First Time Facilitator podcast episode transcript (Episode 10)
Keeping workshop content fresh after 25 years (and how I was inspired by a flamenco dancing facilitator) with Scott Amy (Episode 10)
Leanne: Our guest today is from the Pacific Institute in Perth and has worked extensively in training, facilitating, coaching and project design of the clients around the world. He's been a student of leadership and its effects for many years. With a defencee force background in training and education, has used these experiences as a basis for continuing studies in effective leadership. He's played a major role in developing people and organizations with clients such as Coca-Cola, INP insurance in New Zealand and Rio Tinto. Welcome to the show Scott Amy.
Scott: Thanks, Leanne. Thanks so much for having me.
Leanne: It's great having you on the show and connecting again. We met a few years ago in Broome. I want to start back with your defence force background. How did that happen and what kind of role were you doing in the defence force?
Scott: It's part of the reasons why it's a background now because I spent 11 years in the education and training sector in the Air Force. It didn’t actually fulfill the goals that I wanted. The roles that I was doing were not taking me to where I really wanted to go, so I was stuck with it for a while continually looking for something that was going to take me to what I wanted to do in the education and training side. Hence, found the Pacific Institute through that journey. Funnily enough, the Air Force was a client of the Pacific Institute so I had a fair understanding of what they did and once I got the difference between what I was doing in the Air Force and what I wanted to do the Pacific Institute, it was quite an easy leap.
Leanne: Nice, it's funny how things work out that way. What is the Pacific Institute and what kind of workshops or things do you run for clients?
Scott: We’re a global organization consultancy that runs leadership and personal effectiveness training. The majority of that work is based on positive psychology or cognitive psychology backed up with the latest research in neuroscience. We essentially work with individuals, teams and large corporations to understand their behaviors or their culture and working on the individual development, helping grow their culture to a more effective one.
Leanne: Where do you actually begin a process like that?
Scott: There’s a number of different ways and I guess the work that we do goes from very large scale organizations, you mentioned we had 10,000 people go through our education there, right through the small to medium enterprises and the entry points are a variety. It can be around change management, it can be around ineffective cultures, it can be around creating a stronger more cohesive team. It's a hard question to answer because there are so many entry points to go into an organization but we always come back to that main component of helping the individual because the individuals together will collectively grow a stronger team or organization.
Leanne: What was it about the Pacific Institute when you're working in the Air Force? What really attracted you to that style of facilitation and engagement?
Scott: The Pacific Institute was started 40 years ago by a gentleman called Lou Tice. Lou, had an extremely effective teaching style. He was informative, he was humorous, his points really came across and hit people at a personal application. I had the opportunity to watch Lou’s videos a number of times in some down times in the jobs that I was doing and I just fell in love with his style and the information that he was giving, it was really around how people can develop themselves.
From there, I guess, I stole a lot of the way I facilitate now in Lou and I just thought this is an organization that does wonderful things, in a wonderful way, in a way that I really resonate with. For me, it was a no-brainer in trying to incorporate my future into the Pacific Institute and luckily I did.
Leanne: Did you actually just reach out to Lou and say, "I want to bring this to Australia. I'm your man. Work with me, Lou."?
Scott: No, I wish it was that simple. The Australian office of the Pacific Institute operates fairly autonomously. We have a strong relationship globally but because of our positioning here in Perth, away from Seattle where it started, we've always done things on our own. They simply had a large client and I needed some more resourcing. They put an ad in the paper for the facilitator trainer. A friend of mine always said share your goals with those that can help you and I shared those goals with him one day about getting out of the Air Force. He found the ad for me and suggested I try it out. I thought I would. I thought I would have some interview experience after 11 years of being in the Air Force. Suffice it to say, I still haven't got interview experience because fortunately for me, I got a job on the first go.
Leanne: Congratulations.
Scott: Thank you.
Leanne: I really like to just talk a bit more about Lou's style that you watched on video and that those would have been VHS, I imagine back in the day.
Scott: Yes.
Leanne: You said that he was informative and humorous. Were there certain things about his voice or his body language or the way that he told stories? What was it in particular that you think that you've modeled from Lou?
Scott: That's a great question. It’s around the body language, I think. If you ever get the chance to watch Lou Tice delivering information, look for in as much as he uses a style of flamenco dancing, funnily enough, yet he never danced flamenco dancing but he did study it as an art for communication form. He's just a great gregarious guy that is very open in his communication. He really has a strong passion for the stories and information that he’s teaching. I shared that passion and I just really thought he's a guy that just tells it as it is.
He has an interesting accent so if you ever listen to him you won’t pick him from any certain part of the States. He just has a very soft and comforting accent as well that you put all those things together and it really makes a great presentation style.
Leanne: In your observation then, what are the skills that you transferred to first-time facilitators that are really important?
Scott: I think there is a number of different things. We go by a very basic formula here, is that you need to have confidence in yourself, you have the ability to grow, the ability to, and desire to grow the organization you’re working with and you can engage people, it's fairly simple. I think they have to have a desire to help others grow and discover different elements. Whether that's our curriculum that we're talking about or facilitation of any workshop in general.
Leanne: I'd love to really stay on that first point, confidence in yourself? How do you build that with your participants? Or is it something that you know you can give them strategies but it will take the time, where do you sit on that?
Scott: There’s an element of both. When people are trying new areas and one of the things that we've been quite good at over the years, is we've taken people that had no presentation skills at all a basis and get them to facilitate a program, two or three days facilitation. The confidence is a part of developing their own levels of self-efficacy, their belief in their ability. It's a gradual process. However, the three or four days that we have in helping people become facilitators, there’s a lot of assimilation processes. Just get up and talk, get up and stand, do some thing, deliver a concept, talk about the application of it. The continuously getting to build their levels of confidence and I get a lot of feedback from many in terms of what they can do, what they've done well, what they could do better as we call them gems and opportunities and feedback from the other people going to the program as well. They get a lot of opportunities to really put their own take onto what they're about to deliver, the stories that they would tell, how it might have affected them in the past. There's a lot of them coming across in what they're doing.
Leanne I agree that feedback is really important. You spoke about gems and opportunities, how do you deliver that? Is it like-- we’ve got the SBI model, you've got that "Say something positive, say something negative, say something positive, that sandwich." How do you deliver feedback to people that are just going out there and having a go but need a bit of help?
Scott: It's a continual approach, I think. I certainly don't subscribe to the give something positive, positive something negative style. If I do something that’s not so good, it's a matter of self discovery. What would you do differently? In a conversation with them and the feedback, it might be around, "That didn’t particularly go down well. Do you think it went down well?" Yes or no? If they say no, what would you do differently? A lot of the work that we do at the Pacific Institute is around the visualization, seeing yourself doing it in a different or an effective manner. It continues to get them to understand what they’ve done and what they could do to improve.
Leanne: Fantastic. Actually, that's how I learnt as well in my facilitation style. I was asked to co-facilitate a part of a leadership program explaining the disc model. I studied up a lot on it, I went down there and delivered it. The facilitator I was working with, Nicky, she was actually on episode three of the podcast. She came up to me and started asking questions, "Lian, how do you think you went?" I was like, "I think it went really well, everyone seemed really engaged." Blah blah blah.
Then she said, "Did you notice that you used the words pens down about twenty times through that?" [laughs] I was like, "What? No, I didn't." She's like, "Yes." She said, "I think one participant was ready to throw their pen at you." It was really good feedback because no one had ever told me that before, but what it said to me was that I was approaching it in a really-- in a teaching way. I wasn't really approaching it in a facilitation way, in terms of I was instructing them to put their pens down like they were 10-year-olds, but I think the way that she delivered that feedback, she could have come to me and said, "Did you know you did this?" Which I might have become quite defensive but because she opened up with that question, it was really good.
Scott: I think it's an effective way of doing it. There's a strong difference in my mind between facilitating and presenting as you just identified there. When you're facilitating, the idea of facilitation, it comes from the word facal, the Greek word facal, which is to make easy. All you need to be doing is giving people the opportunity to learn and develop and at the end of the day, they don't know what you're going to do next. If you don't do what you're meant to do, they don't know.
You can't make any errors, it's a broad statement I realize, but it's enjoying it and just seeing how it goes as you go, in my opinion.
Leanne: Yes, I agree. From one Greek word to another, you did mention that you have, in previous conversations that we've had, you mentioned you have a Socratic approach to facilitation. Can you explain what that means?
Scott: Yes, I could, but I'd like to know what you think Socratic means first.
Leanne: Oh my Gosh. Jeez, well, he was a philosopher, so I believe it's probably about asking questions. Am I on the right track or?
Scott: You're exactly on the right track. You've just been Socraticized, I guess, because that's the whole process.
[laughter]
Scott: The Socratic questioning style is around that process of just continually asking questions. From my world of thinking, it comes back from the theory that Socrates had a belief that the truth is within us all, we just need to ask the right questions to find it. When you're continually asking questions, you're getting people to have their journey of self-discovery. Certainly, with the information the Pacific Institute delivers, there isn't a right or a wrong answer. The Socratic question style works really well because the people are discovering it for themselves. As a tip for facilitators, it means you don't have to work as hard in knowing what the content is.
Leanne: I love that. That's perfect. Is there a particular approach to Socratic questioning. Is it that you use a combination of closed, open or how do you even implement it?
Scott: We've got a formula that we go by when we're training facilitators which is called relaxation, fascination and visualization. RF and V, but they actually go in reverse. When you're facilitating or presenting, you want people to be able to visualize themselves using that information. Unfortunately, people can't visualize until they're fascinated. To create the fascination, you've got to get them to be in a position where they want to learn about it. The Socratic facilitation style is around getting people to create the words and the pictures in their minds of where they want to be, how they see that happening.
It's really just a lot of questionings around things like who here has ever? What would you do if? Have you ever been in the experience of? They're very broad opening statements, but it's just getting people to engage themselves in the situation. From there, you can use a logic link. Question gets an answer and the next question comes from the answer that you've given them. It makes for a very casual, free-flowing style as long as you're moving towards where you wanted to go and you're simply asking general interest questions.
Leanne: Have you ever had a situation or really like talking about the fascination comes before the visualization, and you've facilitated for a couple of decades now.
Scott: Thank you. [laughs]
Leanne: You would have had situations where you can tell immediately that some participants in the room just don't want to be there. Is that when you'd come out with these questions? Or how do you approach a situation like that when you can see immediately that they're just not interested?
Scott: Yes, that's a tough one. There's a horror story that comes straight to my mind as soon as you mentioned it. Being aware of what the parameters are of the program. I had a two-day program in Adelaide with a bunch of people that just did not want to be there. That was pretty obvious by lunchtime of day one. We'd pretty much gone through all of the content of two days by afternoon tea of day one. It was around looking for the learners' outcomes. I wasn't going to force them to stay in that room for two days. We went through what we needed to go through in terms of the responsibility from the client's point of view and then we just took it back to a personal view.
How do you use this information personally, because it was very corporate oriented? We finished up at morning tea on day two because it's no good having people sit in a room when they don't really want to be there because that's not relaxation whatsoever.
Leanne: When you were speeding through the program, what were you thinking in your own mind? Were you thinking, "Oh my Gosh, this is going too fast, what's the client going to think? What am I going to do?"
Scott: Yes, I was probably in the same boat as them, thinking I wish we didn't have to do that.
[laughter]
Leanne: Oh dear.
Scott: A nice bunch of guys, they just had no interest which is fair enough. We agreed some rules. We need to be here because your employer expects you to be here, it's part of the outcomes that we're looking for but if we can together make this as enjoyable as possible, how about we do that. I was also thinking about what is the reason I'm going to use to the client that explains why we left it on day two.
Leanne: Maybe we need to create an article about the best excuses you can provide to a client-
[laughter]
Scott: I've got a few of them I can add to it already, if you like.
Leanne: Okay, let's talk about the flipside. What kind of positive transformations have you witnessed as a result of some of the workshops that you've run?
Scott: Well, from the larger organizations we've experienced great cultural change. Developing more of a collegiate culture where solid mentalities are now breaking down those barriers and working more collegiately. Individually, I have seen wonderful aspects of people transitioning into new careers, massive weight losses, relationship gains, all those wonderful aspects. There's probably so many and that's not a braggadocios statement. The impact of the information that we present on people has really a strong impact that's wonderful to see.
Leanne: Great, what about your growth personally as a facilitator? What are doing now that were probably a bit amateurish 10, 15 years ago? What's changed in your style?
Scott: Keeping my introductions simple. I remember just before I started my very first co-facilitation with the Pacific Institute, I went and watched a world-famous presenter. To be honest, it was 25 years ago so I can't remember his name. He told a wonderful introduction story, which was a complete fallacy. He made it up step after step, but it grabbed the interest of people. I thought if he can do that, I can do that. I tried it and it didn't work at all.
Leanne: Was your story made up or real?
Scott: There were elements of reality, not many of them, to be honest. [laughs] There was more a humorous yarn than anything else. I think the development of myself is to well, just being me in what I do. I absolutely love what I do. Having that come across at the beginning sets the pace for everything else and also not willing to teach.
Leanne: Yes, that's really important. I think you need to define, if it is a training workshop and this content is new then you need to approach that quite differently to working with adult learners that have some knowledge in that material that you're presenting and some experience for sure.
Scott: Very much so. People these days, they're far more educated than they were when I first started running this education. They're a pretty savvy bunch of people out there. The concepts are maybe not so new to them but the application of them can be quite strong when they take on the accountability to use it.
Leanne: Been running similar programs for the last 25 years odd years, a couple of questions. How do you keep the content fresh and also how do you keep yourself energized when it's another day of the same workshop? What do you do differently?
Scott: Well, as you said, 25 years doing essentially the Investment and Excellence program, the content hasn't changed a great deal but its application has. For me, every group that I work with is a new group and they're people that have a fresh understanding of the information. I probably try to add an element of coaching into it as well. Not a formal process but really getting people to understand how they can use the concepts that we've been delivering. The fact that I've been doing it for 25 years, I think only adds to the value where there's a lot of stories that I can tell from a wide variety of fields of life.
They can make the concepts come alive for individuals and organizations, because they're new people, the content is always fresh for me. Keeping myself energized, I have a background in radio instruments. Well, I worked in radio for a while and have a love of music because of that. A task I've set for myself is to find a song that supports the information that we might be talking about and implement that as we're going through and just using lots of upbeat music to keep me energized.
Leanne: Do you have a Spotify playlist of all the songs that you use to get yourself going for a workshop?
Scott: Yes, I do. I do. It's a great tool to have, I think. I try and mix it up as well. There's some stock standard ones that are there for a very good reason and then there's new stuff that I find all the time.
Leanne: I really liken facilitation to playing a really important game of netball. Before I play a big final at any game driving to the court, I'd put on this music and it would get me fired up. I do the same before I run a workshop. I find that it just channels that nervous energy into something that's really positive. How else do you prepare for a workshop? Do you have a routine that you go through?
Scott: Not particularly. It's the advantage of doing presentations for 25 years as you very well know what you're doing. Typically, the night before, I just go through my slide deck and my information, making the small changes that I think are applicable, reading the news, stuff like that is great because it gives you current stories that you can tell that relate back to the concepts that we're talking about.
I'll make a few changes there, get to the gig, set myself up and then just wait. Basically, this is where that relaxation part comes in out of that relaxation, fascination, and visualization formula. I like people to be relaxed. As soon as I walk through the door, I introduce myself, make sure I use their name and just do some social chitchat. I find that relaxes me because I get to know a little bit more about them and in doing that, have a greater understanding of what their pressure points might be or their interest points. It enables me to relate with them a little bit stronger I think.
Leanne: Yes, I think it does set a nice tone if you're in the room welcoming people rather than just sitting there and fussing around because you haven't prepared something. Talking about getting your slide deck ready, have you ever had a situation where the technologies let you down on a day?
Scott: Yes, I have. I have had many of those. I think most of us would be in the same boat. There's a degree, when we talk about Socratic facilitation using particularly questions, there's a degree of knowledge that you certainly need to have about the program or the information that you're presenting as well, because if you're left dead with no slide deck or video or whatever it is that you're using, it can be quite an awkward time.
Leanne: Yes, you can't just continue asking questions for the rest of the day.
[laughter]
Leanne: I want to talk about a LinkedIn profile you wrote about practicing and starting habits. This relates to the themes that you're talking about personal development and growth. What drove you to write the article and how do we create a habit?
Scott: It's a practice of making a practice. A lot of the tools that we talk about in the education at the Pacific Institute provides, are practical tools. They're things that you can do and you know how to do. There's nothing difficult in what we're talking about, but I think we live in such a fast-paced world that we don't get the opportunity to do so. we just go to a wonderful two or three-day program that's been presented and think, "That's fantastic. I'll write that one down," and we just head back to the normal. We don't get the opportunity to actually improve and use more of the skills that we've got. The practice of making it a practice is an important element because then it becomes ingrained into our subconscious, the way we just do things continuously. That's a process of continuously developing what you are.
I've just written or recorded a video podcast today. It tells a story of playing golf. Quite often, social golfers will go out and play golf and they'll talk about what they could do differently next time they play a round. It's different stance, closer to the ball, whatever the case may be and then they'll forget about it and won't do it the week after. A professional goes out and plays a game of golf and as soon as he finishes the 18th hole, they tend to get back out again and play another nine. What they're doing there is putting into practice what they need to do to become better. It's around with your social developer or a professional developer.
Leanne: I was just reflecting, it was a video I watched a few years ago and the guy was talking about how you create habits. It's all about getting a trigger point. It could be to do 10 push-ups after you brushed your teeth. Linking it with an existing habit but just building it.
Scott: Yes, that's an important element, that action, and triggering stuff because when you're doing something that's new or different, to create a conscious action is important. I had a friend of mine that I used to ring on a business that I'd say to him, as we all would, I'd say, "How are you doing?" His response was, "I'm relaxed." I thought, "What a weird way to respond to that question?" Then I thought about it after a while. How many times a day do you think you'd answer the phone, Lian?
Leanne: Dozens of times.
Scott: Yes.
Leanne: Yes.
Scott: If you dozens of times answer the phone, I'm relaxed or I'm calm or I'm whatever the case might be, over a period of a very short period of time you've created that habit and for the work that we do, that's going into your subconscious to create your self-image and we act like we know ourselves to be but what a great way of doing something. Creating a trigger action to reinforce the practice is a wonderful tool. I thoroughly recommend what you just said.
Leanne: Great, thanks. I haven't actually implemented that at all but this could be a trigger point for me. Just try and create that new habit. Interesting what you said about the language and the things that we say to ourselves. If we start saying I'm calm on the phone, that's just sending a message to our subconscious. Can you expand on that a bit more, in the terms of the impact of language on our self-belief?
Scott: Yes, if we look at the impact of language or as most people commonly call it self-talk or internal dialogue, we talk to ourselves about 50 to 70,000 times a day. The unfortunate part is we don't stop and listen to what we say. We just accept whatever it is that we say. If the majority of our self-talk is in a negative fashion, that's what our subconscious takes on board. Unfortunately, as I said, the subconscious doesn't know the difference between whether you're joking or you're not. It just accepts it as truth.
The subconscious, which is also the self-image for us or the truth about us, means that we're now going to have to act like that. It's extremely important the way you talk to yourself.
I know I've heard a couple of your previous podcasters talking about like the superhero pose and things like that. That's a similar process because as you're doing that, your self-talk that you're saying to yourself should be reinforcing the good things around the pose as well. It's quite a strong process for us and it's almost that the basis of what our curriculum is based upon. Be careful what you talk about.
Leanne: In the lead up to a workshop as well and if people ask you how are you going and you saying things like, I'm not ready or I'm really nervous or I don't think it's going to go well, you're not really putting yourself in a strong position from the start.
Scott: No, not at all. I'd often quote my mother on this and she said to me as a teenager, "Start how you mean to finish." If you can control your self-talk at the beginning of a session or in preparation of the session and you use words that take you to where you wanted to go, then you're going to finish that way. Finish strong. We think in three dimensions. Words which trigger pictures and those pictures trigger feelings or emotions. We've got to be very careful about the words that we use.
Leanne: Yes, all the time I hear from people, "I'm not creative." I look at them and go-- I just think, "Yes you are. Some of the ideas that you come out with have been outstanding." They're just not recognizing themselves, learning to just close it off and think maybe the word creative is as well associated with art, color and things like that but I see that all too often, especially in the workplace.
Scott: That's exactly right, because we've seen said creative accounting happening in my house and I'm sure [unintelligible 00:27:40] happened in yours as well. It's around that belief in one's own ability. The stronger we can get that, that's personal efficacy. The stronger we can get that, the more we can use the potential that we have.
Leanne: What other resources do you think that you'd recommend for first time facilitators? I guess not only to facilitate but to build up that self-efficacy and belief.
Scott: It's a good question, because there's so many things out there. I'm forever just having a look through SlideShare, YouTube and Vimeo and places like that, TedEx for just some wonderful ideas. Plagiarism is alive and well in facilitation and presentation. It's just a matter of how you put your slant on it. I think grab those areas wherever you can, whatever tools you can use and if you can see yourself doing it, maybe adding a little bit of a personal slant to it, then give it a shot.
One of the things that I use in terms of personal reference was around Karl Rohnke's books from Project Adventure in terms of activities. He's got a number of books to really good activities that could be adapted through individual or team learning as well.
Leanne: Cool, we'll link to those in the show notes. Now, you mentioned that plagiarism is alive and well in the facilitation world. Let's talk a bit about just curriculum design and developing content for a workshop. How do you approach that process? Do you rack your brain first or do you jump straight onto Google?
Scott: For me, the development of a curriculum is always going to be based around the individual. What does the individual need to do? That's our core content here at the Pacific Institute. I would look at what are some of the concepts that we particularly have and then-- Google is a great place these days. Just to go and look at different aspects of how that might work. Looking for a particular concept and then Googling that and look for other people's opinions, ideas or views on it, how do they relate and just trying to create as many links as I can to start with and then work through, well, that's applicable to this organization or this group or that's not applicable or that is and then there's maybe a tenuous link to something else.
Can I make that a little bit stronger? Really, it's a throw up in the air, see what lands and then look for the commonalities for me.
Leanne: On your LinkedIn profile, you mentioned that you have delivered workshops to both presidents and prisoners. What do you do differently with different audiences? That's a huge span.
Scott: Nothing particularly. It's really around the stories. I can remember Lou Tice once said to me, many years ago, he said, "Scott, the soul is assigned for everyone, facilitate to the soul." That's the same premise that I use, is prisoners, just as much as presidents, need to know the information that we're giving them for a variety of reasons. For a president, it might be around spending more time with the family as opposed to work. For a prisoner, it might be around creating opportunities so that they get more time to spend with their family rather than being held up where they are.
It's really around making the concepts and the ideas applicable to the individual, but because everyone is a person, there is not a great deal. I just certainly wouldn't tell a prisoner story in senior executive conference. I probably wouldn't tell a senior executive conference story in a prison.
Leanne: Yes, selecting the story based on the context, I think. I love that. Facilitate to the soul, that's brilliant.
Scott: It's worked well for me.
Leanne: It should be a title of a book, if it isn't already.
Scott: [unintelligible 00:31:24] down now.
Leanne: What's your go-to icebreaker, do you have one?
Scott: No, I don't. For me, it goes back to that relaxation stuff. I got a few that I really don't like and I would never use them but if I need to have an icebreaker, for me, it's around the one that I typically use is, "If you had a superpower, what would it be and how would you use it?"
Leanne: I think what that does straightaway, gets both the fascination and visualization working, because I was thinking of just standing on top of a building with a big cap on, the second you asked that question.
Scott: Good, well it's great, because you actually have a little bit of insight. Some of the parents will often say it's the invisibility to see what my kids are doing, or super hearing so I can hear them when they're in their bedroom and things like this. That also gives me an indication of what's important for them, family, Kids.
Leanne: That's a great question. Finally, Scott, where can people find you?
Scott: Sitting in my office, really.
[laughter]
Scott: Well, all the usual social media areas. There's a LinkedIn page for me, you can find us at our website, thepacificinstitute.com.au, Twitter, well, I'm not very good at that, I must admit. Happy to find us at TPIS or Scott Amy on LinkedIn.
Leanne: Lovely, Scott, thank you so much for all of your useful tips that you've provided in this episode, but also I really love talking about the language and that self belief that you need to have as a facilitator, and little ways that you can change that. I think one good idea we spoke about was just answering the phone a little bit differently and saying, instead of "I'm good," what is that word that you want to start bringing into your life, start saying that in your response.
Scott: I'll ring you next week to make sure you respond about that.
Leanne: Okay, keep me accountable, nice one. Thank you so much Scott, I really enjoyed this chat.
Scott: My pleasure, thanks, Leanne, take care.