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We use our facilitation skills in our work, but these are universally applicable skills. Negotiating with a toddler, hosting parties, working out which takeout to order!

Join me and Jacob Chromy in this episode of workshops work to learn how we can apply our facilitation skills in more walks of life - and how people from all walks of life can identify the facilitation skills they’ve been using this whole time!

It felt so liberating to explore the different ways our tools of the trade can be applied to make a difference in so many ways I hadn’t considered before. This conversation with Jacob really helped me see my work in a new light. I hope it will do the same for you, too!

Find out about:

• What Jacob learned from product design that he applies to workshop design
• How Jacob used facilitation skills with local climate groups to great effect
• How we are using facilitation skills in our daily lives without realising it
• Exploring barcamps – “ the anti-conference” – and how Jacob uses barcamps as part of in-house peer learning programmes
• Flattening the room in person and online
• Why Jacob created ‘family workshops’ and how they are used

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

Questions and Answers

[01:20] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

[03:15] What is ‘pen and paper role play’?

[06:18] Did you learn anything from Role Playing Games that apply in your work today?

[08:05] What do you apply from your past in product design to your present in workshop design?

[19:43] What is a barcamp?

[21:48] How does this differ from an open space format?

[27:50] Can you explain Troika consulting in a little more detail?

[34:54] How do you use barcamp at quäntchen + glück - what are ‘Donedays’?

[38:49] What makes a workshop fail?

[40:53] Do you treat ‘workshop’ and ‘process’ as synonyms?

[44:12] I feel like I can sense the room in a remote workshop, is that not the same for you?

[52:49] Could you talk about your family workshops?

[58:27] What is the one thing you would like listeners to takeaway from this episode?

Links

‘Doneday’ at quäntchen + glück 

Rolepay/Rollenspiel & Facilitation LinkedIn Group (German) 

Facilitating For Future and Climate Activists - Climate Roundtable (German) and Template

Barcamp

Open Space

Troika Consulting

Connect to Jacob:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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This week, I am joined by Joe Allen – a meeting scientist, professor of Industrial Organisational Psychology, Director at the Center for Meeting Effectiveness, and co-author of Suddenly Virtual.

Joe’s dedication to the science of how and why we meet is helping to advance organisations’ understanding of how to have better meetings and, for the last year or so, his focus has been on the sudden shift we had to make to online meetings.

Now, as we start to emerge from the throes of the pandemic, he is predicting a rise in hybrid meetings - in which some people are on-site and others are remote.

Together, we explore how we can have successful hybrid meetings and how we can make meetings of all formats run more smoothly, efficiently, and enjoyably.

Find out about:

• Why better meetings start with diagnosis, not solutions
• The three most common issues Joe finds in meetings – and their solutions
• Whether cancelling a meeting is helpful or harmful
• What lessons Joe learned in writing his book: Suddenly Virtual
• The positive and negative changes we’ve seen in the shift to online meetings
• Exploring hybrid meetings: their limitations, potential, and use cases
• How businesses and teams can prepare for hybrid meetings

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

Questions and Answers

[01:01] You are a meeting scientist! What is that?

[03:16] Would you call yourself a facilitator?

[06:36] What gets in the way and creates the knowing vs. doing gap?

What are the top three issues you encounter with meetings?

[08:18] 1) Overload

[12:36] 2) Challenging personalities

[18:46] 3) Stale meetings

[24:25] What has been the impact of the switch to ‘Suddenly Virtual’?

[27:32] Did people at the top of the hierarchy struggle most with the shift to virtual?

[31:30] What is a hybrid meeting?

[34:17] What are the traps in hybrid meetings that facilitation can help us avoid?

[37:38] Do people naturally fall into ‘subgroups’ in hybrid meetings?

[43:47] Do hybrid meetings require more facilitation than other formats?

[45:20] What makes a meeting fail?

[52:00] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

Links

Joe’s website

Joe’s new book, Suddenly Virtual

The Meeting by Helen B. Schwartzman 

Connect to Joe:

LinkedIn

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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Structure contains us and sets boundaries, it can’t make space for freedom or creativity… can it?

Liberating Structures says otherwise - and Nadia von Holzen joins me in this episode to discuss the benefits and practical applications of these methods.

Nadia is an independent facilitator and advocate for better meetings, collaboration, and creativity. I was taken aback by how many insights and great ideas she left in this episode, speaking with passion and conviction about a huge range of topics.

We danced from Liberating Structures and digital facilitation to thinking fast and slow and analysing the language we use to describe the people we work with. It was a wonderful conversation that I hope you will enjoy.

Find out about:

The importance of process thinking and why COVID has made it more urgent

• Why Nadia doesn’t like to call people “participants”
• Identifying a new zeitgeist of workshops, collaboration, and work
• Why facilitative skills are needed in every area of an organisation
• Why more content and inputs will rarely make a better meeting
• How to get started with Liberating Structures
• Finding the balance between fast and unhurried

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

Questions and Answers

[01:09] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

[02:58] How does facilitation change when you focus on the “how”, not the “why”?

[04:18] How do you bring your experience in knowledge management into facilitation?

[07:25] How has the pandemic changed the way you prepare and deliver your workshops?

[13:09] Is everyone equally in charge of the process, not just the facilitator?

[14:35] How can we strengthen our ‘process muscles’?

[18:12] Nobody intends to host a bad meeting, so why do they happen?

[19:14] What’s the minimum facilitation skill people should learn that would have the biggest impact?

[22:42] Could Liberating Structures be the holy grail for helping organisations have better meetings?

[24:46] What is beyond the toolbox?

[27:21] Is four the magic number of people to have in a breakout room?

[29:30] What makes a workshop fail?

[32:15] How do you select a person within an organisation with whom you will co-facilitate?

[37:09] Can you share more about speed and pacing?

[44:15] How does quality conversation and communication contribute to sense-making?

[46:04] Why confidence matters so much – and why it’s a constant work in progress.

[48:21] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

Links:

Nadia’s website

Liberating Structures

Unhurried conversations

Connect to Nadia:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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Empathy is a cornerstone of facilitation. Without it, we are only thrusting ideas and intentions on people. With it, we meet people where they are and work with them, as they need us too, to create the right outcome for that moment.

Gabriel Couture, a Learning and Service Experience Designer based out of Toronto, has been working on structuralising empathy - using a framework of integral facilitation quadrants that tap into people’s motivations, personalities, and moods.

We discussed integral facilitation quadrants at length, but also delved into the idiosyncrasies of facilitating large groups and the challenges of meeting online. 

It was a wide-ranging conversation that flowed beautifully and uncovered some fascinating insights for both of us. I hope you will find it just as illuminating! 

Find out about:

•  What integral facilitation quadrants are and why they are effective tools
• Why orientation and alignment are the ‘true north’ of meetings
• Why appreciating that we all have different starting points (orientations) is the key to guiding a group
• How we come from different places, have different motivations, and need different things to feel comfortable
• The differences between facilitating small and large groups
• Applying integral facilitation quadrants in online spaces
• How Gabe has adapted his practice for online spaces
• Identifying where structure stops helping and starts hindering the group

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

Questions and Answers

[01:20] When did you first call yourself a facilitator?

[04:08] To what extent did gaining a certification change the way your worked as a facilitator?

[08:12] Do the integral facilitation quadrants have a hierarchy? Do they have to be approached in a sequence?

[10:44] How important is it to understand your audience when using integral facilitation quadrants?

[12:28] Do you design online and offline events in different ways, to accommodate for the increased variance of personalities?

[15:57] Can we picture the quadrants as obstacles that we need to overcome to achieve a successful outcome?

[20:07] What have you learned from integrating quadrants in your workshops and events?

[23:00] Is it easier or harder to facilitate large groups online?

[27:06] What is your experience with bringing people back from breakout rooms?

[33:29] Why is it that we tend to over-explain or over-structure in online meetings?

[35:37] What makes a workshop fail?

[37:18] Do you have a silver bullet exercise to get people to buy-in?

[41:48] What do you do when you realise somebody doesn’t want to be in your workshop?

[45:58] It seems you’re applying a lot of your coaching tools to your facilitation work?

[47:17] How do coaching skills scale from working with individuals to working with a group?

[51:33] If you had a hashtag, what would it be?

[52:48] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

Links

Spring Strategies

Braindates

Cave Day

Connect to Gabe:

LinkedIn 

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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This toe-tapping, energy-flowing, jam of a workshops work episode explores the similarities (and differences) between jazz music, strategy, and facilitation - with fabled facilitator Rich Goidel leading the beat.

Rich fell into facilitation from his career in creative planning and brand strategy and has been uncovering fascinating insights ever since, thanks in no small part to the unique intersections he finds between music, strategy, and facilitation.

We explore where these crossovers work and fall short, how we can all embody a bit more musicality in our work, and even find ourselves practicing a live activity using Rich’s industry-favourite Catalyst Cards!

Find out about:

• Rich’s accidental journey from brand strategy to facilitation
• How the need for alignment shows up in so many places in our lives
• Joining the dots between strategy, music, and facilitation – and how they can each inspire new thought in the others
• Hard skills vs. soft skills – and why soft skills are the hardest to master
• Understanding who owns the ‘blame’ if a workshop doesn’t go to plan
• Why preparation often takes twice as long as the workshop delivery itself
• The tricky debate of whether we can own creative ideas
• Why practice grants us the freedom to work with flexibility and creativity

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

Questions and Answers

[01:08] When did you first start calling yourself a facilitator?

[04:32] What are the similarities and differences between strategy, music, and facilitation?

[09:05] What’s the magic ingredient in creating the space for leaders to be vulnerable?

[17:17] How do you help groups push themselves further and into discomfort – where real progress is made?

[19:57] Where do you draw the line between experimentation and taking the workshop off course?

[24:32] What does neutrality in facilitation mean to you?

[28:18] Who owns the ‘mistake’ if a workshop goes off track?

[31:43] What makes a workshop fail?

[35:50] What’s your stance on ownership of creative exercises? Can we own ideas?

[40:43] What is your favourite way to use Catalyst Cards in an exercise?

[45:34] Rich and I practice using Catalyst Cards mid-podcast!

[48:08] What would be the wrong way to use Catalyst Cards?

[51:32] If you had a hashtag, what would it be?

[52:41] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

Links

dangerous.kitchen - Rich’s company website

Rich’s Catalyst Cards

Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner

Rich’s article, Racing Against The Clock (A Facilitator’s Lament)

Connect to Rich:

LinkedIn

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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Forging your own career or business in facilitation isn’t easy. As so many of the guests on this podcast can attest to, it’s often the case that we don’t know that we are facilitators until somebody introduces us to the concept.

So, how can facilitators create a career or business in facilitation with intention, strategy, and confidence?

Robin Muretisch is a shining example of how to do this! She joins me in this episode to share such vital advice and insights into how facilitators can launch out on their own, run a business, and avoid the mistakes she made.

Find out about:

• Starting a career as an independent facilitator with intentionality
• Which certifications and experiences made up Robin’s journey, and how she weighs their importance
• The key differences between facilitating in-house and independently
• How Robin deconstructed a big dream into small, actionable steps
• How to network in a way that feels natural, not transactional
• How Robin got her first solo gigs
• Why Robin sees the administrative work of running a business as a privilege, rather than a chore

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

Questions and Answers:

[01:23] When did you first start calling yourself a facilitator?

[04:17] Looking back on your first facilitated session, what would you do differently today?

[06:57] How did you pursue certification and training as a facilitator? What were the lessons you learned?

[09:05] Can you be truly neutral as a facilitator?

[10:48] How do you separate what you want from what the group needs?

[12:36] How do you get people to really buy-in to something you are leading and/or facilitating?

[14:45] How did you go from internal facilitator to external, independent facilitator?

[20:22] What do you wish you had known before you started as an independent facilitator?

[28:20] How did you get your first client?

[31:22] Does word of mouth still work, or do you need to have an online presence, too?

[34:49] What makes a workshop fail?

[37:26] How does approaching a session as an external facilitator to differ? Is it liberating to not be too attached to the business?

[41:36] Do you have a favourite exercise?

[50:21] If you had a hashtag, what would it be?

[51:23] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

Links

Robin’s website

Connect to Robin:

LinkedIn

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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How much of your workday do you really pay attention to?

From where you sit to how often you get distracted and what happens when you come back from a break, all of these moments that make up our days are automatic processes.

What would happen if you could track and analyse the way you work?

Dr Mark Whittaker does just that and uses the data he gathers to design human-centred processes that help teams work better than they ever imagined. Combining qualitative and quantitative data with facilitation, Mark’s software vFlow helps businesses optimise their processes by working with their people, not against them.

It’s a fascinating marriage of facilitation, data, workshops, and processes. You can learn all about it in this episode of workshops work.

Find out about:

• How chemical processes translate to business and commercial processes
• Why opinions and data usually show very different versions of our ‘most important’ processes
• How our processes change unconsciously throughout our day
• Ways to manage your workload and protect it from unconscious slips
• Why the thought of freeing up more of our time can actually scare us
• The beautiful neutrality in challenging data, not behaviours
• The importance of listening, as well as observing, when gathering data

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

Questions and Answers

[01:07] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

[04:37] Can you explain what v-Flow is and does?

[06:28] What have you learned about business processes from chemical processes?

[08:20] Is it possible to find the optimal business process when there are so many variables that need to be considered?

[11:32] What is the process behind your data collection process and how you decide what to focus on?

[13:16] Why is there so often a difference between what we think is our most important process and what the data shows us is our most important process?

[18:03] Can you share an example of identifying unconscious/automatic ways of working?

[21:21] Is the energy we spend changing automatic habits worth the end result or can it create problems?

[27:19] How do you bring the data you collect into a workshop setting?

[28:28] How do people react when they see the story presented in the data?

[33:21] This information can be like opening a Pandora’s Box – how do you handle that?

[38:19] Can data that is about people truly be neutral? Is there not some emotional reaction that comes with it?

[40:07] Can you share an example of gamification in practice?

[45:45] How do you encourage comfort and relaxation in a closed-off room?

[47:52] What makes a workshop fail?

[50:43] Has debriefing become harder in the age of remote work?

[52:27] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

Links

Velresco’s website

vFlow’s dedicated website

vWall’s dedicated website

Connect to Mark

LinkedIn

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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100 episodes. (More than) 100 guests. Thousands of listeners. You, here, reading this and listening to this landmark episode.

To mark this milestone, I turned the microphone towards the workshops work audience and asked if anyone would like to share the moment that has stuck with them most from these first 100 episodes.

I’ve received 14 beautiful responses that, when taken together, form a bigger picture of the landscape of facilitation. You might be surprised at the varied scenery it captures!

Thank you for supporting workshops work, for helping to make this show what it is, and for listening – whether this is your first time or your hundredth.

Find out about:

• The moments that made listeners stop, think, reflect, and grow, including…
• Understanding the ground rules of facilitation
• How to develop a facilitator’s mindset
• The essentials of workshop design
• What we can learn from other disciplines to improve our facilitation skills

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

 A huge thank you must go to SessionLab, the sponsor of Workshops Work. Claim your free two months of SessionLab Pro now – this deal is exclusive to Workshops Work listeners!

 Questions and Answers

[00:48] Robin: the summary for each episode!

[02:27] Anamaria: when Thomas Lahntahler, in episode 39, explained how curiosity and attention can foster psychological safety

[04:10] Laure: the fourfold process of hosting, shared by Mary Alice Arthur in episode 58

[06:05] Richard: realising that facilitators are like researchers, as I explored in episode 18

[07:36] Gabriel: how experiences can create change but challenges help us solve problems, prompted by episode 91 with Shayne Smart

[10:08] Annie: when Rein Sevenstern highlighted the importance of making time for reflection, in episode 20

[11:32] Júlio: the core truth of facilitation that appears wherever and however we use our skills, taken from many episodes!

[13:33] Martijn: that Agile is a mindset, not a framework, as shared by Nisaar in episode 59

[16:30] Sonja: that we need to stop having meetings on autopilot and, if we can’t, we need to cancel them, shared powerfully by Gustavo in episode 26

[18:22] Joe: learning to Unflatten and find new perspectives on the same problem, thanks to Nick Sousanis in episode 69

[20:19] Samantha: why improv can improve our facilitation as much as any study programme or course, shared by Tamar in episode 16

[22:02] Nadia: that how we meet matters and that the right setting can be transformational, prompted by Roumayne in episode 88

[23:18] Ana: the concept of ‘the third facilitator’ and how visual notetaking is more than ‘just’ a tool, thanks to Céline in episode 49

[26:30] Lucie: when I admitted that I might not have created NeverDoneBefore if I had known quite how much work it would take!

[28:12] My thanks to you and an open invitation

Links

• My eBook, containing the summaries of the first 60 episodes!
• NeverDoneBefore Facilitation Festival 
• E39 - Thomas Lahntahler 
• E7 - Jeremy Akers

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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Bad meetings are all too common, but they are merely the product of every bad meeting that has come before them.

So, how do we break the cycle of unstructured, imbalanced, aimless meetings and create a structure and process that makes meetings enjoyable and productive?

There’s nobody better to answer that question than Elise Keith, founder and CEO of Lucid Meetings.

Elise joined me in this episode to discuss the essentials of understanding meetings, how we can use them as tools to impact our work for the better, and what we need to do to reclaim their power.

So, join us for a conversation that explores how you can start the important design and preparation work of creating a strong meeting culture within any organisation.

Find out about:

• Why good meetings are the result of structure and mandates, not chance
• How to get the basics – like structure and meeting minutes – right
• Comparing Amazon and Brené Brown’s meeting structures
• How online meetings can act as a great equaliser
• The most common thing we get wrong about meetings – and how to can avoid it
• How the shift to online meetings has democratised and simplified facilitation… and thrown up new complications
• How options for anonymity in online meetings can help us flatten the room

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

Questions and Answers

[01:04] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

[04:09] Is the structure of a meeting more important than its facilitation?

[06:29] Is there a silver bullet that makes people respect a meeting’s timing and structure?

[08:43] Is rotating facilitation in a meeting a good idea?

[12:14] How do we escape the Catch 22 of having ineffective meetings and the desire to stay up-to-date?

[15:01] What is the best way to produce meeting minutes?

[16:31] What is your meeting routine in your own company?

[19:49] Can a good meeting culture proliferate from one team across an organisation?

[21:26] What are the hallmarks of good meeting structure?

[23:35] How important are check-ins?

[27:08] Can we have good online meetings if we never had good offline ones?

[32:21] What is the one thing you think we get wrong with meetings?

[36:25] Is there an exercise you would recommend to a team that’s rethinking their meeting culture?

[40:31] How can we help people see their own blindspots?

[43:11] Have we learned anything from online meetings that we can apply to offline ones?

[49:22] What is your strategy to help the quieter voices in a meeting speak up and feel heard?

[52:03] What is the one thing you would like people to take away from this episode?

Links

●     Elise’s business: Lucid Meetings

●     Elise’s book: Where the Action Is: The Meetings That Make or Break Your Organization 

●     5 things every company should do (article)

●     Meeting tools

●     Lucid Meetings Events

●&n

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

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Agile can be hugely effective in many environments, but from the outside, it can be daunting. The language, its origins in tech, and its overzealous cheerleaders can make it seem inaccessible and only applicable in specific situations.

If that sounds like a familiar pain, Judith Mills is just the medicine you need!

Not only is Judith an expert in applying Agile in everywhere from software to gardening, but she explains it all with easy-going charm, clarity, and simplicity.

You can hear it for yourself in this episode, in which Judith decodes and demystifies Agile – bringing it back to its roots and explaining it as a mindset, not a process.

If you’ve ever had an interest in Agile, you should consider this essential listening!

Find out about:

•  How to apply Agile in any field, not just software
• Why Agile is more a communication tool than a project management process
• The importance of protecting your time from ‘unplanned work’
• Why the time it takes to do a task is an unreliable measure of your workload
• How Judith uses facilitation skills to help teams understand Agile
• Why empowering the individuals in a team strengthens the collective
• The secret to effective retrospectives

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

A huge thank you must go to SessionLab, the sponsor of Workshops Work. Claim your free two months of SessionLab Pro now – this deal is exclusive to Workshops Work listeners!

Questions and Answers

[00:57] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

[01:58] What’s the difference between a facilitator and an Agile coach?

[03:16] How did you get into Agile and what does it mean to you?

[08:08] What’s the difference between “just delivering something every two weeks” and Agile?

[11:32] Can Agile be applied to non-software teams? And does all of an Organisation need to be Agile?

[16:29] What’s the process for calculating a team’s ‘velocity’ and how can you know what is objectively the most important task to be done?

[22:08] Is measuring by time a trap? And how can you create the safety for a team to move past measuring tasks by time?

[26:23] Can you talk a little more about safety?

[34:51] Do you think managers can get caught in the illusion of control?

[37:24] How do you handle someone who just doesn’t want to do any hard work?

[39:46] How can retrospectives help bring unity to teams?

[44:07] What makes a workshop fail?

[47:27] Do you have a silver bullet exercise to raise people’s interest in a workshop?

[49:38] Could Agile genuinely be applied to something like gardening?

[55:33] What would you recommend as the best way for someone to try Agile for the first time?

[59:09] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

Links

Judith's website

Esther Derby and Diana Larsen’s ‘Agile Retrospectives’

Michael Wilkinson’s ‘The Secrets of Facilitation’

Connect to Judith: 

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/