Why is it that so many groups come together with a shared goal… and fail to make any meaningful progress?

This is the question that’s plagued Deb Mashek’s professional life — and it’s taken her to some fascinating places.

Deb’s work and the lessons she’s taken from it have made her a go-to speaker, author, and commentator in popular media, but she’s not one to sit comfortably on the sidelines. She still loves nothing more than diving into mission-critical projects that live or die by the strength of collaboration. As you might expect, she’s got some wonderful insights to share from it all!

Dive into the details of collaboration and how we can all take responsibility for better work together.

Find out about:

• Why the heart of collaboration lies in our personal skills 
• The most common causes for collaborative breakdown that Deb sees
• Why technology helps us collaborate… until it does the opposite
• How leaders can begin the long-term process of creating a collaborative culture
• Why ease, reward, and visibility are Deb’s three key markers for a collaborative culture
• How prioritising shared definitions and language makes collaboration happen faster

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.

Sign up to receive twice-monthly collaboration tips from Deb: https://debmashek.lpages.co/one_simple_tip

Download the Mashek Matrix poster: https://debmashek.lpages.co/mashekmatrix

Connect with Deb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debra-mashek/

Connect to Deb:

On LinkedIn

On Instagram

On Twitter

Support the show:
Make a one-off donation and contribute to the ongoing costs of running the podcast.

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

Facilitation can be a messy business; what can we do to clean it up?

Judy Rees, who’s been working with groups for almost 20 years, thinks the answer lies in clean language. A focus on clean language in turn creates what Judy calls ‘clean facilitation’.

Specificity and neutrality is the name of the game, but can facilitators ever truly be neutral? Judy and I wrestle with the big questions of influence, manipulation, and communication in this episode as we try to clear up clean facilitation and explore how to apply it in our day-to-day work.

Find out about:

• What Judy means by ‘clean facilitation’
• Practical examples of how clean language can help facilitators dig deeper into a discussion
• Why getting out of the group’s way is a noble goal, but not always possible
• The ways in which we manipulate without ever realising
• How to use our influence with the group in a beneficial way
• How clean language can help us better understand a group’s idiosyncrasies and uniqueness
• Why focusing our influence on the process, rather than the content, is a valuable path to follow

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.

Free Clean Language ebook.

Judy’s Clean Language for Facilitators course.

Video guide for a Clean Language-based change process.

New Rules for Work experiment, applying Clean Language.

Connect to Judy:

On LinkedIn.

Support the show:
Make a one-off donation and contribute to the ongoing costs of running the podcast.

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

They say it takes a lifetime to build and a second to break… Trust is priceless to teams and the organisations in which they exist, so why is it so often overlooked as part of team-building?

Perhaps because after-work socials and lunchtime chats are easy and sound ‘right’; but high-functioning teams take work — deep, intensive work. They certainly don’t appear out of nowhere.

Leigh Ann Rodgers sees trust as key to building better teams, because trust can’t be faked, or phoned in, or achieved with a few drinks after quitting time. This episode will help you make trust a priority, understand why it makes such a big difference, and explain what you can do to build a high-trust culture.

Find out about:

• Why communication is the heart of trust
• How to identify a box-ticking approach to trust-building and why it almost always fails
• Why understanding others’ communication styles gives us a shortcut to empathy
• Which characteristics are most important to understand about your teammates
• How to treat trust and alignment as journeys, not destinations
• Which activities and actions you can implement to start building trust quickly

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.

Team Consultant Academy

Better Teams Blog

Connect to Leigh Ann:

On LinkedIn

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

Keynote speaker, published author, zen student, innovator-in-residence, and facilitator — Sunni Brown has a whole village’s worth of knowledge, but, somehow, contains it all within just one conscientious and clever human.

Sunni’s fingerprints can be found on many resources and THINGS you’ll be familiar with as a facilitator: Gamestorming, The Doodle Revolution, and Deep Self Design.

Safe to say, Sunni is well-placed to discuss the finer details of collaboration — and to highlight some of the ways we might learn about it more deeply from unexpected sources. Explore the art of zen and facilitation, how to get out of our own way, and why a dispassionate facilitator can be more helpful to a group than an overly committed one.

Find out about:

• What Sunni has learned about facilitation since becoming a student of Zen
• How our work might change if collaboration was seen as a skill, rather than an outcome
• How to help a group walk the thin line of doable discomfort
• Why a saviour complex is a fatal flaw for facilitators — and how to avoid it
• Why you can recover from poor workshop design, but not poor trust-building
• How to take responsibility for our emotional responses, so we can remain in service to the group
• Why facilitators see big changes when they stop taking resistance personally

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 Sunni:

On LinkedIn

On Instagram

On Twitter

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

What emerges when you survey 1,124 facilitators from 93 countries? The State of Facilitation — a snapshot of our profession for the year and a report packed with insights and direction for our continued development.

SessionLab has conducted the first ever State of Facilitation report and Filip Kis, co-founder and CEO, was kind enough to run through the findings in this episode.

How do facilitators define themselves? What trends are emerging in our work? And how do we structure our work? All of these questions (and more) were answered in the survey — then dissected and explored in this episode!

Find out about:

• A review and analysis of the State of Facilitation 2023 report
• Whether the majority of facilitators are solo or in-house
• How solo facilitators avoid a feeling of loneliness
• How digital tools are evolving into co-facilitators in their own right
• Why conversations remain the perfect preparation for a workshop

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.

The State of Facilitation 2023 report.

Connect to Filip:

On LinkedIn

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

Do you have a presence when you facilitate? (Hint: we all do, whether we mean to or not!)

The thing is, not all of us know it or practice it. Our presence is a combination of how we show up and how we give out our energy to the room. It’s not just about being present, but the way we do it.

Sean Blair has been experimenting with his presence for many years now and has found some surprising results. He’s learned that presence is a flexible force that can positively influence outcomes and experiences in workshops - now he wants to help other facilitators understand and use it.

Find out about:

• What Sean defines as presence and how it differs being from present
• Why a facilitator’s presence is best when it’s flexible and adaptable
• How to assess a group or situation and dial in your presence to suit it
• Working out when it’s right to provoke the group and when to hold back
• The variables that affect how a group behaves and receives you - and how presence can influence that
• How to harness our energy and direct it in a way that is beneficial for the group
• How to relate to the group before you meet them and why it can be so helpful

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 Sean:

On LinkedIn

SERIOUSWORK, Sean’s LEGO® Serious Play™ company

ProMeet, Sean’s facilitation business

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

A difficult conversation can take many forms — emotionally intense, sharing unexpected information, challenging someone, reasserting boundaries.

Whatever ‘difficult’ looks like to you, we all have something in common: we’re terribly under-practiced in having these conversations.

For Kate Crawshaw, role play can be the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to feeling confident about difficult conversations. Creating a container and taking the time to practice, rehash, and become familiar with our ‘difficult’ selves can make every conversation feel more manageable and ourselves more grounded.

Vital work for facilitators, you’ll no doubt agree.

Find out about:

• How role play can give us a second chance — or a practice run — with difficult conversations
• Why difficult conversations are made more difficult by their scarcity
• How to set the rules in role play and maintain a non-judgement practice
• Why it’s fruitless to role play as yourself
• Why judgement is a core part of facilitation and why it can feel so difficult to defer it
• How controlling the tempo of your conversations can settle your nerves
• How to stop focusing on your own ‘performance’ by refocusing on the learning outcome

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

Links

Serious Woo

Connect to Kate:

On LinkedIn

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

Organisations will go to great lengths to create style guides, knowledge hubs, and team guides… so why aren’t they doing the same for problem-solving?

Stefan Fothe believes organisations should be prioritising ‘thinking tools’ — a set of codes, methods, and skills that are shared among groups to problem-solve and ideate with autonomy and ease.

Just as we develop shared technical languages and social hierarchies, we can surely add thinking tools to the mix! Learn how Stefan developed this important theory, why we need to lean into tension, and how you can prioritise thinking tools in your work with this episode.

Find out about:

• What thinking tools are - with practical examples - and how they help groups solve problems
• Why companies are held back by not having a shared problem-solving methodology
• Why solutions have to be engineered from within, rather than presented by consultants
• When to ask questions and when to provide suggestions — and how this can reduce overload
• What happens when we treat tension as a valuable commodity, rather than a problem
• Why consultants are storytellers and what everyone can learn from this approach
• How to take ownership of tension and use it, constructively, to the company’s advantage

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

Links

Stefan’s website https://ownity.com.au/

Stefan’s short video on one Thinking Tool example

Connect to Stefan:

On LinkedIn

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

An organisational change process is a big deal. The whole operating system of a business can change, the context switches, the foundations can falter.

But systems are systems — they are malleable and hard-wearing. People, on the other hand, are sensitive and emotional and often hugely resistant to change. And it is people who have to live, work, and operate within these new systems.

Rhys Cranney wants the whole concept of change management to move away from a focus on systems to a focus on people and the emotional impact it brings. After hearing him speak so passionately in this episode, I think he will have many people supporting this belief!

Find out about:

• Why the human desire for control makes the change process so complicated
• Why inclusion makes change so much more palatable
• How the process changes when we acknowledge the emotional cost it entails
• How facilitation affects physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing
• Why a bottom-up, individuals-first, approach can be helpful when planning change
• What’s different when everybody understands both the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ behind a change

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 Rhys:

On LinkedIn

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!

What happens to a group when there is no leader, no subordinates, and no sense of hierarchy at all? Bob Dick believes this is the optimal approach to group structures — to be self-organised, not instructed or commanded.

Quite how we can consistently achieve this is another question; one that Bob has been experimenting with for as long as he can remember.

Bob has rich experience in creating self-organising groups, facilitating their development, and knowing what not to do. 

Find out about:

• Why control — in all directions — is uncomfortable for Bob
• What happens when we remove the hierarchy from group settings
• How to initially facilitate a group to then adopt a self-organising system
• How Bob separates facilitators along a spectrum from sceptic to mystics
• What a self-organising group — the Australasian Facilitator Network — looks like in real life and how it operates
• Why the path to self-organising starts with honesty, empathy, and storytelling

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

Links

Learn more about the AFN, the Australian Facilitators Network.

Connect to Bob:

On LinkedIn

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

✨✨✨

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more:
https://workshops.work/podcast

✨✨✨

Did you know? You can search all episodes by keyword to find exactly what you need via our Buzzsprout page!