Episode 164: The skill that makes you a better human with Maria McDonald
You’ll often hear how facilitation is used in the context of workshops and meetings on this podcast. However, today’s guest, demonstrates how it’s an incredibly handy skill for life in general, to. In fact, she used the tool of facilitation alone to build an entire Learning and Development department at the company she worked at.
She’s a tremendous example of how you can define what you love, and have the courage to go after it. If you want to build a facilitation career but have no idea how to take the next step, I hope that this conversation will help you find your courage to seek opportunities where you are.
My guest today is Maria McDonald. As a Learning & Development consultant (as well as the L&D Manager for Geocaching), Maria is dedicated to helping leaders, businesses, and entrepreneurs intentionally shape effective, impactful, and empowered company cultures.
In this show, we also discuss how her yoga teaching practice combined beautifully with her facilitation growth, how to demonstrate value-add for teams, how she used facilitation to create a role in her organization (that never existed before!), and how she deals with unpredictable moments in her workshops.
Maria uses facilitation skills to demonstrate the value of continuous learning, improve collaboration across the company, clarify mission & goals, improve individual & collective communication skills, enhance brainstorming sessions, guide retrospectives, and mediate conflict.
About today’s guest: Maria McDonald
As a Learning & Development Consultant, Maria is dedicated to helping leaders, businesses, and entrepreneurs intentionally shape effective, impactful, and empowered company cultures.
Through customized consulting practices, Maria’s innovative and energizing techniques support you in achieving your business goals while proactively developing your people. Her vision is to shift each business into effective paradigms that inspire people at every level of your organization.
Maria is also the Learning and Development Manager for Geocaching, where she formulates learning and development strategy based on organizational needs, and creates a culture in which continuous learning and improvement are encouraged, and where employees are equipped with the tools for self-help and empowered to teach and learn from each other.
Resources
Visit Maria McDonald’s website
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn and send her a message, letting her know your favourite takeaway!
Geocaching: Join the world’s largest treasure hunt
Join The Flipchart community on Facebook
Support the show and shout Leanne a coffee!
Watch the full episode now!
About your host: Leanne Hughes
Leanne Hughes is an international facilitator, speaker and coach who loves creating unpredictable workshop experiences, that predictably work.
She combines her experience in Marketing, with her education in Human Resources and Psychology, to help leaders create engaging everyday experiences - that are so contagious they scale across teams, functions and regions.
Leanne has facilitated leadership, onboarding and team-development workshops across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore and believes in a strengths-centred approach to learning and development. She has over 14 years’ of experience across a range of industries including mining, government and tourism sectors.
She’s the host of the First Time Facilitator podcast and was a finalist in the 2018 Australian Learning Impact awards for Learning Professional of the Year.
Social Media
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