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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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