This episode is a little different than most…Today I do some live-coaching for Rashmi Sharma, a Global HR executive and TedX speaker, on shifting what she wants to be known for, evolving what she wants to offer to the world and how her work can heal for others, while she heals herself.

I'm so grateful that Rashmi reached out to me for some coaching after we were both speaking at a virtual conference in Southeast Asia. As Rashmi has evolved as a leader, she wanted to do some deeper thinking about how she can evolve her thought leadership, and offer something to her community from a deeper place in herself.

I really commend Rashmi's courage in sharing her process with so much vulnerability. As you'll hear in the conversation ahead, Rashmi and I talk about (although very indirectly) the ideas of sublimation - healing your own wounds through helping others.

We also dive deep into how she can hold space and create more depth in her conversations, as she interviews her community to understand what wellness and wholeness really means to them.

Make sure you check out the show notes for Rashmi's full notes reflecting on her insights from the coaching conversation, but, two that I want to highlight here are:

Using all of yourself to Lead

Joseph Campell famously said "it's the privilege of a lifetime to be as you are"...

Finding and highlighting her phrase "use all of me to help people" was a golden nugget in the conversation. This is what Rashmi's interest and work on wholeness and wellbeing is really about - allowing our whole selves to be accessed in our lives. So, it makes sense that Rashmi wants to do the same for herself!

Creating Depth in Conversations

One powerful way to create more depth is to go there yourself...Rashmi and I talk about asking and listening from a deeper place in herself.

We also highlight the idea that "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast," a motto from the Navy Seals. As she interviews her community to gain insights on her new area of focus, Rashmi realized that slowness and smoothness allows people to get comfortable and to think more deeply in her interviews.

Slow and Smooth can mean slowing down your own voice, creating a little bit more space between your words, and it also means waiting a little bit between what they've said and your second question, your response. (Extra credit for not thinking about what you're going to say or ask next while they're talking!)

Slowing yourself down can help others slow down and connect. Active listening helps me really hear, and also helps my partner hear themselves. Depth in a conversation can be hard at high velocity.

One piece of advice I shared with Rashmi as she prepared to head into her next round of community interviews was to simply take a deep breath and ask her partner to tell a story. Narratives can pull a conversation from a back-and-forth of questions and answers. Narratives can help you more deeply enter into the world of the person you're talking to and hoping to get insights from.

I love to work with leaders trying to define their thought leadership, leaders trying to scale their impact and leaders working to transform their organizations. I only work with a handful of high-performing folks each year. If you'd like to reach out about coaching, head over to DanielStillman.com/coaching

Links from this episode:

Rashmi on LinkedIn

Rashmi's TedX talk

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

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In this episode, Glenn Fajardo joins me for a conversation about virtual rituals and their power to help us make sense of the virtual waters we are swimming in everyday. Glenn co-leads the immersive course Design Across Borders at the Stanford d.school, and is the co-author of Rituals for Virtual Meetings: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships. His thoughts on ritual and using curiosity as a force for connection in virtual collaboration are just some of the must-listen moments.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also, check out http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order with Rev, my favorite tool for getting accurate transcripts for the podcast and automated transcripts for my coaching sessions. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 if you give it a try, too!

What on earth would a podcast about designing human conversations, facilitation, leadership and organizational change have to learn from a coach and an expert on Food and Eating? Quite a lot, as it turns out! One of my favorite design thinking principles is to learn from "alternative worlds" - absorbing how other people and communities are solving similar problems in different contexts.

My guest, Alissa Rumsey, is a registered dietitian, nutrition therapist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and the author of Unapologetic Eating: Make Peace With Food and Transform Your Life.

It's always interesting to learn from reflective practitioners - people willing to think about how they do what they do. Alissa designs many human conversations in her work and life, from her coaching work to her group programs to her book, and the marketing thereof - a book is a conversation, after all. Alissa's whole business is a series of conversations designed to shift the larger conversation about food and dieting.

Food and eating can be fraught topics, but Alissa's approach of connecting with and learning to trust your own body is inclusive, empowering, encouraging and wise. She places dieting in a much larger (and longer) conversation about historical racism and gender dynamics. At the core of Alissa's work is an idea that is of deep interest to me: Interoception.

Interoception

Lately, I've been using this word in my coaching calls a lot, and it's Alissa's work that put it back at the top of my vocabulary. You might have heard the word proprioception: It's how you can touch your fingers and toes with your eyes closed: You know where your body is, physically. Proprioception is sometimes described as almost a sixth sense, the sense of self-movement and body position. It's essential for navigating the world in three dimensions, and survival.

But if proprioception is a sixth sense, there's a seventh: Interoception: One's sense of one's internal state. When we say we feel fine, or feel sad, or angry or hungry, we're interpreting a multitude of internal sensations and summarizing them into a simple word. It's how we know what we need and start on the path of getting what we want in response to those needs.

When we feel sad, what are we feeling that lets us know that we are feeling sad? Where is it in your body? Think about that...and feel that!

When we're hungry, it can be physical hunger (like when I do a 16 hour fast...I know that I'm really hungry at the end!) or "mouth hunger" ...like how it just feels GOOD to eat ALL the popcorn. Or it can be emotional hunger that we soothe through eating.

The challenge is that, unless we are attentive and aware of what's really going on with ourselves, we can't take care of ourselves, we can't give ourselves what we really want and need...and we can't grow. For example, for me, getting a massage is a much better way for me to soothe my emotional hunger...because I can tell you, no amount of popcorn will do it!

In leadership, facilitation, coaching and transformation work, we need to learn to take deep care of ourselves since we are constantly caring for others.

It's only when we give ourselves real nourishment, that we can care for and nourish others.

Like the sign in the airplane says "Put your own oxygen mask on first".

The Work is in You & The Leader you want to be

If you listen back to my episodes with Alisa Cohn (a different spelling and a very different type of coach!) she talks about how "the work is in you"...the idea that as we grow and develop, we have to find new resources in ourselves: ways to be firm and decisive, to be bigger and the CEO others need us to be...while being and staying true to ourselves. As Amy Jen Su (Author of The Leader You Want to Be) said in our conversation about leadership development coaching, "we need to find our own North Star".

I truly believe that Interoception is an absolute key to personal growth and transformation from the inside out.

Also..we all eat and try to diet, to control ourselves...so stop! Eat ALL the popcorn and mac-n-cheese if you want to...and listen to your body when it says you have had enough.

The Body Keeps Score

If you can learn to listen to your inner signals,you'll know when your gut tells you your client is gaslighting you, or if the deck isn't actually right (versus all the changes everyone wants to make!), or when to say what needs to be said.

In my coaching work, I have to hear the voices in my head and trust that sometimes, it's intuition...and sometimes I'm getting ahead of the conversation - that rushing feeling in my stomach could be my excitement to share my insights instead of bringing them out of the person in front of me. It's a dance.

I like to joke: If we don't listen to our intuition, it just might pack up and head off to someplace where it's more appreciated. So, welcome your Interoception, your body wisdom, and give it a place of pride. Honor it!

Alissa's book, Unapologetic Eating could also be called "Unapologetic Living"...if you want more of that in your life and work, check out her book. I've enjoyed it.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also, check out http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order with Rev, my favorite tool for getting accurate transcripts for the podcast and automated transcripts for my coaching sessions. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 if you give it a try, too!

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access: https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Links from the episode:

Alissa's Website

Unapologetic Eating

Fearing the Black Body

The Beauty Myth

"Somewhere between action and reaction there is an interaction, and that's where all the magic and fun lies" So says author Tyson Yunkaporta, in his book Sand Talk, How Indigenous Thinking can save the World, my guest for this conversation.

Towards the end of the book, Tyson is explaining the meaning of Ngak Lokath, an Aboriginal word for the brackish water that forms in the wet season when fresh water floods into the sea...an example of what the Yolngu Tribe calls Ganma, a phenomenon of dynamic interaction when opposite forces meet and create something new…

...many pages later he picks up this thread saying:

"There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indiginous and non-Indiginous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting."

This is a powerful image, to have a real, two-way conversation, as equals, between modern and indigenous ways of thinking, and to allow something new to emerge from the turbid, brackish waters…

I see all conversations in this way, too: as flowing, tidal forces. We can push and pull the waters, like the moon, to exert force on it, but the conversation still sloshes around with it's own inertia. Power can form, transform or deform conversations, and the historical power disparity between so-called mainstream culture and indigenous cultures has prevented a great deal of potential insight and transformation, the opportunity to live and work in accordance with a natural order, rather than against it.

Tyson's book does an extraordinary job of grounding ideas in physical reality. Tyson offers us a thought experiment: Risk, viewed through an indigenous lens.

If you cross a river once, there's a risk of being taken by a crocodile. The first time, the risk is minimal, but if you do it twice, the risk is greater.

Non-Aborginal statistics and risk calculation would take the risk and multiply it - It assumes that the risk is random each time. But it's not.

As Tyson says "The crocodile is not an abstract factor in an algorithm, but a sentient being who observed you the first time and will be waiting for you the second time" (emphasis mine). The risk goes up exponentially.

So what? Tyson asks us to think about the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, when non-Aboriginal thinkers insured bets against losses, and then bet on the outcomes of those insurance bets. As he says,

"In a cross--cultural dialogue, we might see that the problem with this model is that every time you create a new layer of derivatives...you double the size of the system, you do not merely double the risk...you multiply it exponentially"

I learned a lot from Tyson's book, most notably, about Yarning, the Aboriginal approach to group dialogue, knowledge creation, sharing and decision making.

Also: Yarning about Yarning is fun, informative and oh-so-meta!

Yarning, in Aboriginal culture, is based on sharing stories and coming to decisions through mutual respect, active listening and humor. There is no talking stick in Australian Aboriginal Yarning (That's something the iroquois created), just an organic back-and-forth and the creation of a space without a stage to share experiences, to draw on the ground and sketch ideas out to illustrate a point.

Yarning is a rich and powerful tradition for anyone to transform their gatherings to be more deeply human. Sand Talk, the drawings on the ground that are a natural part of these conversations - roots the dialog in the land and makes the complex clear, if not simple.

Tyson's book suggests that Indigenous thinking can save the world, and I agree. Our meetings and gatherings could use some more Sand Talk: More listening, more visuals, more mutual respect, more conversation.

In the opening quote, Tyson points to the idea that human cognition is rooted in navigation, spatial thinking and relatedness...all bound up in a place and a story. Modern living and modern work have resulted in a deep sense of disorientation and disconnection...and working online, remotely, has only made this sense even more acute.

Indigenous thinking, grounded in relatedness, rooted in and within a specific landscape, is deeply orientating and connecting.

I believe it is a leader's job to create a sense of orientation where there is disorientation, and connection where there is disconnection, always pointing towards the north star, or your southern cross. Especially when leading through a transformation. Change is disorientating. Moving to a new place, a new land is strange and painful. For more on that, it's worth checking out my conversation with Bree Groff about the 6 types of grief and loss in organizational change.

My conversation with Tyson is non-linear and complex...like any good yarn, it wanders a fair bit...so, I hope you'll take the time to read his book and absorb the fullness of his message directly and understand all of the ways in which a conversation with Indigenous thinking can save the world! In fact, Tyson's whole approach is to be complexity-conscious. The world and all of its interactions are complex - the alligator sees you coming the next time, and together, a system is formed. There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and Tyson isn't selling a simple approach...he's offering an embrace of complexity.

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

Tyson at Deakin University

Beer with Bella: Tyson Yunkaporta

Tyson Yunkaporta looking at the world through an indigenous lens

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also, check out http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order with Rev, my favorite tool for getting accurate transcripts for the podcast and automated transcripts for my coaching sessions. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 if you give it a try, too!

For almost two decades, Amy Jen Su has partnered with investment professionals, CEOs, and executives to sustain and increase their leadership effectiveness as they drive organizational change and transformation. She is the author of the Harvard Business Review Press book, The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles to Bringing Out Your Best Self – Every Day.

Amy and I dive deep on leadership, and how who you are as a person affects the organization you're leading, for better or worse. This means that self-leadership and mindfulness are essential for leaders, and we unpack Amy's approaches to these dimensions of leadership.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to strengthen their center and be a more balanced, more effective leader. And as Amy says in the opening quote, there is no one way for everyone to lead...we each need to find our own north star and our own thread to follow in the story of our own leadership development.

Cultivating Our Inner Conversation

One insight that I was so glad to have Amy "yes and '' is my feeling about the deep importance of our inner conversation - the parts of ourselves that cheer and check us. As Amy says,

"some of these voices no longer serve us, and in fact disempower us"

She suggests that we stay updated with our current selves, and know when it's time to let go of voices that no longer serve us.

Cultivating an outer conversation: Finding mentors and supporters

Amy advises us to consider:

"who are (your) cheerleaders and safe harbors (and how can you build) a network of support that can also live life with us and ride alongside us as leaders and as people."

She suggests that you find and recruit folks like the

"sausage maker, the accountability buddy, the mirror, the cheerleader, the safe harbor, the helicopter"

People who you feel safe sharing the nitty-gritty with, folks who keep you accountable to your goals, people who help you see yourself as you are, who cheer you on, who can be a safe harbor, and people who can pull you out of the dumps when you are down.

It's hard to find that all in one person. For many, their spouses serve too many of those roles! Finding a coach like Amy or myself can help you maintain a regular cadence of attention to these modes of reflection and growth and get to your North Star...and find your next star, too.

Mindfulness is Key. But it's not about feeling good.

Amy and I talk about how mindfulness is very popular right now, but often not considered in its full context. Amy points out that:

"I think one of the misnomers about mindfulness though is that somehow if you start meditating or having a mindfulness practice you're going to feel these wonderful happiness mood states all the time... It's getting to the truth, whether that's a painful emotion or a positive emotion, you're tuning into what reality is... Mindfulness... with razor clarity, (help you) actually come to reality."

Amy Jen at Paravis Partners

Amy Jen's books: Own the Room The Leader You Want to Be

Thich Nhat Hanh: "How do I stay in the present moment when it feels unbearable?"

Mary Oliver's Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Accesshttps://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

In this episode, Alisa Cohn and I talk through Art of Coaching and also one of my favorite ways of looking at Leadership: The Art of Showing up on Purpose. A Coaching mindset is a transformative way to show up for others and yourself, so I'm excited to share these insights from Alisa, since she was named the Top Startup Coach in the World, and she has been coaching startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. If you're stepping up as a leader, or are thinking about coaching, this interview will help you know what to expect in a coaching relationship and why you might want to bring a coach into your work.

Everyday Coaching

A coaching mindset can be powerfully transformative, so even if you don't have a startup, even if you're not a coach... if your you're not even an official leader, or even if you just want to be a good friend, you'll find lessons in this conversation with Alisa that you can use in your work and life, everyday

Coaching is a conversational process that works with someone to help them improve, from the inside out. Alisa shares some of her most powerful coaching questions and all about how the most impactful coaching conversation she's ever had was only 8 minutes long.

Alisa and I got right into the heart of coaching, with her sharing some essential, fundamental conversational approaches to the coaching process like:

>>firm and gentle inquiry>>moving from the presenting problem to the context>>Trusting your curiosity>>Staying Loose!>>Trust that they have an answer...that the work is in them.

As Alisa said:

"All my clients want me to tell them how to do it or what to do. They'll ask me a question and my answer is, "Well, listen, I wouldn't be any kind of a coach if I didn't get a chance to say, 'What do you think?"

>>Alisa will ask "What if you did know?" and push her clients to sit with the question. The act of reflecting is helpful no matter what springs up.

>>The ability to reflect will help with one of the absolute key executive skills: choosing a response versus having a reaction.

Alisa actually quotes Victor Frankl's blockbuster thoughts on this capacity:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

A coach isn't all warm and fuzzy listening though…My coach calls his approach "tapping someone's bottle"...pointing out the limits to someone's thinking. When Alisa wants to push back I heard her use the phrase:

"Well, that's how I invite you to think about it."

Alisa will step in with her perspective but without force. A tap isn't a shove!

Asking "How is this situation serving you?" is a gentle challenge.

What to Expect in a Coaching Relationship...and why you might need a coach

If you are thinking about coaching, this interview will help you know what to expect in a coaching relationship and why you might want to bring a coach into your work.

Alisa and I talked through one of my favorite ideas: The Art of Showing up on Purpose. One huge challenge of being a leader is that, as she says "You have to grow and learn to communicate differently and behave differently as your company grows." Alisa and I talk about how to find new ways of tapping into your inner humanity and show up authentically, no matter the situation. Just because the board says "you need to have more conviction" doesn't mean you have to become a jerk, or invert how you want to be. It's about finding ways to be passionate and firm that work for you.

In my own experience, I've found that, as a coach and a coachee, a powerful conversation can help me find my own, authentic path forward, through having a conversation with my own inner parts. It's hard to do that on your own...having a coach as part of the conversation can be transformative.

Alisa also points out that coaching has to be 3-Dimensional, because we are 3-Dimensional. As we grow as leaders, she thinks of three dimensions of growth: we have to grow in our self management, our skill in managing others, and, of course, in managing the business. A powerful coach is going to make you look at all three.

Alisa's website

Alisa on LinkedIn

Alisa on Twitter

Alisa on Jeff Gothelf's Forever Employable series

Alisa Rapping!

Check yourself before you Wreck yourself

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did. And make sure to head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Mike Sagun is a certified professional men's coach, and he has partnered with companies like DropBox, LinkedIn, and Google. Mike also partners with EVRYMAN, where he hosts men's groups, facilitates men's retreats, coaches individuals, and co-leads EVRYMAN's diversity and inclusion program. I met Mike through the work we've done together in EVRYMAN's programs, and I was delighted to have him on the show to get his perspective on facilitation, coaching, leading intimacy online...and just how important it is to create the space to connect with ourselves.

Doing deep, transformative work online is critically important...certainly in the pandemic, it's essential to be able to keep connecting with people. And as we transition into a hybrid future, it's important to remember how virtual connection has made so much of the world more accessible.

I always remember an NPR story from the start of the pandemic where a wheelchair bound individual was thrilled that they could finally go to church without all of the hassle of transportation. Worlds opened up for so many as well all went online. As hard as making space and time to connect online is, it's worth doing and worth doing well.

Many facilitators and leaders still say that "in person was better" or "virtual will never be like in person" to which I say...yes, indeed. They are different animals. My conversation with Mike Sagun will help you see how deep online work can be, both in groups and one-on-one.

My own men's group has struggled with the online transition, so I visited the Drop In Men's Group Mike hosts each Friday to see how he does it.

I was excited to see that, in the first moments of the session, MIke formed clear and powerful boundaries for the group of 30 men, and did everything and more that I advise folks to do when they want to build a more powerful group connection. These's nothing fancy to it. Like some of the best food experiences, it's about good ingredients, treated with respect. My experience of Mike's facilitative presence was just smooth, open and easy. His pace is not rushed. Some of the things I spotted him doing, which we'll dig into in our conversation were:

1. Greet the people. Connect with them, ask for how to pronounce names. 1. Being Explicit about agreements. What is this space for? What isn't it for? 2. Slow Down. Close whatever came before with a moment of mindfulness. 3. Passing the mike - giving power and control to others in the group to lead parts. 4. Breakout to connect. Smaller groups help create more safety and connection. 5. Assign "captains" of each breakout and give a clear, focused prompt. 6. Get people to share from that breakout. 7. In larger groups, give someone the time-awareness job so you can focus on connecting.

That last element was one of my favorite moments, of Mike setting clear and safe boundaries for presence and connection. Mike asked someone to put in the chat when someone's share out had reached four minutes. He clarified "When it's four minutes, it doesn't mean your time is up. It just means that you've been talking for four minutes."

I sometimes call this practice "giving people jobs so you can do yours" and Mike did an amazing job of it. Giving away jobs helps people feel responsible for the space, in control...and it frees up mental space for you to focus on the most impactful aspects of your presence.

Mike also broke down three levels of listening, which are a powerful key to mastering virtual presence.

Level One is where you are doing what some would call "cosmetic" listening. You're there with a person but you're already thinking about what you're going to say next.

Level Two listening is being deeply engaged in the person. As Mike says "We're listening to every single consonant of the word that they're saying and we are very fully tuned in to their story or what they're talking about. Level two listening is one of the most powerful gifts that you can offer for someone. Just being there for that person to use you as a sound(ing) board."

Level Three listening expands to what's happening within ourselves internally and in the environment. I've heard some folks call this "global listening". Here, Mike suggests that we might notice "what's happening in their body language and their micro facial expressions. Then also, what's happening in the environment... then also what's happening outside in the world. What's happening in the culture, what's happening in politics."

This level of listening is tremendously powerful, to be able to hold the conversation with the other person, with ourselves and with the larger world, all at once.

As Mike says "Level three listening is one of the greatest gifts that we can offer someone but also what we can offer ourselves... especially when we're facilitating a space like this."

So there you have it...the secrets to presence. As Mike said in the opening quote:

"holding that space, I think what's most important is first checking in with ourselves and noticing how you show up. How am I showing up into this space? Do I need to let go of anything in order for me to be completely present for the person in front of me?"

mikesagun.com

The Unshakeable Man

Mike's TEDxKP Talk

Mike on LinkedIn

EVRYMAN

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Tomomi Sasaki and I sat down to talk in-depth about her journey of self-awareness and inner work as a facilitator.

We met at an advanced facilitation masterclass I ran for Google at their Sprint Conference, way back in 2018. She tweeted at the end of 2020:

I've been facilitating workshops for about a decade. The first few years were ferocious, needs-based learning. Workshops took a tremendous amount of energy to plan and run, and after each one, I'd faceplant onto the nearest sofa.

Once things became manageable, I plateaued. I worked on plenty of facilitation assignments (and did a bunch of public speaking about lessons learned) but I was coasting and I knew it.

Then @kaihaley and the @GoogleDesign Sprint Conference gave me the gift of a full day training from @dastillman, and I started to think of facilitation as a practice. (you can listen to my conversation with Kai Haley here.)

Building a practice sends a different kind of signal into the universe. This gives me watershed experiences that blows apart a door I didn't know was there. Behind each door is a whole new landscape to explore, and new friends to explore it with.

It happens consistently, once or twice a year. I don't know what's behind that cadence but it is an amazing thing. You *think* you know the edges of the land and then... ah hah! It gets me every time.

It had been a while since we'd connected, but when I read that twitter thread, I knew we had to sit down to talk about her journey to thinking about facilitation as a practice and what that meant.

Tomomi is a designer and partner at the independent design studio AQ, and a frequent collaborator of Enterprise Design Associates. She's also a top-notch facilitator and, as you might have learned by now, a very reflective practitioner, and in this episode she gives some invaluable advice about how to improve at the skill of facilitation - beyond tips and tricks.

I loved it when Tomomi said that "The insight for me was that I need to take care of who I am and what I'm bringing into the room as a facilitator because that's part of what's going to happen in the dynamics."

Tomomi is essentially saying in her own words what Bill O'Brien, the late CEO of Hanover Insurance said, that "The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener."

When we facilitate, when we lead a group, we are noticing the system...and what we choose to respond to, focus on or call out will shift what happens in the system. The question here is...how do you affect change in a complex system...that YOU are part of?

Many people treat learning and change like a purely technical challenge: They have a deficit in performance and the assumption is that they can learn better ways of doing and apply them.

Similarly, we think we can apply a pattern or tool (like a facilitated workshop agenda, exercise or the like) and get a reliable result - like a baking recipe. But any bread baker will tell you that the weather, the flour and your mood can shift how things go. Dough is alive.

There are two challenges with this mechanical, recipe, way of thinking...one is that people and systems of people are complex...so, the likelihood of things going exactly according to plan without any need for adaptation and improvisation is...unlikely. People, like dough, are alive.

The other issue is that many people think it's new and better ways of doing that are needed...where it's actually different ways of thinking, different mental models and assumptions...which will naturally lead to different ways of doing.

Some folks (Chris Argyris and Donald Schön) describe this as the difference between single-loop and double-loop learning and others even point to triple and even quadruple loop learning...the core of which could be self-awareness, or seeing how we ourselves can affect the system. This is the transition from facilitation and leadership as "doing to" or performance to "doing with" and presence.

The way you show up internally will change what happens in the session.

https://organizationallearning9.wordpress.com/single-and-double-loop-learning/

As Tomomi says later in our conversation,

"I think what struck me was that in facilitation, we think so much about the participants, and the first question you basically asked in the master class was who are you? Until that moment, I hadn't really thought about that, and I think that's why I was getting so burnt out. You give and give without really an awareness of what you're doing to yourself or what you need to be. Then the realization is that, oh, that's where your strength comes from, it's where the practice needs to be built on, because you can't change that much, right?... So, might as well work with what you have. "

I care deeply about this idea. I think that facilitation and leadership more generally, is about expanding your range of capabilities - your ability to show up, on purpose, as the occasion calls for it. Tomomi suggests we can't change *that much...but we can try to grow. I have a free course on Exploring and Expanding your roles as a facilitator, which you can find here.

There is so much goodness in Tomomi's reflections. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

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https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel PhD, is the Associate Director for Design Thinking for Social Impact, and Professor of Practice at the Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University, where she teaches design thinking from an emancipatory perspective.

Design Thinking is a powerful set of tools and mindsets that can help people solve problems. But which people and which problems?

So first off, if you're new to this conversation, design and design thinking can be racially biased, because people are racially biased. As Dr. Noel says in the opening quote I chose, most of us don't understand our positionality - especially if you see yourself as "white". It's essential to see and understand what position are we looking *from* when we look *at* people and the problems we seek to solve for them.

Design is, in essence, making things better, on purpose, and it's a fundamental human drive: To improve our situation by remaking our surroundings. But when we design for and with other people, the process becomes more complex.

So, you might not see yourself as a designer, but if you solve problems for other people or build systems that other people use to solve problems, you might be a designer in the broadest sense, or design thinker, even by accident.

So...you need to get serious and clear about how you learn about problems (ie, do research), frame them and solve them for others (ie, design - attempt to make something better on purpose).

If you do see yourself as a Design Thinker, you might feel challenged by Dr. Noel's reflections on Design Thinking, not as a set of Boxes to be ticked, but as a universe of different ways of thinking and knowing. Dr. Noel makes beautiful diagrams and models for the creative process that breaks out of the hexagons and double diamonds beautifully. I recommend checking out the screenshots I've taken of some of these models from her talks in the Links section

Another resource I suggest you dive into is Dr. Noel's Positionality Worksheet, 12 Elements to help you and your team see the "water they're swimming in." You can also check out a Mural version I mocked up.

As Dr. Noel writes in her excellent Medium article "My Manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity and bias in design" it's essential to start with positionality, for yourself and for your teams. That's point one. Who are you in relation to the people you are working with and solving for?

Point Two of her manifesto is about seeing color, oppression, injustice and bias. For this I recommend getting a deck of her Designer's Critical Alphabet cards on Etsy. They're awesome!

Point 3 might surprise you: Dr. Noel suggests that we "Forget Diversity, Equity and Inclusion"...and instead embrace Pluriversality. DNI assumes an inside and an outside, an includer and the included. Pluriversality looks to remove the center and honors multiple ways of knowing and doing, each with its own valid center.

It's nice to believe in a single ultimate truth for everyone...but that's not going to happen. Pluriversality suggests that there are more than one or more than two kinds of ultimate reality. Pluriversality is essential for our time - finding a path forward together while respecting other's paths and ways.

Pluriversality was a new term for me. I suggest you watch Dr. Noel's talk at UC Davis on Embracing Pluriversal Design to learn more.

And I suggest you read the rest of her Manifesto for yourself!

I am thrilled to share Dr. Noel's ideas on DeColonizing Design Thinking. It's a critical conversation for our time. Design Thinking still has so much to offer the world if we are willing to lean into it and engage in dialogue with fresh and evergreen interpretations of it. People have been designing for as long as we've been people. Learning and respecting the pluriverse of Design Thinking in all cultures can deliver powerful progress.

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Dr. Noel's website

Dr. Noel at Tulane University

Dr. Noel's Critical Literacy Alphabet

Alberini Family Speaker Series Lecture

Dr. Noel's manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity, and bias in design

Today I have a deep dive conversation with the magnetic Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute and a respected voice in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution. Kwame also hosts one of the world's most popular negotiation podcasts, Negotiate Anything. Kwame and I dig into how to be confident in the face of conflict: Confident during a difficult conversation, and confident in yourself, before you step into the conversation. As he points out, it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen! So confidence is critical.

This is one of the most fundamental points that many people miss about negotiating - they see it as a series of tips, tricks and tactics, but it's really about a way of thinking. But before you start any negotiation with another person, you have one with yourself. You convince yourself that you deserve more than you are currently getting, you resolve to speak up. In Negotiation-speak, this is sometimes called the aspiration value - what you aspire to get. But often there's another part of ourselves that tells us exactly the opposite - we don't deserve what we want or we shouldn't bother asking, or that we'll never get it, no matter how hard we negotiate. These parts need to have a conversation and negotiate an approach that feels right to ourselves.

Kwame's book, Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life spends a great deal of time on this inner negotiation and the tools to help you step up, including mindfulness and self-compassion.

What I love about Kwame's approach to negotiation is that the patterns to shift a negotiation with another person are the same tools he suggests to shift a negotiation with yourself: Compassionate Curiosity.

Force and coercion are not effective long-term negotiation or conversation strategies with another person...and they don't work very well when we apply them to ourselves, either. Forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do...it usually backfires, right?

Kwame suggests applying a 3-step process to be compassionately curious with difficult conversations - a way through challenging disagreements with others or ourselves.

1. Acknowledge emotions
2. Get Curious with compassion
3. Joint problem solving

About halfway through our conversation, Kwame talks about how it's hard to force yourself to not worry and what to do instead: It's better to admit that we DO feel worried and seek to understand why. Like in any negotiation, get curious about what data there is on the other side of the table...in this case, what there is to worry about…and then start problem solving. How likely are those scenarios? What can we do about each? It's much easier to negotiate a time-boxed worrying session with yourself than it is to push it off. Leaning into difficult conversations is always more rewarding than avoiding them - this is doubly true with yourself.

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and make sure to check out Kwame's resources on ways to transform negotiation, resources for learning negotiation, and useful meditation techniques: check out Kwame's TEDx talk, the negotiate anything podcast and The American negotiation Institute.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

The American Negotiation Institute

Kwame Christian's TEDx talk, "Finding Confidence in Conflict"

Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life by Kwame Christian

Negotiate Anything podcast

Ask With Confidence podcast

Linda Babcock study

Women Don't Ask book