Facilitation Lab Podcast

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Lauren Green about her facilitation journey. She shares how Organizational Development has changed over the past few decades, how dance has influenced her practice, and how to incorporate more movement into your meetings. We then discuss why a wider range of leaders need facilitation training and the importance of strong participant communication before and after meetings. Listen in for practical tips to improve your hybrid meetings.

"It's nice to have someone who is an expert in social behavior, right? Anthropologists, historians, scientists are great UX designers, are great UX researchers. There's no real difference in futures thinking. I think one of the myths that we're trying to dispel is that futures thinking is not this whole other or body of practice like service design isn't a whole other body of practice. It's still designed, it's still systems thinking. They just have some different tools such as a service blueprint, right?" -Phil Balagtas

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Phil Balagtas about his experience working as a Designer with a focus on Futures Thinking. He starts with an overview of the ethics if Futures Thinking, their implications, and how more thoughtful ethical questions could lead to better decisions. We then discuss how to study and practice Futures Thinking. Listen in to learn practical frameworks to introduce Futures Thinking into your organization.

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Denise Withers about her journey becoming a Story Coach and helping leaders drive change. She shares the importance of developing your Narrative Intelligence to improve our abilities to learn, solve problems, and make sense of the world. We then discuss stories' influence on culture, change initiatives, and leadership development. Listen in to learn more about why we need to think beyond just telling stories and start noticing the problem the story is solving.

"Why does change fail? There are so many reasons why change can fail. I think you could pick from anything. When working on change, change is very much a journey. It's a reason why people call it a journey. The word journey symbolizes a lot of things. It symbolizes the up and downs that you're going to go through, the fact that it's not just going to be smooth. That it's going to have challenges along the way. That it's going to take time." -Tricia Conyers

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Tricia Conyers about her years of experience facilitating change, helping people shift mindsets, and leading reflections. She shares the importance of tracking the experience of change journies individually and collectively. We then discuss psychological safety, micro-changes, and liminal spaces. Listen in to learn more about helping people to get the most out of each other.

"What I learned when I shifted from acting to consensus building and facilitating is, you've got to let go of the idea that people are there for you and you've got to let go of the idea that you're the most important person in the room, that the show's about you, but there's still a similarity around what it means to steward the emotions of the room. And I still carry that from the theater days. And I believe that a good facilitator is acutely aware of the energy in the room and is constantly tweaking their approach to make sure that they're taking care of the people that are there." -Reagan Pugh

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Reagan Pugh about his extensive experience facilitating groups, stewarding the emotions of the room, and consensus-building. He shares how his background in theater has influenced his current work. We then discuss the importance of getting your mind right, visualizing, and self-awareness before working with groups. Listen in to learn about the neuroscience of presencing and being aware of the current state.

"When I first started facilitating, I was of the mindset that getting anything out of that meeting was better than getting nothing out of it. They were going around the room almost trying to show everybody how smart they were, by rehearsing various things and saying this, that, or the other, and I cut that out. I was like, "Hey, let's get to what we agree on quickly so that we can talk about what we disagree on." It was as simple as time boxing people, to say, "All right, hey, look, you two get together and come up with something, you two get together and come up with something, and you only have one minute to do X, Y, or Z. How are you going to do it?" To be honest with you, I don't exactly remember what I did. I think I blacked out for the whole thing, but it worked." -John Hawley

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with John Hawley about his journey becoming a meetings facilitator and self-proclaimed people nerd. He shares practical tactics for leading better meetings, how to set yourself up for success as a facilitator, and the power of vulnerability. We then discuss how John trains to develop skills as a facilitator. Listen in to hear his perspective on in-person vs. Zoom meeting facilitation.

"Neil Postman, and Neil postman said, "Children enter school as question marks and they leave and as periods." And I love that, and I think what he's saying is, they're coming in full of wonder and then they're coming out less full of wonder. So I felt like I want to tackle this issue in some way, and so what I've been doing is going around to schools and just talk about some things maybe that could be done to create an environment where children are going to be more likely to raise their hand with a question. And it's interesting, I mean, it's the same for adults I think as it is for kids, the culture that's needed is all about safety first. It's got to be safe for kids to ask a question. So how do you build that safety? Well, the first thing you do, is you put the message out there, very strongly, that questions are wanted. And then you show that they're appreciated. However you convey that message, it could just be verbally, or it could be through things you put on the wall or whatever. You're sending that very strong that this is a questioning safe place. And in fact, more than questioning safe, we want questions, they're encouraged, they help us." -Warren Berger

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Warren Berger about his journey becoming a "Questionologist". He shares why he thinks learning to ask better questions is a science and an art, why kids are such great questioners, and why we lose the incentive to question as we age. We then discuss tips to develop cultures of inquiry in your personal and professional lives. Listen in to learn the differences between why, what if, and how might we questions.

" I ask the team because I don't want to be imposing too much. Because I'm really having so much fun because I like improvisation and creativity. And they tell me the thing that they like a lot is when we bring people from other groups. And the reason is, that we understand the meaning of why we are doing certain things. Especially, my peers, they come and talk about their expertise, why they love what they're doing and how it works in the organization. How it impacts the organization, right? Then we make the connection. So it gives meaning to our work. And they find that very insightful." -Laura Melchor McCanlies

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Laura Melchor McCanlies about her 25 years of experience improving people's lives with technology. She shares what it's like developing mission-driven teams supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development goal with robotics, A.I., and Blockchain. We then discuss why appreciating your team and being vulnerable with them is so important. Listen in to hear tips for getting more participation from teammates in meetings.

"I think that's also a big piece of what is interesting about holding sessions with groups is to see how people relate to each other. I think part of what I've noticed is that just someone hearing how someone else is feeling and if it matches them, they almost feel that they spoke it themselves. They don't have the need to validate it. They already feel that they belong to a group. I think belonging is a really important part of what we need in our lives." -Hassan Ghiassi

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Hassan Ghiassi about his almost 20 years of experience holding space to help people improve their ability to communicate effectively, think critically, and at the same time increase cultural and emotional intelligence. He shares what it's like to facilitate collective conversations across different cultures. We then discuss why his goal is to help others improve their communication skills and take the mystery out of creating engaging conversations. Listen in to hear why it's important to create a dialog habit in your life.

"At the time, I didn't even think of myself as working in an innovation lab, even though there were multiple innovation labs and all the teams worked in them. The way I perceived it back then is that we had a lot of freedom and that you were given a principle or a value, a problem to solve, and that it was the teams or your individual responsibility to really sincerely think about that problem and challenge yourself to solve it in creative ways, to reach out to people, to not be defensive. So, some of those things will always be true with innovation that it takes multiple people. It takes someone to care and go deep, and be curious, and they need some level of creative freedom to explore, experiment, to put out something that's imperfect and keep trying to get feedback as they go." -Tricia Ratliff

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Tricia Ratliff about her years of enterprise experience leading innovation initiatives, nuances of facilitation, and commonalities of successful shifts in the way people work together. She also shares how the pandemic shifted the objective of her work. We then discuss how to virtualize a program, accidental innovations, and the importance of norms, values, and ground rules. Listen in to hear why it's important to listen to objectors of transformation efforts.