to a thousand people or I'm in a one-to-one or talking to a small group, the question is always “What's the listening?” That's the first question- “What's the listening?” and as soon as you spot it or you get a feeling for it, you can start to speak in a way that's more appropriate. The listening might be if it's after lunch and you've had a good lunch and everybody's had a good morning. The listening will be a bit sleepy because everybody's blood will be in their gat and they'll be feeling that little after lunch feeling. So you have to perhaps up your game a little bit there and be more dynamic. I often get to speak in that spot they think, “Oh, he's a good speaker. He'll wake them up off the loads.”
Leanne: Yeah, what the top crowds want.
Julian: Yeah. So I always get that. Or it might be early in the morning and they don't know what to expect and they've come here and they're not they're a little bit confused and trepidatious and you might want to be very reassuring at that point in calm and helpful and interactive. So speaking into the right listening is really important and makes your speaking much more appropriate. So the question to ask always: “What's the listening I was speaking into?”
Leanne: Excellent question. When you said, “What do you spot? or how do you feel?” I think that's- So you’re looking at sort of body language or if you said a joke that everyone sort of laughed at and there's a connection point which now you then can everyone's feeling more relaxed. Is it that sort of stuff? It's just the dynamics of what’s going on.
Julian: It maybe.
Leanne: Yes. A responses.
Julian: I think- you know I've always said- I said in the book again, I'm not quite sure how this works, I mean. Because there are so many factors involved and it may be little body language signals that you pick up sort of unconsciously. You know consciously you can spot certain things if everybody's leaving back and supporting their heads and eyelids are drooping you that's pretty clear. If by contrast people are leaning forward and looking bright and alert and you've got some smiles then that's all good. So you can certainly see some obvious things but I'm sure there's a lot more going on at a micro level and with the whole science and micro facial expressions and things like that.
We spot an awful lot maybe pheromones I don't know. A whole panoply of sensory input which is going in and probably at subconscious level giving us a feeling for the listening we're speaking into. The important thing it's not to get hooked up in what's the process it's to ask question because just by asking the question, you're training your consciousness in that way, you become sensitized to it. Doesn’t matter how it works you will be good at it I promise and it makes life an awful lot easier.
You can, as you suggested, you can test the water with a joke or with something and see how it goes down you may be there's a little litmus test or a listening ohmmeter phrase that you can use the same way every day and see how it goes down and give you some sort of calibration. I don't do that I just ask the question. So whatever works really for anybody as long as you get in there and ask the question at beginning of every important conversation, it will really help to speak more powerfully into that listening.
Leanne: That's wonderful. What you've talked about in terms of paying attention and you're not too sure whether it is the body language or the pheromones or something going on but I really like that. Earlier this year, I was asked to travel to Indonesia for my day job. I'd helped write a program for our leaders over there but it was being delivered in Bahasa Indonesian which I don't speak and so I was just questioning I said, “Well, what's the value of me going over there?” I'm going to observe this facilitator running a Leadership Program in another language surely I can't critique the course that way. And the guy that runs the operation over there said, “Oh, you'll figure it out.” and so I sat there for a couple of days in the course and he was absolutely right. So I knew when we need to switch the content, put an activity in. I didn't know a word of Indonesian but it was just really interesting how I could pick up on all the energy in the room and what we needed to fix without even understanding the words.
Julian: Yeah. I think much of this is universal. Of course some of it is cultural and we have to be culturally sensitive anytime we're speaking. I've given business presentations in cultures where it's perfectly okay to be doing your email around the table while somebody's talking.
Leanne: Oh, I had that.
Julian: Yeah. Well I don't like it and in the UK that would be considered extremely rude. But there are places I've been in the world where it's the norm and if that's their norm, there's no point you know thumping the table and saying, “Excuse me! Are you listening to me?” and getting all self-righteous because it would just offend and you wouldn't end up with the outcome that you want. So obviously one can try to be as engaging as possible but there are cultural differences which require some sensitivity. Nevertheless, a lot of it is universal. I think a lot of human body language is universal and I think we can pretty much spot when somebody's engaged or not engaged in any culture in the world.
Leanne: Yeah, I agree. Now, we're talking about listening but I'd like to transition and talk about using your voice and speaking as well and particularly talk about the case of credibility. So a lot of first time facilitators struggle with a bit of confidence because I may not believe that they're the right person to be stepping up in training or facilitating a topic. They may be a subject-matter expert but credibility can be shown in many other ways. And in your speech you mentioned that we vote for politicians that have lower voices because it gives us a sense of authority. What then can we do as facilitators to own our voice more? If we don't have a strong voice, can we change that? Or are we doomed to just sort of have a voice that doesn't convey that kind of authority that we’re really after?
Julian: Yes. Again, I think consciousness is vitally important. So in the talk about talking, I speak about having a vocal toolbox. We all have this vocal toolbox and it's really important to become conscious that that's there and there are things you can rummage around in and deploy consciously which will change the way that you received and changed the power of your speaking. First of all is what you say and there's a huge amount in my book about designing great content. I mean, that is really important.
I talked to Chris Anderson, the curator of TED for the book and I asked Chris, I've known him for a long time and he's seen thousands of TED talks now. So the question I asked him was, “Which do you think is more important, great content or great delivery?” and he said, “Well, they're both equally important, really. But if I had to choose one it would be the content. I'd rather see somebody delivering earth-shattering content in an amateurish way than see somebody delivering banal nonsense in a highly slick and professional way because the latter one that's just actually annoying.”
Leanne: Yup.
Julian: I think that's really important. So get your content right is the first secret to engaging people making sure your content is for the right listening and it's going to engage them. There's a big idea. You know the flow of it, you know there's a story, there's an arc you're taking them through in the day and it's just not just an endless repetition or an endless procession of fact after fact or thing after thing. Content is vital. Then, you've got how you say it and the voices I said earlier is this amazing instrument. Mine is slightly compromised at the moment you probably hear I have a slight cold right now here in Oakley which is a long way North from where you're speaking.
Leanne: Yup.
Julian: So it's winter here and I have a slight cold. While I work around that, I have to become conscious of my voice all the time. I do vocal warm up exercises before important conversations to give my voice the best chants and I'm conscious of the vocal toolbox. And that includes all sorts of things starts with things that you might not guess perhaps which are things like stance. You know standing in the right way is really important. Getting your vocal cords relaxed and vertical is a key. Many people will stress their vocal cords.
If I leave my head forward you can hear my voice change or if I push my head back you can hear my voice change. That's because I'm compressing or expanding my vocal cords and they can't work so well in that situation. It's amazing how many of us will do a phone call leaning forward and that changes your voice like that, so stance is important. There's a kind of neutral position I would say which is a very good base. I'm not saying stay there all the time but feet roughly shoulder width apart, slightly narrower for females and everything vertically stacked above.
I always imagine there's a string in the top of my head that I'm suspended from and that gets your shoulders back and down and you feel nice and relaxed and I imagine roots from my feet going into the ground. So I feel rooted and yet supported and relaxed and it's all vertical and it all looks good. Hands loose by the sides that is a fantastic position to speak from. No jiggling, no physical tics of walking around and around on the spot or leading to one side than the other. These things are distracting. If you do them all day, they'll drive people nuts like a dripping tap. So that's- you can video yourself and spot any of those little things.
Stance very important; breath crucial. If you're going to be a good talker, learn to breathe. There are lots of breathing exercises. You can do them in yoga or you can simply Google breathing exercises and take on breathing because your voice is just breath. Breath is the fuel for the voice and without being able to breathe it's very difficult. Most of us breathe like a bird, little tiny breaths to the top of our lungs. We don't take many big deep breaths in the day and it's really important to do that.
Then we've got some of the more fine and really important aspects of voice like for example register. There are four registers of the human voice and the one we would want to use in speaking as modal which can move from the head to the neck or throat down into the chest. I strongly advise anybody who speaks for a living to practice chest voice. You can do that with visualizations, again, you'll find lots of stuff online or go work with a vocal coach.
You can just google voice coach or speaking coach or drama coach or singing coach. Find somebody near you and work. Go and check out some- find somebody you have good chemistry with and then do a set of sessions to learn how to use your diaphragm, how to breathe, how to speak from the chest. This is a much bigger resonator.
So if I take my voice up to my throat which is where most people speak from all the time it's a much lighter feeling and as soon as I move down into my chest the voice has added depth. It's where I habitually speak from these days, not everybody does many people don't actually. There’s a lot of people strangled.
Leanne: Yeah, I’m very jealous.
Julian: Just practice. It's practice- practice-practice. You simply need to be breathing and using the diaphragm. It's a physical thing like learning how to swim or how to ride a bike. So this can all be learned and as you learn it, you give your voice extra authority because you're right. Yes we do prefer in terms of tambour and pitch, we prefer deeper voices, we prefer voices which are described in the way you would describe a hot chocolate, smooth, dark, rich, warm, sweet, all of those words are good for voices.
So you can work at these things, again, with a vocal coach or simply on your own. Recording yourself is a very good idea. We don't like doing that very much because we all listen to our own voice largely through bone conduction. So it comes through the bones of the skull not much of it comes out of your mouth and round the corner into your ears. So when you hear your voice recorded you go, “That's not me. I'm much deeper than that.”
Leanne: Yes, yes. [laughs]
Julian: But you're not. Actually, what's going out into the world is what you hear on the recording. So it's very important to record yourself and practice speaking in ways that you feel give you extra extra authority that usually means a bit of depth and that's where practicing the chest voice is really really important. And then then we've got two other incredibly important things about the voice. There is pace and there is prosody or prosody as I like to say it. Pace is something that a lot of people aren't conscious of when they're speaking.
If you're doing a whole day facilitating something with a group of people, if you maintain the same even pace throughout the entire day they will start to glaze over because we get habituated to sounds and that the habitual cadences of somebody's voice speaking the same way over and over again, saying the same thing over and over again becomes a little bit boring. It's a slightly tedious and we start to glaze over and so really becoming conscious of habitual cadences and of pace is crucial.
You can go really really fast and get people suddenly, “Oh, hello. There's something really exciting.” or you can slow right down to make a point and to the point where you also need to get to be friends with silence. There's nothing wrong with bit of silence. People don't like it in radio and equally on podcast.
If I’m silent for 10 seconds then people would start thinking, “Oh, I lost it. What happened? Did it stop?” So dead air on radio is kind of anathema. But if you're in front of people they can see that you haven't disappeared and I've played with this. You can be silent for the longest time really up to ten seconds right comfortably.
Leanne: Wow.
Julian: And people would just sit there smiling at you and going, “Well, something's going to happen in a minute.” It gives you- if you do this it positions you as a master. You know you are in control. You're comfortable with just being with the other people. You don't have to fill every second with babble and arms and ears. The moment you become comfortable with silence, it gets rid of all that stuff and it's a very very powerful friend to have. So that's pace. Varying the pace is crucial and the other varying that we do in speaking generally is prosody which is the up and down, the sing song of speech. It's how we communicate emotion, how we emphasize certain words and it's also how we break our talking up into discrete chunks. Typically we go down at the end of a sentence, like that. Now, your country has been partly responsible for creating an intonation.
Leanne: I was going to say with you the other way. Yeah.
Julian: Yeah. Which is called high rising terminal, where everything said is a question, even if it isn't a question. Now, that is something to avoid I would say in training particularly, in facilitating, in public speaking because there's a hidden question in that uplift at the end which is kind of, “Is that okay with you?” So it's a kind of questioning intonation and in fact it was originally called Australian questioning intonation or it's otherwise known as high rising terminal. It's in America as well very much on the West Coast and it's really flowed from the American content machine in Hollywood to affect many people particularly younger people around the world who speak like this a lot?
Leanne: Yes, yes.
Julian: So I would tend to avoid that one if you're going to be a professional speaker and remember that it's clear. When you finish a sentence, you go down and that's confident and it shows everybody it's the end. There's no question there, there's no it goes down, “Is that okay with you now. Can I go onto this?”
Leanne: Yeah. You sort of seeking permission, aren’t you?
Julian: Yeah, it's a little bit querulous and it is a little bit less powerful. It's also repetitive and I would avoid repetitive things. And the other, I'm assuming we're talking globally here but I mean, I will say another Australian habit I come across a great deal is “look” at the beginning of every sentence. So, “What's your name?” “Look, I'm John.” Well, that is, it's a verbal tic and if you put a verbal tic- The other big one that is much more common around the world is the word “so” which should mean this then that is a logical sequence this-so-that. Nevertheless, “You get a lot of what you do for a living.” “So I work for-” No, that didn't follow from my question, actually.
And I say in training people on my conversational little acronym the tool RASA Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask which is a wonderful way to flow conversation. The summarizing is “so”. And I want to reclaim the power of the word “so” from this abuse it's getting all around the world. Because if you have a “so” person in the meeting, “So what we've all agreed is this, now we can move on to that.” or it's a great way of closing doors along the corridor of your facilitation or conversation, “So we've got that. Now we can move on to the next thing.”
If you summarize each time, it's good for people's memory and it gets everybody to a nice state where they say, “Yup, that’s finished. Now, it's fresh approach, move on to that. So it's a very powerful little word. And then were going back briefly to prosody, using it, again, culturally-sensitively is important but using it is the most important thing of all. If you have again a voice that's rather monotonous and doesn't go up and down very much and I speak like this for the whole day. It's going to get extremely tedious for people and they really will switch off because they'll get- Monotonous comes from mono tone- one note.
So it's really important with any kind of conversation and particularly if you're standing in front of a group of people, it's very important to use prosody in order to get your points across. So you've got these wonderful tools. You can go loud, you can go soft and whisper, you can go fast and gobble or you can slow right down to the point where you just go silent.
Leanne: Very effective. So it's really about contrast isn't it?
Julian: It is.
Leanne: To get that attention.
Julian: Yeah.
Leanne: I'm on the concept of pace. This is one that's really sort of hits home for me because I talk very quickly. I’m very mindful of it though when I do facilitate especially in other countries because the Australian accents difficult for one thing and then my pace is another thing. What kind of tools or strategies can you use or is it just being mindful and aware that it's okay to talk fast when I want to emphasize a point but to just to change the pace, to change the pitch, to think of everything to make the communication more effective or are there particular tools to kind of slow down your brain so that it doesn't come out of your mouth as quickly?
Julian: Sometimes pace is about nerves and the more you speak the less nervous you will be. It's like any activity. Also, breathing is very important. I would say to interrupters which is a particular habit that can be very destructive in conversation. A great tool for interruptus is simply to take a deep breath every time they're about to speak because that takes a second or two and you might just realize the other person is still speaking while you're taking that deep breath and that is incredibly important on stage as well taking deep breaths. That gives you a chance to slow down again and reset and recalibrate.
Consciousness is the key to everything. Becoming conscious of what you're doing, how you're standing, the gestures you're using, the pace at which you're speaking, asking the question all the time, “How's my listening? What's the listening?” Because if you're really going fast and people are sort of starting to lean back and, “Whoa! What's going on here?” You can feel that in the room. It's a lovely exercise to deliberately slow yourself down really to what you feel is a grinding low gear and just get the feeling that actually works.
A lot of this is about practice I mean, like when I'm training people in speaking, we do a lot of range extension with volume, with prosody, with pitch and with pace as well to get people to realize they can go way further than they think. You know our natural range tends to be a tiny little band in the spectrum and going from really really really slow to incredibly fast and really really babbling. There's a huge spectrum there and the natural pace that you tend to move in will be a very small part of that.
So it's great to expand it to practice, expanding your spectrum so you can start to use more variety in the speaking. Record yourself, video yourself, have people video you when you're actually performing or in front of people, record those sessions. You can get a little zoom digital recorder or something like that for next to nothing and just set it up next to you. Nobody will see it and press record before you start and then you can listen back afterwards. That kind of feedback is absolutely crucial in helping you improve what you're doing and becoming more and more conscious of the tools that you're using and how you're using them.
Leanne: And that was probably the biggest lesson for me when I started the podcast was having to listen back to the first few interviews and thinking, “What the hell?” So I think I'm still guilty of talking from my throat and I know that not only because of the sound of my voice but at the end of a big day of meetings, my voice will just be in a world of pain especially if I've not been as listening as much as I should have.
Just to finish off, I want to- your speech the one with 31 million views, you do that vocal warm-up exercise in front of all those people in the TED Conference and that's something that video I show it in a lot of the workshops that I run with presentation skills. I even use some of those vocal tools to warm-up myself in the morning and also the people who are good in the room.
Julian: Very good.
Leanne: And it's just super fun especially the first one where you sort of just sigh. That's actually very relaxing that first move. That video was published a few years ago. Have you got any other kind of are vocal warm-ups in your toolkit now? Was it just remain the same?
Julian: No, I've stayed the same actually. I use exactly those ones before I go onstage and speak anywhere. So I use them before this conversation, I use them every conversation. I find that those do it for me. That's not to say that they are the pinnacle of vocal warm-ups. There are lots of famous voice coaches who've worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and people like Cicely Berry and so forth. You have books full of vocal warm-ups. It depends what you want to do really.
If you're an actor and you're going to be reading Shakespeare, you need different things. There are specific tools for doing stuff with your lips and your tongue and your mouth and your embouchure and so forth which she has which that’s a different world altogether. You know actors have to be able to whisper onstage, you can hear them right at the back of the theatre. What we don't need to get quite to that level. So I find- I kind of culled those out of looking at what everybody used and I find those fast, easy to remember, fun to do and very effective in readying all the bits of the equipment that I need. So now I haven't changed it over the years. I've stayed with those ones for those very reasons really.
Leanne: Awesome. Well, isn't that cool that we both use the same warm-up routine for this podcast.
Julian: Absolutely. Yes, indeed. There you go and that's how it works. And in relation to speaking from the throat I mean, I would say the same to you, Leanne as I would say to anybody which is find a vocal coach and just work on that because if your throat gets stressed, I mean, I can't shout very loudly. I'm not allowed shouter. There some people can shout enormously loudly from their chest. If I go to a rugby match and I probably can't speak very much the next day. So I have the same thing-
Leanne: Especially if you’re an England supporter. Haha.
Julian: Yeah. Haha. Yes. Well, we won't talk about rugby right now. But if I'm speaking, I can speak all day quite comfortably because I've found a way of keeping my vocal chords quite relaxed when I'm on stage. So I can certainly do that without feeling stressed and if that is happening to you, to anybody listening to this then a vocal coach can really help with that because it's really about that diaphragm and that breathing and getting it into the chest and letting your vocal cords kind of float on top of it.
Obviously all the sound really comes from there but they can be much more relaxed than they perhaps are at the moment so I do recommend that. There are some wonderful people out there working and they know that science of this extremely well.
Leanne: Will look into that for the next year. I actually used to play the tuba when I was younger so my breathing was excellent but it sounds much more shallower now. So I would definitely work on that in the new year. Julian, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Your TED speech, it's in the top 10 of TED as you mentioned but for me, it's my favourite TED speech. It's one-
Julian: Thank you.
Leanne: I think I joke to your friend, your assistant that out of the 31 million views, I think I've read it about 29 million times of those.
Julian: Hahaha. Fantastic.
Leanne: It's been so helpful and practical. So thank you so much for all the work that you do.
Julian: My pleasure.
Leanne: If people want to connect with you or find out more about your book in your online courses and watch all your videos, where should we send them?
Julian: Juliantreasure.com would be a good place and that has links to all of that and the book is called How to be heard and it contains everything we've just talked about and awful lot more I tried to pour everything I've learned for years and years about speaking and listening into it. So it's full of exercises and pretty practical. I'm very proud of it actually, so I do recommend it to anybody.
Leanne: Congratulations and thanks again. It's been great having you on the show.
Julian: Thanks, Leanne. My pleasure.
Episode 45: One question you need to ask before you take the stage with Julian Treasure
In today’s episode, I talk to Julian Treasure. Julian is a sought-after and top-rated international sound and communication expert. He is a gripping speaker with 5 TED talks online which have been viewed around 40 million times. Julian travels the world training people to listen better and create healthier sound. His vision is to transform the world by inspiring people to listen consciously and speak powerfully.
In today’s episode, I talk to Julian Treasure. Julian is a sought-after and top-rated international sound and communication expert. He is a gripping speaker with 5 TED talks online which have been viewed around 40 million times. Julian travels the world training people to listen better and create healthier sound. His vision is to transform the world by inspiring people to listen consciously and speak powerfully.
Julian’s speech ‘How to speak so people want to listen’ is my favourite TED speech. It’s also in the top-10 of most watched TED speeches of all time, with over 31 million views, that’s insane. I found his speech when I was running a presentation skills workshop for a local shire in Western Australia about 5 years ago, and ever since then, I’ve incorporated his speech into other workshops I’ve delivered on public speaking and being an effective communicator. Even in Mongolia a couple weeks ago, I used the vocal warm-up that Julian uses in his speech, as the icebreaker on the second day of the workshop!
However, when I was doing more research on Julian’s work, I also realised the emphasis that he puts on listening. Not hearing, but listening. We spend a good chunk of this conversation discussing how to do that effectively.
He believes that listening is the doorway to understanding and powerful speaking liberates us to make a difference and be known for who we are.
In this episode you’ll learn:
The one key question you need to ask yourself before taking a stage, or facilitating a workshop
The significance of Conscious Listening
How stance and posture affects your voice when delivering a speech
Tips and tricks on breathing and voice exercises
Aspects of voice: pace, pitch, timbre & prosody
Strategies on how to control the pace of your voice
About our guest
Julian Treasure is an expert on sound who uses his fascinating insights to advise businesses how to optimise their environments for sound. He is author of the books How to be Heard and Sound Business. He is also the founder of The Sound Agency. The audio-branding company asks and answers the question “How does your brand sound?” The Sound Agency work with some of the world’s biggest brands to improve their sound.
Julian Treasure’s five TED talks have been watched more than 40 million times. His latest, How to speak so that people want to listen, is in the top 10 TED talks of all time. Julian is regularly featured in the world’s media, including TIME Magazine, The Times, The Economist and the BBC.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
First Time Facilitator events
2019: The year you launch your podcast. Join me on a one day workshop where I'll take you through the steps by launch your podcast from scratch! It's on Sunday 13 January in Brisbane
50th episode meetup: Friday 18 January in Brisbane (email me if interested, hello@firsttimefacilitator.com
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Quotes of the show:
“You can't be a good speaker if you don't learn first to be a good listener.”
“My definition of listening is making meaning from sound and that colours your whole perception of existence.”
“The better we make our listening; the more we understand other people and the more powerfully we can speak to them.”
“Consciousness is the key to everything. Becoming conscious of what you're doing, how you're standing, the gestures you're using, the pace at which you're speaking.”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Julian Treasure.
Episode 44: Creating rewarding workshop experiences: How to apply the SCARF model into your facilitation work
I recently co-facilitated a leadership course for mid-level leaders and as part of that, explained the SCARF mode. This is a brain based model created by David Rock in 2008; a summary of important discoveries from neuroscience about the way people interact socially.
I recently co-facilitated a leadership course for mid-level leaders and as part of that, explained the SCARF mode. This is a brain based model created by David Rock in 2008; a summary of important discoveries from neuroscience about the way people interact socially.
Rock combines all the research and makes it easy for people that aren’t brain scientists, to use the research to determine why we behave in certain ways at certain times.
I thought the application of SCARF could be tremendously beneficial in our role as facilitations. In this episode, I share my thoughts on what we can do, in our role as a facilitators to reduce the threat response for participants in our workshops, and optimise their rewards response.
Here are a couple of updates in the First Time Facilitator world:
I’ll be celebrating my 50th episode which is released on 21 January. If you’d like to meetup and celebrate, I’m going to host an event or some nibbles and drinks in Brisbane on Friday 18 January, probably sundowners around 5pm. Comment below, or email me if you'd like to be on the invite list.
I have a few people asking me about how to start a podcast, so I’m going to run a workshop in Brisbane in early January too, most likely Sunday 13 January. If you’re keen on that, shoot me an email - hello@firsttimefacilitator.com
On this episode, you'll learn:
The three underpinning themes of the SCARF model
Strategies on how you can apply SCARF to create rewarding workshop experiences for your participants and how you can apply this to create a safe workshop environment
Facilitator hacks on how to reduce the threat response of your participants
Resources mentioned in this episode
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Tweet Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Episode 43: No artistry required: Rediscovering paper, pencils and markers with Matteo Becchi
If you’ve ever wondered how to make communication in meetings easier, and what x-factor tools can help you bring a conference together and really support your skills in facilitation, then you’ll love hearing from today’s guest.His name is Matteo Becchi and he’s based in Washington DC. He was recommended by Aminata N’Doye, one of the original listeners of this podcast who’s based in Canada. She met Matteo when he was the chair for the 2018 OD Network conference. He discovered visual facilitation and graphic recording four years ago and uses it for strategic planning meetings with clients and to move them to where they need to go next.In this conversation, we talk about what drew him to visuals and how he likens drawing to simply learning another language. Matteo also explains how he got more confidence to draw in front of others, and how he decides what to draw (and also what to leave out) when drawing live at a conference. He also explains his preparation a month, a week and a day leading into a big event.
Connect with Matteo Becchi
Email Matteo - matteo.becchi@theclearing.com
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Tweet Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Episode 42: Edutainment: How to combine knowledge, wit and interaction in your presentations with Dave Jackson
In this episode, I chat to 2018 Podcast Hall of Fame inductee, Dave Jackson. He’s been podcasting since April 2005, and has been the host of nearly a dozen different podcasts over the last decade.Most people chat to Dave about creating or improving their podcast but I wanted to focus on the fact that he’s been a technical trainer for over 20 years. I also like how he says in his bio that this means that he not only understands technology, but he can explain it in a plain English “geek-speak free” environment.We explore why it’s important to get out of your comfort zone, how Dave has brought his experience playing on bands on stages into the way he presents, what he does to make his presentations more engaging, how he handles his nerves before he presents, and why he is so damn funny.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How having water-cooler type conversations lead him down a new career path
Why it’s important to attend conferences and meet your target market
How he mixes education and entertainment to help make learning stick
How he prepares to speak at conferences
Why it’s important to challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone
Why it’s important to tailor your content and use analogies that fit your audience
About our guest: Dave Jackson
Dave is not only an award-winning podcaster, but he’s a podcasting consultant, teacher, and the founder of the School of Podcasting. A corporate trainer for more than 20+ years, Dave has a Bachelor's Degree in Education and was one of the early early early adopters of podcasting. Starting back in the primordial mist of 2005, Dave began the School of Podcasting, a podcast to teach other people how to podcast.Dave’s show has been described by many as the most entertaining and unique of all the “Podcast About Podcasting” offerings out there. Dave is a master at “edutainment” and has been using analogies to quickly help people understand the nuances of podcasting for over a decade. He has that rare ability to explain complicated concepts and processes in an easy to comprehend way.
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Episode transcript
Episode transcript with Dave Jackson
Here's a transcript of the First Time Facilitator interview with Dave Jackson.
Prefer listening? Click here to listen to my conversation with Dave Jackson.
Leanne: Dave Jackson, you're a podcasting legend and it's an absolute delight to have a conversation with you today. Thanks for joining us on the First Time Facilitator Podcast.
Dave: Oh, thanks for having me. It's an honour to be here.
Leanne: It's great to have you here. Look! As everyone knows or maybe you don't know but Dave is a podcasting Hall-of-Famer. He started podcasting way back in 2005, I believe.
Dave: Yeah.
Leanne: But you had a bit of a life before then, didn't you? There was a life before podcasting where you worked in various different roles that led you here. I was wondering if you could talk about your career pivots that led you to go down the path of podcasting and what you're doing now.
Dave: Yes. Kind of funny, my original degree was an Electronic Engineering and I thought I wanted to go out and fix stuff. So I actually was a Copier Technician which is not a great job because everybody you run into is upset because their copier doesn't work and I did that for about two years and the manager at the time was a really- he was like probably 6’4”, just a big guy and just kind of intimidating or for whatever reason I would just go up and talk to him and you know water-cooler talk nothing too crazy.
And after about two years, he said, “Hey, I have a position for you that I'm going to invent.” and I'm like, “Okay.” and he goes, “You seem to like to talk.” and he goes, “We have our customers, we have this great equipment, we have a great sales staff but our customers are breaking it because they don't know how to run it.” and he said, “We want you to go out, set up the equipment, use your technical side and then we want you to teach them how to run the equipment and then more importantly, show them how to not run the equipment so they don't break it.” and so, that made customer like, I don't know, a service call that was inspired because the customer didn't know what they were doing it.
Those like took a huge nosedive and they're like, “Whoa, you seem to be pretty good at that.” and then they asked me, “Do you know anything about computers?” and that then began probably 25 years of me teaching a lot of Microsoft Office and QuickBooks as well as things like time management and customer service and you name it. And over the years, what's interesting is in the corporate world, they will hire salespeople that for whatever reason can't sell and so when sales takes a nosedive they look at the training department and we are just like a giant bullseye and so I've had it happened three times where they go, “You know, you're one of our best trainers but we just don't have the business.” and I'm thinking, “How about hiring new sales guys?” But instead they let the training staff go.
So that happened like the third time and I was like, plus I actually saw where I was going to get replaced by a phone. I had a student once in a class and I was teaching Microsoft Excel and they said, “Have you ever used these two features together?” and I said, “You know, that's a good question.” I did the teacher thing, I said, “Hey, let's write that on the board and we'll talk about that on break.” and as I wrote it on the board, he asked his phone and got an answer and I remember thinking, “I'm going to get replaced by a phone.” It's just a matter of time and sure enough it took about two years but sure enough once again called into the office, “You're one of our best trainers but we got to let you go.” and I was like, “Hmm. I'm really tired.” and in between there actually I went back and got a teaching degree and because I was one of the hurdles. Once you get laid off and you go to get a job in teaching they go, “Your degrees in Electronic Engineering.” So I was like, “All right.”
So I went back to school and got that degree. So I kept jumping through hoops and I'm like the whole goal of this is not to lose your job and I'm like, I'm tired of hearing, “You're great but we're going to let you go.” and so the last time I had been let go, I had been a customer for a podcast media hosting company called Libsyn and I knew what was then the Vice President and I called him up and said, “I've got bad news and good news.” and he's like, “What's the bad news?” and I'm like, “I just lost my job.” and he's like, “Okay. I'll bite. What's the good news?” and I said, “I'm available to work for you, buddy.” and long and behold two weeks later, I now work from home. I make more money than I did when I worked in the corporate world and where I used to have to take a vacation day or whatever to go to these different events. I now get paid to go to those. So it's really quite the dream job for me and I just love it.
Leanne: Yeah. You got to fly to places like Australia and speak at conferences there.
Dave: That's it. It's a lot of fun. I'm going to Washington DC in a couple days to speak in an event there and all sorts of- I've been to San Diego. That's the first time out of the country was Australia but- and what that does is that puts me knee-deep in front of my target audience. So it's always flattering when somebody comes up and says, “Hey, I listen to your show. I love it. “Oh, Michael. Thank you so much.” But then I always ask, “What would you like to hear or is there something I'm doing that you wish I didn't do?”
I'm always looking for some sort of constructive feedback because that's my audience and I can- you have every form of communication. They're not just like written word. I've got body language, I've got tone of voice. I'm like, I can really read my client, they're my potential customer and so I always love to talk to them and find out what they're struggling with. Anything there that I can use to make better content because that's who I'm trying to reach through my podcast.
Leanne: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think you kind of undersell yourself. You're a bit of a celebrity in the podcasting world. You mentioned recently was that you went to Ohio and you had people drive in just to meet with you and talk to you so it's probably really nice as well. It’s been a motivation for your podcast when you get people coming up to you and saying great things about your show and how they heard of you.
Dave: It's fun. Actually, I was in San Diego once and I was walking down the hall and this woman looked up and said, “Oh, wow.” and I turned behind me, there was nobody behind me and I'm like, “What?” and she goes, “You're Dave Jackson.” I'm like, “I am.” and she's like, “Oh, my God.” and so she had like a total fanboy moment and it was like, “Yeah. It's just me. It's not a big deal.” but it is it's very flattering.
Leanne: It is and I love that story of the two years of water-cooler chat and how it actually wound up. You got your career pivot and your next opportunity just through a conversation with a guy over two years. Isn't that fascinating? It just shows the power of being able to communicate.
Dave: Yeah and where it was is, I worked in the city called Canton, Ohio and if you're into American football you recognize that because that's where the NFL has their Hall of Fame. So that City is just bonkers for American football. So I would just come in on Monday and go, “Did you see the game last night?” and that would just set that guy off for ten minutes and I'm not really that much of a sports guy but it was just enough to listen and I would crack a few jokes and he just for whatever reason seemed to like me so that was-
I really didn't do much to develop that relationship besides the fact that everybody's like, “Well, his name is Craig.” They’re like, “Well, that's Craig, man. Like, you know he could fire you.” and I'm like, “Yeah. I know that.” But I'm not and it wasn't like overtly trying to suck up to the guys just like, “What's up Craig?” He's just a guy and so yeah and what was really nice is when I got let go of that particular situation. I'd been there ten years and what happened is they moved me into a position and then I was using a piece of software and then the company decided they weren't going to use the software and they're like, “Oh, what are we going to do with Dave?” And he was really nice, he actually brought me into his office and I had actually been offered another job from another company said, “I heard you got a job offer?” I'm like, “Yeah, yeah. But I love it here.” and he goes, “You might want to look into that.” and I went, “Oh, really?” and he goes, “You know what? It's really nice outside this would be a great time to take your vacation.” and I went, “Really?” and he goes, “I'm trying to do everything I can.”
So he was very polite of kind of saying, “Hey, you know how you kind of like, you kind of ran out of things to do here. You're probably going to get let go.” So he was really nice to kind of let me know the writing on the wall. So those relationships can really come in handy.
Leanne: Yeah, they can and like you said, it's not kind of going in with any sort of expectation. It's just curiosity asking questions and paying someone out about their team, I think it's great.
Dave: Yeah.
Leanne: So you got the school of podcasting now and in the past you were teaching technical skills related to Microsoft Office and fun systems like that. I like that you brought up the concept of “edutainment” so mixing education with entertainment and that's something that I see that you do extremely well which is why I wanted you on the show. How did you, I guess did you coin that phrase or what is it about entertainment that really helps people retain knowledge?
Dave: I think what inspired me is- I don't know if I coined it. I used it a lot and then I saw it on the internet. I'm like, “Okay. Maybe I didn't invent that phrase but-” I have a niece who was just like spooky smart were you kind of like, “Shouldn't you be playing with Barbies?” and she's over there, whatever splitting atoms or something for fun.
She was insanely smart and I remember it's right when computers first like computer learning you'd pop in a DVD and I think was something like Roger Rabbit teaches reading or whatever and she's just in there laughing and having a good old time and I walk in I go, “What you're doing? And she's like, “Oh, I'm playing with Roger.” And I see she's I don't know at the time she was like probably kindergarten and she was doing like math tables and I'm like, “Wait a minute. I don't even know half this stuff when I was her age.” and it just dawned in I'm like, “You know, if you make this fun, people don't mind learning it. Doesn't seem so much like school.”
And I had a teacher in college that would just come in, it was a really boring class. It was tech report writing so you had to write like directions so that a monkey could do whatever job you're trying to explain and he would literally come in and just blow off the first 10 minutes and kind of make wisecracks and make fun of people or whatever and it would just really loosened up the class and then he's like, “All right. Well, let's do some of this boring stuff.” and we would and I just was like, “I love this guy style.” and again he made it fun. So I've always tried to do that. So I remember when I was teaching like Excel, if I was just trying to teach a basic kind of equation, “Let's add these three things together.”, I would always look at my audience and if I had people that were like in their ‘40s that would be great because they remembered The Three Stooges which was this old comedy, black-and-white TV thing that people, a lot of those people that were in their ‘40s watched them when they were little kids and I would say, “Okay, let's say your first customer is Larry and they don't see anything yet and then I would say and your second customer is Curly.
Well, that was a clue that we're talking the Three Stooges now and that would just get them kind of like, “Okay.” and then it would just play on something they already knew and got everybody thinking about it and somebody would start making a Three Stooges noise and all of a sudden we're learning how to make a spreadsheet but we're having fun at it. So anything I could do to add some sort of humour or make it fun or just not boring number crunching.
It made it a little more fun and by the end they're like, “I can't wait to take part two or part three.” and what was always really flattering is when I would hear somebody say, “Well, how many teachers do you have at this particular business?” I'd say, “Oh, we have like four or five and then they’re like, “Can I request that you teach the class?” I'm like, “Yes, you can.” So that was always for me just like, “Okay. I must have done something right because they're requesting me.” and I just always just to me it was like the eight hours went a lot faster because some of this stuff was just ridiculously dry and I'm like, “Oh, this is so boring. I got to find a way to spice it up a bit.”
Leanne: It does take time and energy on your part, on the trainer's behalf to do that and I think a lot of people do have the intention of delivering something that's really engaging and fun but then they're so busy and caught up with life that they don't take that time investment to really think of examples like The Three Stooges or do just little tweaks like that can really make a great training environment. So congratulations on having students that wanted you back for more.
Dave: Well, just one other thing I would do is I would just ask, “Introduce yourself and tell me what you do at your job.” and that way if they said, “I run the library at my company.” So now when I'm coming up with an example, I can say, “Hey. Well, if we're doing this and now you're doing something in your library and you need to any untighten to what they're doing, that always seem to then connect with the your students in this case or your audience because you kind of know who you're talking to.”
Leanne: Yeah and that's exactly right and personalizing it to who they are. So I guess you wouldn't really use a Three Stooges analogy around people a bit younger than me nowadays.
Dave: Right.
Leanne: But the people in your room were 40 years old, they grew up with. It's an instant connection and it makes people laugh already because it was a funny show.
Dave: Right.
Leanne: So preparation, I'm wondering and I know you're talking in Washington this weekend and I saw on your Facebook profile that you're practicing this speech about 20 to 30 times. Is that something that you usually do or is it just for a big steaks presentations?
Dave: It's just something I do every time and I think the reason for that is number one, you can make your slides, you can make your PowerPoint slides and I do my best not to create death by PowerPoints. Instead I have images that will inspire me so in my head, I have the bullet points. I try not to have the bullet points on the screen I want them in my head and so I'll start with the slides and then from there it's like, “Okay. I know what's in my head. Do those words actually come out of my mouth or have I made a bullet points that are tongue twisters, I didn't even realize it and does it flow?” and by doing this over and over and over, I don't know if it somehow triggers my subconscious or what but inevitably about three days before the event I'll have an “aha” moment where I'm like, “Oh, you know what? That would be a better explanation.” or “This would tie in nicely here.” or “This would be a transition or something of that nature.”
And I've just found by, it's not a nervous thing because what's hilarious is no matter how many times I rehearse it about two minutes like the minute they put a microphone on me, all the blood will rush out of my hands and they become just giant like I have ten ice cubes for four fingers and that's just normal. That's what I'm and I know that now and before I might go, “Oh, what's wrong? I'm really, really nervous.” and I'm like, “Nope, I’m okay. It's time to talk because my hands have left the building and I just- when that starts, the minute I start that's when the nerves go away and I'm ready to start and I launch into it and I know what's going to happen and I've also realised that no matter how many times I rehearse it, somewhere in my presentation I will call an audible. I will do something that was unplanned.
So when in Australia, we were doing a thing and I was talking about how it took Jerry Seinfeld 17 years to become an overnight sensation and I was watching my presentation and I decided to go old man preacher guy and I was like, “Everybody say 14, and the crowd went, “14” and then later, when I said, “It was 17 years.” I go, “Everybody say ‘years’.” everybody's like, “Years.” Just something to do with interactive. That was absolutely not planned it was just something I'm like, “All right. This is going pretty good. What can I do here to make it a little more interactive?” It was about halfway through the presentation. I got to do something to keep people awake and so I just did that off the top of my head that was not planned and that used to kind of bug me but I just know whatever's going to happen that I'm going to have a plan and somewhere in there I'm going to try something and the good news is about 90% of the time it works.
Leanne: Yeah. I love that interactive part and I think Tyson uploaded that video on Facebook. I might be able to share a copy of that on the show notes.
Dave: Yeah.
Leanne: But what it really did was really emphasize the point that to be an overnight sensation it takes a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of consistency and commitment. So I think by getting that audience interaction, you really made that point stick. I thought you absolutely killed it away up our podcast. You were one of I think the second last speakers on the second day which is never an easy shift to pull but for some reason and it definitely was a really raised the energy levels and I kind of felt sorry for Pat Flynn who was after you. I just thinking, “Geez, you're a hard act to follow.” Everyone was in hysteric.
Dave: Well, here's the thing, there is a competitive side to me and I always want to make whoever follows me. There's a- this is even before my time but back in the ‘60s, there was Woodstock and there was a band called The Who and they would smash all their equipment and they really did it in this instance and the reason because that is somehow they had to flip a coin or whatever but Jimi Hendrix had to follow them and they were mad that they were not going on last so they said, “You know what? We're just going to make it. So we're almost impossible to follow.”
So I love Pat Flynn and I knew Pat Flynn was going to do great. There was nothing I could do to upstage Pat Flynn but I wanted to make him sweat a little bit and the other thing that dawned on me literally like 10 seconds before I started to speak was, “Hey, you know what? None of these people have ever seen me speak because the majority of them were from Australia.” That really, really got me excited because I was like, “Okay. I've got to do something here.” and all I did is I remember forget what the point was but I actually jumped up in the air. I said something like people have to jump in the pool or something like that and I remember I jumped and I looked up and oh, I can't remember her name but she kind of like actually in her chair kind of jumped like, “Oh. There's movement here.” and I was like, “Okay. This is fun. And so to me I was like, “Now we're in my element and I've got their attention. Now I've just got to make sure I don't lose it.”
Leanne: Yeah, I know. I was actually remember looking across close sitting at the back and I was looking around and people were just crying with laughter and I even think, “Who is this guy? He’s so funny.” And you brought up the Woodstock and Jimi Hendrix and I know that you're a bit musical as well.
Dave: Right.
Leanne: and you've been part of a band. How’s that sort of helped you as well with the stage presence and getting over that minute before the nerves and accepting that's just a normal part of the way that you perform?
Dave: Yeah, a little bit. Especially the bigger the crowd, the bigger your movements have to be. I've played in front of thousands of people. We played a big outdoor festival and it's not enough to just stand there and look at your sneakers in fact that drives me crazy when I go to see a live band and they're standing, there staring at their shoes and just playing. I like to look at my audience and make as much eye contact as I can and constantly move and in fact if anything I think sometimes I look more like a- I don't know a tiger at the zoo that's just pacing back and forth but that's just to me. I’m energetic, I'm ready to make a great first impression and so I just don't want to stand there in and talk. So I'm trying to do something to just keep you going and avoid you looking at your phone.
So any kind of big movement, I've done a couple of different presentations where I'm whaling my arms or I'm getting loud and then I'm getting soft and anything to just break the dynamics whether that's one minute I'm making a point I'm talking really, really fast and then the next minute I'm making my point and I'm accenting my words. So whether it's loud, soft, fast, slow, standing still, making a point, a great thing I learned from Chris Rock who's a comedian, is Chris Rock will walk to the left of the stage and he'll say his point and then I'm going to walk over here to the right side of the stage and make my point and then when he walked through the middle, he'll say the punch line and I was like, “Oh, that's kind of a cool technique.” If you watch him do that, he does it all the time and so anytime I'm trying to really make a point, I'm really like this is the one you need to remember if I was an old preacher guy, I'd be pounding the podium. I'll just do in my head I'm like, “Let's do the Chris Rock.” and I'll walk it off to the side, I'll walk to the right side but when it's time to make the main point, I will stop and look everybody straight in the eye and make that main point.
Leanne: It really is about contrast and I noticed that you do that with your voice not only on the stage but as part of school of podcasting?
Dave: Yeah.
Leanne: I do notice that you change the tempo, the volume which makes it really easy to listen to and I like that you're also inspired by Chris Rock who is a comedian. Just on the topic of humour, are you naturally- have you always been this funny or have you had to work at this because it just seems that you come out with crazy funny things like every moment of the day?
Dave: I don't know. I think the biggest one, my mom was hilarious. My mom was the queen of puns growing up and we were always trying to make each other laugh and I always like to go right to the line like, “Is this offensive or not?” I'm always asking myself like, “Is this offensive or not?” I remember once where we were talking about what makes a good podcast and I said, “It might be what makes a good presentation.” I said, “You know what? Podcasting is like porn. You know it when you see it or a good podcast is like porn, you know it when you see it but you can't define it.” So you might say that about a presentation, right?
A great presentation in the middle of you're like, “This is awesome.” But if you were to explain to somebody what is it. It's like, “Well, it's kind of this and that.” But you just know it when you see it. But the fact that I used the word “porn”, I was like, “Ooh. Am I going to offend somebody or like that?” So I'd like to push it right to the edge that just because I think by doing that, it kind of shows that I'm comfortable that I'm going to say this kind of word in front of you and I think hopefully that endears me to the audience that, “Okay, Dave's kind of let his guard down. I'm going to let my guard down.” and again if their guards down, well then we can be a little funny with each other and that funny then leads to, “Hey, we're actually learning stuff and we didn't even realise it because we're too busy laughing.”
Leanne: Yeah. It's like when you meet some people in the corporate world and everyone's dressed or formally and then if they come out and say something that's not politically correct which I love that kind of humour.
Dave: Right.
Leanne: I just- it really disarms both of you and you can actually have a really good conversation because you know we're all human. I want to talk about the comfort zone and I know that on the recent episode you spoke about we our podcast and it was a big thing for you coming to Australia first time out the country in quite some time. Just want to share a bit about why it's worth kind of busting through the comfort zone? We have a lot of listeners that are first-time presenters and they want to get more confident at getting in front of a room but it's a little bury that needs to push through to get there. Is it worth pushing through?
Dave: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there are so many things that I look back down and go. I was scared to do something and number one, it's never as bad as you think it's going to be. When I heard I was going to be on a plane for 17 hours. I pictured children on fire screaming and somebody behind me kicking my kidneys through the chair and just all sorts of just mayhem and it was absolutely not that at all.
So I think a lot of times we think about the worst case scenario and it really ever is the worst case scenario. In fact, for me it was like every time I turned around it was like, “Oh, right. That was actually pretty cool.” When I heard that the rounds me the guy that did the whole event and organised it. We had seating, we had assigned seating. I'm like, “But I want to sit with my friends.” and I'm going to end up sitting at a table with nobody and if you scrape me all the way down and peel back the layers, I'm actually a little shy. And so the fact that I had to meet brand new people, it turned out to be great. I met all sorts of great people but there was a part of me that was like, “Oh, this could be really awkward. I'm kind of shy.” and so anything that you think is out of your comfort zone, I said this in my presentation. I said, “I was either going to end up with a great time or if things weren't horrible, I was going to end up with a great story.” and actually, in my case I ended up with both.
I had a great time and I met all these great people and I got to do all these new things and so I ended up with a great time and a great story and so just you can't- whether it's a presentation, you can practice all you want in the basement but you don't know if it's any good until you do it in front of people and that's the part of course that makes us want to wet our pants. But I love- there's a presentation that there was this old country guy, George Jones. He was like this country legend in the States and there was another country guy named Vince Gill, who's very, very popular, very, very talented. Well, these two people were friends and so Vince Gill is trying to sing at George Jones's funeral which right there is like, “That's a tough act.” and then he's singing a song that's super-duper sad.
So poor Vince gets through about I don't know, half a verse before he literally just breaks down and cannot sing and it's a duet so his partner is still singing the harmony but Vince is just over there trying to sing. And I think sometimes if we somewhat crash and burn on stage during our presentation, maybe the slide isn't working right or we lost our place or whatever reason something in our head is going, “Oh, this isn't going well.” and we think the audience is going to hate us. It's the direct opposite. Your audience wants you to succeed.
So in this YouTube video if you find it, you actually see where another country guy Garth Brooks stands up like, “Hey, we're here for you buddy. I know you're having a hard time but doggone it, we're here for you.” and the entire audience stood up and I was like that is like one of the coolest things I've ever seen and sure enough he eventually kind of got it together and continued to sing.
And so that's when I was like, there are many times when we're doing a presentation and things don't go well. This year I was inducted into the Academy of podcasters Hall of Fame, you would mention that and you want to talk about practice. I must have practiced this speech 70 times. I had it in my phone, I had it almost memorized and I'm going to say the fourth or fifth sentence out of my mouth, my mouth just decided to leave and I forget what I said but it wasn't right and I went to say something like “chose” and instead I said “choosen” and I just laughed. I just laughed and I said, “Okay. We're making up words tonight.” and I heard my audience laugh and I went, “You know what? You idiot! You're standing in front of a whole audience full of your friends. What are you worried about? Just shut up and be you.” and I knew that I was kind of like when that first mistake happens because in my brain and I'm like, “Okay. There it is. There's the mistake. You can kiss perfect out the window and let's continue on.” because there's always going to be something that you go, “Hmm. All right. I didn't mean to say that or that didn't go right or my mouth didn't work or whatever.”
So at that point, it allowed me to kind of chill out and then just have this great presentation. So don't freak out when if you do something wrong. Nobody ever knows it if we go back to me being a musician. Nobody ever knows when you mess up playing a song unless you make a face and stomp your foot or some like that. So get out of your comfort zone, get out there and try it and the more you do it, the better you'll be.
Leanne: Yeah. I do think we put some unrealistic expectations on us to be perfect. But I think you- I guess fudging your words on stage, I can see everyone sort of relaxing, you're relaxing and they're just getting on with it. I think it's actually quite healthy to make errors and like you said nothing it's gosh if you're not crying in front of Garth Brooks which I don't think any of us will be in that situation in the future.
Dave: Yeah.
Leanne: Yeah. What's the worst that can really happen. So you talked about having humour is a really important skill preparing is obviously something very important to you. What other kind of skills makes a really good trainer or facilitator or presenter?
Dave: I think it all goes back to kind of knowing who your audience is because when you're teaching something, you're trying to get them into a spot that they've never been. Whether it's some sort of new step by step thing or a new concept or whatever. So if you can kind of know who your audience is and know where they're at. Well, then you know where they're at, you know where you want them to be. It's up to you to find out how to bridge that gap.
And so if I'm in front of people, we'll just use the example of podcasting. If I'm trying to explain what podcasting is to somebody and they look up and they're 60 years old, I'm like, “Okay, that person understands a radio. They grew up with radio. I'm going to use radio.” and I will then say, “Okay. Well, you know how you have a radio to tune into a station and they'll say, “Yes.” I'm like, “Okay. Well, your radio in the new world is like your phone. You have this app.” and I'll just go through the whole thing and I'm just, “Okay. Do you understand this?” “Yes.” “This ties to that.” and so just for me, I love analogies and so anything I can do to help them kind of start where they're at, get to where they're at and then ask them questions in some cases.
Even if it's in a presentation, you can just say, “Are you with me with that and does everybody understand it?” or you might even say, “What would happen if I did this now?” and somebody should say, “Well, Dave, you'd catch on fire.” Like, “Exactly, you got it right. Moving on.” and just do a quick quiz to make sure they're with you and then keep on going and then what happens if you go, “Hey. What would happen if this happened?” In your head you're thinking they're going to say, “Dave, you'd catch on fire.” and nobody says anything this is a fun one. It takes a lot of courage. Don't say anything because that awkward pause is going to make somebody go, “Oh, he's actually looking for us to answer.” and then you might even if nobody answers then you just go, “Well, will I catch on fire?” Making it a yes-or-no question which is even easier and then if somebody says, “Yes.” and you're like, “Correct. Okay, moving on.”
But that's some of those things, it takes a little courage to do to have that awkward pause or to ask them a question or what if they don't interact here and there's only one way to find out and I think we all have that one presentation on occasion then you're like, “Oh, wow. That did not go one or two.” But most of the time if you know who your audience is you've practiced it you're going to be fine.
Leanne: Yeah. I love the- you mentioned the awkward pause. Sometimes it just feels like an eternity up there. It's like time to stand still and your praying someone just speaks up but it is a good tactic and if we can become more comfortable using that pause and we're in the right direction I think it definitely challenges and someone in that room will get really awkward with it and just say something. So you do a lot of learning. You’ve got your teaching degree. Was there any sort of particular book, resource, advice or podcast that really sort of stepped up your game or has just been your experience all that time on your feet in front of rooms which really helped you?
Dave: I think some of it goes back to- I'd like to reverse engineer. Like for me, I was- I make content now all the time and so I kind of sat back and said, “Well, what do I like and why do I like it?” and whether it's the news or if it's a TV show or a movie or whatever. I'm like, “Okay. That was really good.” and then I go. “Why? Why was that really good?” and so for me, most of the stuff I consume either makes me laugh, cry, think, groan, educate, or entertain. Something in there that's going to do that. So I do that and I try to always do one of those things and say, “Okay, in this slide, what am I doing?” or I'll come up with a main point for my entire presentation.
I remember once I spoke at podcast movement and my main point, my one sentence summary was every podcast can benefit from editing. That was it. If somebody said what's your presentation about, that was it and then every slide reinforced that point. So whether it was the fact that magazines have an editor and books have an editors. So why don't podcasts have an editor? But every slide was like reinforcing that main point. I think sometimes that if I get stuck on how am I going to do this, how am I going to attack this particular subject, I look back and go, “Okay. What's the one sentence, what's the one thing that I can boil this whole presentation down to?” That's actually called, there's a book called it's from the score conference Ken Davis, I want to say the Secrets of Dynamic Communication. It's all about speaking online. It's a great book and he talks about that having one sentence and then having all the slides reinforce that main point.
Well, if your presentation has multiple points that's fine but use that same thing and say, “Okay. The next five slides are going to reinforce this point.” and then I'm going to move on to this point. Okay, what's the one sentence and just kind of boil it down. Because sometimes especially if you've ever been in the situation where you thought you had 30 minutes to speak and then you show up and they go, “Oh, yeah and remember you have 20 minutes.” and you're thinking, “Oh, wow. I got to cut 10 minutes out.” You go back to that one sentence, “Okay. What's the main thing I'm trying to get across here.” and then you can sometimes that will help you figure out what slides to cut.
Leanne: That one sentence is very powerful and it sounds like the way that you create a presentation is similar the way that you need to sort of reform an argument. So what is the point I want to get across and then backing that up and you also were a participant in the great debate at the podcasting conference this year and your slide, I believe, didn't win unfortunately but it was very entertaining.
Dave: No. Well. And what's fun about that is I've studied a little bit of Improv, not a lot. But there's always that thing. Because I was completely off the top of our head. We kind of had a little clue but not really. I met with my other team members and we kind of, “Here's some points we're going to hit.” but I didn't know who was going to hit. I was going last so I had no idea what was going to be left and that's a case where you really think, “Oh, I can't just make something up.” I'm here to tell you, your brain will find something to come out of your mouth. I worked with a guy who teaches Improv and he just kept throwing me these weird ideas and I would think, “I have no idea what to say.” and somehow my brain would come up with something. So yeah, your brain is pretty powerful and as long as you remember to breathe, that's another fun one.
Because sometimes when we get a little nervous then we start taking shallow breaths, we're robbing our brain of something that it actually needs right now which is oxygen and that'll help keep you calm and kind of help you get through it. But yeah, don't be- that was fun because they said, “Here's what we're going to do.” and I'm like, “Oh.” Again, getting out of my comfort zone I'm like, “So I'm going to do something. I'm okay. I'm going to argue a point in front of people, I'm not sure what I'm going to say. I'm not sure what my other teammates are going to say. Okay.” and yeah, we did lose but I had a lot of fun.
Leanne: Awe, it was awesome. It was so much fun. It was like a bit of a roast, actually.
Dave: Yeah.
Leanne: A lot of people having a go at each other. Dave, fantastic points. So you spoke about Improv, you spoke about your time. Just having water-cooler conversations and how that opened up an opportunity for you. How getting out of your comfort zone is super important and just some incredible stories or things that have gone well and haven't gone some well. As well as you've thrown in some great analogies too. If people want to connect with you, see more of your stuff, see where you're at, listen to your podcast, where can they find you?
Dave: My main website is schoolofpodcasting.com and all my contact information, everything you need is over there at schoolofpodcasting.com.
Leanne: Cool and we'll link to all of that in the show notes and Dave I just love the excuse to give you a call and chat to you again. I really appreciate all the insights that you've given me and our audience today and it was great catching up with you again, post speakers retreat and podcasting conference and all the best.
Dave: Thank you very much. It was a great talking to you.
[END OF AUDIO] 34:34
Episode 41: Unleash your inner intrapreneur: How facilitators can liberate innovation and creativity in organisations with Dr Irena Yashin-Shaw
Today's guest is on a mission to liberate innovation, creativity and leadership within organisations.On this episode, you’ll hear how Dr Irena Yashin-Shaw transitioned from a high school teacher to become Australia’s leading expert on creativity and innovation.
Today's guest is on a mission to liberate innovation, creativity and leadership within organisations.On this episode, you’ll hear how Dr Irena Yashin-Shaw transitioned from a high school teacher to become Australia’s leading expert on creativity and innovation. Listen in when she discusses the strategies she uses to facilitate knowledge retention and behaviour change in the workshops. We also talk about the role of Intrapreneurs in organisations, and how they’re the future of organisations.If you’ve ever heard anyone say they’re not creative, or you think you’re not creative, it’s also worth taking note of Irena’s response to that statement,.If you want to stay connected to First a Time Facilitator when the show's over, join our community on Facebook called ‘The Flipchart’. In the group, we have 50+ other listeners around the world, who are all sharing tools, tips, techniques to help each other deliver killer content and workshops.
On this episode you’ll learn:
How she transitioned from a high school teacher to become Australia’s leading expert on creativity and innovation
The differences she observed from teaching high school students, to adults in corporate life (and why it’s important to give adults an immediate benefit from attending a workshop)
The pre-work she asks participants to do before attending
What an intrapreneur is; and why they’re so the future of organisations
How intrapreneurs can push through perceived bureaucratic barriers to add value to their organisations
How she developed her presence as a powerful presenter and communicator
Her response when people say the words, ‘I’m not creative’
How she recharges her energy to deliver day workshops
Her advice for subject matter experts who are asked to share their knowledge with others
About our guest
Dr. Irena Yashin-Shaw, PhD. is an innovation, creativity and communication specialist with a Doctorate in creative problem-solving and a Masters Degree in Adult Education. Prior to starting her consultancy in the private sector she was a Senior Research Fellow and academic at Griffith University. Here, she worked on a number of university-wide strategic improvement initiatives while lecturing in various academic programs.A sought after speaker and educator Dr. Irena has delivered keynote presentations and workshops in the UK, Russia, China, India, New Zealand, Malaysia and Australia. She has authored and co-authored numerous publications locally and internationally. Recognising that innovation and creativity are the key drivers of the Twenty-First Century global economy, she has developed a suite of programs designed to assist organisations to increase their innovation capacity by developing a culture of innovation and creative leadership.
Resources
A gift for the First Time Facilitator audience
Dr Irena Yashin-Shaw is offering an incredible for First Time Facilitator listeners - a 50% off discount to The Australian Intrapreneurs Summit . Simply use the code AISDISC50 when purchasing your ticket.
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Episode transcript
Click here to read my conversation with Dr Irena Yashin-Shaw on the First Time Facilitator podcast.
Episode transcript with Dr Irena Yashin-Shaw
This is an episode transcript with my guest, Dr Irena-Yashin-Shaw. Listen to the First Time Facilitator conversation here.
This is an episode transcript with my guest, Dr Irena-Yashin-Shaw. Listen to the First Time Facilitator conversation here.
Leanne: We are very lucky to have today's guest on the First Time Facilitator Podcast. I would like to welcome Dr. Irena Yashin-Shaw to the show. Dr. Irena thanks so much for joining us.
Dr. Irena Yashin-Shaw: My absolute pleasure, Leanne. Thank you very much for having me.
Leanne: No problem at all. It was an absolute delight meeting you at Jane Anderson's workshop a couple of months ago. I've been sort of following your work for some time and then you were in the room, it was a bit crazy and that's how this interview all happened. I'd like to start just by talking about your career history. I love asking all the facilitators on the show how they wound up in the roles that they're in. You are not only a facilitator; you are one of Australia's leading experts in innovation, creativity, and leadership. How did to you get to this stage?
Irena: Well, it's been a bit of a journey, an interesting journey, Leanne. I started out as a teacher, in fact, I was a high school teacher. My whole life has been devoted in one form or another to education and the nurturing and the releasing of human potential. I was a teacher for a number of years and that prompted me to go into a master's degree in education, at which point I discovered I absolutely loved educational psychology and really delving into theory and research and how that could be translated into practice. I then went on to do a PhD in creative problem-solving. Specifically looking at how people gain expertise in solving open-ended kinds of ill-defined problems.
Then after that, I went on to the education faculty at Griffith University and was also continuing some research. Worked on a number of different research projects and then at about 12 years ago, decided that it was time to step out and start my own practice, but still in education because I now work with adults and do various forms of education through workshops, through keynote presenting and speaking, through mentoring programs. Essentially, I'm still an educator and I have been my whole career. That is me through and through. That is my mission in life, my purpose for being on this planet.
It's been a privilege and an interesting journey to just go through those various incarnations of being an educator in those different contexts.
Leanne: That's right. I love that your mission is so loud and clear. You started as a high school teacher, I'm wondering what were the differences that you found between teaching high school students and then working with adults in corporate life? Are there any similarities? I know sometimes it feels like I've got some 15-year-olds in the room, but what did you notice, what was a bit different?
Irena: Now look, working with adults is very different to working with students and there's a whole degree of-- There's a whole lot of research around the difference between pedagogy and andragogy and how adults need to learn things in a context in which the information is as quickly applicable as possible. Now that also works for students, but it is somewhat different because adults, absolutely, need to have a really good reason why they are learning something new and what the benefits of those will be to them and to their workplace and how they can apply that learning immediately so that it becomes embedded, and they need to have a very hands-on approach.
They need to see the immediate benefits offered in order for them to invest the time and effort into learning new things. There is a big difference. I loved my time as a teacher. I enjoyed my time in the classroom and now I enjoy my time in the training room with adults. It's just a different incarnation.
Leanne: It is a different incarnation. I agree with you, the immediate benefit I think especially adults, we're very time poor so when we're called out to go to a workshop or some sort of training course, we want to see that immediate benefit.
Irena: Absolutely.
Leanne: I know that both as a facilitator and as a participant who it's time poor, how do we then teach big things? You talked about creativity, and you did your PhD on solving complex problems, how do you teach that in a way where people walk out feeling that they've got an immediate benefit when it's such a complex topic that you're teaching?
Irena: Well look, it depends on how deeply people want to take a dive into those areas and how much of it they want to transfer immediately into their professional practice. I've done workshops which might be, say, a half-day workshop, where we do identify the concepts.
It's more a consciousness-raising situation because we can't teach deep complex problem-solving in a couple of hours. For that, we need people to be prepared to go on a journey. The best way, of course, is to start with seeing the relevance for that information for them. For example, with my solution center change program, which is built around learning the skills of understanding one's own creative problem-solving preference then developing our creativity and then looking at how we can collaborate with others, that's a wonderful introduction for people to then be ready to take some of the tools that I introduce them to in that experience.
Then move on to begin to applying them in the workplace and actually solving problems. You don't learn about this stuff by hearing about it. The way you learn about this is to become confident in using the tools. I've got a whole suite of tools when I'm working with adults and we're training around innovation and creativity and intrapreneurialism. I've got a variety of processes and frameworks and methodologies that people can see themselves in and then they use those frameworks and strategies and tools in order to support their activity where they actually solve real problems and get real outcomes that are measurable and quantifiable.
Then they develop their confidence in them and then they can reuse them again without the scaffold of my mentoring because they've acquired the skills to know how they can then adapt to that complex information for new situations.
Leanne: That's a question I often ask the facilitators on the show is it's all well and good to deliver an incredibly engaging workshop where you've got great participation but haven't you bed lining after that? I think you just spoken to that in terms of you give them the confidence in that workshop to apply all the tools and methods. Your job is really making something complex very simple for them.
Irena: Yes. Well with many of my programs now, even with my one-day workshops, I ask people to come with issues already identified that they want to solve during the course of the day. Now that's a bigger ask, actually solving something in a day, but in the mentoring programs, we're able to take a few months. Learning needs to be contextualized. For adults, if it's decontextualized, if it's not immediately relevant, it just slips off people's already very busy minds and it doesn't get embedded and it doesn't get transferred.
One of the ways that I address that is by asking people to do some pre-work before they come into their first experience with me already having got their mind in the right space, already having done the background reading, already having thought through what are the key issues that they want to solve. That way we've really hit the ground running when we're working together.
Leanne: [unintelligible 00:42:57] some of the workshops that you're running are really based on this concept of intrapreneurialism which is-- We've all heard about entrepreneurs. There's a guy in London called Chris Ducker who's talking about youpreneurs, can you explain what intrapreneurs are for our listeners and why they're so important for organizations into the future?
Irena: Look, it's a term that still I'm finding not many people are familiar with. If I'll say intrapreneur, people go, "Oh, you actually do mean entrepreneur." "No. No, I don't. I mean an intrapreneur." The intrapreneur is someone who thinks and acts like an entrepreneur while working inside a large organization or a business or a government agency, whatever the case may be. It's someone who has that kind of entrepreneurial mindset is looking for opportunities to solve high-value problems and bring that value into their workplace but it's not their own business.
They are doing it in the context of the existing organization that they are already working within, but they are finding new ways of doing things or new ways of adding value, new ways of delighting customers, new ways of increasing revenue, but they're doing it unbidden. They're doing it because they've got that kind of drive to want to go above and beyond what the basic role description might be of their jobs. These are the people who I just say they are the future of the organization because these are the people who bring enormous value to whatever contexts that they're working in.
I use the metaphor of a helium balloon or a hot air balloon where despite the pull of gravity, it still manages to get lift off and soar into the wild and widely yonder. Intrapreneurs are a bit like that so despite the pull of gravity that might keep them shackled whether it's bureaucratic procedures or entrenched practices or business as usual thinking within the context, they've got that drive and that entrepreneurial spirit that means that they will find ways of getting around obstacles, of rising above those things that keep others shackled in order to do differently and create new values.
Leanne: I love the phrase. I think it's brilliant, and I've worked where I currently work in a big corporate company, big global organization. I worked for the Western Australian State Government, so I'm very aware of the gravity that you talk about. I'd like to find out, and I feel like sometimes I have a bit of a helium balloon in an organizations but from time to time, the gravity can bog you down a bit, how do you encourage these people that have this intrapreneurial drive to keep going when there are barriers which could be real or perceived? Things like delegations of authority, clunky systems, processes which make it really hard to be creative.
I'm saying perceived because I think they are but how do you keep people motivated that have that drive?
Irena: Well, when I work with them, the first thing I do is give them a pathway. If people feel like they're making progress, then they will stay motivated. It's demotivating when people putting a lot of effort into something and they genuinely see absolutely no progress, or they get stuck in busy work that looks like there's a lot happening there but it's actually not delivering any outcomes. I think you probably know what I mean by that. You don't really see worth.
Leanne: I do.
Irena: Always so busy, we're so busy but what's actually happening in terms of value? Are we actually creating value through all of that busyness? One of the things that I encourage people to do is to take time out to give themselves some dedicated headspace to think. Now that sounds like a real luxury when you go, "Oh, really you're going to take half an hour just to think. That's a bit of a luxury, isn't it?" I say well actually that's the most important work that you can possibly do. Because unless we've got that headspace to think, then nothing else happens. That's also the time when we replenish our motivation, we can see through the barriers, we can actually look at what the possibilities and options are et cetera.
I do encourage people to do that on a regular basis and in a dedicated way and not just leave it to chance. That's one thing that people can do to keep themselves fresh and motivated. The other thing that I find really valuable with some people who work with me within organizations is to start little communities of practice so that they can actually hang out with other people who are like them in the entrepreneurial spirit and wanting to drive intrapreneurial initiatives. When I work within an organization, I'll often help them to start up either something that we refer to as a community of practice where they get together and learn from each other and encourage each other or I say, do some out loud learning.
Learning out loud where they might go off and have lunch together but deliberately talk about what it is that they're doing and that way they're actually encouraging each other as well. If people can show the benefit and the value of what it is that they're wanting to do, then those perceived bureaucratic barriers aren't always as impenetrable as people think. Because who's going to be crazy enough to say to an intrapreneur who comes along and says, "I've got this fantastic idea that if we implement is going to save this business $100,000 over the next year."
Can you seriously imagine anyone in their right mind going, "Well, actually we don't really want to know about that. Get back to work and keep going."? Something that people aren't particularly good at, and it's one of the things that I do, I've started to focus on increasingly in my programs, is people being able to articulate very clearly the value of what it is that they're proposing. If they can be really clear about the benefits and lead with the benefits-driven case and advocate for their ideas in a way that foregrounds the benefits, not just for them but for their team, for their organization, for the world if necessary.
If they can articulate those really clearly, then there is so much more likelihood that the resistance will be less, and their ideas will be taken up and supported through the organization.
Leanne: In the example that you just gave about, "Hey, I've got an initiative and it's going to save us $100,000 this year," not many people even get to the stage where they put a quantity.
Irena: Correct.
Leanne: It's just like, "Oh, this is a great idea," but then they don't translate to benefit.
Irena: That's absolutely true, Leanne. It's one of the things that I've in some ways been a little bit surprised about. People and sometimes in corporations or government departments or even large businesses who don't work in the finance area, they aren't used to taking that extra step of quantifying the return on investment. One of the things that I get them to do in my Human Helium Program, towards the end as they bring in their projects to fruition, is to literally do the maths on what they've done. What benefit has your project or initiative brought back to the organization, how much time has it saved frustration, how has it streamlined processes?
Then we literally do the math, and we put dollar signs on it and go, "Okay, well if it saves this much time, and you've done one out of 50 forms that you've digitized, what does that add up to in terms of dollars? Now let's multiply that across the organization, let's multiply that across a year." People are invariably absolutely staggered when they see the dollar sign at the end that what they thought was a relatively humble initiative, brings back to the organization in terms of lost productivity and gains in efficiencies and effectiveness to the business. You're right, people aren't used to taking that additional step and so it's actually become a really important part of the work that I do with intrapreneur.
Leanne: It sounds like a lot of-- You're talking at the beginning of facilitators and how they need to ensure that the audience understands how relevant the training is. This is another example of not styles but a bit of persuasion, a bit of marketing efforts that go behind both being a facilitator and being an intrapreneur and demonstrating value through the way you communicate. Just on the topic of communication, when I did meet you at that workshop with Jane Anderson, you put up your hand and spoke about the photographer that was in the room and how great her work was, but you spoke in this way that everyone just turned, and you were very compelling.
You've got this incredible voice and presence, how did you develop that?
Irena: Thank you so much for saying that. Such kind words, Leanne. You're too kind.
Leanne: Very well deserved.
Irena: Look, it's been a journey and it's been something that I've been interested in my whole life. Quite apart from my work as an educator, I've been fascinated by the whole area of psychology and, in particular, personal psychology and personal empowerment and what is it that gives people that sense of agency and self-efficacy and self-determination and a belief in themselves and that sense of confidence that they can make a difference and change the world if they want to. Part of the reason I think I embarked on that was because, as you might have heard me share that day when we met, I'm extremely tiny. I am at the extreme end of the bell curve in terms of my height.
I'm a really diminutive, very, very petite woman. I think early in my life, I came to realize that when you're really tiny, you can be in danger of being overlooked or given the wrong kind of attention. Not that people were deliberately doing it, but you just don't have that huge physical presence that someone who's 6 foot 4 and built like a house automatically has because of their physical stature. I realized that because of my tiny stature, I was going to have to really work on myself to make sure that I had the impact on the world that I wanted to create.
I embarked on, not that I knew it at the time but, a whole lot of development activities that were designed around creating that sense of confidence and that capacity to impact and influence in the world. Back in my school days, I was a debater, I was in all of the school musicals. Then when I left and went into the workforce, even while I was a teacher, I joined Toastmasters, I went off and did Speech and Drama qualifications, I learned some theater techniques for presenting oneself, I did improv, I worked on my voice, I worked on my speech skills, worked on my presentation skills but having fun along the way because it was my hobby.
I was doing all of these purely because I was interested in it and I got a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment out of it. It's only now that I look back that I realize that I think inadvertently it was probably my way of saying I'm going to make sure that I never get overlooked in this world and that I'm going to develop the skills that I need to ensure that I have this very powerful sense of empowerment and presence in the world to probably or to counteract my very small stature. It has been a bit of a journey, yes.
Leanne: I like hearing that it's been a bit of a journey in that I guess that reassures me because when you hear someone like you speak, you think, "Wow, how do they do that? Is it just a natural thing that they've got? If so, I've got no chance," but to hear that you've actually really invested a lot of time, a lot effort, a lot of energy, a lot of dollars to get where you are, I think it shows that it's a skill that can be taught.
Irena: Absolutely, it can be. Absolutely. I actually believe anything can be taught. I think all it takes is a determination to want it enough. I talk these days a lot about growth mindset. If you're not good at something, you can get good at it if you have enough desire and will and determination and preparedness to put the time and effort into developing it. Now that said, of course, I'm never going to be a marathon runner or a sprinter or a basketball player obviously. We have to be sensible about how we're approaching this.
I don't believe people when they say things like are I'm just not creative, or I don't have it in me to be able to do something like that or that's beyond my reach because it's not within my skill set. I think well if you want it bad enough, you can make it your skill set. If you want it bad enough, you will pursue it in a way that you become quite single-minded about it. I'm a great believer that we can all be entrepreneurial, we can all be creative, we can all be innovative, we've all got leadership skills within us that can be developed and liberated and used in whatever way we want to if we have the will.
Leanne: Yes, I agree with you. I really like that approach and I think that's why we are both in this learning and development industry because we both really believe that.
Irena: Absolutely.
Leanne: I liked that you also mentioned that phrase. I hear an awful lot that phrase, "I'm not creative," and I don't really know if I figured out a response to that. I do challenge people when they say that, and I use questions to find out things that they've done in the past which-- I think a lot of people think creativity is all about being theatrical or being musical or being an artist. I try to dismiss that. What is your response when people say to you that they're not creative?
Irena: Well, I absolutely agree with you that there is this myth around the notion of what is creativity. When people say, "I'm not creative," what they really mean or what they in their head are saying is I can't paint, I don't play a musical instrument, I'm not a composer, I'm not going to write the next Harry Potter series that's going to take the world by storm. They've got this notion that creativity is exclusively belonging to the world of artistry of some way. Whereas, in fact, having spent seven years researching creative problem solving, I can say quite unequivocally that we are all capable of creativity.
In relation to the question that you ask me, what would I say to someone who says they're not creative, I'll say well have you recently had to solve a problem way you didn't actually know what the answer was when you started, did it require you to do some poking and prodding and experimentation and lateral thinking in order to solve that problem? Invariably, people say yes because they don't think of creativity as being an everyday activity. Most of the time, most people have to deal with problems in the workplace which are not strictly step by step by step by step.
They've got to think around them, they've got to bring some more information into the problem space, or they've got to maybe make some associations, some leaps of thought in order to get the best outcome and that is creativity. That is creative thinking. That is creative problem-solving. Whenever we come up against an unfamiliar situation and we've got to come up with a good response to it, we are in fact being creative. I'm on this mission to dispel this association of creativity and artistry. Of course, artistry is the manifestation of creativity but it's just one kind. People in the workplace, they might come up with a really clever way of dealing with a difficult colleague. That is, in fact, a creative response.
They might come up with an out of the box way of solving a problem for a customer, that is a creative response. When you begin to help people to see how in fact they are using creativity on a day by day basis, then it's like the curtains go up, the veil lifts and they can see that they are in fact are very creative. I had someone in one of my workshops a while ago who said I'm not creative and then we happened to be chatting during the course of the workshop. He was telling me about how he had built this generator in his backyard to light his shed and his kids' playhouse and the back garden. He built it out of bits and pieces that he had lying around in his shed.
I said, "Are you seriously telling me-- You just said to me like half an hour ago I'm not creative and now you're telling me about how you've built this Jolly generator that actually works just out of spare parts in your shed." He went, "Oh, you mean that's creativity?" I said, "Yes, you didn't have a map, you didn't have a plan, you didn't have a set of instructions, you kind of figured it out as you went along. You made decisions on a minute by minute basis about what would be a good next step, and you picked up another part and go, yes, this will fit in here and all sorts of really interesting things."
I said that's creativity. It's about being able to put ideas and even physical things together in ways that didn't exist before and to come up with new solutions. People often have a real aha moment when we talk about things like that.
Leanne: Look, I love that you are there out busting the myth and I'm here to support you through every conversation and hopefully our listeners can also-- When I hear people say that they've got a great response so thanks so much for sharing that and that story, man, that guy is super creative.
Irena: Absolutely. It actually drives me nuts when people who are, genuinely, actually are really creative and just don't see it. It's like kind of one of those things, like the nails on the chalkboard. That's why I'm on a mission, I am on a quest, I'm just determined to help people appreciate their creativity and value it for themselves.
Leanne: I agree, and I think it's also on those myths that's tied up with the whole to be a leader, you need to be a manager as well. There's a few myths just floating around with people nowadays. It's good that we've got people like you on the warpath.
Irena: Warpath, I love it, [crosstalk] that one. Sorry, keep going.
Leanne: Quite violent. Just when you were talking about creativity, I could tell that the pace in your voice is really, you spoke about a passion, lot of energy. I think it's one thing that you also have that comes across clear in your video, it's true is your energy. Delivering workshops I believe you need a lot of energy to do it and at the end of the day, it can be pretty exhausting. Two- day workshop, three days, you're off to India next week, how do you get the energy to last the day, the half day, the five days and with all the travel and everything else how do you cope with that?
Irena: That's a good question because I have to confess to you sometimes I am exhausted. Genuinely exhausted. I don't know what it is, Leanne. Even if I'm exhausted, when I step into that space where I'm delivering training, I'm delivering a keynote, when I step into that environment, that context because I'm doing what I know I'm meant to be doing, this is my passion, this is what gives me energy, then it sustains me. I must confess to you that sometimes I do that and then I'll fall in the [unintelligible 00:30:16] probably not what you were expecting to hear. Then I just have to rest for a little bit, recharge my batteries.
I'm an introvert, so it's really important for me, especially when we're in busy stretches, that I do get my alone time where I can sit and reflect and write in my journal and in my- I have a Moleskin where I put all of my new ideas and my thoughts. I develop my IP and my content and my models, the things that will then feed into my next book, et cetera. That then replenishes my spirit. As long as I can have times like that where I can recharge, then I keep my batteries going that point as well.
Leanne: No, I think that point just demonstrates that you are human because I feel the same. You're providing a lot of energy for the people in the room and at the end of the day, it's like, "Wow, I just had no time for myself." Often at breaks, people are up talking to our us, and sometimes I feel like it's a holiday just getting back to my desk and my email.
Irena: Yes. I don't think I'd ever go that far. Email is never under that banner, but I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Just sort of you have that moment of solitude. I think it's important that everyone finds what their own personal stride is around that. For some people, it might be that they come and sit at their desk and they do some quiet work. For others, it might be that they go for a long walk and then they're alone with their thoughts for a while. Other people meditate at lunchtime so that they can recharge their batteries that way. I often find that I'm very creative first thing in the morning, so I try to make sure that I have that space in the morning.
I always have my notebook next to me. If I read something, it'll often spark some thinking and then I can do my drawings or my models in my notebook, that replenishes me. I think it's really important for people to find what works for them and it's not the same for everyone. It's definitely not a one size fits all. People need to find how they recharge their batteries and then make sure that they do that on a regular basis so that they can keep their mojo going.
Leanne: I agree, and I like that you also document your ideas by writing things down. I've got my notes on my iPhone that I just refer to all the time. There's so many random notes in there that I think I need a place where I store them all.
Irena: It's a good idea. I actually have a series of different notebooks, so I don't mix my pure thought leadership stuff with mundane operational stuff. It depends on what kind of thinking I'm documenting, as to which notebook I'll write in.
Leanne: Nice. You must have a really big handbag.
[laughter]
Leanne: Something else you need to invest in.
Irena: I do, as a matter of fact, and it's very heavy.
Leanne: Excellent. We got lots of listeners from different areas, they could be engineers, accountants, a lot of HR people that listen to the show because they have been asked to deliver workshops. What would be your advice for someone that's starting out their facilitation career?
Irena: There's a very big difference between knowing something yourself and being able to do it inside your head, and explaining it to other people so that they, not only get it but want it. Number one thing, this is a general rule for anyone starting in a new field, do lots of it. Like just literally do lots and lots and lots and lots of it. Facilitate as much as possible and then build into every cycle opportunity for reflection so that you can figure out what did and didn't work so that you engage in that constant cycle of action learning. That way, you don't go into the next opportunity for facilitation without doing something better, without having learned something from the previous experience.
That means people build their skills incrementally over a period of time, and they'll find that they become better simply because they're practicing it, and they also practicing mindfulness in the way that they're asking themselves constantly, what did and didn't work. That's one aspect. Something else that is very useful for subject matter experts stepping into teaching or facilitation or training role is to come to the experience looking at whatever it is that they are presenting through the eyes of the learner, not through the eyes of the expert. People who are experts have got very advanced and what from the psychology literature is often referred to as highly chunked schemers.
In other words, the schemers, their mental models are extremely sophisticated because they've been built up over time. That's what allows them to make decisions quickly and be able to see patterns quickly and be able to manipulate larger chunks of information, et cetera, effortlessly within their minds. Now, novices and people who they are teaching, don't have the benefit of that experience.
Experts can sometimes forget that. It becomes really difficult to break things down into its constituent parts and uncouple those concepts that have melded into one overarching abstract way of knowing and being able to articulate it so that someone who doesn't have that level of sophistication in their understanding can get their head around it quickly. One of the best ways of doing that is saying, "Okay, what does this look like from the perspective of my learner, not from the perspective of me, who's the expert?" That's something else that they can do. Then I'm a great believer in facilitators just getting people to do stuff, do stuff.
As much as possible, get people actively involved in something, whether it's building something, whether it's that they've got to reproduce something, whether they've got to roleplay something, whether they've got to answer questions, whether they going to then take on board a piece of information and then teach it to someone else as if they were the expert, how would they use the words to then explain it to their colleague? There's lots of activities that can be done in pairs and in small groups that facilitate all of that understanding.
When people actually have the opportunity to articulate their learning, then it's much more likely to stick, it's much more likely to become clearer for them as well as learners and the facilitator's job actually becomes easier. I would say that's the other thing. Make sure that people get to do things as well.
Leanne: I'm definitely a firm believer in doing things. You're right, it does make it easier for the facilitator but there's also that they need to feel comfortable, letting go and let the group make the concepts their own as well.
Irena: Yes, that's a really good point actually. One of the mistakes that novice facilitators can make is thinking that they need to control everything in the room. They've got to control it all, otherwise, oh, what if it goes off the rails? What if someone asks a question, and we don't know how to deal with it? Or what if things don't work out the way they're supposed to? Am I going to look like I've let people down, that my expertise is lacking? All of those sorts of questions are fairly typical for people who are newly emerging in a field. The best thing to do under those circumstances is to just relax, let go, relinquish control and let everyone be part of the learning process.
If something happens, and the facilitator genuinely has no idea what just happened, just admit it. What's the worst that's going to happen? I don't know the answer to that. Let's find out together. I don't know what will happen if you mix those two things together now, provided you're not mixing nitroglycerin with something else. I think learners really appreciate seeing their teachers and their trainers and instructors go through a learning process as well. It would be a very arrogant trainer or instructor or teacher who would go, "Well, no, look, I really know everything." If that's the case, I think that this person has got no business being in that role because we never stop learning.
The most important characteristic of anyone who's a dedicated educator is that they recognize that they've got so much more education to acquire and that they've got so much more learning that is going to be part of their future. That's what I always look for in people.
Leanne: That's incredible advice to end on. Irena, we've spoken about so much just inside the 40 minutes we've had together: intrapreneurship, the I'm not creative statement we hear a lot, your experience pivoting from a teacher into adult education and our creativity, energy levels, all of it. If people want to get in contact with you and find out more about what you do, where can they find you?
Irena: I'm Dr. Irena Yashin-Shaw. If you Google something that looks vaguely like that, you'll say me. My website is www.D-R-I-R-E-N-A-Y-A-S-H-I-N-S-H-A-W.com, or they can email me on irena@drirenayashinshaw.com, or they can put in anything into Google that looks vaguely like that and they'll find me. I think I'm the only one around so you’re not going to get mixed up with 10 Irena Yashin-Shaws. Leanne, just before we do close off, do you mind if I just give a little bit of a plug for the Australian Intrapreneurs Summit that I'm hosting next year?
Leanne: Absolutely, go for it. It is in Brisbane, yes, please tell everyone about it.
Irena: Thank you. I'm just so excited about this event. We have got people speaking from lots of different sectors. Intrapreneurialism is alive and well in all sectors, not just within the business sector or the large corporate sector from which we have got speakers but also within education, within not for profit, within the indigenous community, within academia. We've got absolutely amazing speakers who will be bringing a different perspective about and to intrapreneurialism during the summit. If they go to my website, if anyone is interested in it, if you go to my website and go to events, you will find that there's information about the summit there, or you can just go www.australianintrapreneurssummit.com.au but that's quite a mouthful.
You've got to make sure you spell intrapreneurs summit properly. I would love to extend an invitation to the people who are part of your network and listening to this podcast. It's at the Brisbane Convention Center on the 14th of March 2019 and it's going to be an absolutely spectacular event. It is the first of its kind, so it is the inaugural intrapreneurs' summit in Australia. Hopefully, there will be many more. I look forward to maybe meeting some of the people in your network at that event, please come and say hello.
Leanne: 100% yes. That was a beautiful plug and we definitely need intrapreneurs in every industry. Well done you and congratulations on being so brave and starting your first conference. That's incredible and I'd love to be there. I’ve already sent it off to some friends and colleagues as well, but I will promote that and have a link to your website as well as the conference website on the show notes after this episode. Thank you so much.
Irena: Thank you, Leanne. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and congratulations on the fantastic work that you are doing with this as well.
Leanne: Thank you so much.