Facilitation Lab Podcast

"I think one of my favorite quotes that I heard was this idea that a picture's worth a thousand words and a prototype is worth like a thousand pictures. And this idea that you bring this thing that you can interact with, you are going to have such a depth of conversation of feedback, you are going to just have this amazing conversation and learn so, so much instead of just showing up to your client and saying, "Okay, let's talk about it." Right?"-Carlye Lauff

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Carlye Lauff about her experience working at LUMA, prototyping, and teaching at the University of Minnesota. We talk about her new book called Design Innovation Methodology Handbook - Embedding Design in Organizations. We then discuss the difficulty of building Prototyping capacities within organizations. Listen in to learn how to use prototyping to build empathy with users, the curse of knowledge, and failing better.

"I think that it is challenging to bring our own thinking and our own mental models to the surface because we're not trained to do it. We're not really teaching kids how to be reflective of their own thinking and the role that their emotions play in framing up their conclusions and how they feel about the world. And so we don't have great capability in that. It doesn't mean we can't, there are certainly people who have developed and cultivated a deep practice of reflection and metacognition that enables them to understand not just what they believe, but why they believe it. But I think the truly foundational thing to engaging in this practice for yourself and with others is a recognition that there are very, very few right answers in the world, right?"-Jennifer Reil

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jennifer Reil about her experience working at IDEO, metacognition, and teaching at the Management School at the University of Toronto. We talk about her new book Creating Great Choices: A Leader's Guide to Integrative Thinking. We then discuss the difficulty in building the capacity to think about what we think about and opposing modals of thinking. Listen in to learn how to build empathy, the curse of knowledge, and failing better.

"My approach on facilitation completely changed because I was really nervous going into a session where we basically had everybody sitting around in a circle and everybody had a chance to share their feedback and their thoughts to this really positive thing that we are doing. I think it wasn't until I had a more experienced person helping me navigate that. But also when I could connect my actions to what I was aware of that they were going through. So they were going through an experience that I was not part of and what they actually did was give me a window into that to be able to facilitate that and help that going forward. So I think that was like the time where I went from, "I hate my job," to, "Oh my God, I love my job." And I'm a facilitator."-Jennifer Reil

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jenny Theolin about her journey becoming a facilitator, entrepreneur, and design and education consultant. We talk about her side project curating the best business, design, and organisational change tool boxes built by some of the most influential companies, institutions and thinkers in the world. We then discuss how to set up client briefs for success, how participants should leave a session, and why she's sick of the work 'workshop'. Listen in to learn why Jenny wants facilitators to be the energy they'd like to see in the room.

"I was at a conference last year pre COVID, and this lady came up to me at a conference booth and said, "Oh great. I just read your book 10X Culture and it's fantastic timing because we're about to redo our culture." And I had a little chuckle to myself, like she was about to paint her living room. Like you can just transform a company culture overnight, but as we both know, and I strongly believe to be the case, culture is really just the sum or the aggregate of the people in the organization. You can't change your culture without changing all your people or the way they operate, the way they show up."-Darren Chait

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Darren Chait about his experience building productivity software for teams. We discuss the link between bad meetings and bad cultures, how productivity software has changed in the past 5 years, and his unconventional point of view on the return to work post covid. Listen in to learn about 'killing meeting sacred cows', communication bandwidths, and empowering people to work when they're most productive.

"Rhetoric to us is the adjustment of ideas to people and people to ideas. Essentially that calls for what we refer to as rhetorical precision. We suggest that a facilitator be much more reliant on substance than style. In fact, we encourage people not to be charismatic because you want the focus on the content, not on the individual themselves. So clarity and precision demand a very sensitive tuning into rhetoric and what one is actually saying or asking."-Terrence Metz

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Terrence Metz about his extensive experience as a facilitation practitioner, author, and trainer. We explore concepts like rhetorical precision, consciousness, and competence. We then discuss the distinction between enterprise vs. community facilitation, consensus vs. unanimity, and stories vs. metaphors. Listen in to learn questions every facilitator needs to know.

"Fallow is such an eco-cyclical idea but I feel that it's very underrated. So I've been thinking about the value. We think about moving through creative destruction into periods of renewal, there is a space and time that is fallow. Things are sort of resting and they're quiet. And there are different ideas and different sorts of notions or learnings that are sort of dormant in us. And then they come out at these times and you're like, well, that's been waiting to just emerge as this delightful piece of tacit knowledge, and then it becomes more explicit knowledge. But I love the idea that there are these things simmering. They're all part of the compost. They're all part of the soil."-Anna Jackson

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Anna Jackson about her experience helping groups work together on what matters most to them, often facilitating collaborative learning experiences, and as a partner for people who want to learn Liberating Structures. We explore why it's ok to be fallow at times and methods for understanding the needs of clients. We then discuss the differences in group work and individual work. Listen in to learn about the mechanisms of systems thinking, transitional facilitation, and learning partnerships.

" I wanted the classroom to be based on the fact that first and foremost, bring everything you got. Bring all aspects of who you feel and think and believe yourself to be, because we're all constantly forming that idea, all trying to figure out who our authentic self is. So through that, I started to focus more on creating an actual pledge for each of my class periods. So instead of saying these are the rules, I had my students help create community in that particular class period and what that meant to them. So that's something that I've presented nationally on creating a pledge, a classroom pledge for each individual classroom."-Matthew Reynolds

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Matthew Reynolds about building a Diversity and Inclusion Consultancy, what inspired their strong point of view within the industry, and finding a sense of belonging growing up as a multiethnic, same gender, peaceful warrior in rural America. We explore strategies for creating environments of humanity and shifting the consciousness of humanity. We then discuss the distinction between acquaintance, friend, and close friend. Listen in to question how much of your thinking is your own thinking.

"One of the most common things that I'm hearing is, 'thank you for sharing'. It drives me nuts because there's a big part of me that is just like, there's no 'thank you' needed. I didn't share that for your gratitude to be received. I shared that because it was on my mind. And so I think what I fear is happening is we're starting to have this conversation about let's listen. Let's just take time to listen. Without having been trained on what to do after you hear things. And I don't know if we're quite ready to really deeply listen without having to know what to do." -Bre Gentile

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Bre Gentile about her unconventional career path transitioning from Academia to tech to Founder of her own lab. We discuss the amazing knowledge she has gained in trauma and toxic stress research and how she was able to leverage her lived experience to help app designers, UX researchers, and other creatives become more trauma-informed so they build more accessible products. We then talk about using friendship as a tool to develop emotional intelligence, empathy, and deep listening skills. Listen in to learn strategies for developing self awareness and empathy at work.

"I think one of the things that is unfortunate about design thinking is it gets a little bit of a bad rap in that people don't see a practical application of it. And I think if you can strip away some of the aesthetics and strip away some of the language, but there are practical applications, I call it, we have to be practical and tactical because we can really drive a lot of change in our organization by doing that." -Brian Sullivan

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian about his twenty plus years of experience in the Design Industry and what led him to become a Design Thinking advocate and educator. We discuss how to make Design Thinking more practical and the joy of having a job making other people better at their job. We then talk about the importance of creating space for mental health and a few activities he uses with his teams. Listen in to learn about his unique approach for educating design students, designing mentorships, and knowledge sharing.

"We spend a lot of time figuring out how to dismantle people's ideas. How to poke holes in them. Critical thinking is supposed to be critical, right? Well, not always. Critical thinking sometimes is about how you combine things in new ways and create new things out of them. See what's possible. Not just how you deconstruct them and leave all the parts on the table."-Gregory Galle

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Gregory Galle about his 30 years of experience applying his Think Wrong problem solving system to both the private and public sectors. We discuss scaling his business internationally and recruiting local assets for global problems. We then talk about the importance of understanding Cross Sector Communication and creating the conditions for 'Being' in business. Listen in to learn about his unique approach to Challenge Statements, reframing How Might We questions, and lots of practical activities to help you change group dynamics.