One of the greatest paradoxes of leadership is that to lead well, you must learn to let go. To get comfortable with not having all the answers! To release your grip, relinquish control, and know that the wisdom already exists in everyone around you.

Professor, coach and facilitator to the next generation of leaders, Rob Lion has spent the last 20 years fostering self-leading workplace cultures that truly listen to their people, building leaders that are facilitators at heart.

Because the best leaders? They’ve taken off the stabilisers of delegation, left their ego at the door, and learnt the delicate dance of stepping back, to invite others to step in. 

Find out about:

• The intersection of leadership and facilitation – and what it takes to be a facilitative leader
• Why we should think with our whole bodies, rather than just listen to our gut
• The complex, nuanced role of surrender and control
• Why leadership micromanagement and delegation are safety mechanisms
• Why great leaders and facilitators must learn to confront their own triggers

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Connect to Rob Lion:

LinkedIn

Website

Blog

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Context is everything. But when we remove ourselves from the tried-and-tested playing board of our work environment, to rewrite the rules and become new characters on fresh, unchartered ground? Everything changes.

On a mission to create a world where people play to learn, Mohsin Memon returns to the show, now as the mastermind of Evivve. His new multiplayer, leadership strategy simulation immerses teams in safe, fictional worlds rooted in neuroscience – designed to create powerful learning opportunities and realisations rooted in truth.

A conversation filled with lightbulb moments, rich insights and lots of learnings for leaders and facilitators alike. Press play!

Find out about:

• The AFFER model that underpins Mohsin’s work in behavioural change
• The five behavioural learning cycle stages of activation, forecasting, experimentation, realisation and reflection
• Why the most effective leaders are those who can make sense of complexity
• How simulation can democratise an organisation, without hierarchy or expectation
• The biggest data learnings from Evivve’s 20,000 game containers 

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Connect to Mohsin Memon:

LinkedIn

Website 

More information about AFERR

More information about EVIVVE

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

If facilitation was a mirror, what would you see? Would there be frameworks propping you up, a lingering desire to be liked, or insecurities sat atop your shoulder, quietly whispering in your ear?

In his new book Facilitating Reflections, the one and only Thomas Lahnthaler holds up this mirror for us all. He invites us to go inward, to step out of the buzzword charade, to close the theory books, and to rethink what we know – because the best facilitation isn’t found in a textbook, but when we can see ourselves a little clearer.

Together, we journey through two decades worth of Thomas’ facilitation learnings, exploring chapters, ideas, stories, and the rich spaces between facilitation and self. What a joy!

Find out about:

• The art of self-exploration, and why it’s so necessary for facilitators to master
• Navigating the desire to be liked, belonging, and falling in love with the group
• Why facilitation, by default, is disruptive and therefore a threat to psychological safety
• The binary of good vs. bad facilitation – can it really exist?
• The important role that context, values and presence plays in facilitation

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Thomas Lahnthaler's Books

Connect to Thomas Lahnthaler:

LinkedIn

Website

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Curation is far more than an artistic act – it is a political one! It’s what’s to leave in, what to take out, what to filter and what to frame. And through this sense-making assembly, it becomes an invitation: to pay attention, to expand our minds, and to stumble into serendipitous encounters.

And nothing masters this quite like TED. Curator of ideas, and a 20-year shaper of the TED conferences, Bruno Giussani helped make the cultural institution what it is today – he joins me to dissect the art and science of facilitation’s dear cousin, and why now, more than ever, curation is so necessary.

Hear the creative workings of the Ted stage, the evolution of TedX, and why Bruno believes ‘content’ is a wrecking ball to culture. This is a conversation you won’t want to miss!

Find out about:

• The cultural responsibility of curation in our desensitised age of information
• The polarities of algorithmic filters, and real-life, intimate, theatrical curation
• How to curate engagement with care, while gently bursting the filter bubble
• How the TED stage was built to blend intimacy with visual impact
• The use of music to primes new moods, neutralise tastebuds and signal art as part of the conversation

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Connect to Bruno Giussani:

LinkedIn

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Hailing from Quaker circles and Berkeley’s grassroots community movements in the 1960s, is the sagacious Parker J. Palmer – activist, facilitator, teacher and author. His unconventional entry into facilitation was piqued by a fascination with circle-work, which inspired a 30+ year career spent holding space for the mutable truth to emerge.

This is a wise, thoughtful conversation grounded in a lifetime of Parker’s lived experiences. From authoring your own life, to questioning the truth with kindness, being aware of hubris and approaching facilitation with fresh curiosity every day.

There’s an incredible amount to learn from Parker in our conversation alone, and I hope you’re as inspired as I was!

Find out about:

• The confluence of facilitation, writing and teaching
• Why safe spaces are an on-going practice, requiring facilitator’s to protect individuals from judgement and criticism
• Understanding the concept of ‘truth’ amongst a group of different perspectives
• The importance of allowing groups to sit in reflection, before rushing to problem-solve
• Why every group workshop must be approached with fresh eyes

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Center for Courage and Renewal

Living the Questions with Parker J. Palmer

Parker J Palmer Publications

Connect to Parker J. Palmer:

LinkedIn

Website

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

How do we host ourselves as facilitators – and how do we host others? How do we grow bigger minds to meet the complexity out there, and then rest in it without needing to know the answers?

Marco Valente joins me for a big, juicy and mind-opening conversation as we navigate the inner workings of the growing self – and the leader – to better understand the messy, unpredictable complexities of our world. It’s about walking up to our mind’s balcony in search of self-awareness and inner presence, it’s about getting vulnerable in our wrongness, and getting comfortable with the unknown.

Marco shares his thoughts, leadership advice and hosting tips with beautiful eloquence and I invite every leader, facilitator and sense-maker to press play to this wonderful episode.

Find out about:

• The mind trap of identity, ego and feedback
• The evolutionary pulls of fear - how much helps or hinders us?
• Why KPIs can harm the collective, rather than help with long-term growth
• The paradox of learning more facilitation methods, in order to detach ourselves from them 
• The balancing act of structure and emergence to accurately address group needs

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Connect to Marco Valente:

LinkedIn

Website 

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Helping people to do their best thinking, is Amanda Cookson. A coach, facilitator and all-round neuroscience whizz, she’s made it her mission to help leaders better understand what it means to be human.

And it all starts with our own thinking-feeling, wildly brilliant, untamed brain! She guides us through its inner workings with effervescence and passion, showing us how to work with it – rather than against it – steer pulse-quickening conversations towards oxytocin, and design experiences that help rewire the brain for real, lasting change.

An energising, thoughtful conversation, full of golden mind-training nuggets to try in both facilitation, and life!

Find out about:

• Why the discomfort of cognitive dissonance can lead to richer learnings
• The power of asking great questions in search of answers that ignite deep thinking
• Amanda’s feelings-based ground rules of presence, curiosity and generosity
• Friends vs Foe: how to turn self-fulfilling prophecies into human connection 
• How to facilitate with the brain in mind, for insight, rather than information

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Connect to Amanda Cookson:

LinkedIn

Website 

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

The greatest myth of creativity? It doesn't fall from the sky into our laps like Isaac Newton’s apple! Creativity is far from that romantic, eureka moment, but rather it is messy, cultivated, and curiosity made manifest.

Luckily for us, Amy Climer has created a system to go about finding this elusive, but valuable novelty with intention – consistently and at scale. A TEDx speaker,  trainer and author of the book ‘Deliberate Creative Teams: How to Lead for Innovative Results’, Amy’s work is a creative panacea for leaders, managers and facilitators in search of better ideas.

From positive feedback fertilisers, to creative learnings from Thomas Edison, she shares her process and the ingredients you’ll need to succeed.

Find out about:

• The three pillars of creative teams: purpose, dynamics and process
• Why conflict is a necessary means to recognise and embrace difference
• Why leaders must intentionally design for collaboration, or risk jeopardising the collective
• How to cultivate the internal team conditions to allow for creativity

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Deliberate Creative Teams Book: climerconsulting.com/book

Climer cards

Connect to Amy Climer:

LinkedIn

Website

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

When you think of an intelligent person, who do you imagine? Perhaps they’re scholarly, quick-thinking, or possess a rare ability to seemingly know all that there is to know.

But intelligence is infinitely more than this! As Daniel Susser teaches us this week, intelligence is greater than the sum of our cognitive parts: it is bodily, inter-connected and contextual. It is a tapestry of inherited, micro influences that makes us each see the macro world in different ways.

So if intelligence is collective, how can leaders unlock it from the organisational organism? Daniel shares all in this fascinating, wordly conversation that dances so beautifully between science, religion and ritual.

It will stretch your thinking and leave you with a whole host of practical tips to extract, celebrate and journey into the intelligence of your organisation!

Find out about:

• What it means to be an Intelligent Team - and how we can create them
• Why organisations must reject their implicit assumptions about what ‘intelligence’ means
• What macrocognition means in organisations
• Introducing organisational rituals for collaboration, belonging and shared purpose
• How leaders can identify imbalances in their organisations using opponent processing

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Connect to Daniel Susser:

find out how to work with Daniel embodiedagility.co.uk

Read more about intelligent teams intelligentteams.substack.com

A good starting point is this blog https://intelligentteams.substack.com/p/the-intelligent-teams-manifesto

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

For every word we swallow, every moment we dilute ourselves, and every time we say ‘yes’ when really, we want to say ‘no’, we collect a pebble into our backpack of life.

The fantastic duo that is Pete Jordan and Tuulia Syvänen from Honesty Europe join us this week to help us offload these pebbles: showing us the way to live lightly, freely, and in a radical act of resistance, to be ourselves! We explore honesty as a practice of presence, we dig at the roots of interpersonal triggers, and most important of all - we learn how to ask for what we want, when we’ve been conditioned not to - even if it means dancing in the face of rejection.

If you’re a chronic people pleaser perpetually in search of the peace, this conversation is for you!

Find out about:

• Learning to ask people to meet our needs - whether the answer is yes, or no
• The act of expressing suppressed emotions, to clear space for deeper connection
• How to tune into bodily sensations and remain present, during vulnerable interactions or boundary setting
• Why a little discomfort is the price we must pay to be true to ourselves
• How to acknowledge personal judgements in a way that diffuses their power

Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

Links:

Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.

Connect to Pete and Tuulia:

www.youtube.com/c/HonestyEurope

www.facebook.com/honestyeurope/

Tuulia’s LinkedIn

Website 

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/