Facilitation Lab Podcast

"I just started to see really smart, prolific, skilled people who shared my values."

-Lynda Baker

I'm excited to have Lynda Baker, IAF Certified Professional Facilitator Master, meeting leader coach, and founder and president of Meeting Solutions Online on today’s episode of Control the Room. As a certified professional facilitator, she creates collaborative client relationships, plans appropriate group processes, creates and sustains a participatory environment, and guides groups to appropriate and useful outcomes. She also trains meeting leaders and managers who want to remove blocks that prevent them from running productive meetings.

While a freshman in college, she wanted to be an orientation leader. She volunteered to work at the admissions office at the State University of New York, who had an excellent peer advisor orientation. Lynda learned about active listening, leading groups of students, and parent groups. The program equipped her with the skills to engage others in conversation. Additionally, she and several peers from this group volunteered to be response volunteers at a local crisis center. These experiences planted the seed to be involved in her career.

Working in an incubator, "I found myself demonstrating these really amazing pieces of technology in a room that was an intranet because the internet wasn't even that powerful in those days."

We talk about her early days of being seduced by technology, why she clicked with the IAF, and how the IAF holds people accountable. Listen in to find out how Laura teaches the concepts of facilitation, why "your" meeting isn't "your" meeting, and why you don't have to manage or control every part of the conversation.

 

Show Highlights

[00:55] How Lynda started her career path to a group facilitator.

[03:58] Her journey from her early experiences to what she does today.

[07:24] How Lynda got started and what she would do differently if she were to relaunch now.

[10:14] IAF and understanding facilitated values and facilitated behaviors and the impact of engagement.

[13:26] Differences between a moderator and a facilitator.

[15:35] Laura speaks about her experience with training facilitation.

[18:36] Leaders and how they can harness the power of facilitation.

[21:30] Why engagement is not entertainment.

[25:48] Having operating agreements instead of ground rules. 

[29:47] Gratitude in facilitation and recognizing the contributions of the group.

[34:22] How can participants be better participants?

[38:27] Behaviors that go unchecked during facilitation.

[41:50] Why Laura believes that a Master’s degree in Leadership Change is the most critical degree needed for our world today.

Links and Resources

Meeting Solutions Online

Lynda Baker on LinkedIn

About the Guest

Lynda facilitates well-designed meetings, face-to-face and on-line, that create actionable results. As a certified professional facilitator, she establishes collaborative client relationships, plans appropriate group processes, creates and sustains a participatory environment, and guides groups to appropriate and useful outcomes. She also trains meeting leaders and managers who want to remove blocks that prevent them from running productive meetings.

Proudly cited as a creative senior-level organizational development professional with a passion for finding the right process to engage collaboration for problem-solving, decision-making, and action planning; her superpower is surfacing clarity that leads to productive outcomes and action plans across organizational levels.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm here with Lynda Baker, IAF-certified professional facilitator-master, meeting leader coach, and founder and president of Meeting Solutions Online.

Welcome to the show, Lynda.

Lynda: Thank you, Douglas. I’m happy to be here.

Douglas: So, Lynda, tell us a little bit about how you got started.

Lynda: Well, I really was a wee tot, I must confess. I think I really got started as a facilitator when I was a freshman in college. I was one of those enthusiastic freshmen who wanted to be an orientation leader someday, and so I volunteered to work in the admissions office at this wonderful institution, the State University of New York at Stony Brook. And they had an awesome peer-advisor, peer-counseling orientation. And I learned about T-groups and about active listening and about leading groups of students who were coming to the university in conversations and leading parent groups, talking to parents who were interested in coming to the university, or having their children come. And even though there was a certain amount of content that we were sharing, we were also equipped with lots of skills to engage these students, prospective students, and these parents, in conversations. So there was that piece.

And the other piece was that it was the early days of creating what I think are now referred to as I&R services, information and referral services, like people who call crisis lines and want information. And there was a crisis line that was being created in the town of Stony Brook called Response, and several of my peers and I volunteered to be trained to be Response volunteers on the phone. And I think both of those activities as a college student really planted the seeds for me to be passionate about this field, although I didn't find that out until a little bit later in my career.

Douglas: And so tell me a little bit more about—I mean, I think it's fascinating to think back around some of the early seeds that are planted and how they start to grow and develop into something that's ultimately a beautiful, flowering career in facilitation. You kind of mentioned that there was a moment much later on that it became more obvious. So was there something that was transformative later, or how did that journey from those early experiences flow into where you are today?

Lynda: Well, I think that the professional career that I chose and my academic training had very strong elements of facilitation, and my master's degree is in Higher Education Administration. So I was a student personnel worker, and I worked with college students and really did a lot of shared leadership. I did leadership training with them and empowered them to make decisions. And trained resident advisors. So I had that background. And then I was in a graduate program in counseling psychology. So my academic background dovetailed quite well.

But I think it was when I was working, very interestingly enough, I was working at an organization called the Austin Technology Incubator, and it was in the early days of what we now call remote workshops. In those days, we called it electronic-meeting software or group-decision-support software. And I found myself demonstrating these really amazing pieces of technology in a room that was an intranet because the Internet wasn't even that powerful in those days. The Web wasn't even that powerful in those days. And I would demonstrate this really cool software that companies at the Incubator were developing.

And I worked for the Incubator as their external relations assistant. I did public relations, and I worked with students. And people would say, “You're really good at that. Do you work for this company?” And I would say, “No. I work for the Incubator.” And I started realizing that I could do something that I really loved to do that lots of other people didn’t necessarily like to do or were not necessarily that good at doing.

And it occurred to me: I'm at this incubator that's incubating businesses, starting businesses. I'm getting feedback that this is something I'm really good at. Maybe I need to just go out on my own and do more of this in another way. So I actually started my business in the ’90s, thinking I was going to do electronic-meeting software. I was going to haul around 20 laptop computers and set them up in rooms, or I was going to buy a boat load of keypads, and we were going to do—you know, of course, now people laugh at that, like who needs that? Just log on. So it's really exciting to see what's happened with this field and what's going on now, particularly in 2020 when everything is “electronic meetings,” when everything is digital and virtual.

Douglas: I find that remarkable, this idea that incubators are there to help startups get launched. But I often find that people share that experience that you had, where they're part of the startup or a part of the support environment. They're an employee of the incubator, and they learn by watching these startups, and then that gives them the confidence to go start their own thing. So it's awesome that this has been happening since the ’90s. I hadn’t heard a story quite like that. That's incredible.

So when you were making that shift to start to have these electronic meetings with clients, and you had this dream of putting together these laptops, what was your first step in starting a company? There's a lot of folks out there who want to start facilitation companies, and that's pretty early in the game. So how did you get started, and what would you do differently if you had to start over now?

Lynda: Well, I think one of the things I did was I did a lot of work aligning with the handful of companies that were in the marketplace, who had software that enabled people to collaborate together—I wanted to say online, but I'm not even sure that that was an accurate statement—on a shared network of computers. And at the time, looking back on it, I think that I was a little bit more seduced, I think, by the razzmatazz of the technology. And it was later that I became more developed in terms of my own skills. And I got that, in large part, through affiliating with the International Association of Facilitators. They were having their second, I think, or third conference in Dallas.

Douglas: So what was it about the International Association of Facilitators that allowed you to kind of take a step back from the razzmatazz of the software? What was that thing that really clicked for you?

Lynda: I think I was introduced to the founders of IAF, actually, were the founders, and many people who were involved with the Institute of Cultural Affairs, which is this global organization of people who were doing lots of facilitation and said, “You know, there are other people out there doing facilitation, too. We are doing it to try to advance participation in communities, to advance participation as a sort of a social movement. But there are lots of people out there also doing this. Maybe we can create an association.” So they were really, many of those people from ICA were the founders of IAF.

And I think I was realizing that there were lots of people who shared the same values that I shared about collaboration, about engagement. And then I also met some of the people who've now become stellar luminaries in my field. I met Sam Kaner and I met Roger Schwarz, and I met lots of people, Ingrid Bens. I just started to see really smart, prolific, skilled people who shared my values, and they didn't need the razzmatazz of technology necessarily, but they understood what facilitative values were. They understood what facilitative behaviors were, and they understood the impact of engaging participation. This notion that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts, which is, actually, the topic of my recent MURAL talk is the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We, the people means we, the people. It’s not just a platitude. You can really make a “we, the people” occur in a meaningful way in a meeting room.

Douglas: That's brilliant. And it sounds like the community and just the amazing people that were coming together to talk about these things and how they were shaping the craft, if you will, it really spoke to you.

Lynda: Well, yes, it was the community, and it was a community and still is a community that holds people accountable to some standards. When I got involved, they first started talking about what are facilitator competencies? How do we collectively define this body of knowledge, these abilities, behaviors, skills? How do these things fit together to really define what a facilitator is?

I think about the ways in which certain words are used in our culture. Counselor is a good one. You go to the doctor's office or you go to some place, a medical place, and they say, “Oh, the financial counselor would like to talk to you.” It's, like, that’s not a counselor; that’s accounts receivable. But people use the word counselor so loosely.

And I think facilitator is like that as well sometimes. People think everybody's a facilitator. And everybody's not a facilitator; this is a profession. And IAF got out there and said, “We're going to define what these competencies are, what it means to say you’re a facilitator. And we have standards.” And I really appreciated that, and I appreciate it being a part of that movement in our field.

Douglas: The word moderator came to mind when you were talking about words that kind of get thrown around. And I know my heart sinks whenever I coach someone that is looking to improve their meetings; or even a lot of virtual stuff these days, where we get pulled in just to coach and help people. A lot of times, people don't have budget, but we can still help them out and point them in the right direction.

I was helping out someone recently and kind of explaining how some of this stuff works. And they were like, they came back to me and said, “Oh, we found a moderator.” And I was just like, “Well, you know, you can you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, necessarily.”

Lynda: You can't make them facilitate. They might just want to moderate instead.

It's an interesting thing that you bring that up, because I will say to people, sometimes, “I think you don't need a facilitator. I think what you're talking about may be, in fact, a moderator.” In other words, I think it's up to us as a profession to try to educate people, and I think that's another reason why I appreciate the designation, is to help educate people about, I'm not a presenter. And yes, a trainer may use facilitative techniques, but someone who's delivering training is not a facilitator of training. They are a trainer who's using facilitative techniques.

So, I'm a former president of the Austin chapter of the Association of Talent Development, which used to be Society for Training and Development, so I have a lot of strong feelings about training, and I understand what training is, and it's not the same as being a facilitator.

So it's to your point, this is like a moderator, trainer, facilitator. It's like, oh, they're all the same thing. No, no, no, no, no, no. They’re not the same thing.

Douglas: So, you teach a class on facilitation, or facilitative leadership, I think, to be more specific. And I'm really curious. We never spoke about this, so I'll be learning on the fly. Students usually have aha moments, and usually they're fairly common threads from semester to semester, cohort to cohort. What's the thing that keeps just recurring as you're teaching this class that are just, like, pivotal moments for students as they’re embarking on learning about facilitation?

Lynda: So you were asking about my class that I teach. I teach a class called Facilitation as a Tool for Strategic Leadership. And my colleague, Dr. Tom Sechrest, had me come to speak to his classes in the master's program in leadership and change at St. Edward's University many years. And after several years of enthusiasm in these students, on Tom's part, he said, “Maybe you ought to teach a special projects class on this subject of facilitation. I knew it was important in my class as a speaker, but it could be a whole class.”

So I embarked on that three years ago. And of course, this year it was totally online. And as of two days ago, my students’ final projects are due, so I’m going to be reading about their aha moments any moment. But I think that what I've observed that's been very interesting is having trained facilitation, teaching people techniques, for many, many years—I teach the technology of participation, which is an ICA methodology—I now am really teaching more concepts of facilitation. I'm not necessarily teaching skills.

And I think what's been really fascinating to me is students will say, “I took conflict resolution, and we learned a little bit about action learning. But the way you teach this class, I sort of see how it is applied in interacting with people. You demonstrated a lot of that to me.” And I have to be honest, Douglas. I don't realize that I'm doing that intentionally, but I've been very gratified to see how people seem to say, “Hmm, if I’m going to be a strategic leader, I may not be a facilitator in the traditional sense of being what a facilitator is, but if I really understand what facilitators do, there are foundational principles and values and behaviors that I can shamelessly steal from that profession and use as being a really good strategic leader.” I mean, I think that that's interesting now that I think about it—I hadn’t thought about it except about our conversation we had before we even started this recording, when we were talking about Roger Schwarz’s book Smarter Leaders, Smarter Teams. I mean, I think his first book was The Skilled Facilitator, but he's teaching leadership now. I hadn't really thought about it, frankly, until this very minute, that synapse, or that connection—that if more leaders were facilitated, we'd probably be in a lot better shape.

Douglas: Absolutely. And we've been talking a lot about how that's the future, right? We're looking at so many ineffective meetings and wasted time. If the leaders understand these things, then they can enact more change across the organization and influence direction through more participation. And I think that's where true innovation can come from.

I guess, looking through that lens of leaders harnessing the power of facilitation, what do you think that can unlock for organizations as far as— like, what is the specific future you could imagine? How would you see organizations starting to change if more leaders were facilitators?

Lynda: Well, I've always said that it's curious that people crave community and yet they abhor meetings. And I think if more leaders understood that people are passionate about getting things done, and they know that they must get them done with other people and cannot get them done alone, and that the reason why they abhor meetings is that there are so many blocks to their productivity in those sessions that they become frustrated. So I think that the secret sauce for a facilitator and for a leader is to learn how to remove obstacles and blocks rather than put things in that are irrelevant or clever or entertaining or the many things that people do. “Oh, I think I'll do an icebreaker.” It's like, “Is there any ice in the room?” I mean, people, I think, need to understand that their jobs are not to be necessarily entertaining, but engaging in relevant ways and listening to what people's needs are and responding in meaningful ways to what their needs are. So I think if leaders begin to understand ways to not be afraid of learning what those obstacles are, not be afraid of being humble, that’s the big learning I've had, to be honest, living in this virtual space right now.

I told my students this summer, “I think I’m the Brené Brown of facilitators.” I will just come out and say, “You know what. I just left a breakout room, and by mistake, I left the whole meeting. I needed to get back in.” And then they feel comfortable saying, “Really? I didn't know where the Chat button was. Thank you so much for admitting your vulnerability and your…” You know, I think we need to be more human with each other.

Douglas: Absolutely. My speaking coach even gave me advice. He’s like, “You don't want to be the hero. No one wants to hear about how awesome you are. But if you show how fallible you are, they'll listen. They'll eat it up.” And I think that's just to better engage the audience in the speech, but on the facilitation side, we absolutely need to show our human side because it's not about us. It's not about us entertaining and what not. And you talking about the obstacles and removing those reminded me of our preshow conversation and the definition of facilitation being to make it easy, and I think more facilitators need to meditate on that one.

Lynda: I think, when I first started working in this field, one of my very good friends and colleagues said to me, “You have to remember that this meeting isn't your meeting. It's their meeting.” And I kept thinking, “Yeah, but they've hired me to help them with their meeting.” Said, “Well, your job is to hold the space and be good at process, but it's their meeting.” And I think when I've trained facilitators to hold their breath—or not hold their breath, perhaps—but take a breath and not necessarily intervene quickly in a quiet space in the meeting, that the group will pick up, eventually, the thread of that conversation.

Roger Schwarz once said, “If you don't intervene at a particular moment and you think it's a really appropriate moment, there's a good chance that whatever that challenge is, it will come back again.” But it's this notion that there are times to intervene that are appropriate. It also is that you don't have to manage or control every part of this conversation, but you develop a sensitivity to when you can move in and move out.

I think you talk about tight control and loose control. It's kind of like the dance, how you really move in and move out. And it's one of the things that IAF promoted at early conference, I think. They talk about the art and science of facilitation. And it really is both an art and a science, I think.

Douglas: It reminds me of how Keith McCanless talks about falling off the horse and getting on the horse. And sometimes you lose control, and sometimes you—and you have to just be at peace with that. But my whole philosophy is you don't want things to be out of control. We want to unleash everyone. We want to distribute control. But as soon as things veer into—in the form of if we're looking at complexity theory, if we get into chaos, that's not generally a good thing. Wading into complexity and allowing emergent phenomenon, that's all good stuff. And how do we as facilitators maybe surf that line and balance around just enough support where we don’t deep into chaos? So we control it just enough so that beautiful things can happen. But we'd all over control it, where we get into the simple demand, and now it's just, you know, obvious solutions that are going to stifle everything.

Lynda: I think that there is a skill to managing conflict, for example, as opposed to trying to cut it off or fearing it. I think that oftentimes there are undiscussables or conflictual undercurrents in a group that can be very illustrative and educational and healing if dealt with appropriately. And oftentimes, that's why people bring in facilitators, because there's something up—they don't quite know what, or they don't know how—but they know they can't do it themselves. And so I think that the degree to which we can hold the space and manage those situations before they are chaotic, but they are conflictual in some ways, that we can guide people to learn from conflicts and not be afraid to talk about difficult things.

One of the expressions that I've heard people talk about when they talk about ground rules—which, I don't like that phrase. I like to call them operating agreements rather than ground rules—is when people say, “There's no such thing as a bad idea.” And I often find that to be very—it's really a superficial comment. There are some ideas that are better than other ideas. And if we want to get really good ideas, we need to be comfortable talking about an idea that maybe has some aspects of it that are not going to help us advance to our desired outcome or to advance the results our company needs or to advance to a higher place. So I think that words matter a lot. I think it’s up to us to try to help—I made that comment earlier about we, the people. If we really want to have free speech, we need to be really skilled at communicating with one another and deepening the dialog, agreeing on what important words mean, and that's what helps contribute to getting to the bottom of issues and not being afraid to go there.

Douglas: So I agree that words matter, and you have some opinions on ground rules don't set the right tone and your preference for operating agreements. I think that's awesome. What other sorts of verbal judo do you have or kind of words in your toolkit when you're dealing with, let's say, conflict or needing to maybe shift energy in the room? What are some of your Lynda favorites?

Lynda: The first thing that came to my mind, and I'm not even sure if this is what I would call verbal judo, is I often will say, “You need to complain to the person who can do something about the complaint.” I think that some of the operating agreements that I talk about—although Schwarz calls them ground rules, but actually he's calling them eight behaviors for smarter teams now. They used to be ground rules, now they’re behaviors—are agreeing what important words mean. The famous Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes guys, talk about focusing on interests rather than positions, sharing relevant information. A lot of those, even if a group’s not necessarily embracing those kinds of practices, I do my best to try to promote the use of those words that become—you become more unconsciously competent about it. If you use it for a long-enough time, you start to develop your own skill in actually doing those things.

In the beginning of my career, I used to say, “I'm going to share relevant information right now,” or “I’d like to focus on an interest rather than a position right now.” And it felt very mechanical. I'm more comfortable saying things like, “This is what I'm interested in. Help me understand what you're interested in, or “This is how I see it. Do you see it similarly, or do you see it differently?”

Douglas: I like that, framing it really clearly and then asking, inviting people to challenge it and correct and maybe nuance. I think that's powerful, for sure.

And I guess, I want to come back to this notion of facilitation making leaders better. And I think that one thing I've noticed in facilitation a lot of times, facilitators talk about holding space, facilitators practice active listening, and I think there's a general thread of gratitude in facilitation, just being grateful for everyone's contribution and recognizing everyone's space and contribution. And I think that alone has a very powerful impact when leaders practice these things, specifically the gratitude. So I say all this out of curiosity around your experience with the, I would say, the overlap between facilitation and gratitude.

Lynda: Wow, that's interesting. I hadn't really thought about the connection between the word grace and gratitude until just now. I think that the current world that we are operating in is a world in which we are called to give one another grace. To me, that means that we are as grateful as we can be for their circumstance and situation, and I think that as a facilitator, we need to be grateful for people giving us the authority, if you will, to lead their meetings.

I learned many years ago that a key to introducing yourself to any group is to express your appreciation to them for giving you their attention. And that is a gift for which you need to be grateful because it's very easy for people to tune you out as a speaker, as a trainer, as a facilitator. So I think we need to express our gratitude for people's time and commitment and earn the right to be in front of that room. There's a lot of humility that I think goes a long way when you realize that for a certain amount of time—an hour, two hours, a day, several days, a couple of weeks—you are being given a lot of attention, and that is very precious.

Douglas: If you could change anything about the way most meetings are run, what would it be?

Lynda: Wow. I think the simple slowing-down-to-speed-up philosophy would be a good way to start. That means listening to what is said and periodically pausing and summarizing what you think has been said and checking back with people and seeing if you are tracking with them. I think that would go a long way if people did that. And I don't only mean meeting leaders. I mean, attendees could do a little bit more of that as well.

Douglas Yeah. So let’s talk about that. John Fitch and I have a book that we are working on called The Non-obvious Guide to Magical Meetings, and we have a whole section on how to make meetings better as a participant, so I love the fact that you brought up this notion of participants.

So as facilitators, we end up in other people's meetings. And what's some of your advice to folks that want to be better participants in meetings?

Lynda: I almost feel like, I don't know, maybe a charlatan, answering that question, because I don't think I'm a very good participant. I have to confess.

Douglas: So what makes you a bad participant, Lynda?

Lynda: Well, I get very excited and passionate as the participant. I think I have a lot of needs for attention. And when I get excited in a meeting, I sometimes get carried away, and I think that I'm the kind of participant that some people who are not experienced facilitators think are those people who go on and on, and you have to shut them up already. And so I think that's why I'm a really good facilitator, because I have sympathy for those people, because I am one of those people.

But that's not what you asked. You asked, How could participants be better participants? So now that I've confessed—I did tell you I was the Brené Brown of meeting facilitators—now that I've confessed that I need to teach myself some behaviors, I've been doing a little bit more of this. I have been. When I'm ready to say something in a meeting and I get really excited about it, I've tried to take a few breaths and think to myself, “If you don't say that right now, why don't you wait for two or three more people to say something, and see if maybe someone else is going to say it first.” So that would be one thing. When you're really excited about saying something, you can write it down, and then wait a few minutes. That’s one behavior.

Another one would be the very thing I said before, which is if you don't feel like you want to—some people say, “Well, I don't really have anything to contribute.” I think a good participant can also be a good-enough listener to say, “Although I don't have any ideas directly about what's just been discussed…” I can hear you typing over there. You might be jotting down some really important notes. Although a participant may say, “I don't have much to contribute,” they can listen and do that observation. “I seem to hear a theme. I seem to hear a theme right now in this conversation,” or “I heard this, this, and this. Is that what people are saying?” So that’s another way.

And I think the other great thing everybody can do is to learn how to ask better questions. What I tell my students is, questions are the Swiss Army knife of a good facilitator.

Douglas: Mm. I think it's really great, too, when participants start asking really great, great questions. And I will often—that's one of my operating agreements. I'll stop saying ground rules. I encourage them to, if they have something to share, that they can share in the form of a question, it's best to ask the question. If they think someone else maybe has more details on something, they can poll the group with this. And often, you will learn something because someone answers your question, they're going to answer it slightly differently than you would have shared. And I just think that's a super-amazing alignment tool is getting the team to ask questions of each other rather than just spewing facts over and over again.

Lynda: I think that is also that combination approach of combining advocacy and inquiry, advocating your particular point of view and asking questions. I think you pointed out before, when I mentioned, that you said being able to pose your opinion and then ask people if they see it that way or they see it differently. And that requires sincere curiosity. It's not, “I have a technique. I'm going to tell you what I think. And then I'm going to ask you if you see it similarly or differently.” You have to really be curious about whether they do see it the same way or differently. Otherwise, it doesn't really work, you know? And I think that's the idea of being a values-based facilitator, that if your values are really to seek transparency and to share relevant information, then you really are curious. You really want feedback. Sometimes we don't want feedback. Then it would not be a good idea to ask for it.

Douglas: Let's talk a little bit about values-based facilitation.

Lynda: I think that we often have behaviors that go unchecked. We don't necessarily align the way we behave in interactions as well as in facilitative skill or facilitative behaviors as human beings interacting with one another. And I think that really getting to the bottom of what we believe, what our values are, what our code of ethics is—I mean, the IAF has a code of ethics. We believe in the power of collaboration. We believe that it is important to disclose conflicts of interest. We honor the integrity of all participants in a group—you start to have to, in a way, hold yourself accountable to, how do your behaviors align with that? And I think that as a culture, we're looking a lot more closely at, how do our behaviors align with our values?

That's why I think that a meeting room, whether it's face to face or virtual, really needs to reflect values or principles that are way bigger than just your personal opinions about how to manage participation. And as I mentioned earlier, that whole idea of, what does it mean that everyone is welcome? What does that mean, really? If you really believe that everyone is welcome, how do you equitably welcome everybody to the table? How do you respect people who do or do not want to have their cameras turned on? How do you connect with people and welcome people? And how do people want to be welcomed? The difference between the Golden Rule and the Platinum Rule—the Golden Rule is treat others as you would like to be treated. But the Platinum Rule says treat them the way they want to be treated. It may not be the same as the way you want to be treated.

So I think that's the best I can do on values-based facilitation. There's certainly authors that have written extensively. And I think looking at organizations like the IAF or ICA or looking at basic beliefs of an organization or the underpinnings of a philosophy.

Douglas: Yeah, that's great.

What's something that you recently discovered that has given you hope or making you really curious?

Lynda: I think it's the gift of being able to teach at the university at this time. For the first time in the years that I've been teaching at St. Edward's, this year I was able to say to my students, “You are all learning about facilitation as you are earning your master's degree in leadership and change. I know that you thought this degree was important when you began to pursue it, but I want you to recognize right this minute that master’s of leadership and change is the most critical degree needed for our world today. And you are all earning that degree, and you're learning about facilitation as you're doing that.” And there were many students who looked back at me on, as I refer to it, the Hollywood Squares of Zoom, and their eyes lit up. And I think that as a mom and as a professor and as a professional in this field, I feel like there are lots of young people who really understand the value of engagement and participation. And our world really needs engagement and participation and compassion and empowerment today, not just young people, but thinking about cities and counties that have discovered, “You know, if we don't have strong leadership beyond our city or county or state, it's up to us. It's up to each individual to step up to the plate, and say, ‘Yes, I can. And yes, I will.’” And I think facilitators are needed more now than ever before to help people realize that, yes, they can, and yes, we will.

Douglas: Lynda, thank you so much for this great conversation today. It's been such a pleasure to have you on the show and to talk with you. I just want to give you a moment to let listeners know how they can find you.

Lynda: Sheltering in place, they can find me. They can find me at meetingsolutionsonline.com. My email address is [email protected]. And I would love to hear from your listeners. I'd love to hear what they heard, what they thought, what they agreed with, and what they maybe wanted to hear more about, or even disagreed with, because I'm aspiring to learn more about this field myself always.

So, thank you so much for the invitation to speak with you, Douglas. It’s been really, really exciting and intriguing for me to hear from you as well. So thank you very much.

Douglas: Always a pleasure, Lynda.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better 

"I had this moment of really enjoying the launching of ideas within existing structures "

-Karen Holst

I'm excited to have Karen Holst with me today. She is an entrepreneur turned intrapreneur and helps companies drive product innovation as a product strategy leader. Karen has deep expertise in human-centered design strategies, creative problem-solving, and product innovation. She worked on Ex-IDEO led innovation at Autodesk, for the CA Dept. of Education and is the co-founder of MyEdu. She currently teaches at LinkedIn Learning, and most recently, we co-authored the book Start Within: How to Sell Your Idea, Overcome Roadblocks and Love Your Job.

If there was one thing she could change about meetings, it would be "that everybody comes in with an understanding of the goal," Karen says. "I think that sounds so simple, but I think that having the same meeting over and over again and feel like you're not moving the ball any further down the field is one of the most frustrating experiences."

In today's episode, we talk about how you can energize the life of your job and the work you are doing. This is advice Karen also gives for using our book, Start Within, and how it can help you at any part of your growth journey. Listen in to find out how you can use an anthropologist's view of running a meeting, how to focus on the one element that can make the most significant impact for leading a meeting, and how to shift your expectations to fit another company's culture meeting process.

Show Highlights

[01:15] Karen's genesis story.

[03:58] How egos can get in the way of meeting productivity.

[06:04] How to dive into Start Within.

[10:12] Understanding meeting culture for the purpose of co-creation.

[16:08] Removing the lense of how to lead a meeting "the right way".

[19:25] Running meetings how your boss expects them to be run.

[21:54] Go beyond the cookie cutter approach to meetings to create your own leadership style.

[24:50] What Karen learned about meetings during her first start up.

[26:55] Being interested equates to asking questions and discovering purpose.

[29:55] Tactics Karen has seen groups implement to get unstuck with their vision.

[34:52] Other books suggestions to move your vision forward.

Links and Resources

Karen on LinkedIn

Get a Copy of Start Within

About the Guest

Karen Holst is a product leader with deep expertise in human-centered design strategies, creative problem-solving, and product innovation.

She has taken her career from a business strategy and entrepreneurship to strategic partnerships and market communications. Karen loves to create technology with a broader impact. She is a leader in her work, co-founding a startup and launching a new technology within a government agency. About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today, I'm with Karen Holst, entrepreneur turned intrapreneur. She co-founded an education-tech startup in Austin, Texas, and later went on to join IDEO, and then, led innovation at Autodesk. She's currently teaching at LinkedIn Learning, and most recently, coauthored the book Start Within: How to Sell Your Idea, Overcome Roadblocks, and Love Your Job.

Welcome to the show, Karen.

Karen: Hi. Thank you.

Douglas: So, Karen, I'd love to start with a little bit about how you got started.

Karen: Sure. So I, my junior year in college, had met two guys at my rival university. I went to the University of Texas, and they went to Texas A&M. I'd heard about a company that they were thinking about starting. And I just had—I was brimming with ideas on what I could do to make this happen. And I approached them and said they needed to bring me on board. And we just clicked, and I became a co-founder, and we launched the company. We, then, grew it through multiple rounds of funding and then ended up seeing a successful exit. So my first job was really a job I created.

And then from that point on, saw that over and over throughout my career. Joined the California Department of Education and helping lead educational technology within the state, and that was really about bringing new tools and services into the classroom and figuring out how to make that process more smooth and get through the red tape.

After that, joined IDEO and helped them launch IDEO U, which is an online-learning platform, teaching design thinking and creative problem solving. And had this moment of really enjoying the launching of ideas within existing structures, that being an entrepreneur, I thought I needed to own the idea, but it shifted. I could own the idea anywhere that I work. So then I was able to just go follow the shiny problems.

Later joined Autodesk in their media and entertainment space and helping them innovate, and gotten to do lots of projects within corporations, nonprofits, government agencies since then. And that all led to writing the book, Start Within.

Douglas: Exciting. So if you could change one thing about most meetings, what would it be?

Karen: That everybody comes in with an understanding of the goal. I think that sounds so simple, but just having the same meeting over and over and feeling like you're not moving the ball any further down the field is one of the most frustrating experiences.

Douglas: Yeah. And I think that aligns with quite a few of our meeting mantras and philosophies about meetings. And two that come to mind is this idea of never starting without a clear purpose. So purpose and goal are at least cousins. And then, also, you talked about how this Groundhog Day kind of feeling, just like the meetings just kind of repeating themselves. And I think, often not being clear on if we're ideating or making a decision, and if we're making a decision, what's the process by which we're going to make that decision?

Karen: Yeah. And I feel like people get in the way of the goals. So even when they're well communicated in advance and alignment, egos can get in the way, where either people are just really married to their ideas and wanting that to try to drive the meeting around that notion, or they're just blindly and accidentally, perhaps, getting in the way of progress because they're just stuck in the ego side of things.

Douglas: Yeah. And I didn't intend on it, but the Groundhog Day analogy came out, and we talk about that in the book, this notion of, is everything kind of repeating itself? Are you just kind of stuck in the hamster wheel of the day to day and feeling just inundated with monotony? And so maybe let's talk a little bit about that feeling and how the book can kind of help guide you out of that feeling in that situation.

Karen: Yeah. So as humans, we are wired to innovate. We're wired to see creativity and make the mundane not mundane. And you think about while we're recording this, it's during the COVID pandemic, and we're seeing this everywhere. People are taking up new hobbies. My toddler son is asking me to read the kids' books in different voices or to change the ending of the book, just because we're so bored of everyday feeling like the day before. And if we're wired for that, what's holding us back from actually doing that? And I think meetings, being such a big part of our work, are a key place to really energize the life and job and work that you're doing.

And a lot of what we talk about in the book is to find that purpose and breathe new life into your job so that you love it, so that you feel passionate about it. So there's lots of steps in that process in how to make that happen throughout the book.

Douglas: And when you think about all the steps and someone wanting to just get started, in your perspective, is it just to pick up the book and jumping into the first chapter, or is it more of a choose-your-own adventure, where it's like, this might apply more to me? Maybe help guide the reader, the doer, into how they might dive in.

Karen: Yeah. That's a great, great analogy, the choose your adventure. I say it's more like that. The process and work of bringing an idea forward is not linear, so there's different places that you're going to start from, and that you're going to get stuck and need assistance. The book reads that way. You can just jump in where you need to. And then I say proceed with caution, because as humans, we're also wired to kind of go after the things that we're most comfortable. And that's okay to start where you're comfortable, but not to ignore the places where we need to grow.

So as an example, I think about the structure of the book. It's set up in three sections: get ready, get set, and go. And I am a "go" gal through and through. I want to start prototyping and experimenting my way forward. And it takes discipline to do the work of the "get ready" and "get set." And if I pick up the book as a lay reader, I might just dive right into the "go" because that's where I want to get started. But that's a place that I'm already pretty skilled at, and where I would really benefit is perhaps starting there, but then making sure that I'm going back through the other sections and phases of this work and building those muscles as well.

So it's very similar to working out, you know? We feel great when we do that same elliptical machine or whatever, weights that we're into, but when we challenge ourselves to do a new machine or new exercise, our muscles start to learn new ways of working.

Douglas: Yeah. I love that analogy of kind of cross training. It's incredible. And I often like to think about the maturity of a project. And so if we're two years into something, the book might mean something different to us than if we're about to start something or we've been afraid to start something. So I like the fact that can really help folks no matter where they are in the journey.

Karen: Yeah. That's so true.

I was talking to someone about this. And in the book we talk about when you're doing a new idea and trying to push something forward, that there's this, for every 80 hours of work that you put towards your project, there's two hours of work in communicating that with your team and bringing along stakeholders. And I've gotten pushback from people that said, "Wow, that's a lot of communication that you're spending time on," and then others saying, "That is totally not enough to bring stakeholders along." And I think that rule of thumb can be shifted based on where you're at in the project and trying to make new things happen, and that context is important as you go through this work, right? You're going to have a playbook through things like Start Within, and then you have to intuit what is and isn't working, and then, kind of fine tune things beyond that.

Douglas: Yeah. Also, think about—was it Malcolm Gladwell that said 10,000 hours of anything will make you an expert? And there have been people that have pushed back on that concept, like, "Well, if you're doing it wrong for 10,000 hours, you're just going to become an expert in doing it wrong." And I like to think that this book has provided folks with some real tactical and very actionable advice to where, as you're getting your reps in, you can start to tweak the way you go about it.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely. To that point of the 10,000 hours, it's definitely about the practice of doing the work, and it's also letting go of the idea that this is only for the charismatic, extroverted people, that the one that you see standing out there and getting to do new things, it does not have to be exclusive to certain types of people. It can be learned.

Douglas: Yeah, I love the idea that we can put it into practice, and we can hone that skill—to bring back the fitness analogy—we can strengthen those muscles.

Karen: Right. Right.

Douglas: So, you've had experience at small companies and big companies, public and private, even consulting and in-house. I'm really curious. With your vantage point across all these different types of companies, what are some of the differences that you've seen as far as meeting cultures and ability to co-create and collaborate? Just what kind of patterns have you noticed?

Karen: Yes. I love that idea of a meeting culture, because going in, understanding that and even using that term for yourself really allows you to then go in with the anthropologist view of, like, here's how it's done, and where can I find opportunities of changing that and making it better? So every company I've ever worked with—nonprofit, large, big, small—have different ways of doing their work, right? The informal and written rules of how meetings should run, it changes based on team, it changes based on who's running it. But the theme at the bottom of all that is you're having these meetings in expectation that it will lead to something. So if you can take a step back and look at how meetings are being run and how efficiently and quickly you're able to go out and do the work post meetings, then you have the opportunity to reflect and say, "Where are there opportunities to make the improvements?"

I think the most stark difference was at the California Department of Education. So I was coming from a startup, where we're doing scrum, we're doing standup, we're doing lots of fast-moving meetings. And then at the California Department of Education, they weren't. And it wasn't a criticism; it was a different way of thinking, a different framework, that when I went in, felt so uncomfortable. I was like, "Hey, when are we going to start picking up the pace and start taking action?" And if I went in there and behaved like that, like a cowboy here to change things up, it would have really turned people off. I needed to learn how they did things to then be able to create the right changes and grow together. It allowed me to be more thoughtful in my approach. It also allowed the team to evolve in how we did our meetings.

Douglas: Yeah. And that's something we've talked about extensively, and I think it's a really keen insight that people really need to consider, which is you can change the process. You can change the method. You can change the corporate goals and objectives. But if you seek to do those things, that's going to be really difficult to also push your idea. In fact, the method, the process, and the goals and objectives, those are two separate things that are best done in isolation. If you're trying to change all that at the same time, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. It's hard enough to make any change, much less just blowing a bunch on at the same time.

Karen: Imagine going into a room, and you look at a person who is writing with their right hand, and you say, "All right, switch. Switch to your left hand. And I want you to close your eyes. And instead of writing in English, write in a different language." That would just overload the person. How do I think about all three of these things you're trying to get me to do? And in pushing an idea forward within an organization, whether that's improving meeting outcomes all the way to launching a new idea, if you're trying to bend and shape things in multiple areas, you're just going to overload the humans that you're trying to bring along in this. So it's really about focusing in on the thing that can have the biggest impact, and then you can go back and after having made that change and seeing the change in place, reapply and do different layers of changes.

Douglas: That's right. I'd even take the analogy one step further, which is, if they're doing all those things, and then we're also trying to tell them, "Let's actually write some different things on the wall. Let's bring on a whole new concept and put that up there," you can see how it just starts to get absurd. And yeah, that's a trap that a lot of people fall into because when—it's almost like, well, we've got the patient open; let's go ahead and make all these changes. Like, we're operating on their lungs; let's work on their heart, too. It's maybe not the best decision.

Karen: Right. Yeah, I mean, meetings, it is such a part of our work and the culture of where we work that at the very root could be the cause of dysfunction in what's going on. So I love that being in a place of leaning in and trying to improve.

Douglas: So let's also take a step back and think about—I love this notion that you talked about, being an anthropologist. And in the book we talk about this element of house rules and understanding how things work at your organization so you can navigate it better. Then, we were just discussing this need to clarify and understand, are we changing the process, or are we pushing some other idea forward? And I think that metaphor of the anthropologist is really powerful because we at Voltage Control do a lot of work where we're were analyzing the meeting systems or helping people understand it, and what does that culture look like, and what sort of systems are going to support a culture that we are aspiring to be, to have? instead of just kind of going full force into the change. Like, really thinking about, do we need to be that anthropologist, or are we actually going in to make change? And so if we're in that mode of anthropologist, what sorts of things do we need to do? How might we put that anthropologist hat on and be really successful at understanding what's in front of us and how we might take advantage of it or how we might just respond to those understanding?

Karen: So in doing this work, it's very hard, but you have to take out your experience elsewhere. So typically, when I coach people through trying to do this kind of work, there's an urge to think back to where you saw it working. Like, great meetings, so we want to do it like that. I came from Amazon. We did it like this, and it was great. We got really far, and we were able to make changes and go out, do quickly. That doesn't mean it's going to work somewhere else, so you have to remove that lens of what I've seen is the right way, and I'm going to figure out how to force that fit, that puzzle piece. Instead, being an anthropologist is really trying to just open up and learn. So it's not directing learning. It's not that one person's going to teach you, so you want to lean in on that person. It's really just trying to open the aperture and figure out where are there these aha moments on what is and isn't working?

And, you know, just going back to the root of that word. If you are going into a village, you wouldn't go into a remote village and expect to be able to instill your values and how you do things and expect this group of people that have a completely different background to take that on. Instead, you're going in to learn from them and build something together. And I think that's hard to do. So it's starting with that beginner's mindset.

Douglas: We also talk about cross examining the silos and then questions that get to real learning. And I think that questions can be really powerful, and listening and observing, as kind of the anthropologist hat that you kind of speak of. And my perspective, if you can get down to actual first principles and understand what are people already upset about, if there are things about the meeting systems or the methods and the process that your organization is using that everyone's already disgruntled about, then that's low-hanging fruit to go after. But you can't learn that stuff unless you get curious and start to examine the silos and start to listen and learn. And to me, I think that's a real powerful opportunity. I'm just curious to hear if you have anything to add there.

Karen: Yeah. I think the other opportunity in all this, if you're going in with this mindset, it allows you to make changes without authority. So even if you're not the person who's running the meetings, you can affect how they're run and how effective they are over time. Now, certainly it might be easier if you're the person of authority to do this work, but it's not a barrier to making things change and happen. You can lead by example. And this all starts with learning and listening and figuring it out as you go forward. But I think that is one of the biggest barriers to this kind of work. And making change within an organization is the belief that if you don't have a title or permission, then you're just kind of an active participant that has to go along with the way things are.

Douglas: Mm, yeah, that's an interesting meeting dynamic, too. Like, if the meetings are set up such that there are active participants and not-so-active participants, the distribution of control and influence and participation can be quite skewed. I'm just curious if you've experienced that, and what thoughts you might have to offer there.

Karen: Yeah, of course. I mean, whenever you're not in charge and someone else is, it might be a meeting you called, but your boss or leadership come into the room as well, that shifts everything. You look at them, and they have an understanding of how the meeting should go, and you report to them, so there's an understanding that you will run the meeting the way they expect it. So you kind of have to shift your own expectations and your own approaches to fit what they believe is the right way forward, even if it isn't sometimes.

And so all of that just points to these baby steps, these baby experiments, that can get you closer to making those changes if you don't have the authority to make it happen, and even when you do, that there's, again, ego in the room or belief systems in the room that there's a way to do it. The little experiments, the small steps, are what can lead to big change over time.

Douglas: You know, it's funny that you say that because it reminds me of times as a leader when my intention was to coach and to show alternative ways of doing things, but I basically just created a little mini-me versions of me, and that can be difficult to notice sometimes. And so we talk a lot about how the book was really inspired by this idea that so many innovation books are focused on the leader and innovation culture and this kind of top-down, like, how are we to shift the organization? And our belief was the best way to shift an organization is a direction from leadership, but empowering the doers to go do the work. And so we really wanted to have a manual for the doer. Now, even though it's a manual for the doer, this is a great tool for the leader because they can take this book and give it out to their folks and use it as a guide for them to be a better coach. And as I've thought about my coaching, even sometimes the best intentions can backfire, and just really paying attention, that have I created a mold of myself that needs to be broken so that they're free to go about doing things the way they would do them so that we have true diversity?

Karen: Yes. I advise startups, and I just had a session this week with a startup that is in the educational technology space. And so it was one that I was really well versed, but also a few years removed. And he wanted to talk about some of the approaches to funding, and then later, marketing that we did. And I went into some coaching lessons, and then I paused and said, "You're in a different time and different products. So here's what we did. Now I'm going to start asking you questions that are kind of the extreme other sides to this. Don't just follow the cookie cutter of what I just shared with you. What are ways that you're going to be different?" And I think if you intuit your way that you're creating many yous—which is a great eye opening, like, how do I not do that? because we just don't want a world full of people like ourselves—a lot of that is because we've got experience in what does and doesn't work for ourselves, and so we reflect that on others. But if we can pause on that and say, "What did and didn't work on me might be in opposition to the person I'm talking to," can we just reframe the question to say, "How might we…" and then don't lead it towards your solution. Instead, think about these might be the ideas that do work for them, or what worked for me is not going to work for them.

Douglas: There's another really beautiful way to approach that, which is just being appreciative.

Karen: Right.

Douglas: Recognizing and being appreciative of everyone's input and contributions. And sociologists have a term called positive deviance, and basically, it sounds almost like deviant, but it's really about making sure that we look at those positive differences. Like, what are those deltas that are positive. So when things have been working well, what were we doing? And often, I think it's easy to look at, "Well, when I did it this way, I got this positive outcome." Having that dialog with others can be really powerful and really kind of lifting them up on a pedestal, and then it kind of relinquishes that burden to feel like, "Hey, here's this process that I need to burden you with."

Karen: I love that. Yeah, that word needs to be rebranded so that people will be more open to it. But yeah, I think there's opportunities to reflect on what does and doesn't work and how that reflects on yourself and the people around you. So, again, it's not the cookie-cutter answer and formula that works for me will work for these other people, but instead, it's framing it in questions to allow them to explore that on their own.

Douglas: Yeah. I love this. I'd already written down questions and underlined it because I wanted to come back to that because you were starting to give some advice to your mentee, and then you stopped yourself and said, "Well, let me ask some questions." And I think that is the hallmark of a really great leader and a great facilitator is to ask really incredible questions. And I think this advice—it just dawned on me—can apply to not only the leaders—because it's very clear, like, "Hey, leaders, ask more-provocative questions of your people,"—and for the doers, it can be equally as powerful, because if your boss, if your leader, is not asking you tough questions and they're doing nothing but giving you advice or criticizing, perhaps you can prompt them to ask you questions.

Karen: Ooh, I love that. Yeah, get them curious.

So, in my startup days, there were really tough meetings with our board, with our investors, and I learned early in my career how to handle those types of meetings. And then later, I started working at IDEO and had a meeting with Tim Brown and other people that were—I'm doing air quotes—"invested in our idea" because we're launching this idea within the company. And so I was ready for what questions I would hear based on that experience of these tough investors and what they asked me in my years prior. And Tim Brown and the leaders there asked such thoughtful questions that floored me, and it really shifted my thinking in how to do this work. I thought it had to be bottom-line growth. And there's other questions around this kind of work and pushing ideas forward that are far more thoughtful around the humans you're building it for that will lead to growth and business strategy. So it's not leaving it up on the table. But instead, it's more thoughtful and deeper than that. And I think when we have productive meetings and great purpose in our work and what we're doing, at the root of it, somebody was asking very thoughtful questions. And you can choose to be that person. And if you are that person, I think, to your point, you can get others around you very curious. Like, it's contagious. When you're being a thoughtful person and really trying to understand things, you'll start to see that shift among others as well.

Douglas: You know, I think that, especially in your LinkedIn Learning course, and a good chunk of our listeners are product people, and I once heard this really profound description of a great product person. And it was that a product person is interested, not interesting, meaning that if you come to a conversation and you try to be interesting, then you're going to share a lot of things. You're going to talk a lot. You're going to tell stories. You're going to try to be cool and hip and, like, "Oh, I know this. I know that." Whereas if you're interested and you're curious, you'll ask lots of questions. You discover all the pertinent things. That always just really stuck with me is that even if I'm in the room with someone who is intimidating and I feel like I need to impress, the best way to impress them is to ask them great questions.

Karen: So, I went to a Super Bowl party. I was living in Canada, and it was at my neighbor's house. And they're not really into American football. It was just something to do on a Sunday. And in the room was a former astronaut and minister, I believe, of transportation—I'm sorry, I don't know his title—who has one of the most fascinating backgrounds. And he asked me—I couldn't get to questions about his background and what he did. He wanted to know more about startups and the book I was writing. And we get about an hour in. I'm like, "Okay, can we talk about what it's like to be an astronaut?" And I just remember leaving there, thinking he was so gifted in exploring the world around him. And it made complete sense that he had gotten to the point that he had in his career, but that he could have very well have been a person that was full of himself and talking about all the important things he's done. And instead, he wanted to learn about me.

Douglas: That's the hallmark of an amazing person. And that's cool that you got to witness that, especially with someone who has already made such great accomplishments, because sometimes those traits, that innate curiosity can wane with popularity and accolades. So it's always amazing when I find someone that's had some amount of fame and notoriety and they've held on to that, because it's a gift, and it's pretty rare.

Karen: I think they're also gifted at finding time and space for allowing those conversations. So, on the other end of the spectrum, a CEO or someone very busy and important can brush you off and make you feel unimportant and not be listening to your answers or not even interested in having the conversation in the first place. And when you are tight on resource for time, that can change who you are, and you have to find opportunities to still be productive, but also learning and listening from each other.

Douglas: Yep. That aligns with one of my philosophies, which is that when you create space, that's when innovation can rush in. If you're constantly whizzing and whirring to and fro the next thing and pressing the buttons, there's really no opportunity for change or new things to develop.

Karen: Yep. If you think about it in meditation or yoga, it's the space between breaths. We're doing this work of breathing and being thoughtful, and then it's in between those moments that you have these eye-opening, kind of out-of-body experiences.

Douglas: So, I'm going to shift gears a little bit here and just talk about tactics. So really curious about what you've seen teams use to get unstuck and start building on their vision.

Karen: So, we recently talked to a woman within a software company, and they're a very large company and been around for many years. And she was really excited about bringing back to her product teams our chapter in work around busting assumptions. And that was so refreshing. You know, this is a company that has figured out a way forward. They can continue to build and move beyond doing things the way they had been. But instead, she and the organization realized they needed to reflect on what's holding back their ideas, what's holding things from becoming something bigger, and how they're holding back innovation. And I think that's an exercise we could do with our teams—get out of the rut of what things should look like and have looked like, and how you might do things differently.

In thinking about assumptions, there's this onion of layers, right? At the very core is the assumptions that you hold on to. And then as you build out, it's the assumptions of the team, of the organization. And then you go all the way out to the world that we live within. And if you can think about each of those layers and how they're blocking you from change, from seeing things, from understanding each other, then that can unlock you, the team, and how you work together, the work that you're doing. There's so many—it's exponential levels on ways of thinking. And it's a great framework for just moving forward and doing things differently.

Douglas: It makes me think that earlier we were talking about meeting systems and meeting culture, and when and why we meet, and what's the goal, and what's the purpose. And so often meetings are just called to discuss something or make some quick decision. I get really excited when people start to open the aperture and to think about, "What if we meet to talk about our assumptions?" or "How about we make a team charter?" so these more kind of meta conversations about the team, the way we work, and things that might be getting in our way, because those types of things can have really profound ripple effects versus just being so into the tactical, like, moving things forward or, heaven forbid, a status report. And so this idea of coming together around assumptions, even applying some of the tools in the book that are designed for an individual, just kind of repurposing that for the team.

Karen: Yes. Going back deeper into the tactical and beyond assumptions, one of my favorite exercises in the book that you can do solo or that you could bring to a team and do together is "No, because. Maybe if. Then, what?" And you start with these three columns of "No, because. Maybe if. Then, what?" And you think about something that's blocking you and your team from moving forward on something, and you just brainstorm all the "no, becauses." No, because we don't have the resources. No, because… You capture each one of those on a Post-it Note.

And then you pause and you go into the next column, "Maybe if." So, no, because we don't have the resources. Maybe if we prototype this smaller, that didn't require as much resources. Or maybe if we found funding outside of our organization. Or maybe if… You go through that same exercise for each "no, because," and you start to brainstorm the "maybe ifs."

You can take a step back, and when you're doing this by yourself, kind of circle where there's heat, or if you're doing this with the team, you could do voting, but moving beyond and really counter attacking the "no, because" with a "then, what?" You know, what are the small experiments that you could be doing to get past this roadblock, if you could pass the barrier that is seemingly holding everybody back? And doing this work over and over with different people in teams, you see this very simple exercise open up people's thinking and to, "All right. I tangibly have something to go after." This feels so much better than the crossed arms, and "This is hard," and the roadblock being right in front of them.

Douglas: It's really cool. And I'm excited because we're working on some templates on MURAL. They'll be launched. And if someone's listening to this in the future, I would say just go and check out the MURAL templates, because they're probably ready at that point.

Karen: Yep. Start within.

Douglas: The other thing I was thinking about was this notion of unlearning and constantly be curious and open to reinventing ourselves. And I think that kind of aligns with a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today, whether it's creating that space as a leader or coming together as a team to look at these assumptions, and just making sure that we've got some time reserved to just allow some of that stuff to happen and being curious about what we might not realize about the world or about our idea or about our team. I guess I'm curious to hear of what else folks should be thinking about in that regard.

Karen: So I do have on my reading list Barry O'Reilly's book Unlearn, and so I haven't read it. I'm going to stop with that because I think that is so hard to do. Even when you say it, you think, "Okay, I've accepted that I'm going to let go of my assumptions and try to lean in and unlearn some of the bad habits, or maybe good habits, so I can find new ways of doing things." We are, again, we are wired to take the inputs that we've had over our lifetime and have that help us move forward. And it is not always obvious where those are, how they're holding you back, or how they might be helping you, too. So that's a book I want to lean into this year and see if that's a place of exploration.

But where I try to do that is stepping back and creating different roles for myself. So when we talk about this in the book, if you're a person who is very positive, a "yes, and," and trying to push things forward, could you go into a meeting before it even starts, say, "I'm going to be the naysayer. I'm going to poke holes in some of these ideas. And you, person over there, you're going to be the positive person." Or we have different roles, and maybe we're shifting what we typically lean into and think about things differently. And how would that dynamic change the meeting? It's not meant to be comical and necessarily a strange meeting that is just run amuck and feels like a comedy show because you're trying to be a naysayer and you just aren't. It's really just about trying to turn your brain into thinking one way, into thinking a different way, and how that helps lead the team in a different direction.

Douglas: I love this idea of examining the roles, and even shifting them and trying on different roles, and I think, not to overload the term role, but role playing can be really a phenomenal way to have a new lens into the world, and also, certainly will disrupt how your teammates think. And we also have talked about the idea of taxonomy, and so how can even the words that we use to talk about meetings can have an impact?

So, for instance—the problem is that we just gravitate to using the word meeting, and it's just what we naturally do. And so it doesn't matter if we're assembling 20 people to talk about how well the product went or it's just two of us having a quick chat about what we're going to have for lunch; we call it a meeting. And I think that is a disservice because it doesn't allow for a clear understanding of the purpose. And that's something we kind of started off with when I asked what was the one thing you would change about meetings is about, you said we need to be more clear about the goals. And so I really love this concept of shifting the roles, examining what those roles are, and trying new things on, because that can really align with us understanding our purpose and even pursuing our purpose more deeply.

Karen: Yes. And that jargon, again, comes back to the meeting culture. So you say meeting. It means one thing at one company; it means another at another. And I saw this happen with calling it brainstorm. So doing a brainstorm from one company where we're standing up, we're active, we're putting Post-it Notes up. There's lots of conversations happening, lots of ideation. And then you go to another company that doesn't brainstorm that way. They do have brainstorm meetings. You go into it, and people are sitting, they're taking notes on their little notepad, and it can be frustrating if that's not—it was frustrating to me. I was like, "Why aren't we all standing up and talking?" And to them, they're like, "Why are you trying to force this other way of doing a brainstorm?" So I think the terms also have different meaning within teams across an organization and certainly within an organization.

Douglas: So, Karen, in closing, what would you like to leave with our listeners?

Karen: I think what's key in this moment, whenever you're listening—if it's recent to when it's posted, it's around the COVID pandemic, and we're working from home, and things are very confusing. Or we're beyond that—there's going to be these times of uncertainty and wanting to hold back on changing things within our team, our organization because we're waiting for things to smooth out. And this opportunity for while things are uncomfortable and uncertain to be when you make the changes and be thoughtful on how big those changes are and how you move forward into them, but that's really what Start Within is all about, and the importance of finding in yourself, that you can affect the change and with the right playbook and tools in hand, you can see it through.

Douglas: Karen, I wanted to double stitch on something you said there, which was, we are living through an unprecedented time right now, and I just wanted to say that I've been grateful to have you as a copilot through some of this, especially as we've looked at inspecting and exploring our own white privilege together, what that means for speaking out around the book and the work that we're doing and supporting others who are struggling through this and needing the help, and how can we be better allies. So I just want to express a little gratitude on the air that it's been phenomenal to work through these challenges with you.

Karen: Yes. I echo that as well. It's uncomfortable and challenging, for lack of better words. And just finding other people that are struggling through this is—finding your community and knowing that you're not alone and doing this kind of work is so important.

Douglas: So, Karen, in closing, how can folks find you and find out more about the book?

Karen: Sure. I'm on LinkedIn, very active there. So, Karen Holst. You can find me. We also have, for the book, the website is start-within.com. You can find it on Amazon to purchase it. And yeah, we have lots of conversations with people that are trying to affect change and bring new ideas forward within organizations. So love connecting with people on that front.

Douglas: It's been great having you, Karen.

Karen: Thank you, again.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resource

"I had this moment of really enjoying the launching of ideas within existing structures "

-Karen Holst

I'm excited to have Karen Holst with me today. She is an entrepreneur turned intrapreneur and helps companies drive product innovation as a product strategy leader. Karen has deep expertise in human-centered design strategies, creative problem-solving, and product innovation. She worked on Ex-IDEO led innovation at Autodesk, for the CA Dept. of Education and is the co-founder of MyEdu. She currently teaches at LinkedIn Learning, and most recently, we co-authored the book Start Within: How to Sell Your Idea, Overcome Roadblocks and Love Your Job.

If there was one thing she could change about meetings, it would be "that everybody comes in with an understanding of the goal,” Karen says. “I think that sounds so simple, but I think that having the same meeting over and over again and feel like you're not moving the ball any further down the field is one of the most frustrating experiences."

In today’s episode, we talk about how you can energize the life of your job and the work you are doing. This is advice Karen also gives for using our book, Start Within, and how it can help you at any part of your growth journey. Listen in to find out how you can use an anthropologist's view of running a meeting, how to focus on the one element that can make the most significant impact for leading a meeting, and how to shift your expectations to fit another company’s culture meeting process.

 

Show Highlights

[01:15] Karen’s genesis story.

[03:58] How egos can get in the way of meeting productivity.

[06:04] How to dive into Start Within.

[10:12] Understanding meeting culture for the purpose of co-creation.

[16:08] Removing the lense of how to lead a meeting “the right way”.

[19:25] Running meetings how your boss expects them to be run.

[21:54] Go beyond the cookie cutter approach to meetings to create your own leadership style.

[24:50] What Karen learned about meetings during her first start up.

[26:55] Being interested equates to asking questions and discovering purpose.

[29:55] Tactics Karen has seen groups implement to get unstuck with their vision.

[34:52] Other books suggestions to move your vision forward.

Links and Resources

Karen on LinkedIn

Get a Copy of Start Within

About the Guest

Karen Holst is a product leader with deep expertise in human-centered design strategies, creative problem-solving, and product innovation.

She has taken her career from a business strategy and entrepreneurship to strategic partnerships and market communications. Karen loves to create technology with a broader impact. She is a leader in her work, co-founding a startup and launching a new technology within a government agency.  About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today, I'm with Karen Holst, entrepreneur turned intrapreneur. She co-founded an education-tech startup in Austin, Texas, and later went on to join IDEO, and then, led innovation at Autodesk. She's currently teaching at LinkedIn Learning, and most recently, coauthored the book Start Within: How to Sell Your Idea, Overcome Roadblocks, and Love Your Job.

Welcome to the show, Karen.

Karen: Hi. Thank you.

Douglas: So, Karen, I'd love to start with a little bit about how you got started.

Karen: Sure. So I, my junior year in college, had met two guys at my rival university. I went to the University of Texas, and they went to Texas A&M. I’d heard about a company that they were thinking about starting. And I just had—I was brimming with ideas on what I could do to make this happen. And I approached them and said they needed to bring me on board. And we just clicked, and I became a co-founder, and we launched the company. We, then, grew it through multiple rounds of funding and then ended up seeing a successful exit. So my first job was really a job I created.

And then from that point on, saw that over and over throughout my career. Joined the California Department of Education and helping lead educational technology within the state, and that was really about bringing new tools and services into the classroom and figuring out how to make that process more smooth and get through the red tape.

After that, joined IDEO and helped them launch IDEO U, which is an online-learning platform, teaching design thinking and creative problem solving. And had this moment of really enjoying the launching of ideas within existing structures, that being an entrepreneur, I thought I needed to own the idea, but it shifted. I could own the idea anywhere that I work. So then I was able to just go follow the shiny problems.

Later joined Autodesk in their media and entertainment space and helping them innovate, and gotten to do lots of projects within corporations, nonprofits, government agencies since then. And that all led to writing the book, Start Within.

Douglas: Exciting. So if you could change one thing about most meetings, what would it be?

Karen: That everybody comes in with an understanding of the goal. I think that sounds so simple, but just having the same meeting over and over and feeling like you're not moving the ball any further down the field is one of the most frustrating experiences.

Douglas: Yeah. And I think that aligns with quite a few of our meeting mantras and philosophies about meetings. And two that come to mind is this idea of never starting without a clear purpose. So purpose and goal are at least cousins. And then, also, you talked about how this Groundhog Day kind of feeling, just like the meetings just kind of repeating themselves. And I think, often not being clear on if we're ideating or making a decision, and if we’re making a decision, what's the process by which we're going to make that decision?

Karen: Yeah. And I feel like people get in the way of the goals. So even when they're well communicated in advance and alignment, egos can get in the way, where either people are just really married to their ideas and wanting that to try to drive the meeting around that notion, or they're just blindly and accidentally, perhaps, getting in the way of progress because they're just stuck in the ego side of things.

Douglas: Yeah. And I didn't intend on it, but the Groundhog Day analogy came out, and we talk about that in the book, this notion of, is everything kind of repeating itself? Are you just kind of stuck in the hamster wheel of the day to day and feeling just inundated with monotony? And so maybe let’s talk a little bit about that feeling and how the book can kind of help guide you out of that feeling in that situation.

Karen: Yeah. So as humans, we are wired to innovate. We're wired to see creativity and make the mundane not mundane. And you think about while we're recording this, it's during the COVID pandemic, and we're seeing this everywhere. People are taking up new hobbies. My toddler son is asking me to read the kids’ books in different voices or to change the ending of the book, just because we're so bored of everyday feeling like the day before. And if we're wired for that, what's holding us back from actually doing that? And I think meetings, being such a big part of our work, are a key place to really energize the life and job and work that you're doing.

And a lot of what we talk about in the book is to find that purpose and breathe new life into your job so that you love it, so that you feel passionate about it. So there's lots of steps in that process in how to make that happen throughout the book.

Douglas: And when you think about all the steps and someone wanting to just get started, in your perspective, is it just to pick up the book and jumping into the first chapter, or is it more of a choose-your-own adventure, where it’s like, this might apply more to me? Maybe help guide the reader, the doer, into how they might dive in.

Karen: Yeah. That's a great, great analogy, the choose your adventure. I say it’s more like that. The process and work of bringing an idea forward is not linear, so there's different places that you're going to start from, and that you're going to get stuck and need assistance. The book reads that way. You can just jump in where you need to. And then I say proceed with caution, because as humans, we're also wired to kind of go after the things that we're most comfortable. And that's okay to start where you're comfortable, but not to ignore the places where we need to grow.

So as an example, I think about the structure of the book. It's set up in three sections: get ready, get set, and go. And I am a “go” gal through and through. I want to start prototyping and experimenting my way forward. And it takes discipline to do the work of the “get ready” and “get set.” And if I pick up the book as a lay reader, I might just dive right into the “go” because that's where I want to get started. But that's a place that I'm already pretty skilled at, and where I would really benefit is perhaps starting there, but then making sure that I'm going back through the other sections and phases of this work and building those muscles as well.

So it's very similar to working out, you know? We feel great when we do that same elliptical machine or whatever, weights that we're into, but when we challenge ourselves to do a new machine or new exercise, our muscles start to learn new ways of working.

Douglas: Yeah. I love that analogy of kind of cross training. It's incredible. And I often like to think about the maturity of a project. And so if we're two years into something, the book might mean something different to us than if we're about to start something or we’ve been afraid to start something. So I like the fact that can really help folks no matter where they are in the journey.

Karen: Yeah. That's so true.

I was talking to someone about this. And in the book we talk about when you're doing a new idea and trying to push something forward, that there's this, for every 80 hours of work that you put towards your project, there's two hours of work in communicating that with your team and bringing along stakeholders. And I've gotten pushback from people that said, “Wow, that's a lot of communication that you're spending time on,” and then others saying, “That is totally not enough to bring stakeholders along.” And I think that rule of thumb can be shifted based on where you're at in the project and trying to make new things happen, and that context is important as you go through this work, right? You’re going to have a playbook through things like Start Within, and then you have to intuit what is and isn't working, and then, kind of fine tune things beyond that.

Douglas: Yeah. Also, think about—was it Malcolm Gladwell that said 10,000 hours of anything will make you an expert? And there have been people that have pushed back on that concept, like, “Well, if you're doing it wrong for 10,000 hours, you’re just going to become an expert in doing it wrong.” And I like to think that this book has provided folks with some real tactical and very actionable advice to where, as you're getting your reps in, you can start to tweak the way you go about it.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely. To that point of the 10,000 hours, it's definitely about the practice of doing the work, and it's also letting go of the idea that this is only for the charismatic, extroverted people, that the one that you see standing out there and getting to do new things, it does not have to be exclusive to certain types of people. It can be learned.

Douglas: Yeah, I love the idea that we can put it into practice, and we can hone that skill—to bring back the fitness analogy—we can strengthen those muscles.

Karen: Right. Right.

Douglas: So, you've had experience at small companies and big companies, public and private, even consulting and in-house. I’m really curious. With your vantage point across all these different types of companies, what are some of the differences that you've seen as far as meeting cultures and ability to co-create and collaborate? Just what kind of patterns have you noticed?

Karen: Yes. I love that idea of a meeting culture, because going in, understanding that and even using that term for yourself really allows you to then go in with the anthropologist view of, like, here's how it's done, and where can I find opportunities of changing that and making it better? So every company I've ever worked with—nonprofit, large, big, small—have different ways of doing their work, right? The informal and written rules of how meetings should run, it changes based on team, it changes based on who's running it. But the theme at the bottom of all that is you're having these meetings in expectation that it will lead to something. So if you can take a step back and look at how meetings are being run and how efficiently and quickly you're able to go out and do the work post meetings, then you have the opportunity to reflect and say, “Where are there opportunities to make the improvements?”

I think the most stark difference was at the California Department of Education. So I was coming from a startup, where we're doing scrum, we're doing standup, we're doing lots of fast-moving meetings. And then at the California Department of Education, they weren't. And it wasn't a criticism; it was a different way of thinking, a different framework, that when I went in, felt so uncomfortable. I was like, “Hey, when are we going to start picking up the pace and start taking action?” And if I went in there and behaved like that, like a cowboy here to change things up, it would have really turned people off. I needed to learn how they did things to then be able to create the right changes and grow together. It allowed me to be more thoughtful in my approach. It also allowed the team to evolve in how we did our meetings.

Douglas: Yeah. And that's something we've talked about extensively, and I think it's a really keen insight that people really need to consider, which is you can change the process. You can change the method. You can change the corporate goals and objectives. But if you seek to do those things, that's going to be really difficult to also push your idea. In fact, the method, the process, and the goals and objectives, those are two separate things that are best done in isolation. If you're trying to change all that at the same time, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. It's hard enough to make any change, much less just blowing a bunch on at the same time.

Karen: Imagine going into a room, and you look at a person who is writing with their right hand, and you say, “All right, switch. Switch to your left hand. And I want you to close your eyes. And instead of writing in English, write in a different language.” That would just overload the person. How do I think about all three of these things you're trying to get me to do? And in pushing an idea forward within an organization, whether that's improving meeting outcomes all the way to launching a new idea, if you're trying to bend and shape things in multiple areas, you're just going to overload the humans that you're trying to bring along in this. So it's really about focusing in on the thing that can have the biggest impact, and then you can go back and after having made that change and seeing the change in place, reapply and do different layers of changes.

Douglas: That's right. I'd even take the analogy one step further, which is, if they're doing all those things, and then we're also trying to tell them, “Let's actually write some different things on the wall. Let’s bring on a whole new concept and put that up there,” you can see how it just starts to get absurd. And yeah, that's a trap that a lot of people fall into because when—it's almost like, well, we've got the patient open; let's go ahead and make all these changes. Like, we're operating on their lungs; let's work on their heart, too. It’s maybe not the best decision.

Karen: Right. Yeah, I mean, meetings, it is such a part of our work and the culture of where we work that at the very root could be the cause of dysfunction in what's going on. So I love that being in a place of leaning in and trying to improve.

Douglas: So let's also take a step back and think about—I love this notion that you talked about, being an anthropologist. And in the book we talk about this element of house rules and understanding how things work at your organization so you can navigate it better. Then, we were just discussing this need to clarify and understand, are we changing the process, or are we pushing some other idea forward? And I think that metaphor of the anthropologist is really powerful because we at Voltage Control do a lot of work where we're were analyzing the meeting systems or helping people understand it, and what does that culture look like, and what sort of systems are going to support a culture that we are aspiring to be, to have? instead of just kind of going full force into the change. Like, really thinking about, do we need to be that anthropologist, or are we actually going in to make change? And so if we're in that mode of anthropologist, what sorts of things do we need to do? How might we put that anthropologist hat on and be really successful at understanding what's in front of us and how we might take advantage of it or how we might just respond to those understanding?

Karen: So in doing this work, it's very hard, but you have to take out your experience elsewhere. So typically, when I coach people through trying to do this kind of work, there’s an urge to think back to where you saw it working. Like, great meetings, so we want to do it like that. I came from Amazon. We did it like this, and it was great. We got really far, and we were able to make changes and go out, do quickly. That doesn't mean it's going to work somewhere else, so you have to remove that lens of what I've seen is the right way, and I'm going to figure out how to force that fit, that puzzle piece. Instead, being an anthropologist is really trying to just open up and learn. So it's not directing learning. It's not that one person’s going to teach you, so you want to lean in on that person. It's really just trying to open the aperture and figure out where are there these aha moments on what is and isn't working?

And, you know, just going back to the root of that word. If you are going into a village, you wouldn't go into a remote village and expect to be able to instill your values and how you do things and expect this group of people that have a completely different background to take that on. Instead, you're going in to learn from them and build something together. And I think that's hard to do. So it's starting with that beginner’s mindset.

Douglas: We also talk about cross examining the silos and then questions that get to real learning. And I think that questions can be really powerful, and listening and observing, as kind of the anthropologist hat that you kind of speak of. And my perspective, if you can get down to actual first principles and understand what are people already upset about, if there are things about the meeting systems or the methods and the process that your organization is using that everyone's already disgruntled about, then that's low-hanging fruit to go after. But you can't learn that stuff unless you get curious and start to examine the silos and start to listen and learn. And to me, I think that's a real powerful opportunity. I'm just curious to hear if you have anything to add there.

Karen: Yeah. I think the other opportunity in all this, if you're going in with this mindset, it allows you to make changes without authority. So even if you're not the person who's running the meetings, you can affect how they're run and how effective they are over time. Now, certainly it might be easier if you're the person of authority to do this work, but it's not a barrier to making things change and happen. You can lead by example. And this all starts with learning and listening and figuring it out as you go forward. But I think that is one of the biggest barriers to this kind of work. And making change within an organization is the belief that if you don't have a title or permission, then you’re just kind of an active participant that has to go along with the way things are.

Douglas: Mm, yeah, that’s an interesting meeting dynamic, too. Like, if the meetings are set up such that there are active participants and not-so-active participants, the distribution of control and influence and participation can be quite skewed. I'm just curious if you’ve experienced that, and what thoughts you might have to offer there.

Karen: Yeah, of course. I mean, whenever you're not in charge and someone else is, it might be a meeting you called, but your boss or leadership come into the room as well, that shifts everything. You look at them, and they have an understanding of how the meeting should go, and you report to them, so there's an understanding that you will run the meeting the way they expect it. So you kind of have to shift your own expectations and your own approaches to fit what they believe is the right way forward, even if it isn't sometimes.

And so all of that just points to these baby steps, these baby experiments, that can get you closer to making those changes if you don't have the authority to make it happen, and even when you do, that there's, again, ego in the room or belief systems in the room that there's a way to do it. The little experiments, the small steps, are what can lead to big change over time.

Douglas: You know, it's funny that you say that because it reminds me of times as a leader when my intention was to coach and to show alternative ways of doing things, but I basically just created a little mini-me versions of me, and that can be difficult to notice sometimes. And so we talk a lot about how the book was really inspired by this idea that so many innovation books are focused on the leader and innovation culture and this kind of top-down, like, how are we to shift the organization? And our belief was the best way to shift an organization is a direction from leadership, but empowering the doers to go do the work. And so we really wanted to have a manual for the doer. Now, even though it's a manual for the doer, this is a great tool for the leader because they can take this book and give it out to their folks and use it as a guide for them to be a better coach. And as I've thought about my coaching, even sometimes the best intentions can backfire, and just really paying attention, that have I created a mold of myself that needs to be broken so that they’re free to go about doing things the way they would do them so that we have true diversity?

Karen: Yes. I advise startups, and I just had a session this week with a startup that is in the educational technology space. And so it was one that I was really well versed, but also a few years removed. And he wanted to talk about some of the approaches to funding, and then later, marketing that we did. And I went into some coaching lessons, and then I paused and said, “You're in a different time and different products. So here's what we did. Now I’m going to start asking you questions that are kind of the extreme other sides to this. Don't just follow the cookie cutter of what I just shared with you. What are ways that you're going to be different?” And I think if you intuit your way that you're creating many yous—which is a great eye opening, like, how do I not do that? because we just don't want a world full of people like ourselves—a lot of that is because we've got experience in what does and doesn't work for ourselves, and so we reflect that on others. But if we can pause on that and say, “What did and didn't work on me might be in opposition to the person I'm talking to,” can we just reframe the question to say, “How might we…” and then don't lead it towards your solution. Instead, think about these might be the ideas that do work for them, or what worked for me is not going to work for them.

Douglas: There’s another really beautiful way to approach that, which is just being appreciative.

Karen: Right.

Douglas: Recognizing and being appreciative of everyone's input and contributions. And sociologists have a term called positive deviance, and basically, it sounds almost like deviant, but it's really about making sure that we look at those positive differences. Like, what are those deltas that are positive. So when things have been working well, what were we doing? And often, I think it's easy to look at, “Well, when I did it this way, I got this positive outcome.” Having that dialog with others can be really powerful and really kind of lifting them up on a pedestal, and then it kind of relinquishes that burden to feel like, “Hey, here's this process that I need to burden you with.”

Karen: I love that. Yeah, that word needs to be rebranded so that people will be more open to it. But yeah, I think there's opportunities to reflect on what does and doesn't work and how that reflects on yourself and the people around you. So, again, it's not the cookie-cutter answer and formula that works for me will work for these other people, but instead, it's framing it in questions to allow them to explore that on their own.

Douglas: Yeah. I love this. I’d already written down questions and underlined it because I wanted to come back to that because you were starting to give some advice to your mentee, and then you stopped yourself and said, “Well, let me ask some questions.” And I think that is the hallmark of a really great leader and a great facilitator is to ask really incredible questions. And I think this advice—it just dawned on me—can apply to not only the leaders—because it's very clear, like, “Hey, leaders, ask more-provocative questions of your people,”—and for the doers, it can be equally as powerful, because if your boss, if your leader, is not asking you tough questions and they're doing nothing but giving you advice or criticizing, perhaps you can prompt them to ask you questions.

Karen: Ooh, I love that. Yeah, get them curious.

So, in my startup days, there were really tough meetings with our board, with our investors, and I learned early in my career how to handle those types of meetings. And then later, I started working at IDEO and had a meeting with Tim Brown and other people that were—I'm doing air quotes—"invested in our idea” because we're launching this idea within the company. And so I was ready for what questions I would hear based on that experience of these tough investors and what they asked me in my years prior. And Tim Brown and the leaders there asked such thoughtful questions that floored me, and it really shifted my thinking in how to do this work. I thought it had to be bottom-line growth. And there's other questions around this kind of work and pushing ideas forward that are far more thoughtful around the humans you're building it for that will lead to growth and business strategy. So it's not leaving it up on the table. But instead, it's more thoughtful and deeper than that. And I think when we have productive meetings and great purpose in our work and what we're doing, at the root of it, somebody was asking very thoughtful questions. And you can choose to be that person. And if you are that person, I think, to your point, you can get others around you very curious. Like, it's contagious. When you're being a thoughtful person and really trying to understand things, you'll start to see that shift among others as well.

Douglas: You know, I think that, especially in your LinkedIn Learning course, and a good chunk of our listeners are product people, and I once heard this really profound description of a great product person. And it was that a product person is interested, not interesting, meaning that if you come to a conversation and you try to be interesting, then you're going to share a lot of things. You're going to talk a lot. You’re going to tell stories. You’re going to try to be cool and hip and, like, “Oh, I know this. I know that.” Whereas if you're interested and you're curious, you’ll ask lots of questions. You discover all the pertinent things. That always just really stuck with me is that even if I'm in the room with someone who is intimidating and I feel like I need to impress, the best way to impress them is to ask them great questions.

Karen: So, I went to a Super Bowl party. I was living in Canada, and it was at my neighbor's house. And they're not really into American football. It was just something to do on a Sunday. And in the room was a former astronaut and minister, I believe, of transportation—I'm sorry, I don't know his title—who has one of the most fascinating backgrounds. And he asked me—I couldn't get to questions about his background and what he did. He wanted to know more about startups and the book I was writing. And we get about an hour in. I'm like, “Okay, can we talk about what it's like to be an astronaut?” And I just remember leaving there, thinking he was so gifted in exploring the world around him. And it made complete sense that he had gotten to the point that he had in his career, but that he could have very well have been a person that was full of himself and talking about all the important things he's done. And instead, he wanted to learn about me.

Douglas: That's the hallmark of an amazing person. And that's cool that you got to witness that, especially with someone who has already made such great accomplishments, because sometimes those traits, that innate curiosity can wane with popularity and accolades. So it's always amazing when I find someone that's had some amount of fame and notoriety and they've held on to that, because it's a gift, and it's pretty rare.

Karen: I think they're also gifted at finding time and space for allowing those conversations. So, on the other end of the spectrum, a CEO or someone very busy and important can brush you off and make you feel unimportant and not be listening to your answers or not even interested in having the conversation in the first place. And when you are tight on resource for time, that can change who you are, and you have to find opportunities to still be productive, but also learning and listening from each other.

Douglas: Yep. That aligns with one of my philosophies, which is that when you create space, that's when innovation can rush in. If you're constantly whizzing and whirring to and fro the next thing and pressing the buttons, there's really no opportunity for change or new things to develop.

Karen: Yep. If you think about it in meditation or yoga, it's the space between breaths. We're doing this work of breathing and being thoughtful, and then it's in between those moments that you have these eye-opening, kind of out-of-body experiences.

Douglas: So, I’m going to shift gears a little bit here and just talk about tactics. So really curious about what you've seen teams use to get unstuck and start building on their vision.

Karen: So, we recently talked to a woman within a software company, and they're a very large company and been around for many years. And she was really excited about bringing back to her product teams our chapter in work around busting assumptions. And that was so refreshing. You know, this is a company that has figured out a way forward. They can continue to build and move beyond doing things the way they had been. But instead, she and the organization realized they needed to reflect on what's holding back their ideas, what's holding things from becoming something bigger, and how they're holding back innovation. And I think that's an exercise we could do with our teams—get out of the rut of what things should look like and have looked like, and how you might do things differently.

In thinking about assumptions, there's this onion of layers, right? At the very core is the assumptions that you hold on to. And then as you build out, it's the assumptions of the team, of the organization. And then you go all the way out to the world that we live within. And if you can think about each of those layers and how they're blocking you from change, from seeing things, from understanding each other, then that can unlock you, the team, and how you work together, the work that you're doing. There's so many—it's exponential levels on ways of thinking. And it's a great framework for just moving forward and doing things differently.

Douglas: It makes me think that earlier we were talking about meeting systems and meeting culture, and when and why we meet, and what's the goal, and what's the purpose. And so often meetings are just called to discuss something or make some quick decision. I get really excited when people start to open the aperture and to think about, “What if we meet to talk about our assumptions?” or “How about we make a team charter?” so these more kind of meta conversations about the team, the way we work, and things that might be getting in our way, because those types of things can have really profound ripple effects versus just being so into the tactical, like, moving things forward or, heaven forbid, a status report. And so this idea of coming together around assumptions, even applying some of the tools in the book that are designed for an individual, just kind of repurposing that for the team.

Karen: Yes. Going back deeper into the tactical and beyond assumptions, one of my favorite exercises in the book that you can do solo or that you could bring to a team and do together is “No, because. Maybe if. Then, what?” And you start with these three columns of “No, because. Maybe if. Then, what?” And you think about something that's blocking you and your team from moving forward on something, and you just brainstorm all the “no, becauses.” No, because we don’t have the resources. No, because… You capture each one of those on a Post-it Note.

And then you pause and you go into the next column, “Maybe if.” So, no, because we don't have the resources. Maybe if we prototype this smaller, that didn't require as much resources. Or maybe if we found funding outside of our organization. Or maybe if… You go through that same exercise for each “no, because,” and you start to brainstorm the “maybe ifs.”

You can take a step back, and when you're doing this by yourself, kind of circle where there's heat, or if you're doing this with the team, you could do voting, but moving beyond and really counter attacking the “no, because” with a “then, what?” You know, what are the small experiments that you could be doing to get past this roadblock, if you could pass the barrier that is seemingly holding everybody back? And doing this work over and over with different people in teams, you see this very simple exercise open up people's thinking and to, “All right. I tangibly have something to go after.” This feels so much better than the crossed arms, and “This is hard,” and the roadblock being right in front of them.

Douglas: It's really cool. And I'm excited because we're working on some templates on MURAL. They'll be launched. And if someone's listening to this in the future, I would say just go and check out the MURAL templates, because they're probably ready at that point.

Karen: Yep. Start within.

Douglas: The other thing I was thinking about was this notion of unlearning and constantly be curious and open to reinventing ourselves. And I think that kind of aligns with a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today, whether it's creating that space as a leader or coming together as a team to look at these assumptions, and just making sure that we've got some time reserved to just allow some of that stuff to happen and being curious about what we might not realize about the world or about our idea or about our team. I guess I'm curious to hear of what else folks should be thinking about in that regard.

Karen: So I do have on my reading list Barry O'Reilly's book Unlearn, and so I haven’t read it. I'm going to stop with that because I think that is so hard to do. Even when you say it, you think, “Okay, I've accepted that I'm going to let go of my assumptions and try to lean in and unlearn some of the bad habits, or maybe good habits, so I can find new ways of doing things.” We are, again, we are wired to take the inputs that we've had over our lifetime and have that help us move forward. And it is not always obvious where those are, how they're holding you back, or how they might be helping you, too. So that's a book I want to lean into this year and see if that's a place of exploration.

But where I try to do that is stepping back and creating different roles for myself. So when we talk about this in the book, if you're a person who is very positive, a “yes, and,” and trying to push things forward, could you go into a meeting before it even starts, say, “I'm going to be the naysayer. I'm going to poke holes in some of these ideas. And you, person over there, you're going to be the positive person.” Or we have different roles, and maybe we're shifting what we typically lean into and think about things differently. And how would that dynamic change the meeting? It's not meant to be comical and necessarily a strange meeting that is just run amuck and feels like a comedy show because you're trying to be a naysayer and you just aren't. It's really just about trying to turn your brain into thinking one way, into thinking a different way, and how that helps lead the team in a different direction.

Douglas: I love this idea of examining the roles, and even shifting them and trying on different roles, and I think, not to overload the term role, but role playing can be really a phenomenal way to have a new lens into the world, and also, certainly will disrupt how your teammates think. And we also have talked about the idea of taxonomy, and so how can even the words that we use to talk about meetings can have an impact?

So, for instance—the problem is that we just gravitate to using the word meeting, and it's just what we naturally do. And so it doesn't matter if we're assembling 20 people to talk about how well the product went or it’s just two of us having a quick chat about what we're going to have for lunch; we call it a meeting. And I think that is a disservice because it doesn't allow for a clear understanding of the purpose. And that's something we kind of started off with when I asked what was the one thing you would change about meetings is about, you said we need to be more clear about the goals. And so I really love this concept of shifting the roles, examining what those roles are, and trying new things on, because that can really align with us understanding our purpose and even pursuing our purpose more deeply.

Karen: Yes. And that jargon, again, comes back to the meeting culture. So you say meeting. It means one thing at one company; it means another at another. And I saw this happen with calling it brainstorm. So doing a brainstorm from one company where we're standing up, we're active, we're putting Post-it Notes up. There's lots of conversations happening, lots of ideation. And then you go to another company that doesn't brainstorm that way. They do have brainstorm meetings. You go into it, and people are sitting, they’re taking notes on their little notepad, and it can be frustrating if that's not—it was frustrating to me. I was like, “Why aren’t we all standing up and talking?” And to them, they're like, “Why are you trying to force this other way of doing a brainstorm?” So I think the terms also have different meaning within teams across an organization and certainly within an organization.

Douglas: So, Karen, in closing, what would you like to leave with our listeners?

Karen: I think what's key in this moment, whenever you're listening—if it's recent to when it's posted, it's around the COVID pandemic, and we're working from home, and things are very confusing. Or we're beyond that—there's going to be these times of uncertainty and wanting to hold back on changing things within our team, our organization because we're waiting for things to smooth out. And this opportunity for while things are uncomfortable and uncertain to be when you make the changes and be thoughtful on how big those changes are and how you move forward into them, but that's really what Start Within is all about, and the importance of finding in yourself, that you can affect the change and with the right playbook and tools in hand, you can see it through.

Douglas: Karen, I wanted to double stitch on something you said there, which was, we are living through an unprecedented time right now, and I just wanted to say that I've been grateful to have you as a copilot through some of this, especially as we've looked at inspecting and exploring our own white privilege together, what that means for speaking out around the book and the work that we're doing and supporting others who are struggling through this and needing the help, and how can we be better allies. So I just want to express a little gratitude on the air that it's been phenomenal to work through these challenges with you.

Karen: Yes. I echo that as well. It's uncomfortable and challenging, for lack of better words. And just finding other people that are struggling through this is—finding your community and knowing that you're not alone and doing this kind of work is so important.

Douglas: So, Karen, in closing, how can folks find you and find out more about the book?

Karen: Sure. I'm on LinkedIn, very active there. So, Karen Holst. You can find me. We also have, for the book, the website is start-within.com. You can find it on Amazon to purchase it. And yeah, we have lots of conversations with people that are trying to affect change and bring new ideas forward within organizations. So love connecting with people on that front.

Douglas: It’s been great having you, Karen.

Karen: Thank you, again.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resource

"No one wants a boring facilitator, right? It's about being effective. It's about getting their goals accomplished. But if someone's going to be in a room with you for four to eight hours, to an extent it would be nice if you can entertain."

-Harold Hardaway

I'm excited to have Harold Hardaway with me on the Control the Room podcast today. Harold is the co-founder and CEO of Cardigan, a branding and internal communications company that "Inspires Brands that Inspire Employees." Cardigan has deep expertise in working with companies with non-desk employees, multiple-location businesses, retail brands, and professional companies with remote workers.

Harold started his career in banking and found his way as the Director of Corporate Communications and Culture for H.E.B. before co-creating Cardigan. He currently oversees research and strategy for all client projects at Cardigan, and he is also a speaker and thought leader on corporate communications and culture.

On today's episode, Harold and I talk about how to utilize quiet during facilitation, how to bring subjects and jokes back around when presenting, and how to have a "full circle" moment. Listen in to find out how Harold uses ingratiation in his facilitation, how to use equifinality, and why acknowledgment is so powerful.

Show Highlights

[01:58] Harold's genesis story.

[03:33] How personality traits assist Harold in his career.

[06:42] Creating a better experience for clients.

[09:07] Planning ahead of time and getting to know your client.

[14:03] How to change your language to fit your audience.

[16:15] Harold shares about facilitating and racial unrest.

[18:27] How professionalism has crept into the workplace as a form of insensitivity.

[21:35] The power of acknowledgement for yourself and others.

[30:22] Advice from Harold about facilitating during COVID and into the future.

Links and Resources

Harold on LinkedIn

Cardigan CG on the Web

About the Guest

Dr. Harold Hardaway is a speaker and thought leader on corporate communications and culture. He believes that everyone should "Chase the Good" and centers his work on helping organizations create spaces wherever possible. Today, he serves as Co-Founder and CEO of Cardigan—an internal communications and employer branding firm—and he was previously the Director of Corporate Communications and Culture for H-E-B. Harold has been featured in San Antonio Magazine and Business.com, and his writings have been featured in the Austin Business Journal, SHRM's People & Strategy Blog, and Recruiter.com. He was recently recognized as a Finalist for the 2019 Austin Under 40 Awards, and he is on the Board of Directors for Leadership Austin, Creative Action, and Equality Texas.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I'm with Harold Hardaway, CEO of Cardigan, where they're cultivating brands that inspire employees.

Welcome to the show, Harold.

Harold: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Douglas: Excellent. Well, I wanted to start off by hearing a little bit about your history. I'm always fascinated by how facilitators find their way to their roles, because, let's just face it, there's no degree at any college where you go to become a facilitator, so there's always a fascinating journey. And especially when we're looking at all these different silos and different methodologies, people come from totally different worlds. So I'm really curious to hear how you got here.

Harold: Yeah. I probably stumbled into it like most people, like you're saying. So no degrees here to kind of get there. So when I first started out in my career, I worked at a mortgage bank, and they didn't have a training department. It was a new division, and so in the absence, with no one raising their hand, to develop training, I raised my hand, and I was the trainer for that particular group. And so I think through that I kind of learned how to explain things two, three different ways to someone. And at the same time, I was in a group with business analysts, and through that process, they were working on developing systems, and then I would have to sort of train the system. But I would be in the room when they would start working on what that was going to look like, how it was going to operate, and so being able to really translate how the business was using the tool versus how they were designing it. So between the business and I.T. and translating there and being able to speak both languages really helped a lot.

After that, I worked at a large grocery retailer here in Texas—so I'm sure everyone can probably guess who that is—in the I.T. department, and H.R. was my customer. So you can imagine with developing technology with them, there was a lot of translation needed. Like, "I want this." And then I.T. saying, "Well, we can't necessarily do that." And it's like, "Well, what they're really asking for is this. And can you live with this, because I think it'll still get you the business outcomes that you want." And so being able to hear both sides and translate and help them negotiate an 80 or 90 percent solution was really important.

And then, once I got taken off of H.R. technology, H.R. just kind of hired me to go work in that department. And through the rest of my career, there was a lot of translating and taking big ideas, which is how I ended up in communications, taking big ideas and being able to kind of translate that down and then navigate people through a process to get to a business outcome. So honestly, most of the times it's because someone didn't raise their hand, and in that space, I did, and figured I'd give it a shot. And I learned a lot, and I ended up facilitating.

I also am a little bit of a ham and an extrovert, and I don't mind being upfront.

Douglas: We talked about that a little bit, the importance of being this unbiased third party that's kind of coming in and helping the team be the heroes. But there is still an element of performance you have to prepare, be on your game, get up there, and even if you're kind of stepping off to the side a bit at times or a lot of times, there is still that moment of, hey, the show's on, and I've got to be there.

And before we started recording, you were mentioning that you had some experience in standup comedy, etc. And so just curious to hear how those experiences related, if you've actually dipped into any of that when you've been planning sessions.

Harold: Yeah. You know, a lot of times when you're up there, no one wants a boring facilitator, right? It's about being effective. It's about getting their goals accomplished. But if someone's going to be in a room with you for four to eight hours, to an extent it would be nice if you can entertain.

So, way back when I kind of was living in Dallas, it was this mortgage banking crisis, and they laid off all support functions. So, like, 600 of us kind of in one day. And in that space, I was like, "What are some things I've always wanted to try?" And it was standup comedy. So I did that. Actually got paid to do it, so I am a paid standup comedian. It was just 100 bucks, but I'll take it and I'll claim it any day of the week.

But I think what that really allows me to do is pay attention to what's happening. Timing is important to kind of like lay down the joke. And I think timing is also really important when it comes to facilitation, right? So when are you quiet? When do you give space? When do you step in and say something? Also, listening to what other people are saying, and how do you bring things back around? So part of a comedy, right, you'll say something, and then you'll navigate people through a process, and then, you bring the joke back around, and then it hits harder the second time because people kind of feel it. So with facilitation, you'll set something up at the beginning, and then you'll kind of have, hopefully, this full-circle moment where the light bulb goes off for everyone.

So I think not being afraid to be in front of people, some comedic timing, understanding sort of that cycle of bringing things back and helping people kind of understand and the light bulb goes off helps a lot when it comes to facilitating.

Douglas: So I want to double stitch on that bringing things back, because you talked about in the preshow kind of prep conversation, you talked about this notion of cultural inside jokes or the words they use or getting to know them. And so I thought that was really, really neat, and how can I not only come in as an unbiased outsider and be that person that doesn't necessarily have any stake in this decision so that I'm not going to influence it, but at the same time, how can I be a friend, an ally to, then, so that everyone feels comfortable and vulnerable? So how much does that bringing it back, the timing, the improv comedy stuff, align with that ability to kind of like dissect the culture and then imbibe that into the experience?

Harold: Yeah. I think it's really important. I think they're equally important. So timing is huge, but also, if you're an outsider, you need people to trust you, to your point. You need them to open up. You need them to be vulnerable. So ingratiation is actually kind of an impression-management technique. So part of it is—I'm also a teacher at some of the universities, so you'll hear some nerdy stuff come out of my mouth every once in a while. But how can I ingratiate myself to someone quickly? So I can do it with a smile. I might be able to say, "Oh, look, I've done this for so many people," but at the same time to say, "Hey, I did my homework, and I know a little bit about you. I know the words that you use. I know what's important to you." Makes people think, "Oh, wow," and you can see it in their face, where they start paying a little bit more attention.

So an example of that. I had a facilitation. I was actually speaking, just speaking. But it was a little bit like some workshop fun activities in there. And so I was like, "Well, give me three—" we were talking about personal brand. "Give me three words that you would say describe who you are, or someone would say, 'That Harold. He's blank, blank, and blank. How would you want them to fill that in in terms of personal brand?'" And they had this whole thing called "more." They were like, "Well, if we were to do more," you know. And so I said, "I'm asking you for three. But if you'd like to do more, you could do four." And everyone in the room burst out laughing and thought it was the funniest thing ever. But it's just because I asked, "What are some things you say culturally? What are some things that you do? What are the inside jokes? What are you working on? What's important in terms of an initiative? If you'll share some of the last emails that have gone out, if you want to, then I can kind of work all that in." And so it doesn't feel so much like an outsider, but a continuation of where their organization is really headed. And so that was just kind of a fun example that always sticks out in my head.

Douglas: Yeah. I love this notion of not only adding levity to the situation, but also getting people to really resonate with these broader themes and these broader objectives, or how does it tie back to whatever the business outcomes are? And you mentioned the importance of that in this notion of planning. And the purpose of the planning is to have the plan, but we want to be skilled enough that we can deviate from that.

So we often talk about antifragile agendas. We want to build our agenda so that we can blow them up if we need to. And I strongly believe that if you're not focused on the outcomes, you can't do that. So that got me really excited when you were talking about those things. So I'm curious to hear how you think about plans, how you think about outcomes, and as that relates to just having a great facilitation.

Harold: Yeah. So, from a client perspective, I will always say, like, "What are one or two things that, at the end, if we accomplish this, you would be like, 'Wow, I didn't waste my money on this guy'?" Right? Or if it's my partner, Shannon on Cardigan. And be very clear about those and come up with the plan about how we're specifically going to get there. And what that really does is, I think as a facilitator, allows you to number one, not get frazzled and know that you have a path to get there. And I'm going to say a path because you know what I'm going to bring up in a second. You have a path to get there. And if there's a process and you've planned for it, I always say, if something goes wrong, if I planned enough, plan A, plan B, then it's going to be easy for me to pivot.

And so I've also been responsible for corporate events with 2,000 people in a room. And so I'm like, "We are going to kill ourselves to try to make this 'perfect.'" And I always say, "It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to have the appearance of perfection." But once we got started, I was like, "If the roof falls in, oh well. At least we exhausted every opportunity." So to me, the plan is an outline, is a structure. You have to be able to—like we talked about comedy—read the room. What's going to work? What's not working? And be willing to say, "It's not going to work."

The other thing, though, with the plan—and I love this concept that I learned in school called equifinality, and there can be infinite ways to get to the same ending. So just because I had this one particular way I thought we can navigate people through the process, if I've done a good job creating space, if I've done a good job aligning people, getting people to open up and speak up, then maybe someone else is going to throw something out, it's going to spark some sort of creativity, and my plan is no longer the best one. But just recognizing and realizing that there's multiple ways to get there. The plan is a framework to kind of keep you on track, and, also, to get your customer to understand where you're going as well. But throw it away if it doesn't work. So don't stick to it, and don't feel like you have to cleave to it, because I've seen so many facilitators do that, and then at the end, you didn't accomplish anything you want to accomplish, but you stuck to your plan. And that's not what you were really getting paid to do.

Douglas: When you started talking about equifinality earlier, my brain started doing this thing because it's kind of meta, if you think about it, because when we're planning, we want to make sure that we don't have this fixed mindset, that we can be adaptable and willing to adjust on the fly as needed. But also, all of these facilitation approaches, no matter if you're in design land or liberating-structures land or wherever, they're kind of based off this concept of equifinality, right, because you want to make sure we bring everyone to the table, and what happens in the room happens. So there's these emergent qualities that we're there to seek out. And so if we come in with this fixed mindset around what the outcomes going to be specifically, then the session's not going to be very valuable. Or the deep work doesn't happen that we're kind of seeking for. So I thought it's really interesting that that concept works on multiple levels. It's, like, at the participant level, it's at the facilitator level, and we all have to embrace that if we want to really get the interstellar outcomes.

Harold: Yeah. And I think that comes from, to your point, the process. I think it also comes from language. And I'll give you an example. You know, we've recently done a lot of webinars on navigating through crises, etc., because there are multiple going on at one time now. And then we're like, "How do you talk to your people that relates to your brand?" And so one example we'll use is, "Do you talk to them like a cheerleader? Do you talk to them, like, familial?" But that was when we were talking to H.R. leaders. When we were speaking to people maybe in oil and gas, we were like, "Do you talk to people like a coach?" You know what I mean? When you start changing language, because words matter and people can receive them. So are they all men? Are they primarily women? Are they CPAs? Are they advertising people? And kind of getting that understanding that the exercise changes the words, the language that you use changes, so it can be received well by the receiver, because that's the point, right? You don't want to alienate someone with language as well. So language, also, is a big part.

Douglas: It also, I was beginning to think about, like, not only what's happening in the room, what's happening to your agenda, to how you're just even approaching the facilitation, what's happening in the room with the participants, but also what's happening to all the participants outside the room. So all the stuff that they're dealing with and the baggage they bring in, the trauma, the stress, etc. And I think that has an element of equifinality to it as well, because, those things are going to have a way of resolving themselves, and all this lives in this ecosystem. It's like Russian nested dolls or something, right?

Harold: Yeah.

Douglas: And so it brings me back to this thing you mentioned around acknowledging and creating space for these things that everyone's dealing with, whether it be racial unrest or whether it be some bomb just blew up at work. Like, there's a production outage. People are bringing stuff into the room, emotions into the room. I loved your word acknowledge because I think a lot of facilitators will say holding space. And that's kind of a very facilitator-centric term, whereas, acknowledge, that's a term everyone can understand. And we just want to take some time and honor it and let people have that transition moment, because we can't expect them to flip a switch and just throw this stuff to the side.

So, I know you had a recent moment that felt kind of special around giving people the ability to acknowledge.

Harold: Yeah. I was in a meeting—and I borrowed this from someone, so it's not a Harold Hardaway original, as I like to say—everyone was, I realized, feeling some type of way about something, with all the racial unrest. And knowing you have introverts and extroverts, and maybe some people want to talk; some people don't want to talk. And it was on a Zoom meeting, and we've been on so many of those recently. The thing was, "Hey, think of one, maybe two words that describe how you feel, and type it into the chat. And you don't have to say it," but as the facilitator, she read them out loud. And when I did it and borrowed it from her, I read it out loud. And people were like, "tired," "exhausted," "hopeful." And there's just something really powerful about reading those things out loud, acknowledging where people are in the space, and so you as a facilitator kind of know what people are bringing with them. And at the same time, I'm opening it up and thanking everyone, acknowledging where people are, and then saying, if there is someone who wants to expand on how they're feeling, give them the opportunity and invite them to do so. Some people, at one meeting, a few people really chose to do that, to the point of tears. And another meeting, no one did, but they were saying, "Thank you for at least allowing us to say this and acknowledge where we are," and how that really is kind of the lens and the emotions that people are kind of bringing to the work, "Even though we're all there for the same purpose, this is where we are and how we feel." And sometimes just the act of acknowledging something is really powerful and gets it out there.

Douglas: You know, it's like recently ran into this concept of silence breakers. And I instantly fell in love with it because it's so easy to be silent because it's the safe thing to do. And also, I think in, definitely in my career, just this reinforcement of what professionalism is and professionalism became this thing that was so inhuman. Like, we weren't supposed to bear our feelings or touch on some of these sensitive issues. And I think we do our best work when we're the most human we can be, and, to your point, creating these moments of acknowledgment can get us there.

And I wanted to just observe something that I've been tracking on, whether it's appreciative inquiry, or there's a really great Liberating Structure called seen, heard, and respected, and this moment of reading those feelings out loud means that the people that wrote those, they're feeling heard. And I was recently in an alternate relating workshop, and a gentleman pointed out how emotional it was to hear his story repeated back. And really struck me because I do a lot of this work, and so I'm around this type of stuff a lot, and went back to that moment. And I put myself in that gentleman's shoes and thought, "Wow, if that is an emotional moment, the reason that's emotional is that it doesn't happen much. So that means that he's experiencing hearing someone really empathize, really unders—there's evidence that he was heard, and that was touching." And if we can create more moments like that, I think we can drive much more business value. But the problem is everyone focuses so much on the business value, they can't set the initial conditions to where that stuff can thrive and become outside. Love this notion of acknowledgment.

Harold: It doesn't 100 percent relate to business facilitation, but I went through a leadership development sort of class process. And there was this moment where it was like, "What's one thing that you would like someone to acknowledge you for," or something. And so you write it on a sheet of paper. And you didn't even know why you were writing it, right? "Who would you want that person to be?" And so I remember I wrote down that I was a good dog dad because my dog had passed away. And I would want it to be my pet, right?

Douglas: Sure.

Harold: And the interesting thing was, hours later, she picked them up and she read them, and then I had to choose someone to play the role of my pet and acknowledge me for being a good parent, a good pet parent. To him—because I was carrying a lot of guilt. Don't get me wrong. We went to all the vets. I got all the medication. I did everything. But I couldn't change this outcome. And, you know, it's like a type A person, who is so used to making things happen for everybody, for companies, I couldn't save, you know. And so someone acknowledging me like they were my pet broke me down, you know? But it was the most healing thing I think I had experienced in so long. I slept like a baby. I forgave myself. So that idea of acknowledging and kind of hearing things back—I know it's a little bit off topic from business work, but there is a lot of power in that. And I think even from an employee perspective, you want to be acknowledged for certain things from certain people. I mean, how do we allow that to be expressed in some sort of way? So sorry for making a baby left turn there, but it was really powerful.

Douglas: I agree. And these powerful moments are critical if we're going to build really resilient and really strong teams. And that's the kind of stuff that I think that I'm willing to invest in my team. The trust falls and the rope courses, yeah, whatever. But if we can authentically come together and be there for each other, if there is some weight on your shoulders about the end of life around the dog, them taking the 30 seconds over the—or the two minutes or whatever it took to say that—it's, like, a very small investment that could have huge ramifications on your ability to work more closely together and drive those outcomes. And so if we focus on the health of the team first, we can have these profound impacts versus just trying to utilization, like treating everyone like a factory and just like, go, go, go, go. And so I think that, in a lot of ways, this is the best stuff we could be doing for business outcomes.

Harold: I think so. No one in the room picked anything business related.

Douglas: Right.

Harold: Not a single person. It was like, "I said this to my grandmother, and I didn't have a chance to say something else before she died." This is, like, where people were going, and this was like a three-month process, two weeks but three months apart. But that's kind of, to your point, what people were bringing in, right? What they were carrying. What needed to be acknowledged. And then after that—I'll speak for myself. I can't speak for everybody—but I know I felt dramatically better, and I felt sort of like healed, and I wasn't, to your point, carrying that around with me all day and trying to do that and still facilitate for other people.

Douglas: You know, it brings me back to this notion of human connection. And when we held the big workshop, right at the beginning of the lockdown, for facilitators to kind of have a conversation on the future of facilitation, the one big, big thing was human connection. It was interesting that on the spectrum, some folks were really concerned about losing it to the in-person human connection. Like, "We're really good at this digital stuff. Will we ever be able to come and have these moments we love?" And so it was kind of like this fear of this dystopian future. Then, the other side was just this notion of like, "Well, are we actually going to be able to do it? Can these tools support real human connection?"

It's interesting. We talked about this acknowledging and unburdening and supporting each other. But it really does come down to this human connection, and that's where we are most creative. That's how we solve stuff together, is when the connections exist. And so I'm curious to hear about your journey through the virtual space and how you've been able to maintain human connection. And do you have any tricks up your sleeve? Are you still experimenting with things? Just kind of what's there for you as far as human connection in this virtual world?

Harold: Yeah. So, I mean, I'll be honest with you, personally. So all my friends will do Zoom things multiple times a week. But then I actually saw one of my friends and got a hug. And I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I haven't had a hug in eight weeks." And I freaked out at first because just not used to it. So I don't think there's necessarily a substitute. But one of the things we've been doing is, from a facilitation standpoint, trying to mix it up. So there're random breakout rooms and maybe prompts that you can send people and bring them back in. There's videos. There's shorter timeframes. All of that stuff has been working, but you're still sitting there, behind your computer. So those things have kept it more interesting for people.

Also, limiting the size of groups. So I know there are the webinars, but also being able to see someone's face. And I know one of your articles that I think you just posted to LinkedIn, I read it earlier. It was, like, cameras have to be on. If your camera's not going to be on, then you don't need to be on the call for certain things. But usually we try to limit—because we do focus groups and research as well, and it actually has worked out pretty well to make them engaging, but I can't say that there's necessarily the human connection.

I think part of it is that thing about being an invitation, looking for the connection that I have with someone. So whenever I have an interview for a focus group or research, do a little bit of what I call appropriate stalking, meaning I went to LinkedIn, I read some articles on folks, and they try to figure out, did we go to similar schools or do we have… and try to make that connection and really talk about all of that first. So you know how sometimes at work, what would happen in a meeting is everyone talked about their weekends and all the things that had nothing to do with the meeting because everyone needed that. On Zoom calls, I try to facilitate that, and I'll do my homework, even if it's someone I don't know for sure, do my homework and figure out, well, how can we make that connection, and how can I recreate that sort of experience where we waste the first 10 minutes? It just—it's not a waste, right? It really does establish that human connection, and we laugh and we joke. And then we're able to easily transition into work because I know something about you, you know something about me, and it kind of gets back to sort of ingratiating yourself to someone else. So I just try to think, how can I recreate that first 10 minutes of every meeting that we all sit through, over Zoom? And that requires a little bit of homework, and I'm okay with that.

Douglas: Yeah. It kind of parallels this kind of researching their cultural norms, the words they use, so that if you can relate to them and make them feel like you care and you spent some time, that's a great way to open. Really love it. And I agree, having that time up front, whether it's the weather report or some sort of way for them to transition in, sometimes people just need boot-up time. They've been running from meeting to meeting, and just kind of just jumping straight into it, that's not always the best place to be.

Harold: And I will say, the extrovert in me will write down, and someone, one of my coaches—I feel like I've had a lot of coaches in my life, Douglas—but one of my coaches would say write "Wait" on a sheet of paper. It stands for Why Am I Talking? I don't know if you've heard this or not. I will usually write that, Wait. Why am I talking? And it's another way of saying hold space for people. But I don't have a problem talking, so if I just, like, shut up for a minute, usually someone's going to speak, or they'll keep talking, or so... Yeah. Wait. That's another little technique that I have.

Douglas: You know, it's such a powerful facilitation technique just to use silence. And I was recently facilitating one of our weekly facilitation practices. So we'll host a free event every Thursday, where facilitators can come in and just try stuff out. We used to do it once a month, but now that everyone's virtual and trying to figure out this virtual stuff, we just started doing it every week. It's been really fun because we've got a global audience and everything. But I was facilitating something, and while I had folks doing solo work and adding stickies to this MURAL, I was telling some stories just to kind of entertain folks. And then, when we did the critique, because we always do a critique. After people go, we'll do a Rose, Thorn, Bud, just so that people can kind of learn because that's the whole point: come, practice, learn. One lady's feedback was, "Your stories were so interesting that I couldn't think of what I wanted to write." And I thought, oh of course, I should shut up.

Harold: Well, but you have great stories. And nothing else, she'll remember the stories, right?

Douglas: That's right.

But, yeah. I love this acronym, WAIT. This sounds so important. I haven't heard that one before.

So other tips? I guess from just navigating this crazy virtual world and launching out on your own, building your own company, what advice might you have for the facilitators out there that are following in your footsteps?

Harold: You know, I always try to think of any meeting as an experience. And so to me that's really important, whether it's the music that's playing when someone comes in. I mean, even when we've hosted webinars, we'll have music playing to kind of like set the tone and let people know we're about to have a good time today. Some of the questions at the beginning. So I think if anyone can think about it as an experience and walk people through it and navigate them through the process, that would be my first tip for anyone getting into this space.

Number two, I would say think of yourself as a quarterback. For our company, we do a lot of work with culture as well, branding, etc., and we're always like, hey, we're a quarterback. We need a team, and nothing's going to get done without the people in the room. So even if you're at the front, reading the room, reading the defense, calling the next play is really important. And so those two things, you know.

And I would also say—oh, gosh. Well, where I said knowledge feelings, but also kind of getting people centered is another thing, in terms of the podcast. Not podcast, but meeting. Get people moving. If you can get people moving, that's fun. And so, I mean, we've done things by daring people to stand up, because most people have on random shorts, even though you're business on the top and, like, party on the bottom. Well, work-appropriate party on the bottom. But, you know, like what kind of PJs are you wearing? And to your point, I mean, in the practice that you all they're doing and getting together with ideas. I've had friends who've done things from, like, quarantine kitchen, and it's like a random kind of a game.

So like, I think this idea of prototyping. I think that's what I want to settle on. I've probably rambled. So prototyping is the one thing that one of my friends mentioned to me, and he's the person I call all the time. You know, he's very good at games and gamification. And we brought him in on projects. And the idea of thinking, just try it and prototype something and see if it works, and if it doesn't work, scrap it. But sometimes perfect just gets in the way of progress. And for me, I want things to be perfect. But once I just tell myself, "It's just a prototype," then, I'm able to move quickly and get feedback on it. And then, I have the next iteration. And so for me, I think that's really important. And in this space, and I know my company and my business partner, what we've done is, let's try this, let's try this, let's try this. And I just tell myself, "It's just a prototype. It's just a prototype. It doesn't have to be perfect," because that has been the enemy of progress, for me personally, in a space where you have to respond quickly. So that would be my one big thing that I've learned in the middle of COVID, specifically, in transitioning to virtual is prototyping.

Douglas: Awesome. I love it. As you know, I'm a big fan of prototypes.

Harold: Yes.

Douglas: And so I will double down on that answer. Absolutely. If you're curious about something, afraid of something, a prototype can be really powerful because it can give you the confidence to go give it a spin and see what works, see what doesn't work. Definitely, perfection can be paralyzing and prevent it from trying and making that first step.

So, Harold, it's been a pleasure chatting with you today and hearing about the importance of timing, acknowledging, ingratiating your participants. Such an awesome concept. And then, equifininity, equifinality—

Harold: Equifinality, yeah.

Douglas: —is now in my vocabulary. I love the word. It is a— it is something that explains something that I've known to be true, but in a way that packages, I think, it up in a really nice little box. I love it.

And so, just in closing, how can folks find you? How can they get in contact and potentially work with you?

Harold: Thank you for that. So Harold Hardaway on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on there. I work at Cardigan, so you can find us at cardigancg.com. We help organizations with branding; internal communications, whether that's campaigns, change management, been getting a lot of calls, obviously, for the DEI space. You know as well. Find us there. You can email me at [email protected]. And so, yeah, find me in all of those places.

Thank you so much for having me on the show. I was excited and honored when you reached out, wanted to know what little ole me had to say about anything, so thank you for that.

Douglas: Yeah, absolutely. It's been a pleasure chatting today, Harald, and I look forward to talking more soon.

Harold: Yes, we will. Thank you.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

 “No one wants a boring facilitator, right? It's about being effective. It's about getting their goals accomplished. But if someone's going to be in a room with you for four to eight hours, to an extent it would be nice if you can entertain.” 

-Harold Hardaway

I'm excited to have Harold Hardaway with me on the Control the Room podcast today. Harold is the co-founder and CEO of Cardigan, a branding and internal communications company that "Inspires Brands that Inspire Employees." Cardigan has deep expertise in working with companies with non-desk employees, multiple-location businesses, retail brands, and professional companies with remote workers.

 

Harold started his career in banking and found his way as the Director of Corporate Communications and Culture for H.E.B. before co-creating Cardigan. He currently oversees research and strategy for all client projects at Cardigan, and he is also a speaker and thought leader on corporate communications and culture. 

On today’s episode, Harold and I talk about how to utilize quiet during facilitation, how to bring subjects and jokes back around when presenting, and how to have a "full circle" moment. Listen in to find out how Harold uses ingratiation in his facilitation, how to use equifinality, and why acknowledgment is so powerful.

 

 

Show Highlights

[01:58]  Harold’s genesis story.

[03:33] How personality traits assist Harold in his career.

[06:42] Creating a better experience for clients.

[09:07] Planning ahead of time and getting to know your client.

[14:03] How to change your language to fit your audience.

[16:15] Harold shares about facilitating and racial unrest.

[18:27] How professionalism has crept into the workplace as a form of insensitivity.

[21:35] The power of acknowledgement for yourself and others. 

[30:22] Advice from Harold about facilitating during COVID and into the future.

Links and Resources

Harold on LinkedIn

Cardigan CG on the Web

About the Guest

 

Dr. Harold Hardaway is a speaker and thought leader on corporate communications and culture. He believes that everyone should “Chase the Good” and centers his work on helping organizations create spaces wherever possible. Today, he serves as Co-Founder and CEO of Cardigan—an internal communications and employer branding firm—and he was previously the Director of Corporate Communications and Culture for H-E-B. Harold has been featured in San Antonio Magazine and Business.com, and his writings have been featured in the Austin Business Journal, SHRM’s People & Strategy Blog, and Recruiter.com. He was recently recognized as a Finalist for the 2019 Austin Under 40 Awards, and he is on the Board of Directors for Leadership Austin, Creative Action, and Equality Texas. 

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I’m with Harold Hardaway, CEO of Cardigan, where they’re cultivating brands that inspire employees.

Welcome to the show, Harold.

Harold: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Douglas: Excellent. Well, I wanted to start off by hearing a little bit about your history. I’m always fascinated by how facilitators find their way to their roles, because, let's just face it, there's no degree at any college where you go to become a facilitator, so there’s always a fascinating journey. And especially when we're looking at all these different silos and different methodologies, people come from totally different worlds. So I'm really curious to hear how you got here.

Harold: Yeah. I probably stumbled into it like most people, like you're saying. So no degrees here to kind of get there. So when I first started out in my career, I worked at a mortgage bank, and they didn't have a training department. It was a new division, and so in the absence, with no one raising their hand, to develop training, I raised my hand, and I was the trainer for that particular group. And so I think through that I kind of learned how to explain things two, three different ways to someone. And at the same time, I was in a group with business analysts, and through that process, they were working on developing systems, and then I would have to sort of train the system. But I would be in the room when they would start working on what that was going to look like, how it was going to operate, and so being able to really translate how the business was using the tool versus how they were designing it. So between the business and I.T. and translating there and being able to speak both languages really helped a lot. 

After that, I worked at a large grocery retailer here in Texas—so I’m sure everyone can probably guess who that is—in the I.T. department, and H.R. was my customer. So you can imagine with developing technology with them, there was a lot of translation needed. Like, “I want this.” And then I.T. saying, “Well, we can't necessarily do that.” And it’s like, “Well, what they're really asking for is this. And can you live with this, because I think it'll still get you the business outcomes that you want.” And so being able to hear both sides and translate and help them negotiate an 80 or 90 percent solution was really important. 

And then, once I got taken off of H.R. technology, H.R. just kind of hired me to go work in that department. And through the rest of my career, there was a lot of translating and taking big ideas, which is how I ended up in communications, taking big ideas and being able to kind of translate that down and then navigate people through a process to get to a business outcome. So honestly, most of the times it's because someone didn't raise their hand, and in that space, I did, and figured I'd give it a shot. And I learned a lot, and I ended up facilitating. 

I also am a little bit of a ham and an extrovert, and I don't mind being upfront.

Douglas: We talked about that a little bit, the importance of being this unbiased third party that’s kind of coming in and helping the team be the heroes. But there is still an element of performance you have to prepare, be on your game, get up there, and even if you’re kind of stepping off to the side a bit at times or a lot of times, there is still that moment of, hey, the show’s on, and I’ve got to be there.

And before we started recording, you were mentioning that you had some experience in standup comedy, etc. And so just curious to hear how those experiences related, if you've actually dipped into any of that when you’ve been planning sessions.

Harold: Yeah. You know, a lot of times when you're up there, no one wants a boring facilitator, right? It's about being effective. It's about getting their goals accomplished. But if someone's going to be in a room with you for four to eight hours, to an extent it would be nice if you can entertain. 

So, way back when I kind of was living in Dallas, it was this mortgage banking crisis, and they laid off all support functions. So, like, 600 of us kind of in one day. And in that space, I was like, “What are some things I've always wanted to try?” And it was standup comedy. So I did that. Actually got paid to do it, so I am a paid standup comedian. It was just 100 bucks, but I'll take it and I'll claim it any day of the week. 

But I think what that really allows me to do is pay attention to what's happening. Timing is important to kind of like lay down the joke. And I think timing is also really important when it comes to facilitation, right? So when are you quiet? When do you give space? When do you step in and say something? Also, listening to what other people are saying, and how do you bring things back around? So part of a comedy, right, you'll say something, and then you'll navigate people through a process, and then, you bring the joke back around, and then it hits harder the second time because people kind of feel it. So with facilitation, you'll set something up at the beginning, and then you’ll kind of have, hopefully, this full-circle moment where the light bulb goes off for everyone. 

So I think not being afraid to be in front of people, some comedic timing, understanding sort of that cycle of bringing things back and helping people kind of understand and the light bulb goes off helps a lot when it comes to facilitating.

Douglas: So I want to double stitch on that bringing things back, because you talked about in the preshow kind of prep conversation, you talked about this notion of cultural inside jokes or the words they use or getting to know them. And so I thought that was really, really neat, and how can I not only come in as an unbiased outsider and be that person that doesn't necessarily have any stake in this decision so that I'm not going to influence it, but at the same time, how can I be a friend, an ally to, then, so that everyone feels comfortable and vulnerable? So how much does that bringing it back, the timing, the improv comedy stuff, align with that ability to kind of like dissect the culture and then imbibe that into the experience?

Harold: Yeah. I think it's really important. I think they're equally important. So timing is huge, but also, if you're an outsider, you need people to trust you, to your point. You need them to open up. You need them to be vulnerable. So ingratiation is actually kind of an impression-management technique. So part of it is—I’m also a teacher at some of the universities, so you'll hear some nerdy stuff come out of my mouth every once in a while. But how can I ingratiate myself to someone quickly? So I can do it with a smile. I might be able to say, “Oh, look, I've done this for so many people,” but at the same time to say, “Hey, I did my homework, and I know a little bit about you. I know the words that you use. I know what's important to you.” Makes people think, “Oh, wow,” and you can see it in their face, where they start paying a little bit more attention. 

So an example of that. I had a facilitation. I was actually speaking, just speaking. But it was a little bit like some workshop fun activities in there. And so I was like, “Well, give me three—” we were talking about personal brand. “Give me three words that you would say describe who you are, or someone would say, ‘That Harold. He’s blank, blank, and blank. How would you want them to fill that in in terms of personal brand?’” And they had this whole thing called “more.” They were like, “Well, if we were to do more,” you know. And so I said, “I'm asking you for three. But if you'd like to do more, you could do four.” And everyone in the room burst out laughing and thought it was the funniest thing ever. But it's just because I asked, “What are some things you say culturally? What are some things that you do? What are the inside jokes? What are you working on? What's important in terms of an initiative? If you’ll share some of the last emails that have gone out, if you want to, then I can kind of work all that in.” And so it doesn't feel so much like an outsider, but a continuation of where their organization is really headed. And so that was just kind of a fun example that always sticks out in my head.

Douglas: Yeah. I love this notion of not only adding levity to the situation, but also getting people to really resonate with these broader themes and these broader objectives, or how does it tie back to whatever the business outcomes are? And you mentioned the importance of that in this notion of planning. And the purpose of the planning is to have the plan, but we want to be skilled enough that we can deviate from that. 

So we often talk about antifragile agendas. We want to build our agenda so that we can blow them up if we need to. And I strongly believe that if you're not focused on the outcomes, you can't do that. So that got me really excited when you were talking about those things. So I'm curious to hear how you think about plans, how you think about outcomes, and as that relates to just having a great facilitation.

Harold: Yeah. So, from a client perspective, I will always say, like, “What are one or two things that, at the end, if we accomplish this, you would be like, ‘Wow, I didn't waste my money on this guy’?” Right? Or if it’s my partner, Shannon on Cardigan. And be very clear about those and come up with the plan about how we're specifically going to get there. And what that really does is, I think as a facilitator, allows you to number one, not get frazzled and know that you have a path to get there. And I'm going to say a path because you know what I'm going to bring up in a second. You have a path to get there. And if there's a process and you've planned for it, I always say, if something goes wrong, if I planned enough, plan A, plan B, then it's going to be easy for me to pivot.

And so I've also been responsible for corporate events with 2,000 people in a room. And so I'm like, “We are going to kill ourselves to try to make this ‘perfect.’” And I always say, “It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to have the appearance of perfection.” But once we got started, I was like, “If the roof falls in, oh well. At least we exhausted every opportunity.” So to me, the plan is an outline, is a structure. You have to be able to—like we talked about comedy—read the room. What's going to work? What's not working? And be willing to say, “It's not going to work.” 

The other thing, though, with the plan—and I love this concept that I learned in school called equifinality, and there can be infinite ways to get to the same ending. So just because I had this one particular way I thought we can navigate people through the process, if I've done a good job creating space, if I've done a good job aligning people, getting people to open up and speak up, then maybe someone else is going to throw something out, it's going to spark some sort of creativity, and my plan is no longer the best one. But just recognizing and realizing that there's multiple ways to get there. The plan is a framework to kind of keep you on track, and, also, to get your customer to understand where you're going as well. But throw it away if it doesn't work. So don't stick to it, and don't feel like you have to cleave to it, because I've seen so many facilitators do that, and then at the end, you didn't accomplish anything you want to accomplish, but you stuck to your plan. And that's not what you were really getting paid to do.

Douglas: When you started talking about equifinality earlier, my brain started doing this thing because it's kind of meta, if you think about it, because when we're planning, we want to make sure that we don't have this fixed mindset, that we can be adaptable and willing to adjust on the fly as needed. But also, all of these facilitation approaches, no matter if you're in design land or liberating-structures land or wherever, they're kind of based off this concept of equifinality, right, because you want to make sure we bring everyone to the table, and what happens in the room happens. So there's these emergent qualities that we're there to seek out. And so if we come in with this fixed mindset around what the outcomes going to be specifically, then the session’s not going to be very valuable. Or the deep work doesn't happen that we’re kind of seeking for. So I thought it's really interesting that that concept works on multiple levels. It’s, like, at the participant level, it's at the facilitator level, and we all have to embrace that if we want to really get the interstellar outcomes.

Harold: Yeah. And I think that comes from, to your point, the process. I think it also comes from language. And I'll give you an example. You know, we've recently done a lot of webinars on navigating through crises, etc., because there are multiple going on at one time now. And then we're like, “How do you talk to your people that relates to your brand?” And so one example we'll use is, “Do you talk to them like a cheerleader? Do you talk to them, like, familial?” But that was when we were talking to H.R. leaders. When we were speaking to people maybe in oil and gas, we were like, “Do you talk to people like a coach?” You know what I mean? When you start changing language, because words matter and people can receive them. So are they all men? Are they primarily women? Are they CPAs? Are they advertising people? And kind of getting that understanding that the exercise changes the words, the language that you use changes, so it can be received well by the receiver, because that's the point, right? You don't want to alienate someone with language as well. So language, also, is a big part.

Douglas: It also, I was beginning to think about, like, not only what's happening in the room, what's happening to your agenda, to how you're just even approaching the facilitation, what's happening in the room with the participants, but also what's happening to all the participants outside the room. So all the stuff that they're dealing with and the baggage they bring in, the trauma, the stress, etc. And I think that has an element of equifinality to it as well, because, those things are going to have a way of resolving themselves, and all this lives in this ecosystem. It’s like Russian nested dolls or something, right? 

Harold: Yeah. 

Douglas: And so it brings me back to this thing you mentioned around acknowledging and creating space for these things that everyone's dealing with, whether it be racial unrest or whether it be some bomb just blew up at work. Like, there's a production outage. People are bringing stuff into the room, emotions into the room. I loved your word acknowledge because I think a lot of facilitators will say holding space. And that's kind of a very facilitator-centric term, whereas, acknowledge, that’s a term everyone can understand. And we just want to take some time and honor it and let people have that transition moment, because we can’t expect them to flip a switch and just throw this stuff to the side. 

So, I know you had a recent moment that felt kind of special around giving people the ability to acknowledge.

Harold: Yeah. I was in a meeting—and I borrowed this from someone, so it’s not a Harold Hardaway original, as I like to say—everyone was, I realized, feeling some type of way about something, with all the racial unrest. And knowing you have introverts and extroverts, and maybe some people want to talk; some people don't want to talk. And it was on a Zoom meeting, and we've been on so many of those recently. The thing was, “Hey, think of one, maybe two words that describe how you feel, and type it into the chat. And you don't have to say it,” but as the facilitator, she read them out loud. And when I did it and borrowed it from her, I read it out loud. And people were like, “tired,” “exhausted,” “hopeful.” And there's just something really powerful about reading those things out loud, acknowledging where people are in the space, and so you as a facilitator kind of know what people are bringing with them. And at the same time, I'm opening it up and thanking everyone, acknowledging where people are, and then saying, if there is someone who wants to expand on how they're feeling, give them the opportunity and invite them to do so. Some people, at one meeting, a few people really chose to do that, to the point of tears. And another meeting, no one did, but they were saying, “Thank you for at least allowing us to say this and acknowledge where we are,” and how that really is kind of the lens and the emotions that people are kind of bringing to the work, “Even though we're all there for the same purpose, this is where we are and how we feel.” And sometimes just the act of acknowledging something is really powerful and gets it out there.

Douglas: You know, it's like recently ran into this concept of silence breakers. And I instantly fell in love with it because it's so easy to be silent because it's the safe thing to do. And also, I think in, definitely in my career, just this reinforcement of what professionalism is and professionalism became this thing that was so inhuman. Like, we weren’t supposed to bear our feelings or touch on some of these sensitive issues. And I think we do our best work when we're the most human we can be, and, to your point, creating these moments of acknowledgment can get us there. 

And I wanted to just observe something that I've been tracking on, whether it's appreciative inquiry, or there's a really great Liberating Structure called seen, heard, and respected, and this moment of reading those feelings out loud means that the people that wrote those, they're feeling heard. And I was recently in an alternate relating workshop, and a gentleman pointed out how emotional it was to hear his story repeated back. And really struck me because I do a lot of this work, and so I'm around this type of stuff a lot, and went back to that moment. And I put myself in that gentleman’s shoes and thought, “Wow, if that is an emotional moment, the reason that's emotional is that it doesn't happen much. So that means that he’s experiencing hearing someone really empathize, really unders—there's evidence that he was heard, and that was touching.” And if we can create more moments like that, I think we can drive much more business value. But the problem is everyone focuses so much on the business value, they can't set the initial conditions to where that stuff can thrive and become outside. Love this notion of acknowledgment.

Harold: It doesn't 100 percent relate to business facilitation, but I went through a leadership development sort of class process. And there was this moment where it was like, “What's one thing that you would like someone to acknowledge you for,” or something. And so you write it on a sheet of paper. And you didn't even know why you were writing it, right? “Who would you want that person to be?” And so I remember I wrote down that I was a good dog dad because my dog had passed away. And I would want it to be my pet, right?

Douglas: Sure.

Harold: And the interesting thing was, hours later, she picked them up and she read them, and then I had to choose someone to play the role of my pet and acknowledge me for being a good parent, a good pet parent. To him—because I was carrying a lot of guilt. Don't get me wrong. We went to all the vets. I got all the medication. I did everything. But I couldn't change this outcome. And, you know, it's like a type A person, who is so used to making things happen for everybody, for companies, I couldn't save, you know. And so someone acknowledging me like they were my pet broke me down, you know? But it was the most healing thing I think I had experienced in so long. I slept like a baby. I forgave myself. So that idea of acknowledging and kind of hearing things back—I know it's a little bit off topic from business work, but there is a lot of power in that. And I think even from an employee perspective, you want to be acknowledged for certain things from certain people. I mean, how do we allow that to be expressed in some sort of way? So sorry for making a baby left turn there, but it was really powerful.

Douglas: I agree. And these powerful moments are critical if we're going to build really resilient and really strong teams. And that's the kind of stuff that I think that I'm willing to invest in my team. The trust falls and the rope courses, yeah, whatever. But if we can authentically come together and be there for each other, if there is some weight on your shoulders about the end of life around the dog, them taking the 30 seconds over the—or the two minutes or whatever it took to say that—it’s, like, a very small investment that could have huge ramifications on your ability to work more closely together and drive those outcomes. And so if we focus on the health of the team first, we can have these profound impacts versus just trying to utilization, like treating everyone like a factory and just like, go, go, go, go. And so I think that, in a lot of ways, this is the best stuff we could be doing for business outcomes.

Harold: I think so. No one in the room picked anything business related.

Douglas: Right.

Harold: Not a single person. It was like, “I said this to my grandmother, and I didn't have a chance to say something else before she died.” This is, like, where people were going, and this was like a three-month process, two weeks but three months apart. But that's kind of, to your point, what people were bringing in, right? What they were carrying. What needed to be acknowledged. And then after that—I'll speak for myself. I can't speak for everybody—but I know I felt dramatically better, and I felt sort of like healed, and I wasn't, to your point, carrying that around with me all day and trying to do that and still facilitate for other people.

Douglas: You know, it brings me back to this notion of human connection. And when we held the big workshop, right at the beginning of the lockdown, for facilitators to kind of have a conversation on the future of facilitation, the one big, big thing was human connection. It was interesting that on the spectrum, some folks were really concerned about losing it to the in-person human connection. Like, “We're really good at this digital stuff. Will we ever be able to come and have these moments we love?” And so it was kind of like this fear of this dystopian future. Then, the other side was just this notion of like, “Well, are we actually going to be able to do it? Can these tools support real human connection?” 

It's interesting. We talked about this acknowledging and unburdening and supporting each other. But it really does come down to this human connection, and that's where we are most creative. That's how we solve stuff together, is when the connections exist. And so I’m curious to hear about your journey through the virtual space and how you've been able to maintain human connection. And do you have any tricks up your sleeve? Are you still experimenting with things? Just kind of what's there for you as far as human connection in this virtual world?

Harold: Yeah. So, I mean, I'll be honest with you, personally. So all my friends will do Zoom things multiple times a week. But then I actually saw one of my friends and got a hug. And I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I haven't had a hug in eight weeks.” And I freaked out at first because just not used to it. So I don't think there's necessarily a substitute. But one of the things we've been doing is, from a facilitation standpoint, trying to mix it up. So there’re random breakout rooms and maybe prompts that you can send people and bring them back in. There's videos. There's shorter timeframes. All of that stuff has been working, but you're still sitting there, behind your computer. So those things have kept it more interesting for people.

Also, limiting the size of groups. So I know there are the webinars, but also being able to see someone's face. And I know one of your articles that I think you just posted to LinkedIn, I read it earlier. It was, like, cameras have to be on. If your camera's not going to be on, then you don't need to be on the call for certain things. But usually we try to limit—because we do focus groups and research as well, and it actually has worked out pretty well to make them engaging, but I can't say that there's necessarily the human connection. 

I think part of it is that thing about being an invitation, looking for the connection that I have with someone. So whenever I have an interview for a focus group or research, do a little bit of what I call appropriate stalking, meaning I went to LinkedIn, I read some articles on folks, and they try to figure out, did we go to similar schools or do we have… and try to make that connection and really talk about all of that first. So you know how sometimes at work, what would happen in a meeting is everyone talked about their weekends and all the things that had nothing to do with the meeting because everyone needed that. On Zoom calls, I try to facilitate that, and I’ll do my homework, even if it’s someone I don’t know for sure, do my homework and figure out, well, how can we make that connection, and how can I recreate that sort of experience where we waste the first 10 minutes? It just—it's not a waste, right? It really does establish that human connection, and we laugh and we joke. And then we're able to easily transition into work because I know something about you, you know something about me, and it kind of gets back to sort of ingratiating yourself to someone else. So I just try to think, how can I recreate that first 10 minutes of every meeting that we all sit through, over Zoom? And that requires a little bit of homework, and I’m okay with that.

Douglas: Yeah. It kind of parallels this kind of researching their cultural norms, the words they use, so that if you can relate to them and make them feel like you care and you spent some time, that's a great way to open. Really love it. And I agree, having that time up front, whether it's the weather report or some sort of way for them to transition in, sometimes people just need boot-up time. They’ve been running from meeting to meeting, and just kind of just jumping straight into it, that's not always the best place to be.

Harold: And I will say, the extrovert in me will write down, and someone, one of my coaches—I feel like I've had a lot of coaches in my life, Douglas—but one of my coaches would say write “Wait” on a sheet of paper. It stands for Why Am I Talking? I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not. I will usually write that, Wait. Why am I talking? And it's another way of saying hold space for people. But I don't have a problem talking, so if I just, like, shut up for a minute, usually someone's going to speak, or they'll keep talking, or so... Yeah. Wait. That's another little technique that I have.

Douglas: You know, it's such a powerful facilitation technique just to use silence. And I was recently facilitating one of our weekly facilitation practices. So we'll host a free event every Thursday, where facilitators can come in and just try stuff out. We used to do it once a month, but now that everyone's virtual and trying to figure out this virtual stuff, we just started doing it every week. It's been really fun because we’ve got a global audience and everything. But I was facilitating something, and while I had folks doing solo work and adding stickies to this MURAL, I was telling some stories just to kind of entertain folks. And then, when we did the critique, because we always do a critique. After people go, we’ll do a Rose, Thorn, Bud, just so that people can kind of learn because that's the whole point: come, practice, learn. One lady's feedback was, “Your stories were so interesting that I couldn’t think of what I wanted to write.” And I thought, oh of course, I should shut up. 

Harold: Well, but you have great stories. And nothing else, she’ll remember the stories, right? 

Douglas: That’s right. 

But, yeah. I love this acronym, WAIT. This sounds so important. I haven’t heard that one before. 

So other tips? I guess from just navigating this crazy virtual world and launching out on your own, building your own company, what advice might you have for the facilitators out there that are following in your footsteps?

Harold: You know, I always try to think of any meeting as an experience. And so to me that's really important, whether it's the music that's playing when someone comes in. I mean, even when we've hosted webinars, we'll have music playing to kind of like set the tone and let people know we're about to have a good time today. Some of the questions at the beginning. So I think if anyone can think about it as an experience and walk people through it and navigate them through the process, that would be my first tip for anyone getting into this space. 

Number two, I would say think of yourself as a quarterback. For our company, we do a lot of work with culture as well, branding, etc., and we're always like, hey, we’re a quarterback. We need a team, and nothing's going to get done without the people in the room. So even if you're at the front, reading the room, reading the defense, calling the next play is really important. And so those two things, you know. 

And I would also say—oh, gosh. Well, where I said knowledge feelings, but also kind of getting people centered is another thing, in terms of the podcast. Not podcast, but meeting. Get people moving. If you can get people moving, that's fun. And so, I mean, we've done things by daring people to stand up, because most people have on random shorts, even though you’re business on the top and, like, party on the bottom. Well, work-appropriate party on the bottom. But, you know, like what kind of PJs are you wearing? And to your point, I mean, in the practice that you all they're doing and getting together with ideas. I've had friends who've done things from, like, quarantine kitchen, and it's like a random kind of a game. 

So like, I think this idea of prototyping. I think that's what I want to settle on. I’ve probably rambled. So prototyping is the one thing that one of my friends mentioned to me, and he's the person I call all the time. You know, he's very good at games and gamification. And we brought him in on projects. And the idea of thinking, just try it and prototype something and see if it works, and if it doesn't work, scrap it. But sometimes perfect just gets in the way of progress. And for me, I want things to be perfect. But once I just tell myself, “It's just a prototype,” then, I'm able to move quickly and get feedback on it. And then, I have the next iteration. And so for me, I think that's really important. And in this space, and I know my company and my business partner, what we've done is, let's try this, let's try this, let's try this. And I just tell myself, “It's just a prototype. It's just a prototype. It doesn't have to be perfect,” because that has been the enemy of progress, for me personally, in a space where you have to respond quickly. So that would be my one big thing that I’ve learned in the middle of COVID, specifically, in transitioning to virtual is prototyping.

Douglas: Awesome. I love it. As you know, I'm a big fan of prototypes. 

Harold: Yes. 

Douglas: And so I will double down on that answer. Absolutely. If you're curious about something, afraid of something, a prototype can be really powerful because it can give you the confidence to go give it a spin and see what works, see what doesn't work. Definitely, perfection can be paralyzing and prevent it from trying and making that first step. 

So, Harold, it's been a pleasure chatting with you today and hearing about the importance of timing, acknowledging, ingratiating your participants. Such an awesome concept. And then, equifininity, equifinality—

Harold: Equifinality, yeah.

Douglas: —is now in my vocabulary. I love the word. It is a— it is something that explains something that I've known to be true, but in a way that packages, I think, it up in a really nice little box. I love it. 

And so, just in closing, how can folks find you? How can they get in contact and potentially work with you?

Harold: Thank you for that. So Harold Hardaway on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on there. I work at Cardigan, so you can find us at cardigancg.com. We help organizations with branding; internal communications, whether that's campaigns, change management, been getting a lot of calls, obviously, for the DEI space. You know as well. Find us there. You can email me at [email protected]. And so, yeah, find me in all of those places. 

Thank you so much for having me on the show. I was excited and honored when you reached out, wanted to know what little ole me had to say about anything, so thank you for that.

Douglas: Yeah, absolutely. It's been a pleasure chatting today, Harald, and I look forward to talking more soon.

Harold: Yes, we will. Thank you.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

"I think it's about finding, as an individual, what recovery methods work for you and how you are able to carve that out in your own unique schedule."

-Ceili Cascarano

Sleep seems to be a perpetually tricky routine to land, and it's one of the most important pillars of our overall health–it affects everything from our immune systems to our cognitive function. Listen in as I, your host Douglas Ferguson, discuss this and more with Ceili Cascarano on Episode 4 of the Control the Room Podcast.

Ceili is currently the co-founder and CEO of Somn, a digital sleep expert that helps people tackle their unique sleep issues. Somn brings clarity to the world of sleep. Without individuals understanding why they can't sleep, they aren't able to come up with a solution that works. Somn helps people navigate their sleep journeys and assists them in their sleep process.

Ceili has over ten years of experience in Big 50 corporate healthcare America where she worked on large national brands. She has recently worked in corporate innovation, where she helps build partnerships between Somn and other companies with a good product-market fit.

In today's episode, Ceili and I talk about how sleep impacts daily function, different approaches people are taking for individual recovery, and how your daily routine can affect your quality of sleep. We discuss the emotional and physical benefits of exercise, how to speed up the decision-making process in meetings, and why you should never go into a meeting without knowing the purpose of the meeting.

Show Highlights

[01:13] Ceilie's corporate marketing and innovation experience.

[03:39] The factors that create a market for Somn.

[07:08] The effect of sleep when facilitating meetings.

[10:14] Science-driven resources and solutions to achieve quality sleep.

[13:33] The ability to remove yourself from everyday situations gives your mind space for creativity.

[18:45] The power of a good-enough-to-go viewpoint.

[22:43] Accommodation of structured breaks throughout your day.

[27:35] Ceili on being a good leader.

[30:30] Owning your power in meetings and taking responsibility for your actions.

[33:00] How to take the Somn assessment.

Links and Resources

Ceili on Linked In

Somn on the web

About the Guest

Ceili is currently the co-founder and CEO of Somn, a digital sleep expert that helps people tackle their unique sleep issues. She is a strategist and business builder with 13+ years experience managing established brands and emerging innovations in CPG, healthcare and healthtech. Ceili spent over 10 years at Fortune 50 companies, and she has worked most recently in corporate venture capital, assessing new verticals, products, technologies, and business models for investment and growth. She has experience as a commercial leader and P&L owner for LISTERINE® and TYLENOL®.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Really excited to have Ceili Cascarano on the show today. She is the CEO and co-founder of Somn, and Somn was created to help people navigate the mysterious world of sleep.

Welcome to the show, Ceili.

Ceili: Thanks for having me.

Douglas: Let's kick it off with a little bit about how you got your start and a little bit more about Somn.

Ceili: Great. So I am a good 10 years in Fortune 50 big company, corporate America and had a phenomenal experience in a big healthcare company, where I worked on tons of brands, and had a phenomenal experience understanding how businesses run. And most recently, actually worked in corporate innovation, where I helped assess startups, partner with startups, and really helped them understand product market fit in service of partnership with this big company.

And so that sort of gave me the startup itch, and was actually working on a project in the sleep space with this company, myself and two other gentlemen. And as corporate priorities always do, the pendulum swung, and they decided to double down on core businesses, move away from whitespace, move away from sort of new verticals. And myself and these other two gentlemen said, "Hey, we really believe in what we've been working on. Can we take it and run with it on the outside?" and took a leap of faith and have been doing that for about a year now. The company was really supportive and really wanted to see this flourish, even though it couldn't happen inside the walls.

And so we just launched the site, still working through a few of the early iterations of that, and excited to be bringing a little bit more clarity to the world of sleep. It's a really complicated space. There are lots of factors that affect sleep. And one of the biggest issues in this space is that people just don't understand what's driving their unique issue. And so they can't navigate their way to a solution. And so we're there to help demystify some of that and help people navigate that journey and handhold them a little bit in that process.

Douglas: It's really exciting to see how much personalization is coming into fields of science like this. It's interesting. There's developments on the population health, and then there's also developments on personalization. And it's fascinating to see them both moving and how they both can impact us at the macro level and micro level. And I'm personally really interested in how I can—like, the quantified self kind of stuff—where I can learn more about me and how I need to treat myself versus oh, here's this population study that says 80 percent of the people benefit from this, but what's unique about me. What sort of stuff are you starting to find?

Ceili: I think the interesting thing in the world of sleep is that it spans such a spectrum of factors, of lighter-touch issues through its actual medical diagnoses. And so what we're seeing emerge in this space is a strive for personalization. You're absolutely right. What ends up happening, though, is that a lot of these technologies, a lot of the wearables are right for one subset of the population. They're right for one underlying factor. Maybe it's meditation-forward device that's helping with some of the racing mind and the anxiety. That's not going to work for somebody whose sleep is affected by hormonal changes, like moving into menopause. And so you are seeing acknowledgment of customization, of personalization, but it's really hard to navigate all the various things and factors that might affect sleep. And so it is a big, sweaty problem, and we've definitely taken higher up in the funnel sort of demystifying as a foundational exploration, what is it that's affecting your sleep? And then, let's help you solve it.

And that will shape our roadmap. That'll shape how we think about solutions we bring to market. But first and foremost, we are focused on the demystification. We've created a digital assessment that has taken over 25 clinical scales, and turned them into about five-minute experience to help you understand what's affecting your sleep so you can find that personal solution. So you're spot on, and we're seeing it in so many fields. Sleep is no exception.

Douglas: Yeah, it's fascinating. It reminds me of a story that we shared, and start with them, about the Crash Test Dummies. When they were first developed, they were developed by men, so the shapes and sizes of these things resembled the average man. And then the sad, sad thing—we both laugh because it's absurd—but it's actually a sad, sad thing because you look at the statistics of deaths and injuries on the highway, and women are off the charts, much, much more likely to get injured. And so, to your point, if these devices are only helping a subset of the population, how can we start to serve the others? And I think that's a noble cause.

Ceili: Yes, we hope so. And also acknowledge we are never going to be able to solve everybody's issues, underlying factors. And so how can we leverage some of our data, leverage some of those top-of-funnel experiences to get them on the path to the right partner or to the right doctor? So that's a little bit longer term, but we really think we can play an important role in the ecosystem, where it's not about us or a competitor; it's about how do we get you on the path to the right solution. And I am very glad as a woman that there has been some acknowledgment of that, as I wear my seatbelt.

Douglas: Yes, absolutely. Better airbags, for sure.

I was thinking about this whole phenomenon that if you're going to facilitate a room and you expect them to be there for the room, you have to be there for yourself first. Your psychology has to be stable if you're going to help manipulate—and manipulate's the wrong word—but help bring forth some change or take a group in a direction. And so when I think about that, I think in relation to sleep, it seems that sleep plays a big role in that. If we're not getting quality sleep, then it's going to be hard for us to show up as facilitator. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts there.

Ceili: Yeah, we talk a lot about sleep, obviously, and the role it plays for overall health. It's critical. It's becoming more understood. That's not just about hours. That's not just about going to bed at a set time. Even that looks individualized to some extent. I really like taking that even to the notion of recovery. So how do we view sleep in the context of recovery and allowing our body to do what it needs to do overnight to repair itself? How do we think about recovery throughout the day?

My co-founder, one of my co-founders and CTO, is a huge believer in the mini nap. Literally been in sessions with him where he'll walk away for 20 minutes and go take a catnap. I wish I had that super power. But you're absolutely right. Then you think about facilitating groups and being in the right headspace, the intentional commitment to recovery, everything from the good sleep at night, but also the recovery through the day, whatever that looks like for you. If it's a moment to yourself, if it's the catnap, if it's a little bit of meditation, all of these things are impacting our ability to function and to operate at our highest level possible.

Douglas: I think about the fatigue that we are experiencing with all these virtual meetings, and also the extra stress. We've talked about having the kids around, and, sure, we love our kids, but when they're tapping at the door when we're trying to—it as another source of information that we had to process. And that's coming in, and we have to prioritize and delegate and regulate. And there's just a lot more coming at us that we have to filter and deal with. And so I agree. Taking those moments of recovery.

It reminds me of athletes have built-in recovery. It's very planned and very intentional. So they might train really hard, and then, there's a day of recovery. And they have very specific tools to do that, whether it's ice baths and saunas and massage and all these things. And so I love this notion of the catnap. And I'll sometimes just say, "Hey, can we—instead of doing the Zoom, can we just do a phone call?" And then I'll go sit on my recliner and just kind of veg out but get the work done, and that way when I come back to my desk, I feel a little bit more charged up. And so have you seen other types of tactics or approaches people have been taking to get that recovery?

Ceili: Especially in today's environment, it's so individual. And so the catnap might work for my CTO, who has one small kid at home. It just doesn't work for me. I will be crawled on and slobbered on and hair pulled. So I do think it's about finding as an individual what recovery methods work for you and how are you able to carve that out within your own unique schedule.

We have seen, especially through the sleep lens, a large rise in things like meditation. Absolutely. I mean, you have phenomenal science-driven resources out there, like Headspace, like Calm, that are helping to facilitate that in an accessible way. Talk therapy, especially in this current environment where therapy used to be more face to face, moving more to the telemedicine model and that becoming more mainstream. Absolutely an uptick as well.

And I do think it's just about your habits and your routine. We talk a lot about it, actually, at Somn, and is one of our five factors that we focus on is routine and what is the impact of routine on your day, on your sleep? And so how are you making those choices to support that recovery in the current environment?

So, I mean, for me, I'm pretty competitive. I got an Apple Watch, and I'm getting my 30 minutes of exercise every day. And so while exercise itself is not about recovery—that's about performance, and that's about exerting effort—taking the intentional minutes after to recover and to have some time to myself and to escape the chaos of life for everybody right now has been really important.

So I think it's a range of things. I think it's very individual. And you have to acknowledge that your situation may look different than mine and find ways to build that recovery in a way that works for you.

Douglas: That's really cool that you mention exercise as a way of disconnecting or resetting. I was recently talking to Jon Fitch about this, about how you can actually vary your level of intensity to dial in the type of recovery you want. So if you want to totally reset your brain, do something really intense, because (a) you're not going to be to think about anything else because you're devoting all your resources to that intense cardio. Also, like the deprivation of oxygen—you're basically pushing your systems to the max. So it's like you can't stress out of whatever your cousin just did or whatever. So that can be a really great way to move past this moment and kind of hit a reset button. But if you're needing to really concentrate on something and think through it, but you're needing to kind of change the scenery, then a short walk or brisk walk might be just the thing that the doctor ordered. And you mentioned taking walks as well as being something that you are finding relief in.

Ceili: That's right. I just actually started running again. And you're spot on. I was in the humidity and dying and couldn't think about anything other than how miserable I was and how much I hated it. But I have intentionally—and I didn't really realize this until you mentioned it—I've intentionally varied that with walking for my physical purpose. But the emotional and the mental benefit of that as well has been huge to vary that as well. And being able to take the walks, to use that even for a creative reflection, I've started building walks even into my schedule as part of my work day as a time to reflect. I mean, you know, in this environment, Zoom fatigue, even without quarantine, we were facing meeting fatigue. And carving out time to think is so much harder than I think any of us realize, and the ability to remove yourself from a setting and find a new one, a new inspiration, is key to both creativity, but being able to find what you were talking about at the beginning, some of that mental headspace to effectively lead and manage teams.

Douglas: I always like to say that if you create space, innovation rushes in. So if we're just like—if our calendars are crammed full, if our brains are crammed full, where's the juice for cool things to happen? So I like that notion of having this headspace for that.

You just talked about meeting fatigue. And we were, before the show, talking about as a startup we can just jump in a room and make some decisions. And big companies require, even though it's just a lot of churn in conversations and circular this and that. And I'm just curious what you found. Are there ways to speed up decisions? How do we get to the destination a little bit quicker, even when we're having to deal with larger groups?

Ceili: If I had a perfect answer for that, I'd probably be a billionaire.

Douglas: It's a tough thing, right?

Ceili: It is. The two things that immediately come to mind, number one is being very clear up front on the meeting purpose, the meeting objective. So I was just talking to somebody about this. Had a meeting pop up, no context, I don't know what this is about, and now having to spend time to figure that out, figure out, am I the right attendee? Am I going to prioritize this? So the better expectation setting we can set up front and what outcome we want at least sets the right framework going in.

Now, I fully acknowledge that might look different at every company. So when I was at big company, the culture was very relationship driven. I remember early in my career, we tried to start a very formal, "Okay, when you send the email, there needs to be an objective, a purpose, a goal; the attendees," and culturally, it didn't work. It was too formal. It was too structured.

So how do you lean into the culture of the organization? So if it's a swing by when we're back in the office, if it's Slacking me, if it's a text, just helping to set the expectation for some of these meetings, however that makes sense culturally, is first and foremost a huge opportunity to overcome the, "Well, this meeting could have been an email sentiment."

And then second, and it's something I've really grown into in my career, is a mentality and is hard for a lot of perfectionists but I think is critical, especially in the world of innovation, is having the mentality of good enough and go. So you're never going to get it perfect. You're never going to get all of the answers. But how do we get to the core of what we're trying to achieve; align, commit, and go? And again, that's a mindset. It is easier said than done. But as a facilitator, setting the expectation that this doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough for now until we have new information or more information that will lead us to learn, evolve, pivot has really, really helped me as I've grown in my career and as I've learned how to prioritize and also not to stress the impossible pursuit of perfection.

Douglas: I love that. You know, it's funny. I see so many companies, when they're in that pursuit of perfection, they're pursuing and pursuing and pursuing. And then finally, it gets to this point where it's like, "Oh, now we have to release it." I mean, it's like, it's so ridiculous to me because we could have just skipped all that in-between stuff because you still made that decision at the end to do the thing you could have done much earlier. And I think to me, the biggest problem is that people don't take note of the fact that many decisions are reversible.

Ceili: Absolutely. And as you were speaking, the word that came to mind, they don't leave room for learning. And the past few years, both on the startup side and the corporate side, where I've really sat and spent a lot of my energy, is how you create the room for learning, because there's always going to be something you didn't expect. There's always going to be an insight that develops. And I truly believe that this pursuit of perfection hinders the ability to learn, which rightfully then leads to iteration or to new insights or to new opportunities. And on the corporate side in particular, you want it to be buttoned up and perfect, and you want to go then and pitch it to the C-suite and for it to be shiny and exactly how you have it in your head. But the reality is we don't have a crystal ball. We don't know. We don't know how the market will react. We don't know how consumers will like a feature or something else that we never planned for. So sitting in the space of learning and really allowing that good-enough-and-go mentality to support that pursuit of learning has been really important in my career.

Douglas: That's great. And I come back to your point around when you were talking about the structure being too, let's say formal, for a company that's very relationship based. And when I heard you describe the things that were necessary to create better results, they sounded more like principles to me than structure. And so I think that a lot of times when people hear those things, though, when they hear, "Oh, we've got to set expectations," they tend to jump the structure. The solution they go to is like very rigid stuff. But like, hey, if we're just clearer, if we agree that we're never going to walk into a meeting without understanding the purpose, we don't have to have a consistent, rigid structure. We can be very relationship and informal about how we communicate that. But just hold that true as a value that we will not walk into a meeting that we don't feel like we're going to provide value in.

Ceili: Doug, I love that. And what's coming to mind is this notion of aligning on the what, what is it that are guiding principles; and allowing room for the hows, so how that gets executed, how we prop that principle up and live and do it every day.

Listen, you know, companies are different and sometimes maybe culture needs to change. But this balance of the what and how when it comes to some of those values and principles, you're spot on, are two levers we can pull. And I think sometimes people get scared that it has to look a certain way.

Douglas: Yeah. And if we can ladder all that into the why, then we're really cooking.

Ceili: Absolutely. You've hit the mecca at that point.

Douglas: So I want to ask you a somewhat facetious question. So we talked a little bit about facilitators needing sleep. It's important to recover, be on the A game, and do that self-care, because you spend a lot of time taking care of your participants. And if you haven't taken care of yourself first, it's going to be difficult. But what about participants? I saw this funny video loop. I don't know, it was maybe four months ago or something. And there was a participant falling asleep in the session, and all the other participants started clapping to wake her up. And it's somewhat funny, but also somewhat sad. Like, she was—now, assuming she's not narcoleptic or anything, she was so tired that she—or the session was so boring, she fell asleep. So I've just wondered if that conjures up any stories or relates to any of the work that you're doing. I mean, it's somewhat facetious, but also, I think it's a curious thing to explore, this notion of attendees being deprived.

Ceili: Yeah. So one story that comes to mind is I was at a training one time that was actually very focused on performance and recovery. And a very senior leader had, very much on this topic, talked about for employees to facilitate some of the recovery for participants, for employees in their day to day. They had put nap pods throughout the maybe first floor. But as a place for employees to recharge, maybe take that catnap, and that nobody used them. And somebody turned to this gentleman and said, "Have you ever used one?" He said, "Oh, no, never." And then he caught himself and realized what that response was reflecting, of you can put the shiny objects out there, you can do all the cool things, but if you don't have leaders or facilitators living into those principles and setting the same example, it's really hard for employees or participants to do the same.

And so where I've seen really successful meetings enable participants to promote some of that recovery is a combination of structured breaks. So the rule I've heard lately, especially with some of the Zoom work sessions that I've been on, is 50 minutes and then a break, no matter what. So building in the structured, but then also those informal check-ins. As you said, sometimes the topic is dragging, or sometimes it's post lunch and people, it's starting to settle, and they're losing steam a little bit. How do you tune into the needs of the group as you're facilitating and make those impromptu stretch breaks or quick walks or quick breaks and allow for that combination of structure and spontaneity as well?

When I was in B-School, I interned at a company where they were very focused on us for employee productivity, and there literally used to be an alarm that went off every—I want to say it was every two hours. And everybody would line up, and we would do calisthenics together. And I sort of laughed at it at the time, but it was so ahead of the curve. And so I do think there are things in the toolkit that facilitators can bring in, whether it's stretches. I have this great app called the 7 Minute Workout app. It's literally down and dirty. You can do a really light touch, quick exercise all the way up to more hardcore. I have not tried the hardcore one yet, so please take that with a bit of a grain of salt. But I do think as leaders, as facilitators, we have to live into the principles, create room and structure for that recovery, but then also tune into our employees, tune into our participants, and say, "Hey, you know what. Actually, we're at the 30-minute mark, and it's time. Let's stretch our legs and get outside. Let's do a little bit of calisthenics," whatever that might look like.

Douglas: That's cool. I have two things I'll share. I was doing a virtual conference. The conference is in Bangkok, which was really strange because (a) I was up really late to do this virtual conference. And I had mixed feelings because I didn't have to hop on a plane and deal with jet lag and all that to get to this conference. But also, I was kind of sad that I wasn't in Bangkok. I'm talking with all these folks in Thailand, but I wasn't actually there experiencing the city. So it was a lot of weird mixed emotions there. And before we came on, we were in a waiting area. And there was a guy that was giving a session on how to stay more fit during COVID. And his entire exercise routine, it was called Sit and Fit. And there were exercises you could do from your chair, which made me laugh because I was like, "Wait a second. You're going to take the effort to exercise, but not take the small effort it would take to stand up?"

Ceili: So I've got to tell you, that reminds me of the planes. You know, how they have the seat exercises, the roll your ankle. Nobody ever does that. So did people actually partake in this, do you think?

Douglas: I don't—I mean, it was there, and we were kind of getting cued up to go on. So we were watching the thing before us. It was actually really quite nice because any kind of butterflies or stress that I had evaporated watching this guy do hip movements in his chair and stuff.

Ceili: You're like, if he can do hip movements from his chair, I can go on and facilitate this.

Douglas: Yeah. I can talk about innovation. No big deal.

The other thing I'll share is you were talking about doing stretches in your meetings and workshops. And in our weekly facilitation practice, we've seen a really cool technique where—and someone had a name for it. I'm forgetting now—but essentially, you go around the meeting, and you have people share a stretch, and then everyone does the stretch. So someone will share the stretch, and we all do the stretch. And then they'll pick the next person. So it kind of creates a cadence because it's really hard. You can't say, "Oh, go around the circle," because there's no circle in Zoom. And so that kind of "choose the next person" is a nice dynamic there.

So in general, do you have any favorite questions that you find really provocative or interesting or generally get good juice from a crowd or a coworker?

Ceili: One that may not be provocative, but I have found helps to push the boundaries of thinking, to clarify folks' perspectives, even to bring in more diversity of thought is something as simple as "tell me more," especially in big meetings. You're trying to get to a resolution. You're trying to get to an objective. There's folks sometimes that are the leader of the pack. They've got the loudest voice in the room. And what's been really important for me as I have progressed as a leader is ensuring that everybody who wants to have a voice has the opportunity and that I take the time to probe with the folks that maybe are a little more reflective or a little bit quieter. And what I find is that once you get the opening and you use that statement of "tell me more," it can open up discussion that may not have happened otherwise.

And so a great example. I was in a meeting, and we were pretty close to resolution, and somebody hadn't really talked, but I knew this person had great insight, great perspective. And that statement of "tell me more" actually ended up leading us down a different path to a different resolution of where we would have gotten otherwise, and also ensured that the loudest voice in the room wasn't the one that was heard just because it was the loudest voice in the room.

Douglas: Yeah. It's always tricky when there's over-talkers or someone feels like they have a lot to share. How do you redirect that and get others talking and stuff? And so I'm always really curious. We call it verbal judo. How do you kind of deflect and get the room kind of really humming and make sure everyone's active?

I was actually reading something last night about microaggressions, and just the current climate has impacted what's kind of come across my reading nightstand and in a positive way, I think. And this microaggression article, it was talking about just general things that you can do in certain situations. Because I think the insidious thing about microaggressions is that we don't realize we're doing them. And so there was this prompt that I thought—and it relates to what you were talking about except slightly different—it's, what do you mean by that? So rather than calling—I thought it was so beautiful because rather than villainizing someone for doing something that they've been conditioned to do all their life, and there's no intent behind it, it can give them the opportunity to take it back in a very soft way. And I think that it's somewhat parallel to the "tell me more about that." It's very open, and it kind of puts them in the driver's seat, to take it where they think it should be taken.

Ceili: Yeah. What's really nice about that as well is, I'm sure that you leverage this, too, this notion of assuming best intent, that is on the individual who is maybe on the receiving end of the misinterpretation. And what I love about that is let's empower everybody in this situation. Let me assume best intent as an individual, but let me also prompt a discussion, prompt a reframe, of how I interpreted that, because then maybe I don't even have to worry about assuming best intent because I realize "Oh, actually, I just interpreted that completely wrong." And so how do we make everybody active participants in that clarification of meeting, that clarification of intention, and own that there are these microaggressions and own that we are players in that and bring power to sort of that full system of players. So I love that. And that is why I love this notion of "tell me more," because it opens up both to diversity of thought and folks who may not be the loudest voice in the room, but also allows for a bit of an open-ended share. Share what is on your mind. Share what you want to share.

Douglas: One that's slightly different but definitely in the same ballpark is I love to ask, what do you think we should do? Because when someone brings me a problem, they probably have some notion of what they think we should do. And I think that's very empowering to—also, it kind of keeps me from, as a leader, from getting exhausted from having to have all the answers.

Ceili: You know, right or wrong, I've also found myself using that notion of we in terms of—failure is maybe too strong a word—but owning the output. So, "Hey, we committed to doing that. And maybe it was actually you, but we are in this together. So how do we sort of rectify or commit to fixing that?" And so this notion of "it's not you versus me. We are in pursuit of better sleep together," or "we are in pursuit of better facilitation together," whatever that is, trying to reframe and reground that common goal probably doesn't happen enough in startups or corporate.

Douglas: I agree. There's not enough focus on the purpose. And, you know, if we live there, then a lot of the other decisions become a lot easier.

Ceili: Though easier said than done, yes.

Douglas: Yes, exactly. It's hard work, and people get uncomfortable doing it. It's like a lot of times when we do purpose work—and that's where we like to start—and people can get uncomfortable because it's difficult. They'll restate the company slogan and say "Let's move on." It's like—

Ceili: Check.

Douglas: —we need to move past the jargon, you know?

Ceili: Yeah.

Douglas: In closing, you mentioned that there are five factors that you study or promote within Somn, and recovery is one of them. Maybe share the final four, and let listeners know how they can maybe take the assessment, how they can learn more, how they can lean into what you're working on.

Ceili: Great. I'd love to. So to take the assessment, you go to www.somn.co, and the assessment helps you understand the underlying factors affecting your sleep. And so there are five: mind, so anxiety, racing mind, staying awake at night. Body, so the things that affect your body, your hormone levels, things like that; routine, which I mentioned, is a huge one when it comes to sleep. Just having good routines, productive routines as your routines, as you're readying yourself for bed. The environment, so environment plays a huge role. The street lights, the noise. I live in the city, so I hear all sorts of crazy stuff that can keep me awake at night. And then social, so the effects of your bed partner, your pets. In my case, kids. So all of those things are underlying factors that affect your sleep. They all may have different solutions, different opportunities to address. That doesn't mean that it have to be things that you buy. So that's really what we've distilled it down to. And then the notion of recovery is actually sort of a separate sentiment of how do we live into recovery as a benefit in terms of how you think about sleep and the broader efforts driving to health.

Douglas: Excellent. Thanks for sharing. And I encourage everyone to check this out because sleep is so, so important. And love the work that you're doing. It's been fun chatting.

Ceili: Hey, Doug. Thanks for having me. And I look forward to learning more about all the great stuff you guys are doing.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together.

"I think it's about finding, as an individual, what recovery methods work for you and how you are able to carve that out in your own unique schedule."

-Ceili Cascarano

Sleep seems to be a perpetually tricky routine to land, and it’s one of the most important pillars of our overall health–it affects everything from our immune systems to our cognitive function. Listen in as I, your host Douglas Ferguson, discuss this and more with Ceili Cascarano on Episode 4 of the Control the Room Podcast.

Ceili is currently the co-founder and CEO of Somn, a digital sleep expert that helps people tackle their unique sleep issues. Somn brings clarity to the world of sleep. Without individuals understanding why they can't sleep, they aren't able to come up with a solution that works. Somn helps people navigate their sleep journeys and assists them in their sleep process.

Ceili has over ten years of experience in Big 50 corporate healthcare America where she worked on large national brands. She has recently worked in corporate innovation, where she helps build partnerships between Somn and other companies with a good product-market fit.

In today’s episode, Ceili and I  talk about how sleep impacts daily function, different approaches people are taking for individual recovery, and how your daily routine can affect your quality of sleep. We discuss the emotional and physical benefits of exercise, how to speed up the decision-making process in meetings, and why you should never go into a meeting without knowing the purpose of the meeting. 

Show Highlights

[01:13] Ceilie’s corporate marketing and innovation experience.

[03:39] The factors that create a market for Somn.

[07:08] The effect of sleep when facilitating meetings.

[10:14] Science-driven resources and solutions to achieve quality sleep.

[13:33] The ability to remove yourself from everyday situations gives your mind space for creativity.

[18:45] The power of a good-enough-to-go viewpoint.

[22:43] Accommodation of structured breaks throughout your day.

[27:35] Ceili on being a good leader.

[30:30] Owning your power in meetings and taking responsibility for your actions.

[33:00] How to take the Somn assessment.

Links and Resources

Ceili on Linked In

Somn on the web

About the Guest

 

Ceili is currently the co-founder and CEO of Somn, a digital sleep expert that helps people tackle their unique sleep issues. She is a strategist and business builder with 13+ years experience managing established brands and emerging innovations in CPG, healthcare and healthtech. Ceili spent over 10 years at Fortune 50 companies, and she has worked most recently in corporate venture capital, assessing new verticals, products, technologies, and business models for investment and growth. She has experience as a commercial leader and P&L owner for LISTERINE® and TYLENOL®.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings. 

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Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Really excited to have Ceili Cascarano on the show today. She is the CEO and co-founder of Somn, and Somn was created to help people navigate the mysterious world of sleep.

Welcome to the show, Ceili.

Ceili: Thanks for having me.

Douglas: Let's kick it off with a little bit about how you got your start and a little bit more about Somn.

Ceili: Great. So I am a good 10 years in Fortune 50 big company, corporate America and had a phenomenal experience in a big healthcare company, where I worked on tons of brands, and had a phenomenal experience understanding how businesses run. And most recently, actually worked in corporate innovation, where I helped assess startups, partner with startups, and really helped them understand product market fit in service of partnership with this big company.

And so that sort of gave me the startup itch, and was actually working on a project in the sleep space with this company, myself and two other gentlemen. And as corporate priorities always do, the pendulum swung, and they decided to double down on core businesses, move away from whitespace, move away from sort of new verticals. And myself and these other two gentlemen said, “Hey, we really believe in what we've been working on. Can we take it and run with it on the outside?” and took a leap of faith and have been doing that for about a year now. The company was really supportive and really wanted to see this flourish, even though it couldn't happen inside the walls.

And so we just launched the site, still working through a few of the early iterations of that, and excited to be bringing a little bit more clarity to the world of sleep. It's a really complicated space. There are lots of factors that affect sleep. And one of the biggest issues in this space is that people just don't understand what's driving their unique issue. And so they can't navigate their way to a solution. And so we're there to help demystify some of that and help people navigate that journey and handhold them a little bit in that process.

Douglas: It's really exciting to see how much personalization is coming into fields of science like this. It's interesting. There's developments on the population health, and then there's also developments on personalization. And it's fascinating to see them both moving and how they both can impact us at the macro level and micro level. And I'm personally really interested in how I can—like, the quantified self kind of stuff—where I can learn more about me and how I need to treat myself versus oh, here's this population study that says 80 percent of the people benefit from this, but what's unique about me. What sort of stuff are you starting to find?

Ceili: I think the interesting thing in the world of sleep is that it spans such a spectrum of factors, of lighter-touch issues through its actual medical diagnoses. And so what we're seeing emerge in this space is a strive for personalization. You're absolutely right. What ends up happening, though, is that a lot of these technologies, a lot of the wearables are right for one subset of the population. They're right for one underlying factor. Maybe it’s meditation-forward device that's helping with some of the racing mind and the anxiety. That's not going to work for somebody whose sleep is affected by hormonal changes, like moving into menopause. And so you are seeing acknowledgment of customization, of personalization, but it's really hard to navigate all the various things and factors that might affect sleep. And so it is a big, sweaty problem, and we’ve definitely taken higher up in the funnel sort of demystifying as a foundational exploration, what is it that's affecting your sleep? And then, let's help you solve it.

And that will shape our roadmap. That'll shape how we think about solutions we bring to market. But first and foremost, we are focused on the demystification. We've created a digital assessment that has taken over 25 clinical scales, and turned them into about five-minute experience to help you understand what's affecting your sleep so you can find that personal solution. So you're spot on, and we're seeing it in so many fields. Sleep is no exception.

Douglas: Yeah, it’s fascinating. It reminds me of a story that we shared, and start with them, about the Crash Test Dummies. When they were first developed, they were developed by men, so the shapes and sizes of these things resembled the average man. And then the sad, sad thing—we both laugh because it's absurd—but it's actually a sad, sad thing because you look at the statistics of deaths and injuries on the highway, and women are off the charts, much, much more likely to get injured. And so, to your point, if these devices are only helping a subset of the population, how can we start to serve the others? And I think that's a noble cause.

Ceili: Yes, we hope so. And also acknowledge we are never going to be able to solve everybody's issues, underlying factors. And so how can we leverage some of our data, leverage some of those top-of-funnel experiences to get them on the path to the right partner or to the right doctor? So that's a little bit longer term, but we really think we can play an important role in the ecosystem, where it's not about us or a competitor; it's about how do we get you on the path to the right solution. And I am very glad as a woman that there has been some acknowledgment of that, as I wear my seatbelt.

Douglas: Yes, absolutely. Better airbags, for sure.

I was thinking about this whole phenomenon that if you're going to facilitate a room and you expect them to be there for the room, you have to be there for yourself first. Your psychology has to be stable if you’re going to help manipulate—and manipulate’s the wrong word—but help bring forth some change or take a group in a direction. And so when I think about that, I think in relation to sleep, it seems that sleep plays a big role in that. If we're not getting quality sleep, then it's going to be hard for us to show up as facilitator. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts there.

Ceili: Yeah, we talk a lot about sleep, obviously, and the role it plays for overall health. It's critical. It's becoming more understood. That's not just about hours. That's not just about going to bed at a set time. Even that looks individualized to some extent. I really like taking that even to the notion of recovery. So how do we view sleep in the context of recovery and allowing our body to do what it needs to do overnight to repair itself? How do we think about recovery throughout the day?

My co-founder, one of my co-founders and CTO, is a huge believer in the mini nap. Literally been in sessions with him where he'll walk away for 20 minutes and go take a catnap. I wish I had that super power. But you're absolutely right. Then you think about facilitating groups and being in the right headspace, the intentional commitment to recovery, everything from the good sleep at night, but also the recovery through the day, whatever that looks like for you. If it's a moment to yourself, if it's the catnap, if it's a little bit of meditation, all of these things are impacting our ability to function and to operate at our highest level possible.

Douglas: I think about the fatigue that we are experiencing with all these virtual meetings, and also the extra stress. We've talked about having the kids around, and, sure, we love our kids, but when they're tapping at the door when we're trying to—it as another source of information that we had to process. And that's coming in, and we have to prioritize and delegate and regulate. And there's just a lot more coming at us that we have to filter and deal with. And so I agree. Taking those moments of recovery.

It reminds me of athletes have built-in recovery. It's very planned and very intentional. So they might train really hard, and then, there's a day of recovery. And they have very specific tools to do that, whether it's ice baths and saunas and massage and all these things. And so I love this notion of the catnap. And I'll sometimes just say, “Hey, can we—instead of doing the Zoom, can we just do a phone call?” And then I'll go sit on my recliner and just kind of veg out but get the work done, and that way when I come back to my desk, I feel a little bit more charged up. And so have you seen other types of tactics or approaches people have been taking to get that recovery?

Ceili: Especially in today's environment, it's so individual. And so the catnap might work for my CTO, who has one small kid at home. It just doesn't work for me. I will be crawled on and slobbered on and hair pulled. So I do think it's about finding as an individual what recovery methods work for you and how are you able to carve that out within your own unique schedule.

We have seen, especially through the sleep lens, a large rise in things like meditation. Absolutely. I mean, you have phenomenal science-driven resources out there, like Headspace, like Calm, that are helping to facilitate that in an accessible way. Talk therapy, especially in this current environment where therapy used to be more face to face, moving more to the telemedicine model and that becoming more mainstream. Absolutely an uptick as well.

And I do think it's just about your habits and your routine. We talk a lot about it, actually, at Somn, and is one of our five factors that we focus on is routine and what is the impact of routine on your day, on your sleep? And so how are you making those choices to support that recovery in the current environment?

So, I mean, for me, I'm pretty competitive. I got an Apple Watch, and I'm getting my 30 minutes of exercise every day. And so while exercise itself is not about recovery—that's about performance, and that's about exerting effort—taking the intentional minutes after to recover and to have some time to myself and to escape the chaos of life for everybody right now has been really important.

So I think it's a range of things. I think it's very individual. And you have to acknowledge that your situation may look different than mine and find ways to build that recovery in a way that works for you.

Douglas: That’s really cool that you mention exercise as a way of disconnecting or resetting. I was recently talking to Jon Fitch about this, about how you can actually vary your level of intensity to dial in the type of recovery you want. So if you want to totally reset your brain, do something really intense, because (a) you're not going to be to think about anything else because you're devoting all your resources to that intense cardio. Also, like the deprivation of oxygen—you're basically pushing your systems to the max. So it's like you can't stress out of whatever your cousin just did or whatever. So that can be a really great way to move past this moment and kind of hit a reset button. But if you're needing to really concentrate on something and think through it, but you're needing to kind of change the scenery, then a short walk or brisk walk might be just the thing that the doctor ordered. And you mentioned taking walks as well as being something that you are finding relief in.

Ceili: That’s right. I just actually started running again. And you're spot on. I was in the humidity and dying and couldn't think about anything other than how miserable I was and how much I hated it. But I have intentionally—and I didn't really realize this until you mentioned it—I've intentionally varied that with walking for my physical purpose. But the emotional and the mental benefit of that as well has been huge to vary that as well. And being able to take the walks, to use that even for a creative reflection, I've started building walks even into my schedule as part of my work day as a time to reflect. I mean, you know, in this environment, Zoom fatigue, even without quarantine, we were facing meeting fatigue. And carving out time to think is so much harder than I think any of us realize, and the ability to remove yourself from a setting and find a new one, a new inspiration, is key to both creativity, but being able to find what you were talking about at the beginning, some of that mental headspace to effectively lead and manage teams.

Douglas: I always like to say that if you create space, innovation rushes in. So if we’re just like—if our calendars are crammed full, if our brains are crammed full, where's the juice for cool things to happen? So I like that notion of having this headspace for that.

You just talked about meeting fatigue. And we were, before the show, talking about as a startup we can just jump in a room and make some decisions. And big companies require, even though it’s just a lot of churn in conversations and circular this and that. And I'm just curious what you found. Are there ways to speed up decisions? How do we get to the destination a little bit quicker, even when we're having to deal with larger groups?

Ceili: If I had a perfect answer for that, I'd probably be a billionaire.

Douglas: It’s a tough thing, right?

Ceili: It is. The two things that immediately come to mind, number one is being very clear up front on the meeting purpose, the meeting objective. So I was just talking to somebody about this. Had a meeting pop up, no context, I don't know what this is about, and now having to spend time to figure that out, figure out, am I the right attendee? Am I going to prioritize this? So the better expectation setting we can set up front and what outcome we want at least sets the right framework going in.

Now, I fully acknowledge that might look different at every company. So when I was at big company, the culture was very relationship driven. I remember early in my career, we tried to start a very formal, “Okay, when you send the email, there needs to be an objective, a purpose, a goal; the attendees,” and culturally, it didn't work. It was too formal. It was too structured.

So how do you lean into the culture of the organization? So if it's a swing by when we're back in the office, if it's Slacking me, if it’s a text, just helping to set the expectation for some of these meetings, however that makes sense culturally, is first and foremost a huge opportunity to overcome the, “Well, this meeting could have been an email sentiment.”

And then second, and it's something I've really grown into in my career, is a mentality and is hard for a lot of perfectionists but I think is critical, especially in the world of innovation, is having the mentality of good enough and go. So you're never going to get it perfect. You're never going to get all of the answers. But how do we get to the core of what we're trying to achieve; align, commit, and go? And again, that's a mindset. It is easier said than done. But as a facilitator, setting the expectation that this doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough for now until we have new information or more information that will lead us to learn, evolve, pivot has really, really helped me as I've grown in my career and as I've learned how to prioritize and also not to stress the impossible pursuit of perfection.

Douglas: I love that. You know, it's funny. I see so many companies, when they're in that pursuit of perfection, they're pursuing and pursuing and pursuing. And then finally, it gets to this point where it’s like, “Oh, now we have to release it.” I mean, it’s like, it’s so ridiculous to me because we could have just skipped all that in-between stuff because you still made that decision at the end to do the thing you could have done much earlier. And I think to me, the biggest problem is that people don't take note of the fact that many decisions are reversible.

Ceili: Absolutely. And as you were speaking, the word that came to mind, they don't leave room for learning. And the past few years, both on the startup side and the corporate side, where I've really sat and spent a lot of my energy, is how you create the room for learning, because there's always going to be something you didn't expect. There's always going to be an insight that develops. And I truly believe that this pursuit of perfection hinders the ability to learn, which rightfully then leads to iteration or to new insights or to new opportunities. And on the corporate side in particular, you want it to be buttoned up and perfect, and you want to go then and pitch it to the C-suite and for it to be shiny and exactly how you have it in your head. But the reality is we don't have a crystal ball. We don't know. We don't know how the market will react. We don't know how consumers will like a feature or something else that we never planned for. So sitting in the space of learning and really allowing that good-enough-and-go mentality to support that pursuit of learning has been really important in my career.

Douglas: That’s great. And I come back to your point around when you were talking about the structure being too, let's say formal, for a company that's very relationship based. And when I heard you describe the things that were necessary to create better results, they sounded more like principles to me than structure. And so I think that a lot of times when people hear those things, though, when they hear, “Oh, we've got to set expectations,” they tend to jump the structure. The solution they go to is like very rigid stuff. But like, hey, if we're just clearer, if we agree that we're never going to walk into a meeting without understanding the purpose, we don't have to have a consistent, rigid structure. We can be very relationship and informal about how we communicate that. But just hold that true as a value that we will not walk into a meeting that we don't feel like we're going to provide value in.

Ceili: Doug, I love that. And what's coming to mind is this notion of aligning on the what, what is it that are guiding principles; and allowing room for the hows, so how that gets executed, how we prop that principle up and live and do it every day.

Listen, you know, companies are different and sometimes maybe culture needs to change. But this balance of the what and how when it comes to some of those values and principles, you're spot on, are two levers we can pull. And I think sometimes people get scared that it has to look a certain way.

Douglas: Yeah. And if we can ladder all that into the why, then we're really cooking.

Ceili: Absolutely. You’ve hit the mecca at that point.

Douglas: So I want to ask you a somewhat facetious question. So we talked a little bit about facilitators needing sleep. It’s important to recover, be on the A game, and do that self-care, because you spend a lot of time taking care of your participants. And if you haven't taken care of yourself first, it's going to be difficult. But what about participants? I saw this funny video loop. I don’t know, it was maybe four months ago or something. And there was a participant falling asleep in the session, and all the other participants started clapping to wake her up. And it's somewhat funny, but also somewhat sad. Like, she was—now, assuming she's not narcoleptic or anything, she was so tired that she—or the session was so boring, she fell asleep. So I've just wondered if that conjures up any stories or relates to any of the work that you're doing. I mean, it’s somewhat facetious, but also, I think it’s a curious thing to explore, this notion of attendees being deprived.

Ceili: Yeah. So one story that comes to mind is I was at a training one time that was actually very focused on performance and recovery. And a very senior leader had, very much on this topic, talked about for employees to facilitate some of the recovery for participants, for employees in their day to day. They had put nap pods throughout the maybe first floor. But as a place for employees to recharge, maybe take that catnap, and that nobody used them. And somebody turned to this gentleman and said, “Have you ever used one?” He said, “Oh, no, never.” And then he caught himself and realized what that response was reflecting, of you can put the shiny objects out there, you can do all the cool things, but if you don't have leaders or facilitators living into those principles and setting the same example, it's really hard for employees or participants to do the same.

And so where I’ve seen really successful meetings enable participants to promote some of that recovery is a combination of structured breaks. So the rule I've heard lately, especially with some of the Zoom work sessions that I've been on, is 50 minutes and then a break, no matter what. So building in the structured, but then also those informal check-ins. As you said, sometimes the topic is dragging, or sometimes it's post lunch and people, it's starting to settle, and they're losing steam a little bit. How do you tune into the needs of the group as you're facilitating and make those impromptu stretch breaks or quick walks or quick breaks and allow for that combination of structure and spontaneity as well?

When I was in B-School, I interned at a company where they were very focused on us for employee productivity, and there literally used to be an alarm that went off every—I want to say it was every two hours. And everybody would line up, and we would do calisthenics together. And I sort of laughed at it at the time, but it was so ahead of the curve. And so I do think there are things in the toolkit that facilitators can bring in, whether it’s stretches. I have this great app called the 7 Minute Workout app. It's literally down and dirty. You can do a really light touch, quick exercise all the way up to more hardcore. I have not tried the hardcore one yet, so please take that with a bit of a grain of salt. But I do think as leaders, as facilitators, we have to live into the principles, create room and structure for that recovery, but then also tune into our employees, tune into our participants, and say, “Hey, you know what. Actually, we're at the 30-minute mark, and it's time. Let’s stretch our legs and get outside. Let’s do a little bit of calisthenics,” whatever that might look like.

Douglas: That’s cool. I have two things I’ll share. I was doing a virtual conference. The conference is in Bangkok, which was really strange because (a) I was up really late to do this virtual conference. And I had mixed feelings because I didn't have to hop on a plane and deal with jet lag and all that to get to this conference. But also, I was kind of sad that I wasn't in Bangkok. I'm talking with all these folks in Thailand, but I wasn't actually there experiencing the city. So it was a lot of weird mixed emotions there. And before we came on, we were in a waiting area. And there was a guy that was giving a session on how to stay more fit during COVID. And his entire exercise routine, it was called Sit and Fit. And there were exercises you could do from your chair, which made me laugh because I was like, “Wait a second. You're going to take the effort to exercise, but not take the small effort it would take to stand up?”

Ceili: So I’ve got to tell you, that reminds me of the planes. You know, how they have the seat exercises, the roll your ankle. Nobody ever does that. So did people actually partake in this, do you think?

Douglas: I don’t—I mean, it was there, and we were kind of getting cued up to go on. So we were watching the thing before us. It was actually really quite nice because any kind of butterflies or stress that I had evaporated watching this guy do hip movements in his chair and stuff.

Ceili: You’re like, if he can do hip movements from his chair, I can go on and facilitate this.

Douglas: Yeah. I can talk about innovation. No big deal.

The other thing I'll share is you were talking about doing stretches in your meetings and workshops. And in our weekly facilitation practice, we've seen a really cool technique where—and someone had a name for it. I'm forgetting now—but essentially, you go around the meeting, and you have people share a stretch, and then everyone does the stretch. So someone will share the stretch, and we all do the stretch. And then they'll pick the next person. So it kind of creates a cadence because it's really hard. You can't say, “Oh, go around the circle,” because there's no circle in Zoom. And so that kind of “choose the next person” is a nice dynamic there.

So in general, do you have any favorite questions that you find really provocative or interesting or generally get good juice from a crowd or a coworker?

Ceili: One that may not be provocative, but I have found helps to push the boundaries of thinking, to clarify folks’ perspectives, even to bring in more diversity of thought is something as simple as “tell me more,” especially in big meetings. You’re trying to get to a resolution. You're trying to get to an objective. There's folks sometimes that are the leader of the pack. They've got the loudest voice in the room. And what's been really important for me as I have progressed as a leader is ensuring that everybody who wants to have a voice has the opportunity and that I take the time to probe with the folks that maybe are a little more reflective or a little bit quieter. And what I find is that once you get the opening and you use that statement of “tell me more,” it can open up discussion that may not have happened otherwise.

And so a great example. I was in a meeting, and we were pretty close to resolution, and somebody hadn't really talked, but I knew this person had great insight, great perspective. And that statement of “tell me more” actually ended up leading us down a different path to a different resolution of where we would have gotten otherwise, and also ensured that the loudest voice in the room wasn't the one that was heard just because it was the loudest voice in the room.

Douglas: Yeah. It's always tricky when there’s over-talkers or someone feels like they have a lot to share. How do you redirect that and get others talking and stuff? And so I'm always really curious. We call it verbal judo. How do you kind of deflect and get the room kind of really humming and make sure everyone's active?

I was actually reading something last night about microaggressions, and just the current climate has impacted what's kind of come across my reading nightstand and in a positive way, I think. And this microaggression article, it was talking about just general things that you can do in certain situations. Because I think the insidious thing about microaggressions is that we don't realize we're doing them. And so there was this prompt that I thought—and it relates to what you were talking about except slightly different—it's, what do you mean by that? So rather than calling—I thought it was so beautiful because rather than villainizing someone for doing something that they've been conditioned to do all their life, and there's no intent behind it, it can give them the opportunity to take it back in a very soft way. And I think that it's somewhat parallel to the “tell me more about that.” It’s very open, and it kind of puts them in the driver's seat, to take it where they think it should be taken.

Ceili: Yeah. What's really nice about that as well is, I'm sure that you leverage this, too, this notion of assuming best intent, that is on the individual who is maybe on the receiving end of the misinterpretation. And what I love about that is let's empower everybody in this situation. Let me assume best intent as an individual, but let me also prompt a discussion, prompt a reframe, of how I interpreted that, because then maybe I don't even have to worry about assuming best intent because I realize “Oh, actually, I just interpreted that completely wrong.” And so how do we make everybody active participants in that clarification of meeting, that clarification of intention, and own that there are these microaggressions and own that we are players in that and bring power to sort of that full system of players. So I love that. And that is why I love this notion of “tell me more,” because it opens up both to diversity of thought and folks who may not be the loudest voice in the room, but also allows for a bit of an open-ended share. Share what is on your mind. Share what you want to share.

Douglas: One that’s slightly different but definitely in the same ballpark is I love to ask, what do you think we should do? Because when someone brings me a problem, they probably have some notion of what they think we should do. And I think that's very empowering to—also, it kind of keeps me from, as a leader, from getting exhausted from having to have all the answers.

Ceili: You know, right or wrong, I’ve also found myself using that notion of we in terms of—failure is maybe too strong a word—but owning the output. So, “Hey, we committed to doing that. And maybe it was actually you, but we are in this together. So how do we sort of rectify or commit to fixing that?” And so this notion of “it's not you versus me. We are in pursuit of better sleep together,” or “we are in pursuit of better facilitation together,” whatever that is, trying to reframe and reground that common goal probably doesn't happen enough in startups or corporate.

Douglas: I agree. There's not enough focus on the purpose. And, you know, if we live there, then a lot of the other decisions become a lot easier.

Ceili: Though easier said than done, yes.

Douglas: Yes, exactly. It's hard work, and people get uncomfortable doing it. It's like a lot of times when we do purpose work—and that’s where we like to start—and people can get uncomfortable because it's difficult. They'll restate the company slogan and say “Let's move on.” It's like—

Ceili: Check.

Douglas: —we need to move past the jargon, you know?

Ceili: Yeah.

Douglas: In closing, you mentioned that there are five factors that you study or promote within Somn, and recovery is one of them. Maybe share the final four, and let listeners know how they can maybe take the assessment, how they can learn more, how they can lean into what you're working on.

Ceili: Great. I'd love to. So to take the assessment, you go to www.somn.co, and the assessment helps you understand the underlying factors affecting your sleep. And so there are five: mind, so anxiety, racing mind, staying awake at night. Body, so the things that affect your body, your hormone levels, things like that; routine, which I mentioned, is a huge one when it comes to sleep. Just having good routines, productive routines as your routines, as you're readying yourself for bed. The environment, so environment plays a huge role. The street lights, the noise. I live in the city, so I hear all sorts of crazy stuff that can keep me awake at night. And then social, so the effects of your bed partner, your pets. In my case, kids. So all of those things are underlying factors that affect your sleep. They all may have different solutions, different opportunities to address. That doesn't mean that it have to be things that you buy. So that's really what we've distilled it down to. And then the notion of recovery is actually sort of a separate sentiment of how do we live into recovery as a benefit in terms of how you think about sleep and the broader efforts driving to health.

Douglas: Excellent. Thanks for sharing. And I encourage everyone to check this out because sleep is so, so important. And love the work that you're doing. It's been fun chatting.

Ceili: Hey, Doug. Thanks for having me. And I look forward to learning more about all the great stuff you guys are doing.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together.

"People have been aware of racism for a long time, but I think we have all had our awareness radically heightened and our eyes open in these last few weeks."

Jake Knapp

I'm Douglas Ferguson, and I'm on a mission to help people everywhere have better meetings. There's clear evidence that poorly run meetings not only waste time, but they also squander a lot of money. A recent report by Doodle found that $541 billion is lost globally every year on common meeting mistakes–and that's just the report from the County for Direct Labor Costs. This staggering amount translates into opportunity costs we incur from ineffective meetings.

I'm excited to have Jake Knapp with me today! He is the creator of The Design Sprint, author of Make Time and author of the New York Times bestseller Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. Jake also happens to be one of the world's tallest designers.

We talk about Sprint, spending time with the family, and how Jake's book is more relevant now in light of the COVID pandemic. Amid the pandemic and riots, we are challenged by outside events that we can't control but are forced to deal with at the moment. "We also can't ignore the fact that these things offer great opportunities for us." Jake talks about embracing the right parts of staying at home, such as spending more time with family.

Listen in to our dialogue about learning how to remove shame when talking about racial barriers, how we are both feeling the change, and how we can have a positive impact. Find out why Jake hates meetings, the pros and cons of online meetings, and design elements involving movement of the human body during the workday.

"People have been aware of racism for a long time, but I think we have all had our awareness radically heightened and our eyes open in these last few weeks."

Jake Knapp

I'm Douglas Ferguson, and I'm on a mission to help people everywhere have better meetings. There's clear evidence that poorly run meetings not only waste time, but they also squander a lot of money. A recent report by Doodle found that $541 billion is lost globally every year on common meeting mistakes–and that's just the report from the County for Direct Labor Costs. This staggering amount translates into opportunity costs we incur from ineffective meetings.

I'm excited to have Jake Knapp with me today! He is the creator of The Design Sprint, author of Make Time and author of the New York Times bestseller Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. Jake also happens to be one of the world's tallest designers. 

We talk about Sprint, spending time with the family, and how Jake's book is more relevant now in light of the COVID pandemic. Amid the pandemic and riots, we are challenged by outside events that we can't control but are forced to deal with at the moment. "We also can't ignore the fact that these things offer great opportunities for us." Jake talks about embracing the right parts of staying at home, such as spending more time with family.

Listen in to our dialogue about learning how to remove shame when talking about racial barriers, how we are both feeling the change, and how we can have a positive impact. Find out why Jake hates meetings, the pros and cons of online meetings, and design elements involving movement of the human body during the workday.

 

"I've read a lot into behavioral psychology, and one thing that is appreciated across the board regardless of the therapist or psychologist is that you change the environment, you change the behavior."

John Fitch

I'm Douglas Ferguson, and I'm on a mission to help people everywhere have better meetings. There's clear evidence that poorly run meetings not only waste time, but they also squander a lot of money. A recent report by Doodle found that $541 billion is lost globally every year on common meeting mistakes–and that's just the report from the County for Direct Labor Costs. This staggering amount translates into opportunity costs we incur from ineffective meetings.

I'm excited to have John Fitch with me today! John is the CPO at Voltage Control and the author of Time Off. John is an author, business model generator, and prototype creator. He enjoys deep, intentional work that leads to the facilitation of new ideas and business models.

John is a big fan of compartmentalization, especially with work colleagues, projects, and phases of projects. He stresses the importance of reflection and the design lens of conversation. John believes that compartmentalizing takes conversation design, "which I admit, I'm not a pro at, but I know that to compartmentalize we need to talk about it, have a language about it. I think it's fascinating," he says.

With COVID-19 and many of us working from home, John stresses the importance of having clearly compartmentalized spaces. "Now, if work is in your home and you haven't developed a rest ethic and have yours defined, and you're intentional about it, now that work is at home, it can be surrounding you at all times."

Learning how to take time off can be an investment in many ways. It can help create new ideas and turn activities into meditation time, to name a few. Time off can also bring you awareness of what you do in a space of rest so that you can be intentional about how you spend time away from work. Find out why you should use breaks in your projects or meetings, how our days can be dictated by our emotional behaviors, and how you can have boot-up and boot-down time for your creative process.

Show Highlights

[01:45] Time Off–the book and what it means to have a Rest Ethic.

[02:22] Compartmentalizing work matters.

[04:25] Doing specific tasks in your own space can help with compartmentalization.

[07:29] Use your transition time commuting as a slow interstitial time-off switch.

[08:05] Superhuman and it's relevance to complexity theory.

[08:54] Driving and music can be a form of meditation.

[10:57] Incubation and the process of stepping away from the thing you are trying to achieve leads to more success.

[13:02] Use exercise to think through challenges–John's interview with Terry Rudolph, a Quantum Physicist.

[18:20] Build intentional time into your schedule for rest during meetings or projects.

[21:31] Emotional triggers, both positive and negative, lead to a biased judgment of work.

[26:15] Utilizing rest time requires a transition period and acclimation periods.

[30:27] How John upgraded his business through time off and a real-life example from his book.

[32:15] Intentionally plan time off and give others a heads up that you are planning to be disconnected.

[34:17] When you lead a room, read others and be prepared to facilitate.

[38:24] John's recommendations to leaders for facilitating better meetings.

[42:25] How you should reframe activities in your own mind.

Links and Resources

John Fitch

Time Off

Time Off Podcast

About the Guest

John Fitch is a maker who loves tinkering and building prototypes of products and businesses. "When new ideas aren't successful, it's usually because a team was overconfident about how well customers and users would understand the idea and how much they would perceive its value." He specializes in enabling teams to receive customer and user reactions before making any expensive commitments. This process involves a lot of play, unlearning, and empathy.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: I'm super excited to have John Fitch on the show this week. And John Fitch is the chief product officer at Voltage Control and the author of Time Off. Welcome to the show, John.

John: Douglas, it's an honor to be on a podcast episode with you, deep in conversation. And it's also one of those classic funny lines where they're like, "Hey, it's been a while," whereas right before recording this, you and I were prototyping some cool stuff. So it's cool, then, to transition from the intensity, deep work of prototyping to a more casual conversation.

Douglas: In a way, this casual conversation comes off as a bit of time off compared to the deep, intentional work that's required for facilitation.

John: Well said. And you said a word there that is really important. You said intentional. And in the book Time Off and the whole point of view I have is we talk about it's important to have a work ethic, and we just proved that, prototyping some awesome software. We did it with an intentional work ethic. And having an intentional rest ethic is what the book Time Off is all about. So you're right. And time off can be active, which is another, I think, eye opener for our readers. It doesn't just mean vegging out on the couch, which is totally fine, that's a form of time off, but sometimes stopping what you're doing and just having an awesome conversation with a colleague, a friend. In this case, you're both of those. So, yeah. Good point.

Douglas: Excellent. And I want to get to your background a little bit. But before we do, I love this notion of being able to be friends and colleagues at the same time. And I think there is this notion of compartmentalization that's so important to be able to do those things. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this notion of compartmentalization.

John: I think it's fantastic to compartmentalize lots of things. And especially with those you work with, but it's important to compartmentalize the projects, and what phase is it in. I think we've talked many times before in our facilitation coaching that it's important to look at your meeting culture through seasons. That's a compartmentalization, right? You've decided, hey, right now we're in a season of production, or we're in a season of reflection or redesign or growth. And all of those have been intentionally compartmentalized. And so I think across relationships, that's really important. But also within your company culture, within yourself, you've got to compartmentalize parts of yourself. Like, I can't necessarily bring the version of me that's going out hunting and hiking to every prototyping session I have. And so I think that mindfulness and that internal check in, both for yourself but also across your team, is just, you know, that's the beauty of reflection and intention. So I think it's cool to just simply talk about it.

And I know you've had Daniel Stillman on the podcast and so cool to just think about the design lens of conversation. And to your point, compartmentalizing things, I think takes a lot of amazing conversation design that I know I'm not a pro at. But I know that to compartmentalize, we've got to talk about it, we have to have a language about it. So I think it's fascinating.

Douglas: You know, it's interesting you bring up this notion of hunting or fishing, and I think exercise can play a role there, these things that have a space associated with them. You go to do those things in that space tend to help with compartmentalization because you can think of that it serves a purpose.

Right at the beginning of COVID, I read some really fascinating writings by psychologists that were saying to really think about how you redesign your space and the purpose each room has for you so that you can still compartmentalize your life, even though you're confined to a much smaller, let's say, footprint.

John: Yeah. It's fascinating. I've been thinking about now, since Time Off is out, you have friends and readers who reach out, and they're like, "Hey, have you thought about what you're writing next?" And in regard to the whole Time Off sort of franchise, if I'm to use that word, I think a natural follow up would be time on and intentional time on. And then a book title that I'm the most excited about regarding what you just said would be a title something like Time Away. I, too, have read a lot into behavioral psychology, and one thing that is pretty much appreciated across the board, regardless of the therapist or psychologist, is you change the environment, you change the behavior. And that's so fascinating. And, yeah, right now we're all limited. You and I can't both just pack our bags and go to Ireland. Well, I mean, I guess we could, but probably not smart at the moment. But just by changing things up in your own house.

I remember—remind me of Linda's last name, who spoke at Control the Room.

Douglas: Linda Baker.

John: Yeah. Linda Baker. She gave a presentation on feng shui, and I think that's under that lens of energy design, space design. And it is amazing if you just rearrange things. And I know I've been on so many Zoom calls with you. You've really transformed your office, I assume for the better. But all of those intentional environment changes have, I would assume, changed your behavior. Would you say so?

Douglas: Absolutely. You know, I've created stations, if you will, within my house, so that each spot's almost like traveling to a new—it's like a replica of what I had previously. I've got the space where I'm doing workshops. I got the space where I'm boxing and doing Pilates. I got the space where I'm eating. I got the space where I'm relaxing, and I got the place where I'm sleeping. I try to keep those responsibilities delineated and compartmentalized so I can be very intentional about what I'm going to do and how I spend that time.

John: And that's really important. I think that's one thing I've been thinking a lot about with the pandemic. In some ways, it was a big, forced time off for some people, depending on their context. But also, I didn't really think about this because it'd been so long since I had the lifestyle of, oh, I go to a workplace. I work. I leave. I go home. A lot of people that going home, that interstitial time, was sort of a slow time-off switch. Like, they were going home, and when they went home, they were able to leave work at the office and home is home, and that's a clear compartmentalization. Whereas now if work is in your home and you haven't developed, as we call it, a rest ethic and have yours defined and you're intentional about it, now that work's at home, it could just be surrounding you at all times.

Douglas: Yeah. It's not only the compartmentalization you're describing, it's the transition. And, you know, in complexity theory, whenever we're talking about complexity theory, one of the examples I love to give is Superman. Superman doesn't turn from Clark Kent into Superman instantaneously. He goes into the phone booth and changes. And likewise, when we're moving from simple to complicated or complex, we can't just transition from those domains instantaneously. We have to go through some transformation and recall that disorder.

And I know for a fact I used to—I live out in the country, and my drive home, I always planned it so that I would never be stuck, because I hate sitting still in traffic, but I love driving. And just the motion, my thoughts form and dissolve and reform. And it's a great way for me to, I think, it's almost like active meditation. We've talked about this before, John.

John: I'm curious. Is there a particular playlist or something you would listen to in that transition time?

Douglas: You know, it's interesting, John. You know I have very eclectic music tastes, and so I have about, gosh, I don't even know what the total is. I think it's somewhere in the realm of, like, 500,000 songs on a USB thumb drive. And it's amazing because it used to be that back in the day, it was like a wall full of CDs. I still have a whole shelfful of albums, but now I have this thumb drive that's like the size of a—I mean, it's so tiny. It's maybe two centimeters or something. It's the tiniest little thumb drive. And I just put it on random. And the nice thing about listening to a really eclectic database of music on random, I can always skip something if I'm not in the mood for it. But it's the weird serendipities of things that flow from one thing to another. And I might be on a thread of thought, and then it totally changes my gears because it intercepts where I'm at and re-shifts me. So I kind of like being taken on a journey that I'm not having to plan, that I'm not having to put thought into, and I just flow with it.

John: I like it. It's like the audio version of Google's Feeling Lucky feature. I mean, that's a cool environment change. I mean, it's your audio's mind space. You're just allowing serendipity. And I actually think that has a lot of beautiful correlation to our book Time Off, which a lot of times people who haven't talked to me or read the book when I just surface level tell them, "Yeah, I wrote this book," they're like, "Oh, that's cool. You wrote a book on vacations," and I'm like, "No, no, no, no. It's our goal, my coauthor's and I's goal, is to really expand the connotation of time off, not just being vacation from work." It's micropractices. And why it's important is we looked at the creative process, and there's four phases of it. And one of the phases that's absolutely essential is called incubation, and it's when you're not actively working on the thing you're trying to achieve. It's by stepping away from it, by doing something else. Again, that could be something very passive. It could be something very active, like an intense workout. The point is, is your subconscious and other parts of your brain are able to work in the background in those moments.

And so what I like about your random music selection is that is a form of incubation that—well, you're driving, so you can't really actively code or do any of your workshop facilitation work, but you're able to be an open channel. And so those sounds come through, and who knows what memories that ignites, and one idea can flow into the next. And I know a type A personality like me really benefited from changing my perspective of time off of this, like, I'm not working to, like, no, it's actually a very productive practice for an investment in better ideas or an investment to an epiphany, perhaps. So I like that you're just opening it up. You don't know what's going to come.

Douglas: Yes. It's really fantastic. And one of my other favorite active-meditation techniques is actually just going to the gym and just having my sauna time, getting into a groove of—there's a Pilates routine that I kind of developed out of my greatest hits, the things I really, really like. There's a spine corrector and some different exercises on the Cadillac that I've done so many times that I don't even have to think about what's next. I just go in there and I flow through it. I'll do that as a warmup, as a way of stretching and getting ready to do something more intense. And an hour will just evaporate. I'm not thinking about much of anything. And I found that time to be very valuable, and I miss it terribly because it's really hard to recreate that at home.

John: It's really cool that you brought up exercise. That's one of the many deep dives in our book Time Off, and it reminds me of—we interviewed this quantum physicist named Terry Rudolph. And exercise is a really big part of his rest ethic, and he gave us—each person we interview, we ask them to give very practical advice for the reader to immediately try. And his was—and you could replace the word run with any kind of movement. But he essentially said, look, run hard to empty your mind, or jog slowly to think through a problem without distractions. And so he essentially told us, if you need to clear your mind, go really hard. So that could be your high-intensity workouts. And challenge yourself so that you're not able to think about anything, basically. And you just kind of get lost on focusing on not dying in that high-intensity activity. So it's, in a way, you're unplugged for a while and getting back to the body.

Or as, if you want to use a workout as productivity, you could set some clear intentions or questions to contemplate in advance, and then use that time off exercising to really give you a macro view. So that could be, like, as you've told me, in the sauna or in Pilates, where it is active, you're definitely working out, but there's enough space in there for you to dream up, have a macro view. And so I think that's a cool oscillation of intention.

And also, that analogy could be made to a work project. There's times where, like today, actually, you and I were prototyping. You can only do that for so long, just like you can only sprint for so long on the Treadmill, or you can only stay in the really intense, infrared sauna for so long. And so it's just being aware of that oscillation and intentional about it to reap the benefits and not just choosing and obsessing over one.

Douglas: That's right. And I think that it's another thing to think about how you might hijack some of the systems to do things that you might need, because you, not to overuse the word hijacking, but imagine your emotions. Your brain chemistry is hijacking you at the moment. Well, then going for a really long run, in a way, you're kind of depriving yourself of oxygen, because everything's just devoted to surviving that intensity. Whatever weird conversation you just had with someone that didn't sit well, that's going to all be history. And so then you'll be in a much better headspace to analyze it, synthesize it, and address it. So that's interesting. Time off can be both micro and macro, I guess.

John: I'm curious. That's a good point. So I'm just, in real time, I know you have a ton of experience in music and especially in synthesizers and other instruments. I mean, you've helped produce music. And if you think about it, time off is essential in music, too. Time off between certain notes gives you a rhythm. Time off from one section of the orchestra is important to evoke a certain emotion. I'm curious in, like, synthesizer space, is time off an important part of your whole setup? I'm just totally randomly curious about that.

Douglas: Yeah. It's no different than other music, right? You've got micro timing, which, to bring it back to the micro and macro, you've got these moments with inside the melody itself, where literally—and if we want to really break it back down to the voltages, the voltage is either on or it's off. If the voltage was on the entire time, nothing would happen, because the system would just be totally primed. You'd imagine it would just be complete stress, right? So in order to have anything interesting happen, it needs to oscillate up and down. So the voltage goes positive and it goes negative. Or if it's d.c., it goes just positive and zero. And that's where you get these really cool modulations, where really stuff interesting happens.

But I think if you were going to really bring it back to work and life and habits and how we keep our brains healthy, we also need to think about the frequency of isolation, because I would argue that even if you're having too much rest and the contact switch alone could be exhausting, just switching between turn it on and off. So I think that the frequency is important to having it too fast, the duration too short, and then switch is too fast, it's probably equally harmful.

John: Hm. You and I have been conductors of a lot of rooms. It's been a great honor we're able to learn so much when we do that. I'm curious before I go in, because I've contemplated it for a few years, putting the book together, but in your own master facilitation, whether it's a large-group gathering or a small team or a design sprint, Douglas, how have you used time off as a function as a facilitator? Anything come to mind?

Douglas: Well, yeah. I mean, there's the cardinal rule of the 90-minute break. We don't want to go over 90 minutes before we have breaks, and making sure that that's written into the agenda and being very strict about seeing to that. Also, just time away from the material can be really powerful, whether that's by design—we build something into the agenda for us to kind of take a tour around through something different. It's exactly the reason why you might do improv games or icebreakers and these types of things, where we intentionally want to move the energy or the patterns through the room. And it's definitely an amazing tool when things get uncomfortable, and it's unproductively uncomfortable, and we can call a break. We can use that time to let people disperse and then come back together at a time. It's similar to going on that sprint, letting the emotions discharge so that we can come back together when people are a little less emotional or a little less spun up.

John: Yeah. It reminds me when I was in film school, we took this class, and I was really focused on being a producer, which was kind of the business mind, the coordinator of the project. But in order to do that, you had to take editing, and you had to take directing. And I remember being really fascinated by, in our directing class, one of the biggest tips we heard from renowned filmmakers was if you're the director, I think on average, it was like two or three months was the minimum recommended from when your filming ended, so all of your production of the live action footage, etc. Two to three months between that and when you sat down the first time with your editor, because you needed to be detached from the material, because there may have been a particular shot, a particular line, a particular character, that in that time of production you were just really excited about personally and in detaching from a while allowed their advice. And I definitely, when I was producing documentaries, benefited from this advice, that by the time you had been so detached, you were able to really reflect and kind of come to the material new again and work with the editor from the perspective, more of a new viewer versus someone who's been deep in the weeds for a long time.

Douglas: Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like the weeds could cause a couple of problems. If I were to bring it back to design sprints, it's a reason that we encourage people not to do any synthesis at the end of day five. So if you've done interviews all day, you're going to be suffering from recency bias from the most recent interview. Just go clear your head over the weekend and come back. Take that time off to let it all just dissipate, disassociate from whatever happened. It was much more effective.

And John, it makes me wonder. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think there could be things around emotional triggers that are—I mean, maybe that scene was filmed on your birthday. People were giving you lots of Happy Birthdays and encouragement; maybe you got a cool gift from someone. Or maybe you found out your grandmother was sick the day this other scene was filmed. And so could you have these associations with them that are subconscious, where you might judge them in ways that aren't accurate?

John: Oh, that's certainly the reason you need a team, because of that complexity of influences. And I actually wish that I would have known how much that my film-school experience would have prepared me to work in software and design. I had no idea. I think I would have been much more intentional as a student because we had these—and I mean, you and I do them all the time, working together, and we help organizations get comfortable with doing them. We just have a different language for it—but in film school, we call them design crits, "crits" short for critique. And you would show up with your work in progress, a.k.a. a prototype; and you would sit there with about eight to nine others; show the 90 seconds, four-minute clip, whatever the professor allowed for. I mean, you had to get good at taking feedback, and through repetition, it was not easy first. But by the time I graduated, you look at feedback as this beautiful gift. And it's because of yes, there's certain things that I'm attached to. And how many John Fitch's are there in the world? I mean, I'm sure there's some people with a similar psychographic as me, but that's not going to get me an award-winning film.

And so just exposing yourself to more and more feedback early on, I think, humbles you and gets you out of your own head with all of those influences, because someone will resonate with something that you might think is not that exciting. Whereas you can see a pattern of something your deep—like to your points earlier, something around, oh, my birthday happened, and I had a super-good day, and we shot that one scene, and that scene's got to be in the film. And unless I get checked by a team or early viewers, early testers, that could be a poor decision on the quality of the story.

And so, we are in the art of helping people, I think, quickly adapt, thanks to the gift of feedback.

Douglas: It's amazing, right? It's interesting. Even if your time off isn't giving you the answers, like we can rely on the perception of others, the perspective of others. And I want to come back to this notion of, I feel like a lot of this is borne out of kind of tech burnout and getting in these situations where people are overworked and they need to kind of step away from things so they can do better work. It's almost like a rejuvenation and a recovery, to use the athlete metaphor. If you train all the time, you'll just wear yourself out. There has to be time for recovery. So that's why people do the sauna, the ice bath, the compression sleeves. Take a day off. Take a week off. Heal.

And I've been thinking a bit lately about this notion of flipping the switch from active to inactive or time on to time off. And I've personally found it a bit difficult just to completely flip that switch into the other mode, and it's because we kind of prime our nervous system and our mind and our habitual states, the things that we kind of get acclimated to, and how we spend our days are based off of behaviors. And as we were kind of going through this transition for moving more and more things, pretty much going to a 100 percent virtual facilitation company versus a 15, 20 percent virtual company, it required a lot of my work and attention, and I poured myself into it, partly to support the community, but also to make sure the company stay alive and survive this transition. And now that I've got a lot of things in place and I'm confident about where we are, I've started to pull back. And as I've done so, it's been great to have some of that time off and to be able to shut off and think about other things and come back to it.

The other thing I've noticed is that it's a continuum. You know, if you look at a thermometer, if you put a thermometer into boiling water and you turn the stove off, it's going to take a while for that thermometer to get back down. You can't just go straight into the other mode. And so I'm just curious if you thought much about these, that it's around these kind of this rest time and even making use of it might require some transition. It's not just like, let's just go do it. Okay, I'm doing it. It's like I need to almost, like, train myself to be able to function in that mode properly.

John: You threw the perfect slow-motion softball pitch to me right now. This is the whole thing that the backstory that led to Time Off. To answer this is, again, we put together these two words. I had not come across it before. Not going to be—I can't say I invented it. They're just two separate words that we put together. But rest ethic. So work ethic for me is like someone with a solid work ethic, they're not just carelessly driving themselves for no reason. They put high intention. They're good at prioritization, decision making, etc. They follow up with what they're going to do. Intentional work ethic, to your point, yes, to get the most out of rest, it's going to take some intention. And so those things you're feeling are real.

And I learned, and I'm going to simplify it, and I think each person has to figure out their own transition art. But when I was at Animal Ventures, a firm that did prototyping with a lot of supply chain automation work, my two business partners were the ones that opened me up to this whole concept of time off. And our model of time on, time off by no means is copy, paste at other cultures. But based on how we worked and what we did, we were able to establish a model where everyone worked for three months. So think about a quarter. And then after that quarter, you had a month mini sabbatical, and we had to stagger those.

And a lot of people hear that and they're like, "Oh, that sounds amazing." Well, we had to really design that out and practice it. And before that month off, there was a lot of preparation, not just like, "Hey, I'm going to go away for a month." You decentralized your functions as a person. Each person has responsibilities and things they handle, and those would be documented, and in a way, diversified across a few other people that would be still in their time-on mode. Or you would think about ways to automate it more. So we were all—again, it was this intentional thing you would do. It was like the time-off prep so that it wasn't like all of a sudden massive switch off and then shit falls through the cracks and things aren't operationalized. So a lot of intention.

And then also—so then you'd go have your time off, and if you did that prep right—you really were off, and you didn't have to freak out during your time off because your functions were not only handed over, they were going to be upgraded because that was one of the points, is new people get a hold of those functions, and they're able to poke holes in it and be like, "Oh, that's not that efficient. We could do better." Or a new technology comes out in your month that you're off, and the people upgrade the operations.

And then, let's say I would come back from that that mini sabbatical. I had a re-acclimation period, sort of like altitude adjustment, where it wasn't just like I came back on Monday, and it's boom, full blow. The last one I had done at the firm when I was still there was a week-long acclimation period where I'm not necessarily back to work. I'm understanding what has changed. That was one category. The second of work was I was giving in sharing my epiphanies on how my position, my department, my product ownership, whatever it was, I mean, that time off gave me a lot of epiphanies. And so I would share, "Hey, here's how I think it could be better," and we would workshop that. And then the people that handled my functions while I was gone would then report to me saying, "Hey, we ran your functions while you were away, and we upgraded it." And so I had to now—I had literally an upgraded playbook for the position. And so all of us were upgrading the business-culture software through this time off. And so the ramp up and the ramp down is often never practiced. And that's important.

And I think a beautiful analogy is you're an athlete and you warm up, then you do—well, in that case, the hardcore work, in this case, the hard core time off—and then you have a cool down, and you re-acclimate. And that's really important to do.

One of the micro tips in the book that I'll give you an example of a mistake I made where I didn't take my own advice. We interviewed Tiffany Shlain. She came up with this concept called the Tech Shabbat, where, for a 24-hour period, you don't interact with any screens. And it's a really powerful exercise, especially given that we work in screens a lot. I find that it slows down time. In a way, I get bored on purpose, and it's just really fun what you end up filling that time with. And what's funny is the first time I did one, I did not take that advice of prep and then acclimate. And it was awesome. I was like, time slowed down. I'm enjoying no screen time for a weekend. And when I get back to my phone on Sunday, my iPad, and I open it up, I have, like, 25 missed calls and all these texts, and it was from my mom and her friends because my mom is so used to chatting with me on the weekends. She was like, "All his devices are off. All his phones off." She thought I got kidnapped and was freaking out. And then that stressed me out. And so I could have easily prepped her. And that's just a little micro example of, great, you have some intentional time off planned; make sure to prepare for it. And then, also, integrate yourself in a meaningful way back, because it is hard to go from a very rested rhythm and state and then suddenly just drop it in. It's like you call it boot-up time in a lot of the meeting culture at work you do, Douglas. And I think there's boot-up time, but there's also—what would it be, boot down?— to also get prepared again to take time off.

Douglas: Yeah. You had to open, explore, and close, right?

John: Yeah. So that's something that can be applied on the micro and macro as well. And it's helpful, too, because in the time off, there's not only the gift of recharging and building your enthusiasm back up, but you're going to have—again, it's an important part of the creative process. It's called incubation. And then following incubation is illumination. That's the aha. That's the moment of clarity. That's like you've zoomed out peregrine-falcon-level view. You're looking at things differently because you're detached for once. And that's when we unlearn and rethink things.

Douglas: Yeah, I love that. And it also reminds me of not only do we need to prepare ourselves, we also need to prepare others. So setting those expectations and making sure that others aren't going to be negatively impacted by—because if it's completely selfish, then it's not going to necessarily serve us when we go to do our deep work again, because we usually have to collaborate with others or others are going to be the benefactors of our work. And so I think it's really awesome that the book shows this path where people can be really, really intentional about their rest ethic, so how they help inform others, how they help prepare others. I think it's really wise.

John: Yeah. And it's important, too, for leaders to—and I know you and I've talked about, especially in the art of facilitation, read the room and be aware. For I think leaders to feel more confident, I mean, just based on some of the early readers who've been reaching out to me that are in a position of leadership and influence, their biggest question after being won over on the importance of time off is, "Okay, now I need to work with my team to figure out what our more-detailed time-off strategies and operations are." And that's awesome, and I'm glad that they're thinking about that, and they'll work through it, because until that intention and design is put forward, the time off and rest ethic in a business context is generally just a short little clause in vacation policy. Whereas it can be so much more manageable, I think, and smart, if it's a daily, a weekly, a monthly, it's not just this, like, "Oh, yeah, you decide when you take time off, and here's our policy." To actually embrace it and to workshop it and to figure it out for the context of that business is something we hope leaders think about after they read it, because it expands that definition that time off is not just vacation and mai tais on a beach. I mean, our sub chapters are things like sleep, solitude, exercise, reflexion, play, which you and I talk a lot about. And then also our relationship to technology.

And the last thing I'll say that I'd be curious to get your ping-pong, back and forth. I think the most mind-blowing thing that we uncovered in the opening section, which is called "Time Off Throughout History," it's like 100,000-foot view of humanity's relationship to work and leisure, and we found we kind of knocked the dust off of this brilliant thought series from Aristotle, who talked about this concept of noble leisure. And actually, the word school, which goes back to, I think it was pronounced schola or scala, meant leisure. They looked at it as what we did in our leisure time, which nowadays we would call extracurricular or volunteer or play time or hobby time, that was the most respected thing humans did. It was noble because in those moments we would think to ourselves what's possible, what's a better society, we would share, we care about the environment. Literally, because of noble leisure, they invented mathematics and philosophy, these things that propel humanity forward.

And why I got excited about that is he said that one day all of culture would have the opportunity to revisit noble leisure because we would eventually automate the mundane. And you and I think a lot about artificial intelligence and how that's impacting the future of work. And we're helping companies think about rescaling, retooling their teams to be more focused on these human skills, these soft skills, however you want to call them. But I just get excited because I agree that Aristotle, his advice of noble leisure, we're at a time in human history where that's not so much of a pipe dream anymore. You could argue that once, who knows, a decade, two decades from now, with automation—and you would know more than I on the accuracy—that real humanness, that noble leisure is kind of what's left for us, the more that mundane is not only better suited for machines, but I think that helps humans get back to those quality moments.

Douglas: So, John, when we're thinking about how facilitators can make use of these concepts and maybe help teams perform better or work better together, what comes to mind? What recommendations do you have to have better meetings or to just be better facilitators, in light of what you've kind of uncovered in the book Time Off?

John: So, I mentioned some of the sub chapters that are in there, of the components that make up a rest ethic, things like reflection, solitude, play. And I think that's really important to incorporate those types of practices into your workshop, your meeting, because in all of those activities that I just mentioned, you see people in a lot of joy.

And for example, you and I have been in some workshops, and when I was working on the reflection chapter in the book, there was this question that is in there around, when was the last time you felt like a kid, or what activity do you do that you feel the most childlike while you're doing it? And when you ask that in a professional setting, people's answers, they light up, and there's that inner child that's still in there. And that question—let's say, we're brought in. It's a serious problem, and we've got to figure it out, and we're there to facilitate it and workshop it. And it's definitely serious, and we've got to do the work, and we're going to have an awesome workshop. We're going to produce a prototype. We're going to produce an artifact. We're going to drive outcomes. Pretty serious stuff. But if you sprinkle in these moments of what I'll call time off from the deep work, from the actual serious thing, it actually improves the overall process because, again, it goes down to that creative process. You're leaving some time for incubation and illumination, because then after that, you have verification, which is all about, okay, actually doing the work to see if that idea is worth a damn.

And in the first one—I mentioned it was four phases—is preparation, which is also deep work as you prepare to do things again. And so if you implement time-off practices into any of your workshops, look at them as investments and illumination and incubation for your participants. And also, it helps them rebuild enthusiasm if you go for a walk or you just say, "Hey, we take breaks seriously," because I've been around facilitators that I don't know what their reasons are, but they don't incorporate meaningful breaks and rest within the workshop. And you can tell when it's 3:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m., people are just like, they're done. They're checked out. It's like forcing someone to just continue hill sprints over and over. And so that would be the first thing is ask yourself what moments in our workshop could benefit from incubation and illumination? And have fun with it, and whatever vocabulary you choose to use, I think your participants are going to appreciate that time off, because I think when we think about workshops, meetings, seminars, conferences, the art of gathering, that can be tiring. And I think with facilitators that incorporate more rest, people can be less intimidated by it all. So that'd be the first thing, Douglas.

The second thing is facilitators—and you and I are facilitators. We do a lot of facilitation, and we know people that do more facilitation than we do. It is hard, and it is a lot of energy that is used to hold space and pay attention and document and solve problems and deal with conflict. It is no joke. And you could look at time off as time management, but I've been thinking about it more and more as energy management. And so I think to do your best work as a facilitator, you also deserve those intentional moments of time off to not only make sure you don't get overworked and overwhelmed and burned out, but you'll benefit, too. Maybe by stepping away for once, you'll completely rethink one of your workshop modules; or you'll reflect on some feedback that someone gave you, and you'll level up, or you'll come up with an entirely new idea for a workshop or an activity.

But I just wanted to make sure to say that, I mean, today you and I were wrapping up a design sprint and then doing prototyping, and there is definitely a part of me that's like, "Yeah, I still have a few more things to do. But my internal compass is also talking to me, saying 'That was intense, and you can now go into the garden and cook a nice meal and rest and be back at it tomorrow.'"

So those are two things I would think about, and try to reframe it in your mind from a place of starting to eliminate this idea that you're not effective if you're not working. I think that's something society is unlearning—I hope our book helps—is this whole concept of visible busyness. Just because you're active doesn't mean you're effective. Whereas, I think a lot of people assume it's true. And once you reframe and see rest as productive because it helps with recharge and illumination and incubation, you'll start taking it as serious as your time on.

Douglas: It's also, I believe, in the serendipity of if you can manage to do those things when you most need them, I think it'd be much more effective because it's timely. And it's sort of like eating before you. You're just ravenously hungry. And I found the co-facilitator has been an interesting way to have those micro moments where I can have some time off. I know how to be 100 percent on the entire workshop, and I found that to be, those workshops are much less draining.

John: I'm so glad you remixed it to that. I've been thinking a lot about that lately, Douglas. You and I have co-facilitated a lot, and I think that's a really important message for the future of work as facilitation becomes more and more relevant, especially now in virtual work, too. Just having multiple facilitators not only provides that time off but you have a skill set that gives you strengths in certain activities. Let's say there's a meeting narrative. Let's just go with the open, explore, close. There's parts of your personality where you're really great at the explore and the close, and maybe I'm just, like, a master of the open. And if we're aligned as a team of facilitators, each one of us can be in our zone of genius more. And not only does it allow us to have these interstitial moments of "in the zone" and then kind of backing off and relaxing, it allows us to just do our best work. And I know what's been really cool when both of us are co-facilitating: in my time off from facilitating, I'm observing you, which I'm able to give you feedback that is through the lens of a facilitator. Likewise, you've done the same for me. And so if you've been going it alone as a facilitator, hey, hats off to you. Deep respect. But try out co-facilitating.

Douglas: I think we're at time, John, so I'm going to close it here and say thanks so much for being here today. It's been so fantastic riffing with you. It's always fun chatting with you. And I think we should let the listeners know how they can find you and the facilitation work you do as well as where can they find the book?

John: Totally. So if you want to talk about meeting culture and prototyping and the maker movement and all things running awesome meetings that are magical, voltagecontrol.com. You'll find me on there somewhere. And in terms of the book Time Off, if you just type it in Amazon or Google, I'm sure it'll come up. Timeoffbook.com will send you to Amazon as well.

And other than that, Douglas, it's been an honor to not only talk about this, but to stay in touch as friends and colleagues throughout many years now. So, I'm pumped you're doing a podcast, you ask really good questions, and I'm honored to be on the guest list.

Douglas: Thanks for joining. And we'll definitely encourage everyone to get a copy of Time Off because it's really fantastic and it's super timely.

John: Thank you.

Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.