First Time Facilitator podcast transcript

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. On today's show, I chat to Steph Clarke. Steph is originally from the UK and is now based in Melbourne, Australia. She runs her own business, using her experience in learning, leadership development and executive coaching to develop courses to help organisations develop and professionals become more confident, productive and effective leaders.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Steph Clarke. Alternatively, you can listen to my First Time Facilitator conversation with Steph.

Leanne: Steph welcome to the show.

Steph: Thank you and hi.

Leanne: Hi, now Steph you've started your life as an accountant and I love in your biography that you say that you realized you enjoy developing others more than deciphering technical accounting standards, and I think a lot of our facilitators, you're the first accountant that's made the pivot on the show, but I'm sure not the first accountant in the world that's done it.

Steph: I know a few.

Leanne: I actually know a few too. It seems that accountants turn into L&D people later on in their careers. How did you manage that pivot and what really drove you to L&D?

Steph: I can't really think about what the exact moment was that I thought actually L&D is for me, but I remember going on training courses when I was a young accountant and feeling like actually I wanted to be at the front of the room, developing content and delivering the stuff rather than sitting there having it taught to me and maybe that's a slight on some of the people who are delivering incredibly dry accounting topics and thinking, "Maybe I could be a bit more creative with some of this."

Not that I feel like necessarily-- Actually, okay, I think sometimes that I could do a better job, but sometimes just thinking surely this could come to life a lot more than it currently is and be done in a different way and liking the idea of that challenge.

Leanne: Yes, that's exactly what drove me as well I think. You can't see Steph because you're listening in, but you're your eyes have just lit up talking about that passion that you have for being in front of the room. I thought it was something that you've been comfortable with being at the front?

Steph: Well, I remember the first few times I did it and despite me thinking like, "Yes that's what I want to do," just being terrified but I think a lot of that was less about being at the front of the room but it was the pretty bit more of the judgment of the people there and thinking, "This is what I really want to do, this matters and actually feeling like I wanted to do a good job," not that I didn't feel like I wanted to do a good job when I was doing the accounting stuff because I did, but it was more around wanting to prove that I was good enough to do this and almost justify that being my next career choice which is a bit scary.

Leanne: It's like that impostor syndrome that comes through and funny accounting it's a job where you're behind a computer and it's quiet, no one really sees it whereas facilitating is very public so everyone can have an opinion on it. Is that what you found when you made that transition as well?

Steph: A little bit and I think there's really so feeling like because I went into it when I was quite junior relatively speaking that I didn't have enough technical knowledge to justify teaching, but I think there's there's definitely old adage of those who can't teach so I have rode that way everything for a few years of my accounting training life. I think actually one of the things I noticed within even six months of doing the training because first couple of years, this is context, I did both so I did training and I did accounting and just switch between the two at different times of the year. What I found was I was much better and I understood the concepts much more deeply after I'd done the training.

Once I'd been thinking about putting in to different perspectives and doing it in different ways and explaining it to others, I understood it so much better than I did when I was just doing it and having it explained to me once or twice and then having to get on with it.

Leanne: When you were sitting in that room and you were looking at the facilities at the front and going, "Gosh this is dry what are they doing?" What then did you think that would be a good strategy for you to get engagement and how did you start getting the skills to engage your audiences?

Steph: At first I didn't, at first I sucked because I just did what everyone else did because that was the script and I just needed to get over the initial fears and then I thought, "Hang on, if I want to do this a bit differently and if I want to not have people looking like they'd rather be anywhere else in the room rather than in the room I need to mix it up." I think initially and I still use this technique is very much around a bit of self-discovery so actually giving different topics for people to research in the same way as they would when they're at work because someone's not always stood at the front of the room in the audit room or in the office telling you what to do.

Actually giving people little projects to research using the resources that they're going to have to use every day to research the technical topics anyway and letting them then teach back. It practices some multiple different skills, gets a bit of peer learning in there, gets a bit of social learning in there, gets a bit of discovery and people then own it a bit more because they've actually done the research rather than being quite passive. Just trying to make learning a bit more active rather than passive.

Leanne: Yes, hear, hear. All the time I think we see a lot of talking and people are lecturing and then it's just listening and I think who actually does learn that way and like you said, when I just sit there in our cubicles learning by people talking at us it's all about getting involved and having that conversation, I 100% agree. I want to move on to your attraction towards leadership and that's something a skill that you love to teach now. What was it about leadership that attracted you that's all these topics going around communication, presentation skills, why leadership?

Steph: I think leadership jumped out because I see it and this isn't necessarily relative just in my industry, but I just see it done badly so often and when I talk to people, when I have conversations with friends, with family, the thing that always sucks out of their work is their leadership or lack thereof sometimes depending on the the context. I think because there's so many problems to solve, I find I quite like it because it's quite meaty. There's always going to be work because clearly [laughs] it's quite future-proof as a career I think.

I like that it is a bit broad, but you can go quite deep into different areas of it. For me, the areas that I quite like to focus on are two, one is emerging leaders so those who have made that transition particularly from technical competencies such as accounting because yes, that's my path as well. Those who've made that transition from technical roles through to leadership or management roles and a bit like, "Oh what do I do and who are these weird people that I now need to lead and where do I even start? I've got this other work to do I don't have time for them," and just trying to navigate that to build the sustainable leadership.

Then secondly teams, actually working with teams at different levels not necessarily just new leaders that can be quite senior executive teams and leadership teams to help them be more effective. Actually building back some of the habits that they might need to help them to be be more effective as a team. Just to some of those to get a bit unstuck because some of those teams they've been operating together a while or they've had new people in and they're a bit like, "Oh we need to start again but we're not really sure how because it's been a long time since we've had to do that."

Leanne: Like you said the very broad groups, with the emerging leaders that you focus on, what do you think is the biggest struggle for someone that's stepping into a leadership role?

Steph: It is a few things and I think a largely it comes down to having even an idea of your identity as a leader, what do you actually want to be known for? Who do you want to be as a leader? What do you want your team to say about you, think about you in three months, six months, twelve months time when they're not your team anymore? I think a lot of people are promoted into those ranks not because of their leadership skills, but because of their technical skills so that is what they identify with. It's what they've been rewarded for, it's what they've been recognized for, it's what they think and know that they are good at and they are which is great, but those things are not going to make you a great leader.

It's being able to help them identify what they want to be as a leader and for a lot of people, again depending on industry that's quite an alien concept because it's quite fluffy, it's ambiguous, it's a bit airy-fairy whatever. They've not really thought about themselves in that way and I suppose a lot of them or not a lot of them but a number of them don't necessarily even want to be a leader.

A leader of others necessary or a manager of others. They want to just do the work that they are good at and get on with it. Helping them see how they can bring their strengths from their technical areas into leading others and whether that's being a technical expert and being a technical leader, but still having some of those qualities of great leadership as well.

Leanne: I think about leadership all the time, it's something that I work with at my organization and everything that you've said there is I think echoed in a lot of organizations right now so you're right. You'll never be out of a job. It's funny with leadership I think with all leaders and I've had conversations with my mates around the barbecue as well in all different industries and there is that common denominator of, "My leader doesn't this or this I can't delegate, they don't speak well." I think a leader these days there's a lot of different hats to wear.

They've got to champion diversity initiatives, they've got a champion safety, environment standards. It can seem really tough I guess it's a bit maybe but it might seem we are asking too much for a leader or we are trying to create a type of a unicorn perhaps. What do you think about that? Do you think there's a lot of crazy expectations on leaders or what should someone do?

Steph: There really is, and I think it's not even just expectations, but the wash of initiatives that we throw at leaders or throw organizations. Yes, from really senior to the more junior leaders and managers is just not fair because we are not setting them up right or well or fairly to really succeed because they are trying to do everything, you just do nothing. I think there is a fundamental issue in, I don't want to say workload necessarily, but that's what it all comes down to because it's so broad.

Not always, we are trying it and we are expecting the same thing from everyone. [unintelligible 00:09:56 baseline of what we do need to expect around things like safety particularly if you're in the extractions in the industry or things like that. Clearly there's a baseline, that's not a leadership thing that's an everyone thing, but when we come to the leaders, we do need to think about maybe differentiating slightly more and thinking about what strengths and what are people going to be great at bringing to the organization and fostering or championing in the organization maybe expecting less of everyone to do everything.

Leanne: Yes and that's what the whole strengths based approach really is all about, not everyone needs to be a champion diversity, not everyone needs to be all about the environment, not everyone needs to deliver inspirational speeches at morning teas.

Steph: Absolutely yes.

Leanne: Share that around. Now you're talking about an emerging leaders and you said that one critical thing is to know yourself and what your legacy is or how people perceive you in three, six months. That leads me back into the model that you developed your framework, do you want to explain that to our listeners and how you developed that I think it's really great.

Steph: Thanks yes so my trifecta or Venn diagram for leadership is know your stuff know yourself, know your team because when I think about all the challenges and all the different skills and behaviors you need as a leader it really does boil down to those three things and by team of course you can make that broader and think about your stakeholders, your organization, your customers et cetera because there is no others.

Maybe in time that will evolve to know others rather than know your team, but if we start with know your team I think particularly for emerging leaders that's a good starting point and then you can take those behaviors and thinking a bit broader. I think the way I came up with it was really just synthesizing most of the different challenges I hear and also the strengths I hear from people as well. When people are great what is it they're great at and it's usually something that helps with all three of those if not two, to three of those areas.

When I think about a lot of the skills and behaviors for things like delegation, things like communication, again you're good at those because you know yourself you know your staff, you know your team.

Leanne: When you would talk about synthesizing the ideas, did you just sit down with a stack of post-it notes and start drawing them out and categorizing them what was your process?

Steph: It was literally a shower idea.

Leanne: I'd say that.

Steph: I'm sorry. There was no process. It had been festering away in my brain and literally saying to me one day and I don't know if I was actually in the shower, but I was doing something really inane like washing up or in the shower or something when those moments come to you and that was. I went and scribbled it down and thought, "I could work with that." What I tend to do then is leave it for a bit in front of me on my desk or something on a post-it note or a scrap of paper and then just keep going back to it and just testing, does that fit within that and does this fit within that? Will with this work if I was using it in this situation and then just testing it on some courses and testing it on LinkedIn and in my newsletter and stuff like that in some posts just to see how it landed if people came back were like, "That is why don't-- I was going to say something a bit rude - and that is terrible." What rating this podcast is sorry.

Leanne: We've had a few people say explicit words on it. I think when talking about those situations they've been in workshops so don't need to censor it. The reason I ask that is I think as facilitators we tend to use a lot of of course leadership theory and models off from reviewed articles and a lot of stuff but it is nice to have our own IP and think about what's our own opinion is on certain things and how we see the links. I think that's a value that we can bring as facilitators so I guess the tip there for first-time facilitators is to have more frequent showers.

Steph: I think so, yes.

Leanne: Also, I think what you said is that you had this model, you let it sit there, you kept reflecting on it and coming back to it from time to time and then testing it which is key.

Steph: Yes, and also just refining it and being open because I think it's really tempting and I definitely fell into this with this model and a couple of others that I've worked on use more in specific courses and things as you get really attached to it you're like, "I've had this idea and I might never have it again and this is going to be it." Then you have to be okay with with refining it or taking feedback or it not working anymore or it becoming a bit outdated. Yes, it's absolutely great to have your own IP and really working on that and I spend a bit of time thinking about letting the ego go and knowing that that IP might not be great forever.

Once you might have that Eureka moment in the shower and think, "Yes, this is the best thing since something by Covey," you need to take a step back and think and be okay when it doesn't work.

Leanne: That's hard sometimes when you're all so attached. I was talking to a really great leader at my business and he said, "When you put an idea at the table, you've got to be prepared to step back and let the criticism come in and let the feedback flow and just don't be attached to it." I thought that was really great advice. You mentioned Covey there and growing up for me his book Seven Habits was one of my favorite books growing up and still is. Are there any books that have really impacted you professionally I guess both in your facilitation sense but as the way that you I guess live and run your life.

Steph: I like how you say growing up like you're like a 10 year old reading Seven Habits [unintelligible 00:15:05]. [laughs]

Leanne: Well his son Sean Covey he had Seven habits of highly effective teens so I did [crosstalk] Yes, actually very. I didn't read the Stephens version until I was a bit older, but yes Sean's version same same but just the language is written in a really- [crosstalk]

Steph: Yes, nice overachieving I love it Leanne.

Leanne: It was a Christmas present [unintelligible 00:15:33]

Steph: The books and actually there's one I've read really recently and I keep waxing lyrical about it on LinkedIn and on some blog pop ask was have done is The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. I think as a facilitator it's quite a new book, I think it actually came out early this year but as a facilitator it's really changed the way I think about why we get people together and not just change the way I think, but really put some language for me around some of the uneasiness I have sometimes when some groups come together and some of the language around why I don't feel that something's are useful or helpful.

She just really helped to go and this is why I'm like, "Ah this is why." It's always just been like a bit of a weird feeling and I've not been able to really articulate, for example, it's a bad structure now I realized so it's a bit of an example. When you've got a team together and there's people in the room that shouldn't be in the room for the conversations they're having, and you know that it's not quite working but you don't really know why, but you do know why because it's those one or two or three people. What this book really does is it almost gives you the confidence to go back to whoever the stake holder is and say, "Let's go through the list and actually talk about why each person is there and actually have them articulate. Yes well we've had to invite that person because of some legacy thing or we invited this person, we have to invite that person."

Whatever that usually political reason is and then just being able to challenge them and say, " If this is what we're trying to achieve and actually having a really clear purpose on what is it, why are we bringing this particular group together, is having these one or two or three people there. Is that going to help us get closer to or further from our goal, our objective, our mission? Using that then as the catalyst to uninvite some of those people which can be controversial and a bit challenging, but using that purpose of why we gather and how we're bringing and why we're bringing people together to then challenge who's there, why we're there, where we meet as well.

I think as a facilitator we just rock up at the office or at the conference venue or whatever it is and sometimes as facilitators we're maybe coming in for a session as part of a bigger event, so we don't have the luxury of saying, "Have you thought about why you're in this place," and they're like, "No we just booked it, we use every year." We can't always have that level of control, but when we do it was a great reminder to think about what does this symbolize? What does this represent? Is this the best environment for us to have this particular conversation.

For example if we want to talk about the future of the company is sitting in the company's mahogany panel boardroom with pictures of all the old presidents and chair people and all the rest is that really getting us in the mindset of the future of this company? Maybe not.

Leanne: Maybe not, no. That's really interesting because I've actually looked at participant lists and gone I'm actually physically scratching my head and I do ask the question but it wasn't in the way where it referred back to the purpose or saying is it bringing us closer to the purpose and to continue iterating that, I wasn't too sure how to challenge it or if it even was my place as a facilitator because I'm trying to serve you if you think that's the best move maybe that's the best move, but I think if we're there to drive the best outcomes we need to start taking accountability and ownership of who is in the room and what's the environment like.

Steph: Yes, and I think it's a great point you raised Leanne because as a facilitator as any subject matter expert whether it's of your the skill as a facilitator or the subject matter of the content you're there to have an opinion, you are there to be the expert so if you are the facilitator that is exactly the kind of thing that we should be having an opinion on challenging our clients or our organizations other internal or external clients on because we're there to help them get the outcome not just to walk them through a process or walking through a conversation. That's part of it, but there is a much, much bigger environment and ecosystem that we are part of them that we can control to get that outcome.

Leanne: That's how we start adding more value as facilitators.

Steph: Absolutely.

Leanne: Talking about conference locations and venues, have you presented at any X Factor or participated in any great conference locations?

Steph: I was think about this because you had this on I think it was, I can't remember if it was Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram one of the social media.

Leanne: It was Instagram.

Steph: You had some bland picture and I was really racking my brain I think unfortunately having delivered a lot of accounting training, the locations aren't always super imaginative so a lot of hotels have very boring walls and windowless rooms and things like that. I've been to some really cool locations. I've been around the world to deliver different training when I was basically [unintelligible 00:20:35] I've been to Singapore to, a couple of times in Singapore, Shanghai so not just places beginning there, Hong Kong all around Australia, quite a few places in Europe so Germany, the Netherlands, US.

I've been really lucky to travel a lot with my facilitation, but most of those in fairly uninspiring offices and locations unfortunately.

Leanne: I should just get rid of any windowless room. It should just be [crosstalk]

Steph: I know, a few nice country clubs and golf clubs in the UK because that was often our conference venue were in those locations, you drove out to the country and because they are usually bit bigger as well but sadly nothing super loud. We've had some cool places where there was footballers or some kind of celebrity staying in the same place, some of the participants got really excited and just following let's try and find if they could get spotted and selfies with whichever footballer was there.

Leanne: That sounds like you didn't need to do any kind of energizer if you've got celebrities- [crosstalk]

Steph: Exactly, yes.

Leanne: We've had great experiences because you've worked for this global company. Now you're also a side hustle, some people don't like the word side hustle but you've got a side project that's happening and I've got to say that I love your branding. In your email signature you've got these really cool, your icon of red glasses. Can you talk us through how you started branding yourself and figure out your brand story and all that for facilitators that are trying to make that transition from corporate to running their own show.

Leanne: Yes, and I think for me it was a bit of a turmoil in trying to pin down what my area was going to be because as a bit of someone who's bit of a jack-of-all-trades and likes to have fingers in. The thing for me for about three or four months just know you feel a bit sick just thinking about niching or niching if you're American, niching because it was just a lot of it. That idea of cutting off different options and when I realized that actually no I'm not cutting off different options, I'm actually just specializing or focusing on one or two for now and in a year, two years, three years whenever I can always transition because I'll have a client base and I'll have all these different contacts.

If I want to then focus a bit more on presentation skills which is another thing I really love to teach but didn't want to necessarily do right now, well then it's quite an easy transition because it's, "We've seen Steph present, she does leadership stuff or she's a great presenter. Great yes, she would be great if you get her to do some presentation." Actually thinking about the evolution of a life-cycle of the business rather than just what I'm doing for the next three, six nine, twelve months. That was the first hurdle was to get over my innate fear of boredom and a lack of variety which was a bit of a problem.

Psychologist please apply within and then thinking about the other brand and what I wanted to building a website and all those kind of things. At first for starter we are just writing some blogs and just thinking about getting a voice and building the brand voice and the brand opinion and what topics I wanted to talk about and which ones flowed a bit easier than others and where I wanted to put a bit of a stamp and then from there, I thought we need some kind of logo and looking at different things. Then the big decision was do I brand without going into the back end of the business too much but do I brand ? Do I actually start a business and incorporation or do I go more sole trader and with my own name?

Looking at both the pros and cons of both and really thinking for this point in what I'm doing I want to be Steph Clarke and that's the brand to be rather than necessarily at the moment a business or a company name. That was the other thing to determine as well and obviously there's questions around, do you want to go and hire people immediately and have people working for you or franchise, in which case maybe go down the business and having a brand name otherwise if it's going to be you flying solo for a while maybe that's your name.

Then the glasses happened again I don't know if it was quite a shower idea and I think it was even my boyfriend, I'm sure he would take credit for it anyway, when I was thinking about what is it that makes me me and I think I had my glass on the time and so a bit of a slightly statement piece and I was looking at different icons because I really love iconography and rather than more detailed images.

Yes, I think at a similar time we went, "Oh, what about my glasses?" Then got a little icon of one just in the icon catalog and then made it red and I was like, "Yes, this could work." What I did, as I went then went onto Fiverr and just asked someone to sent a photo of my glasses and I was like make this into an icon in this color red and there we were.

Leanne: So clever, so clever. I like that you really thought about your life cycle of your business because I know in Australia a lot of people don't think of it until I have to get registered and I'm like, "I'm I still a trader? I'm I a business, what am I?" They wait for the governance to apply before actually proactively thinking where is this business going in the future. It's interesting you talked about specializing as well and just starting somewhere, getting clients and then expanding. I think that's a really nice approach. What are you up to now? What kind of projects and courses and workshops?

Steph: I have just this weekend hit submit on my first Udemy course it's going to be very exciting. I'm going to be using that really as a bit of a supplement to other things so it's my delegate or die course which I run. I have run classroom versions for and now it's going to [unintelligible 00:26:19].

Leanne: Cool name.

Steph: Thanks. Funny I recorded it all and I did like a promo video and all the rest and delegate or dialect, I just thought, "I hope they don't throw that away," because you have to submit it to be reviewed first. I thought if they come back and don't like that title I didn't want them to get a D because I'm going to start everything all over again and that would make me want to die, probably.

Leanne: You could just delegate that to someone else.

Steph: Exactly, delegate that yes, exactly. Luckily I looked on Udemy and there's another one that's called diplomatic or die or something like that so I was like, "Okay cool it's obviously okay so this is good." Anyway, that's one of the things that's going to be launched in the next, hopefully next week or so provided their review gets uploaded and submitted okay. That's very exciting and then outside of that I'm working on something called the New Leader 12 Week Success Planner which is going to be a combination of course of coaching and some other resources too some of which are still in in the pipeline so I can't talk too much about them at the moment in case it will fall through, but you've got some quite exciting things to actually help our new leaders take that first 12 weeks and think about what habits.

It's all based around the habit of leadership and the habits that you can be building in a sustainable way to actually help you as a new leader. When I say new leader it doesn't have to be someone who's day one, it could be you've been a leader or a manager for a little while and you're just like, "I've never really honed these skills and I need to actually think about refreshing or learning a bit more about my leadership style and skills et cetera." It's really helping them in quite a guided way to become better leaders and build the sustainable habits they need to lead.

There's content for that and there's going to be some mixture of online stuffs and coaching packages with me to actually help guide through that 12-week process and some classroom based sessions too. There's going to be a half-day version in November in Melbourne and looking at hopefully one in Brisbane as well but working on some dates for that by hopefully end of October.

Leanne: Wow, you must be so busy.

Steph: Yes, it's stuff that gives me this especially doing it on the side as well as I work four days in my main hustle and then the rest of the weekend well whilst I have one full day. Also I'm delivering for clients in some of that time as well so it really is evenings, weekends, [unintelligible 00:28:46] in between the two, but it's fun and it's creative. I think the creative side there's some bits that suck my soul as well when I'm filling in a spreadsheet with my expenses for that week or whatever with my general ledger mainly because that reminds me of accounting probably, but when something goes wrong in my website and I'm just like, "Oh God why is this so terrible?"

At the same time the creative freedom and I think just the possibility of where this could go and where the clients I can help and the people I can work with yeah it's really exciting.

Leanne: I hear you, I'm on a nine-day fortnight as well and that one day it's just so precious and you can't afford to be tired or sleeping, you've really got to ramp it up but then also use those after hours and it's amazing how much time you do find in a week and what you can get done. I think it's not tiring because like you say you get to be creative and making your own decisions and it's it's really fun. I really love-

Steph: I was just going to say actually that's just the point you made there around it's amazing how much time you do have an evening actually that's what started my business. It was just a bit of boredom because I exercise in the mornings, in the evenings I was making dinner and then just sitting and festering and I felt like my brain was disappearing. This was probably a year after moving to Australia, so yes there is a lot of other stuff going on, you're getting settled and yet doing it. Going out and doing stuff and then after that I was like, "Okay, what I'm I going to do know? [laughs] What's next in my career?" Just thinking about that and that's really where this whole thing emerged from was I think again my boyfriend's going, "Well, why don't you start your own business?" I was like, "Yes, okay, I'll try that." [laughs]

Leanne: [unintelligible 00:30:29] your boyfriend but you started in business and got your branding organized too?

Steph: Yes, let's not give them too much credit.

Leanne: What I love about your online 12-week program for habits is that we often find that when clients approach the internal or external, it's just to around a workshop. They don't really think about the embedding strategies. Something like a 12-week program because it takes, I don't know what the theory that you've read says, but I'm of the mind about 30 days to create a habit consistently every day. That's how I developed my habit of exercising in the morning and then when you make it that habit, if you don't do it, you just feel terrible because it's so ingrained. I think that course is going to be so useful for anyone transitioning, so well done on putting that together. That's great. If people want to connect with you, talk to you, find out all your stuff. What's one place that we can send them where they can do that?

Steph: Yes, LinkedIn is probably my most visited social media site. LinkedIn is where I'm probably most active at the moment. Get on there and contact me there. I'm Steph-Clarke and I'm sure you put the link in the show notes. I've recently joined Twitter which I did it while I was on sick leave, which I think was probably a massive mistake because it's just the vortex but I think someone described to me two months is one long shot, said, "Okay, go away." [laughs] I'm also on Twitter and Instagram which is Steph_Clark__ because someone had the one underscore already and on Facebook too, just Steph Clarke leadership, is where you can find me.

Leanne: Perfect, all on everywhere.

Steph: All the socials but LinkedIn is definitely where I'm most active.

Leanne: Yes, your posts and videos are very active. Also if you want to look at great how branding is, Instagram is really cool too. Steph we'll link to all those in our show notes, but also it's been wonderful having you on a nice, bright and early on a Monday morning. Great way to start our way week.

I think so.

We've covered so many topics, from leadership to your career pivot, through to skills with facilitator just in space of 30 minutes. I'm sure our audience appreciates that a lot and all the best with everything. I can't wait to see how all your programs go and where you position your business in the future. It's really exciting.

Steph: Thanks Leanne and I'm looking forward because I'm sure we'll be collaborating at some point in the future.

Leanne: I am sure we will.

Steph: Mainly because I love coming to Brisbane, so just any excuse of that. [laughs]

Leanne: Hell yes. For those based overseas, Brisbane's very sunny and Melbourne's renowned for being quite chilly in winter.

Steph: It's all relative, so when your from the UK, I'm like, "This is cool," because Melbourne's not like that.

Leanne: Thanks again Steph.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript (Episode 31)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. When you're asked to deliver another workshop, do you find you're having to recreate content, or dig around different folders, trying to find that one slide or activity that worked really well all those years ago? This happens to me.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Sally Foley-Lewis. Click to listen to my First Time Facilitator conversation with Sally.

Leanne: I'd like to welcome this week's guest who is a dynamic and interactive presenter, MC, and much-sought-after facilitator and executive coach. Her clients rave about her because she leaves the audience equipped to take immediate positive action. Welcome to the First Time Facilitator Podcast, Sally Foley-Lewis. It's great to have you on the show.

Sally: Oh, Leanne. I'm so delighted to spend a little bit of time with you and chatting our favourite topic; facilitation.

Leanne: We could talk, I mean there's so much to talk about in terms of facilitation. But I saw you earlier this year as an emcee at the Institute for Learning Professionals Conference held in Brisbane. So you open up that conference and you really made us all laugh, you look completely natural on stage, you were talking about al l the different types of people that attend conferences which was just yeah I found that really funny. The stage looks like a bit of a happy place for you has it always been that way?

Sally: As a child, if I'm in front of an audience or if an audiences and imprisoned and have just watch me, I'm always happy. That's just something that I have found incredibly easy to do and I know that doesn't come naturally for other people. Trust me, I'm not good at everything but being in front of a crowd is yeah, it is, it's my happy place.

Leanne: Oh, wow. You're very very lucky. How long have you been in this game of running workshops facilitating emceeing?

Sally: Well, don't let my youthful looks deceive you, dear Leanne. Hahaha. Look, at least 20 years. My first job at a university was working as a Recreation Officer in a Psychiatric Hospital in Brisbane and so I was in front of the, my audience back then with patients and so we would do cooking classes or we'd do some training around some skills for cleaning or crafts or anything like that. So my first job at a university, I already had an audience as such. Yeah, so it's over 20 years.

Leanne: Wow. So in terms of what you need back then 20 years ago and the skills that you've honed now, what's really changed? I mean like the audience obviously has changed. You no longer working with patients. What have you done to really hone your craft in terms of your development?

Sally: I am a big believer of lifelong learning. So I have got books, I'm surrounded by books that I read. When courses come up that I think are going to really take my skills to a haul other level then I will jump on them. Advance facilitation programs, professional speaking courses, training courses. Also programs that probably a little bit left of centre but expand my thinking. And in the last sort of 10 to 15 years, I'm even looking at going in, I mean, I've been spending a lot of time going and seeing other speakers speak and other facilitators facilitate secondly for the content but firstly for the process. The reason why I do that is because I want to sit there and watch the audience and what's the facilitator interaction and probably in the last five years, I've been really more attuned to going, “That was great. That was awesome. This is what I've learned.” But also, “This is what I didn't like.” Now, why didn't I like that?, Why did that not resonate with me?” Because there's value in both sides of that coin and I think any opportunity presents a learning opportunity and heightening that level of observation and ability to say and well, stop and say to yourself, “Why didn't I like it?” or “Why did I like it?” is really important.

Leanne: Yeah, it's a really powerful question. Now that I've been in some workshops and I've thought the facilitators been incredible and killed it and I've really resonated the person and then I talked to the person next to me and that didn't hit the mark. It's pretty fascinating why some facilitators stick and why others don't. Why do you think people are more interested in some facilitator styles over others?

Sally: Well, I think it comes down to why have people presented? Why do people shop in the first place? So, who's your audience and what do they want? And also, is the message being delivered in a way that resonates? I think that's where it comes down to you as the facilitator is having multiple formats of your message ready to go so that it can hit everyone in the room in the right way and I also believe that you will have a very clear bell curve of audience. You'll have people who will be, “No, thank you. Never again.” You'll have people in the room who go, “Yep, pretty good.” and don't take that personally, that's actually take it as it is, that's pretty good. And then, there'll be other people in the room that will become your own personal stalkers because they love you so much. So I think, the good facilitators understand that and also the good facilitators know that of the end that didn't like you, there is some value in trying to work out why but don't stay there because that's just soul-destroying.

Leanne: And I think, yeah, you've had 20 years experienced of this and I think that call of “don't taking it personally” is actually really useful for our first-time facilitators who was just starting their journey. How did you develop your resilience? Was it just a case of, “Okay, I'll take the feedback but I'm going to move on and be constructive with it.” or did you have any sort of other kind of coping mechanism to deal with the feedback from the No group in that bell curve?

Sally: There's been multiple little things along the way and that's been willing to listen. Thanks the person for the feedback but then also remember to ask yourself, “Is that true?, “Is this true of that person?” and “Is this true of me and what I need to be doing to get better?” And then also, I know this sounds really bizarre but after I have facilitated or delivered some training whatever. I come home and I have a shower. It’s a little ritual where I wash away the day because if I if I had someone who gave me some feedback that didn't resonate or didn't make sense or they just didn't like me then I washed that away. But also, in the shower it gives me time to actually step back and relax and say, “Okay, what do I need to take out of this?” So that's one thing. The other big lesson for me is that I have got the biggest expectations of myself. I'm self-competitive and what that means is I'm always going to be my worst critic and sometimes I need to calm that little bunny right down and actually noticed that there are 19 very goods and only one good. So which one do you focus on?

Leanne: Oh, yes.

Sally: Yeah and that's something that's really important and you know what? The goods are good. Don't devalue good, it's good and that's a positive word and I think we sometimes and put good into a not good enough category in our own heads when we're doing that mind chatter. Good is good and be okay with that and focus on the 19 very goods that you've got.

Leanne: Yeah. Isn't it funny how we do just go back to that one feedback form and really dwell on it when you've got overwhelming evidence that it actually went really well.

Sally: Exactly.

Leanne: Good tip. I'm the shower thing. Yeah. I love doing that too, actually. I didn't really think of it as a strategy but it's something that I when I reflect on the work that I've done at the end of the day, yeah, there’s nothing better than just having a hot shower, letting it go and then focus and resetting the next day. I think that's great!

Sally: Absolutely.

Leanne: So you spoke about as in terms of your facilitation you've created information you deliver it in multiple formats. So you have that in your back pocket so you can relate these stories or whatever mediums to present. Are there any other sort of other tips or skills that you think facilitators really need?

Sally: Yeah. I think that in the room, what I have seen a lot of is that a facilitators feel the need to be seen as the expert. While they are hired on that premise, I think there's a lot of facilitators who could do was remembering that people in the room have got experiences and they actually combined with your experience, create a really wonderful depth and richness to the room and so instead of just being the talking head in the front of the room, maybe it's a case of asking a question first and saying, “Who's had experience of this?”, “What's your insights around this?”, “What do you hope to get out of this?” and really listen to what's been said because that can then help you determine how deep you go on some things and it also helps you determine whether you need to actually deliver information as knowledge transfer or actually get into an exercise or an activity to truly immerse the group into something. I think that's something that some facilitators get caught up in whether its nerves or an expectation to be seen as something X Y Zed. I'm not sure but that's one of the things I think a lot of facilitators could do to just take that deep breath and ask first.

Leanne: I think there's a real fine line between facilitating and training and I also think for some reason, if you're at the front of the room, you're expected you're the authority figure so you're expected to know it all. I think that's where we cover coming from so I really like the idea of just letting go and using questions more to find out what your audience actually does know and where can you fill that gap.

Sally: Yeah.

Leanne: Now, you mentioned that you read a lot of books but you've also written a few books yourself. Now one of the books is called The Productive Leader and I really wanted to talk about, you talked about productivity and using systems to make work easier and I know as a facilitator especially working for a big company, we've got some content and then were asked to deliver a workshop or something entirely new or we might be asked to change a half-day workshop into a full day or cut it down to an hour. So we're constantly having to go through all the resources we've created and make all these changes and we save them somewhere. Is there a better way of doing that?

Sally: Look, I think there's just one layer and this actually creates work to start with but saves you a lot of time later and that is as you save, where's your cataloguing of your IP. What I think happens is that we create all these programs and all these resources and we've got files everywhere and we've even probably got them cross-reference to. It was somewhere they're sitting in a training folder or a facilitation folder and then somewhere else they're sitting into the actual topic folder and I think what we're not doing is creating a really clear catalogue and I've got a very, look, I'm big for simple. To me, it's very difficult to make things simple but that's where I'm always striving for which means an Excel spreadsheet that has a cross-referencing of the file name and the activity, the resources and also what it will help to, what topic it's supposed to hit on whether it's interpersonal communications, time management, leadership, delegation feedback, whatever it is and it can be more than one. So that way, when I go into the Excel spreadsheet and I do a find, say I've got to do a Lunch and Learn on feedback. If I do find feedback, there I go I've got about six or seven activities: Bang! Pick and choose.

Leanne: Oh, my gosh. That sounds incredible. Yeah, so easy.

Sally: I'm not going to lie to you, the set-up is big. It does take a bit of work to set it up but it is so worth it when you imagine in 12 months’ time you're going and looking for something and all you have to do is do a find search in an Excel spreadsheet. So that's one of the little hacks I think is really valuable and time-saving.

Leanne: Yeah. I mean, I'm even thinking now get so many people at work coming up to me and going, “Oh, do you have a good energizer or something they can get people moving or an activity that's great for engineers, or?” and so if we had just a shared Excel document where all that was. I really like that.

Sally: Yes.

Leanne: You also promised in your book that promised to the reader that you'll help save them two hours every day.

Sally: Yes.

Leanne: It's just using a combination of these type of hacks or what's your philosophy around time and I know you mentioned that it's really about self-management not time management.

Sally: Yeah. It’s tasks and focus-management really. I don't like the phrase time-management but that's what we know it is called as a commercial type of phrase. I do promise two hours a day because when you get into the book, The Productive Leader, there's three big elements to it. There's your personal productivity, your professional productivity, and your people productivity. And if you do one or two things out of each of those three areas, you will find that you'll be crawling, you'll be taking back, creeping back those two hours. It’s nothing you're not going to use them,  you will use them but you'll be using them for things that are far more valuating and far more fulfilling for either your personal, your professional life. So it could be setting up an email automation system as one. Tidying up the way you have your meetings is another and that could be your professional productivity and your personal productivity, you could do some batching of tasks or some chunking of some work and then in your people productivity, it could be who can I delegate some work to. So just those couple of things set up over the course of the two-week period or we'll wait a couple of weeks actually brings you over time you'll get back two hours a day.

Leanne: I really need those two hours. Haha. With the people side, do you in terms of delegation, do you outsource any tasks using any virtual assistants. Have you gone down that road?

Sally: I have. I mean, as you know I work for myself and so what I tend to do is outsource project to project. So depending on what it is, is what I'll then outsource. So I'm a big fan of it and I know that it can be quite daunting for some people but when you do it right and I'm actually quite passionate about delegation so that will probably be my next book. That if it's done right and it's clear and your expectations are set in place and you do have milestones and progress checks and things like that until you have that such trust in the relationship that you know you can hand the project over and not worry about it, then it does work well. I do that whether they're virtual or not. I just had a video because I'm speaking in Kuwait and so I have to do some promotional video and so I've sent that off to what it was Upwork or whatever it was Fiverr or whatever I kind of remember what it's called now. A guy came forward and said this is what I do, this is who I am and so I have to do my checks and balances. It's my due diligence here and so anyone who has to delegate, you have responsibility to check that you're picking the right person and so once that was established I asked, “Is this something you can do?” “What's your experience with doing this?” and then, “How long do you think it would take?” and so it was slow to set up but once I once I knew that he was the right guy, I uploaded the videos they were done and they were done perfectly any one revision on one was required for and what I did was I asked for Arabic subtitling onto the videos and within 24 hours done dusted and perfect. So it might have taken me two days to set that up and get that relationship right, get my understanding and my expectations clear but then, bang! Done. Thank you very much.

Leanne: We had so a couple things one I can't wait to read your book on delegation. I'm fascinated by it too more the case of when I look at people, there are certain people or I don't know if it's types and hopefully I'm not labelling but delegation seems it's not about just delegating a task, it's really about a mindset and I know that some people have a fear of letting go or have the confidence that someone can perform a task better than other people. So looking forward to reading that book.

Sally: Oh, yeah.

Leanne: Second thing is, what you're presenting in Kuwait? What's that all about? That’s exciting!

Sally: Thank you. It’s the book The Productive Leader.

Leanne: Yes.

Sally: I've been booked to do a one-day presentation in Kuwait. So it's a long way to go for one day.

Leanne: It is.

Sally: I used to live in the Middle East and we didn't actually get to go to Kuwait while we were there so I'm so excited. I think I'll get about five minutes to see the city. But I'm very very excited about going.

Leanne: Oh, that's so cool. I mean, I read in you bio, you've worked or lived in Germany. So the UAE as you mentioned Asia and even outback Australia. So you're presenting to all different types of people, what do you change anything in the way that you deliver or what is it with the different audiences that you do kind of modify to make sure you hit the mark with your message?

Sally: Well, I think the thing that happens before you even stand in front of the audience is asking a lot of questions and questions like to the client not necessarily the audience. There’s two different things there. To the client, “What do you want your audience to do, to think, to feel, to believe, to act on when I when I walk off the stage? Number one. Number two is who's in the room that I need to be aware of? Are there any particular issues that are going to be in the room that will be not spoken about but completely known to everyone except me? Is there any languaging? That is super important. I don't just mean swearing and potty mouth stuff. I actually mean, “Do you use a certain type of terminology in your particular industry?” And so those sort of questions that take it another step further are really important and I do change it because they're not every audience is the same. I sound less Australian when I'm actually overseas.

Leanne: Really? I got some friends, yeah, when they have a few drinks they’re just their accent changes.

Sally: Yeah, I will admit I come from Queensland so I sound a little rednecky, I’m a Queenslander. But when I'm overseas, I do for some reason I switch into a far more less accented Australian accent if that makes any sense.

Leanne: Yeah, I know what you mean. More kind of British English?

Sally: Yes.

Leanne: Yeah.

Sally: And I also slow it down as well. I speak a lot slower when I'm overseas. But also, I mean that's just voice.  But also, I think for the audience when I'm when I'm in the city than I even present differently because there's an expectation perception and while part of me thinks can't they just judge me for me and we can all get on that bandwagon. The reality is you've got to hit a credible no straightaway and so it's dressing the part, speaking the part and then also delivering the part. So when I'm out West, I might wear a pair of jeans and pair of boots and a shirt. Whereas, in the city, I'll be wearing a suit. It just you've got to be thinking about who is and changing things to suit them and as an example is that just recently did some cross-cultural training with a group from the Philippines. So in order to get an exercise done, I had to change some phrasing around so that it would make sense but because English is obviously is not their first language and so I tried different ways to describe a phrase as well as have the person in the group who had English was probably the best out of the whole group and had a chat with him about what the phrase means and have to translate it and so I think for facilitators, it's being okay to play and be flexible and adaptive and keep trying to work things out because your audience wants to get it and that's the thing.

Leanne: Yeah. I think flexibility is key and what most recently last week I was booked into run the strategy session and the agenda just continued to change and I was thinking, “Oh, gosh. I'm not going to have a good night's sleep tonight knowing that it might change again.” But I think that is the nature of the game. That is facilitation. You need to be prepared for anything.

Sally: Oh, yes. I was just going to say. I think that there's a line of being flexible and I'm about to contradict myself and say knowing when to say No and knowing as a facilitator to know when to pull back because let's face it we have a lot of people who want to put in a lot into a day. The more content you shoves in; the more shallow you're going to be and I think that's that bouncing act that makes it very hard for facilitators sometimes.

Leanne: Yeah. It does. Especially if you've got this whole day and they want you to cover all these topics but even just moment you can look at that and just go, “Look, one of those topics alone, it's like it's been a week on it.” I mean, even the doing that delegation, productivity and things like that. So I guess the million-dollar question is a lot of people go to these workshops and they get really inspired but afterwards they don't really implement the changes and I know that at the conference where you emceed what you did was at the beginning of that is you got us to team up with someone as a buddy and we were budding each other, we're going to make each other accountable for learning and embedding all this stuff. As well as setting a time in our diaries and our phones for a week after where we could spend some time to reflect on what we learn about conference. I thought that was such a great tool. What other tips do you have for embedding learning following that workshop?

Sally: I tend to walk out of the programs I deliver with I could guarantee that they've got a coaching session as well and that is to make sure that with between now and a month's time it's usually less than a month but usually within the month I say, “Please call me or book in a session because I want to make sure that over the next month as this feels clunky as you embed new things and I'm there to support you.” and I don't sugar-coat anything. I'm not one of these people who says, “Oh, it's just easy.” No, it's not! You're going through that transition of conscious incompetence and trying to embed something new. You're trying to change something and the latest research says that habits take anywhere from 21 days to 18 months and it depends on the habit and depends on the situation, it depends on you. So you know these things take time and so I often say to people, “Be prepared for it to feel clunky. Please call me.” and then also, “What is it they're going to do? “What's their accountability piece? And I get them to tell me and I will often say depending on the size of the group. “How do you want me to help you stay accountable?” and that's a coaching. It's actually just taken straight out of a coaching context and I will say to every person in the group particularly small groups on a little piece of paper I will say to them, “You need to write down your name, your email, your phone number and how do you want me to help you stay accountable?”

Leanne: Nice. So it could just be like an email or a quick SMS but then they know that someone else is thinking about them and wanting them to succeed. Love it.

Sally: Yeah, definitely. And I say to them, “Just remember scary Sally is coming and get that.” and that’s fun with it and that's the other thing I do say, “What's going to make this fun for you? What’s going to light you up?” and if they say, “Oh, I'm going to do this.” and I said, “Well, no. Say it to me please, you’re excited.”

Leanne: Yes.

Sally: Then don't do it.

Leanne: Yeah.

Sally: Then I say that, I take that pressure off and say, “Don't say that you're going to do something just because you think that's what I want you to hear. I actually want you to tell me what you do want to do it and don't overthink, don't hassle, doesn't have to impress anyone but you.” And when someone, I'm thinking of an example just recently when someone said, “I just want to reread this.” and I said, “Then that's your action and that's okay.” That was the most valuable thing that person could do because at the end of the session they hadn't done their pre-work for the session and at the end of the session I think they felt that they were a little bit behind the group because they didn't do their pre-reading and so they actually said to me and quite quietly so not everyone else heard, “I think I just got to reread this.” and I said, “That is brilliant. Write it down. That's what you're going to do.”

Leanne: Yeah. It doesn't have to be changing the world, right?

Sally: That’s right.

Leanne: But simple steps that at least you get one action done that builds momentum. That’s exciting!

Sally: Absolutely.

Leanne: Just before you mentioned the word fun as well and I think that when I think of you and your brand I think of fun just after what you did at the emcee event plus all the photography and branding that you've got too. I think that's really clever. So all those slides that you had were just photos of you doing different things and with different props. How long did it take you to really create that brand yourself and make it come alive in terms of all the marketing collateral you've got and the training resources?

Sally: Well, I could say 20 years but the real, it's finding the right photographer I think is one person and finding yourself and your branding like, “Who are you?” and I think it's really important to do values exercise for yourself. Now, “What values do you want that light you up, they think to who you are but also resonate as you as a professional and how will then do you want those values to be seen in the market?” and I was called, someone once said to me, “Sally, you're like a lighthouse. You know, you except you're constantly glowing and that means that I feel safe. When I'm with you, you give me safe passage and safe direction and you light the way for me and I love that about you.” and I thought, “Well, that was just fantastic,” So anything to do with light bulbs and lighting the way or a lighthouse was going to be definitely in my branding when that sort of struck a chord with me. The other thing is, you know my undergraduate degree was a Bachelor of Leisure Studies. So if I don't have fun somewhere in what I'm doing and that will be a waste of a degree and I think it's about allowing yourself to shine. I've had probably three or four sets of branding photography done over the years and this latest set I had some very close friends who know me actually say, “Ha! Finally, photos that are so you and that's when you know you're congruent.”

Leanne: Yeah. I was really impressed by them and I think we'll add a link to your website on the show notes so everyone can see what I'm talking about.

Sally: Okay.

Leanne: But just your slides are amazing, very visual and just I think you're right, people just connect with that because it did. I think it represents you even though they don't know you that well from what you were coming across and with those slides it really worked.

Sally: Oh, thank you.

Leanne: So we’re speaking about so many different topics. I'd really kind of surface level. We could speak for ages. We talked about branding, the different types of audience that you've delivered to across the world, cataloguing your resources, productivity, so much more. If people want to get in touch with you and find out or if they want you just to keep them accountable. Where can they find you?

Sally: All the W's. Sally Foley- Lewis; S A LL Y F O L E Y L E W I S.  So website and LinkedIn are probably my two go-to spots but if you google my name then there's only one of me. Thank goodness many people say.

Leanne: Awesome and all the best in Kuwait as well. We can't wait to hear about it. I'm sure you'll post some updates on your LinkedIn about that experience. That's fantastic.

Sally: Oh yeah. Thanks, Leanne. Awesome.

Leanne: Awesome

Sally: And thanks for having me. It's been great chatting.

Leanne: Absolute pleasure. Thank You, Sally.

Sally: Thank you.

[END OF AUDIO] 28:54

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Joshua John (Episode 28)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In today's episode, you're going to hear from a good mate of mine, Joshua John. Josh has been living in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and has been working as a Language, Literacy and Numeracy trainer at North Regional TAFE.

This is a transcript of Episode 28 of the First Time Facilitator podcast, with Joshua John.

Leanne: I'd like to welcome to the First Time Facilitator podcast, my former colleague and good mate, Joshua John.

Joshua: Good morning, Leanne.

Leanne: Welcome to the show. Thanks for your time. It's great being in beautiful Broome.

Joshua: I'm glad to have you back for a short holiday back in Broome.

Leanne: Now, Josh, I'd like to start off with you sharing with the audience what you currently do and what you did in your past which enabled you to be in the role that you're in today.

Joshua: At the moment, I'm working at North Regional TAFE. I'm a literacy and numeracy lecturer. I work across a range of industries. That's my daytime job. I've just recently, this year, started an events business called Rise Entertainment and that's mainly around event managing, emceeing, and DJing. In 2007, I was holidaying across in Broome, as a lot of the stories always are, and I was out on a remote community and met with their school principal. I heard there was a job going, working in the school as a tutor and I put my hand up and he gave me a call back. That was my entry into the Kimberley.

From there, that was back in 2007, I've worked communities, in the towns, and all over the shop.

Leanne: That first foray into tutoring, prior to that, what role were you doing? Did you have the education backing to become a tutor or you just knew a lot about the industry, what was going on, a bit about literacy and numeracy at the time that enabled you to make that transition?

Joshua: I was doing some volunteer tutoring in Brisbane just after uni, just to get my experience up once I finished my arts degree. Surprise, surprise there, the offers weren't coming in thick and fast for a Bachelor of Arts in Brisbane with possibly not the best results. I was just volunteering, doing some tutoring for high school students. Then I moved to Darwin where I was just temping. Temping in different offices doing office work. I just found that there were just-- A lot more doors were opening, being in a more regional area, moving from Brisbane to Darwin.

Then I knew that a possible move was also going to happen, moving from Darwin to a more regional center. Like I said, that did happen but by chance, being on holiday in Broome and that's how I fell into education. I then started my grad dip in education to become a qualified teacher as I was working in the school. That's how I got, formally, into education. Then after that, I have moved into the TAFE system, into more training.

Leanne: The interesting thing about this show is it's called First Time Facilitator and facilitation is really about getting the experience in the room, getting people to share that knowledge and training a unique skill set because you're actually there to pass on information. It appears to be more structured, but I know that in the Kimberley and especially working in communities, things don't always go to plan. I'd love you to tell us any stories or some challenges or opportunities you've had while working remotely. What you've had to do a bit differently and the cohort that you're training.

Joshua: It's the more remote you get, the-- You have a lot more freedom to do what you want to do because people aren't watching over your shoulder, so you have a lot more freedom to get into what the clients demand or what works well for the client, rather than going out there and running off-the-shelf product. You can go into a community or with a different group and, working overtime, work out what their needs are and really adapt and modify a program that suits them.

Probably the best example of this was, I was working at a local cattle station, doing some literacy and numeracy work, and then that evolved from essentially the literacy and numeracy tuition into leadership skills and management skills. The station themselves really keen to get the station workers skilled up and exposed to some of these ideas that you might get if you walk into a business course or a management course. I was bringing those out to this remote station and delivering it to these station guys. It was-- Like I said, I had a few years to develop a program which looks completely different at the end from at the start.

It was interesting, they'd come in the morning. First class was at six o'clock in the morning, that'd be the first group. The second group would come in from doing the station work, they'd come in covered in dust and blood and all this stuff and we'd get stuck into it. They were quite keen because obviously, they got to sit in an air-conditioned room for a bit rather than fighting cattle. We went on with a lot of different concepts which wasn't my mandate going in, but that's what I'd work with the group. These station managers were keen to see, saw the progress, their staff enjoyed it, and they just kept on evolving from there,, and a lot of freedom and opportunities to do that.

Leanne: Fantastic. With these guys on the cattle station, guys and girls, I should say, what's interesting sometimes when I have workshops with people that are used to being out on the floor or being active during the day, they actually struggle when they're sitting in a classroom. They're not used to the lack of movement. What kind of activities or-- How did you actually-- You talk about tailoring your content to suit this type of audience, did you play any games? What kind of things did you do with these students to keep them engaged and motivated?

Joshua: That's right. Absolutely, lack of movement's an issue. We have it here with a lot of trades guys. They come into the classroom and then-- It's difficult. What happens is, the facilitator or the lecturer is on their feet. They're walking from the computer to the whiteboard, they're walking around the room and it's all the students, essentially, who are sitting in their seat. As that facilitator, you don't actually realize that you're moving around, so your energy levels are staying up, the blood is flowing in your body. For the people sitting down, that's right, their energy levels are going to go down, so I ensure that I place simple things just to get them to move.

One of the simple ones I do a bit is, rather than handing out maybe the worksheet or something like that and walk around to them, I'll leave them at the front say, "Okay, when you're ready, go up and get that worksheet." It's not because I'm lazy, it's more just to get them walking and moving, and they don't really realize that. You have to keep on doing it otherwise, that's right, people start to nod off, regardless. Everyone knows if you sit down through a three-hour lecture, it's really hard to keep it going, so you have to incorporate movement.

Absolutely, playing team building activities where people are on their feet and working things out together, that's definitely where I-- This type of training programs I like to design because if you're training someone who's in a certain vocation-- If you're training someone whose job is not to sit down and essentially do office work, if you're training someone who's on their feet, then it's good to train them doing those type of tasks. I've designed a few activities where people are on their feet working in a team environment and, essentially, team-based problem solving and really getting into communication.

One of the most important things across every industry is that ability to communicate. Where my training ended up really revolving around was communication and teamwork. Now, with the skills, we're able to run these activities in the classroom. I designed them to be hard and people would fail, then we'd reflect on it, discuss what went wrong and then we'd run it through again and saying, "These are the skills we need to develop." Have a bit of a laugh along the way in a space where people aren't being judged and they're not being stressed out about stuffing something up or obviously getting injured on the job.

Having that classroom is that place where no negative talking and if someone can't do something, that's okay. We're all working together and we're all, obviously, always learning and trying to get better.

Leanne: Fantastic. Did you find that you have to do a bit of rebranding of the classroom? Some people associate a classroom with school. The way schooling's taught, it's very structured and there's right and wrong answers and you must follow this script. When you go in there and you're being flexible, you're getting people up and moving, is that something that you do to move away from the connotation of, this isn't school, this is an adult learning environment?

Joshua: Absolutely. If you walk into a classroom, or a setting, and you hand out, essentially, assessments or workbooks and it's all very literally black and white on the page, people, they get taken back to possibly negative times when they were at school. They would switch off so you've really going to shake that up at the start. The first activities, I ensure you're not asking them to write anything down, you're asking them to engage in the classroom. The first thing I'll always try and do is get everyone to speak, which I know it sounds a bit daunting for some people training, saying, "Oh, it's really difficult to get my students to speak."

It's difficult because they're used to not speaking so they're not going to start halfway through the week or something like that. You need to break that straightaway. The method to do that is, allow them to speak about something that they're not having to rely on their knowledge about the subject and being found out that they're not an expert. I have activities based around like, "Let's have a look at the difference between these two pitches. Circle the difference," and then we'll go around, "Okay, everyone has to say one thing which is different." Everyone can point and say, "Oh, look. This object is in this first picture but it's not in the second."

Just by something as simple as that, the individual has engaged, they've broken that-- No one's laughed at them, they haven't got it wrong. From that, that's the tempo of the class and everyone's keen to go along like that. In saying that, you've got to be careful to ensure that the first person you ask to speak is that individual who's showing a bit more confidence. You're not going to show that-- The kid at the back of the room who's trying to shy away, they'll be last.

What that individual will see is, every other person in the class has spoken, no one's laughed. It gets to their turn, they're able to say something and it's more part of that desire to be part of the group, that no individual is then going to go against it and not speak, that they're like, "Okay, everyone's doing it. I'm going to be part of the group. There's no repercussions." They're engaged, and then from there, the classroom environment is working well.

Leanne: Wow. I really liked you talking about creating a safe environment where everyone feels like it's okay to speak up. I like that you mentioned tempo as well. It's the first time someone on this podcast has mentioned tempo. A lot of facilitation and training is really about, how do you mix that up? At the beginning, you're setting a nice, safe tempo, but there'll be times where you're putting people and challenging people, increasing that rhythm then bringing it back when you reflect, so I like that you brought that into it.

I also want to touch on your time, I think it was in Darwin or was it in Brisbane, when you were doing stand-up comedy. Can you please tell us a bit about that experience? Why did you start doing that and what did you learn from it?

Joshua: It's a very short-lived career of stand-up, but I do enjoy-- I grew up performing on stage. I grew up playing musical instruments, my mother's a musician. From a very early age, I was just on stage tapping a drum or something behind a group of people which you just get so used to it being on stage.

Leanne: Josh loves the microphone.

Joshua: Yes, I don't shy away from it. It's something that's just always been there. Then in school, my eldest brother, when I was in year 8, he was in year 12, he actually wrote the school musical. I just always found myself performing on stage to some extent. I entered a comedy competition, RAW Comedy, in Darwin. Then I was the finalist there, so I traveled to the Melbourne comedy show and performed there. That was probably the biggest performance I've done inside of an audience.

One of the interesting takeaways from that was, right before I went on stage, as I was sitting, essentially, behind the curtain as they're introducing me, I just remember thinking of-- completely forgotten my first line. My mind went blank, and I was like-- In those situations, it's just good to stay calm because that's how the body works. I knew I delivered these lines before, I was well prepared, but it was a massive audience, there was camera crews, et cetera. Mind went blank.

The takeaway there is, that's how the mind works before you do something new, before you get on stage. Even for myself who’s someone who's been on stage a lot, I still get nervous. Particularly when it's something I'm doing for the first time, I still get those nerves and jitters. Maybe the difference is I, not embrace them, but I put up with them and know that's part of the gig and you go through with it.

That would be my advice to people who are presenting for the first time. If you're feeling nervous, well, everyone feels nervous. It's only when you're doing the same gig or the same facilitation to the same clientèle group after about three times, you'll realize, "Oh," then the body just starts to relax and you don't get that heightened state of awareness before, you don't get that adrenalin shot before. Like I said, if I do a different type of gig, then yes, I'll be nervous before I go on stage. It's something I think is always going to happen to individuals. Don't let that be a barrier for you to think you're not cut out for being a facilitator. I'd be surprised if there was an individual who didn't feel like that. It's the case for most people.

Leanne: Yes, I agree. It is the case. I thought it would be easy as well and that every time, I still get nervous. I have have spoken to facilitators and trainers on this podcast that have been doing it for 20 to 30 years and the second that you change up the content, it always comes back. Then what drives you to appear on stages or appear in front of workshop rooms and teach people?

Joshua: It's one of those things most related to my emcee work. Some people say, "You’re emceeing, you like to be on stage, you like to have that microphone." The real skill of a good facilitator or an emcee is someone who can get the event rolling and functioning well. Often that means doing less on the mic and not being up there to listen to your own voice, it's about being effective in your timing and what you're saying, and the tempo of the night. While it's counterintuitive, while I don’t mind being on stage, that's not the draw. The draw for me is the excitement in facilitating, is getting the event rolling well.

Nothing is more annoying or frustrating as seeing a facilitator or an emcee who's up there, who likes the sound of their own voice and they're showboating around. That turns everyone off instinctively. The skill of a real facilitator or an emcee is to be able to make it seem natural for the audience and make the whole event fluid. A lot of the time that's not spending time on the mic but actually getting other people up there and kicking things along, keeping that pace going.

Leanne: Fantastic. Let's talk about emceeing an event. What kind of prep work do you do prior to that night, that big day?

Joshua: The number one thing you can't go without is having a list of the names and checking you can pronounce them correctly. As I said before, often you can go up and then everything just disappears out of your mind. That's just the nerves kicking in and that's when you'll forget the individual's name or their position. I always have a list of the key people and in a really simple running list. From there, it's just a bit of adlibbing, but essentially, you're able to refer what's coming up next and what needs to be said at that point in time.

Just having those. Obviously, you can't stand up and read a list of notes, so your notes are very simple, and you're able to get those key points across. Then the rest is just adlibbing on the night.

Leanne: You've got an uncanny talent. You're very lucky that you can actually I have never [unintelligible 00:17:55] around you, but you can bring in these jokes just in the right moment, at the right time. Where does that come from? Is that just something that Josh has in his personality or did you have these jokes in the back your mind before you got on stage? Where does it come from?

Joshua: Humor is an interesting one. Like I said before, it's good to be prepared, possibly with a few jokes, but nothing would be set in stone where it's like, "Oh, at this point, I'm going to say this gag." A lot of the time I'll skip over them. You need some content, it's not all just ad-libbed, you need some content there but it's all about reading the room. Humor sometimes, like I said, it can seem very lame if an individual's up there and and they're telling a joke that they think is funny. If the room's not ready for that or it's not the right point, you need to restrict the humor.

In other times, that's right. You can just feel the audience. It's just building and everyone's listening to every word you say, so then it's a lot easier to drop a little word in there or a look or a glance which is funny, but that's only because at that stage, at that point of the night, that works. You need to be-- Like I said, I've definitely skipped over jokes or things I've written out just because it just wasn't the right time. It's about reading the room and just doing what's right at the right time.

Leanne: Excellent. Let's skip and go back to the remote training environment. I'd love to hear what you pack, what you find is essential when you're training people in a remote area. What do you put in your car?

Joshua: Some of the most important things I take out, it would be a-- You've obviously got to think about how many people you're training, but usually with me, it's around the 10 mark so it's not a massive audience. Obviously, if it was bigger, I’d have to take more activities. In saying that, I'd take a projector if I had more clients, but if it's smaller groups, I'll just have a laptop there. Definitely like a portable whiteboard, quality speakers. In most of my facilitation, I'll always have short clips of videos that I can put up there because you need to break up who’s speaking and the content, rather than me driving all these information and content.

It's great to go, "Here's a little two-minute clip of an individual," maybe introducing a topic for the first time or just an interesting little activity, because like I said before, it's easy then for the individuals and for everyone in the room, if we watch a-- For example, you could put on a short clip of people arguing in a customer service environment. Then it's very easy to go, "Hey. What went wrong here?" It's quite easy and people feel confident saying, "Hey. That person was rude to that person," or "This person did that," et cetera." It's very easy for everyone. It's not confronting, because you're talking about people on the computer, you're talking about people who aren't there.

It's easy to identify that behavior, and then from that we can say, "Okay. Take those points out," rather than me standing in front of a room for a number of hour saying, "Don't be rude to customers. It's bad and they'll have an argument." Always taking visual short videos, like I said, quality speakers to get all around the room. It's something that the person sitting at the back of the room needs to be able to hear or they'll completely switch off.

It's always good, no matter where you're delivering, is to get a sense of the room that you're going to be delivering in. Reorganize that room, so it's efficient. You might be pushing all the tables to the side, having a big open space, put all the desks in circles, et cetera, et cetera. It's important to just be well prepared.

Leanne: Fantastic. That's great. You had some advice for first time facilitators and that was about keeping calm and just making sure that your preparation enables you to deliver when it's the big moment. Do you have any other advice for those starting out their facilitation journey?

Joshua: Advise for first time facilitators. It's all preparation. Give yourself enough time to get your presentation ready. Run that past someone who can give you that feedback, and then it'd probably be, don't try and squeeze too much information into any presentation. Sometimes I chair a meeting here and we have multiple presenters all the time. People have a 3-minute slot and they'll have 15 points that they're trying to make to tell people.

What you need to think about is, "Where is my presentation? Where is that in the sequence of events for that day?" Because if it's all morning and there is 10-minute slots and you're one of those 10-minute slots but there's 5 before you and 5 after, no one has the capacity to remember the 15 points you want them to remember. Write your presentation first, but then go back and clearly be able to define, "What are your key takeaways?" You need to be able to explain those things very simply, and they need to be very obvious from people going away.

Like I said, after, if you are doing a professional development week or professional development day, at the end of the day, how many things can you remember from that day? If you can be really clear and succinct and explain your concepts well and easily, people will remember that, "I can remember, yes. That guy was talking about behavior management," or whatever it was. It's good to really break it down, and don't try and add more information in to make it appear that you're right for the job.

People try to stick in so much content and it's too much. It's like a tsunami of information. It just overwhelms people and it's hard. The brain kind of turns off. It's like "Well, there's too much information here, I can't handle all this. Even if I'm writing down a few notes, it's too much. It's coming too quick." Less is more. Break it down, introduce the key concepts very simply. Then like I said, show a short little video of that concept, maybe in action. Break that video down and talk about it in a more complex way, but then also bring it back into a more simplistic way that, like I said, everyone can understand.

That's the way to get your point across, and then people will walk out of your session going, "That made sense." [laughs]

Leanne: That's really interesting, talking about the order of proceedings and where you're in, say, over day and if you've given a short period of time. What it's really about there is being memorable, is what you said, but also think about what everyone else is doing. They'll be doing what you think you should be doing, which is cramming information down. To be remembered, what you have to do is something that's a bit different. It could be just telling a story for three minutes, bringing in that video, something that no one else has done. Immediately, if your key takeaways are obvious, people will remember. That's just the key for everyone is, when you're in a day and you're one part of that, try and forecast ahead and go, "All right. Well, this is the agenda. This person will be talking about ABC. Where can I come in? What can I do to bring it to life so that my three minutes, everyone remembers that at the end of the day?" That's critical.

Joshua: Absolutely. That's right.

Leanne: Josh, where can people find you if they want to talk to you and find out more?

Joshua: I'm on the world wide web.

[laughter]

Joshua: I'm on Facebook, Broome MC & Wedding DJ. That's my events business. It's called Rise Entertainment, but that's the search you put in. I'm up here in Broome delivering training to North West Australia. That's probably the main contact.

Leanne: You can find the links to Josh's website and his LinkedIn profile and other details on the show notes for this episode. Josh, thank you so much for your time. It's great to reconnect. I love that you have this side hustle of emceeing because you've always asked us to do it within the workplace, so it's great that you're doing it for the public as well.

Joshua: Absolutely. Leanne, thinking back on knowing I'll come in today and talk about some of my things I have been doing with emceeing and event management. A lot of those things that I've actually got into is because of yourself. We've work together. You were the creative driving force in a lot of those activities. You got me a lot of those gigs, you put my name forward, so I'd like to thank you for-- It was your creativity a lot of the time which opened some of those doors to going, "Hey, geez, these things needs to happen. Someone needs to do it. Well, I'll do it." You created the opportunities, so on behalf of myself and everyone in Broome, I've just got you a little token of appreciation.

Leanne: That's lovely.

Joshua: Got you a little Broome Cycles hat, the local cycling shop. It just says "Broome" on it, with a nice sunset. You can take that back to Brisbane and all your travels overseas and just show people beautiful little Broome.

Leanne: I will. We'll have to get a selfie after we've recorded this and pop it on the show notes. You can see the hat there and a photo of Josh and I on the show notes. Thanks for that lovely compliment, and I'm proud to be part of your career development. Let's check in in a couple of years and see where we've both gone.

Joshua: Looking forward to it.

Leanne: Cool. Thanks, Josh.

Joshua: See you, mate.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Mark McKeon (Episode 25)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In today's episode, I talk to Mark McKeon about the parallels between creating high performance on the footy pitch; and high stake situations in a group workshop facilitation environment. Need some inspiration and motivation?

Here’s the episode transcript for Episode 25 with Mark McKeon. Alternatively you can listen to my conversation with Mark.

Leanne: Welcome to the First Time Facilitator Podcast, Mark McKeon.

Mark McKeon: Hello Leanne

Leanne: Hi Mark, thanks so much for your time. Mark to start, I'd really love you to share with our listeners your career journey, it's a bit different from any other facilitator that we've had on the show. You started out playing in a high performing footy team and then transitioned to a high performing coach, and now you work with businesses as well. You've pivoted your skills through sport and business, can you share with our listeners a little bit about your career journey and how you wound up in the world of speaking and facilitating?

Mark: It's certainly not a stayed journey, it was really serendipity 101 because, as you mentioned I was involved with footy as a player, and then as a high performance coach my original training was in biomechanics and human movement. While I was doing the high performance coaching, because in those days it wasn't a full time role, I also set up corporate gyms for clients, and one of the clients actually asked me to do a talk to the staff to try to get more people to join the camp.

I did that and I had a call couple of days later from an agent, a speakers bureau rep asking me to- when I was doing another talk I had let him know because he wanted to come and watch. I said, "Well, I'm not doing anymore, that was the only one. That was a one off." He actually then organized a job, a freebie came along, I guess he liked what we saw and asked if I'd want him to represent me.

It was purely by accident and then slowly over the next five years that took over from my corporate work and then another 10 years later from my coaching work, and for the last, I guess 20 years, it's been an absolute full time role.

Leanne: Congratulations. That first stage, can you remember that was over say 20 years ago, what kind of preparation had you had before that, had you had any kind of media training through your footy career or was this just something that you learnt on your own?

Mark: Look, no, to be honest, I think it's maybe just a skill that I've managed to have, and it was obviously very raw at the time and I've hopefully improved it since then, but I just try to do it in as honest and as natural way as I could. I still try to do that now maybe I think it's like 1,400 presentations later I still try to bring that same honesty to my presentations when I can.

Leanne: Wow. Let's talk about those parallels between I guess high performance. Also, I used to play netball, not at the level that you did, but at a pretty high level. I've often said in the Podcast the way that I prepare for a big workshop or a speech is the same way that I prepare for a netball game in terms of my morning routine, the music I listen to when I'm on the drive in. Do you find that there are some parallels between playing in a high performing game like a footy final as opposed to presenting in front of thousands of people?

Mark: Yes, definitely. It's one of the things that really drew me towards it because after I played for a little while, but then coached for a lot longer, you do everything you can and you do your role to your highest level but come game day, the players would run out, not watch from the sidelines and whether that's a ego thing or a desire to have the most influence you can, really restores the fact that if you are on stage, if you are facilitating it, it was you, it was your performance, it was your ability to affect the outcome, so I think that's a really strong parallel from a broader point of view of the AFL environment and a corporate environment.

I think it's also amazing how much impact leaders have, coaches or business leaders have in getting that discretionary effort, in getting that high level of performance out of their teams is amazingly close parallels there.

Leanne: Let's talk about that discretionary effort, what does that look like for you in terms of your preparation for a big- say for a big workshop? Say you got a new client, they want something, let's talk about you guys are in training a bit later, but you are approached and you haven't worked in an industry before, what kind of effort do you put in to making that a really great experience for the people that show up?

Mark: That's where the rubber hits the road. That's just one thing you can't [unintelligible 00:04:30] regardless of whether you have been traveling or you have been busy with other roles, you have to do that, you have to do that research. I always would want to have that absolutely done at least the day before the event, if not well before that. Certainly, that starts with your web search, you're checking their website and getting a close understanding of what the industry does, what their product or service is, if you haven't had previous experience with that company or with that industry.

Then most importantly, when you're getting a brief from the clients, often the clients don't really know what it is they want or you might be working with a committee and there are [chuckles] differing views on what should and what shouldn't happen. One of the great dangers especially in a facilitation role is it becomes vague and you don't have clear idea of what you are trying to achieve.

When I do that brief I'm always starting with the end in mind and I often ask the people if you had a magic wand in this day or this say could go as well as they possibly could, what would be the three outcomes? For them that can be a really challenging question that they need to go away and think about and discuss. Once you know as a facilitator what those three outcomes are, then you can work back and do your preparation about your discussion groups or what content you might provide yourself and you can structure your day.

I'm quite a casual person but that's one thing that I'm not casual about, I can be quite painful about that and the only other thing is room set up. I'm very pedantic about room set up to make sure that you've got the best opportunity for people to be involved.

Leanne: Great, so in terms of room set up, what does that look like for you?

Mark: Every room is different, but I would certainly, and it depends on the size of the group and so on. The worst rooms are long, skinny rooms like corridor type rooms where you are at one end and there can be a long distance between you and the last person. That makes it much harder. A room that was like that, I would try to have that configured, so that I was in the side in the middle so people are only half as far away from you as they would be to have it the other way.

If it's more of a presentation thing and it is a large audience, you have to have a stage. Often, organizers won't provide a stage, but you have to have a stage. I'm about 183 centimeters, I'm reasonably tall, but if people are sitting down and they might be 10,15 meters away from you, it's very hard for them to see you. I also would never have a lectern because a lectern is a barrier between you and the audience and you need to be open and in control, so I'd absolutely get rid of that.

In terms of seating with a small group where it may be a facilitation where there's 30 or 40 people, I think round tables open at the front, so people aren't sitting with their back to you, are much more preferable rather than a U-shaped- most are U-shaped depending on the number of people in the room can work, but it tends to be very formal and very back to school because people are sitting next to each other almost like they are back in school.

If it's a large audience but in a bigger auditorium that might hold a few hundred or even more people to block off the back and have the people more towards the front, so they are closer to you.

Leanne: Yes, you always find a nice big sort of room set up. When you invite people to come in, they always linger towards the back and it's a bit of effort to rally them up the front. That's really good practical advice.

Mark: Pleasure. Just in regard to that too for people who haven't facilitated so many times before, if you are ever in doubt as to whether you should or shouldn't use a microphone, always, in my opinion, use it because you might have a strong voice, but you could be speaking all day and the extra amplification that you get through a mic makes your voice much deeper, much more resonant and it just really adds to quality.

Sometimes people say, "Why did you use a mic? There wasn't that many people there." It actually, it's one of those subtle thing that helps. My preference is for a lapel mic because it means both hands are free. When you have a hand held mic unless you have it in the right spot as it very easy to get that popping peep all the time. If it's a directional mic one other thing that sometimes people may not be aware of, if you hold the mic a hand held mic vertically just in front of your chin, you don't get nearly as good a sound as if you hold it at an angle so the top of the microphone is directly in front of your mouth, but of course, when you do that you are actually partially hiding your face. [chuckles]

Whichever way you go with a hand held mic you lose a little bit, so my preference is the lapel mic. Of course, I wouldn't use a lectern mic because to use the lectern mic you need to stand behind the lectern, and as I mentioned that could be a block between you and the audience, but just to add to that all these things or opinions and people have their own preference.

Leanne: That's true, but I agree with you on all of those, especially the having a lectern up there. I think there's nothing worse, it creates a block. I guess people use it because it's a bit of a safety net for them, because they can have their notes there and everything else. I do challenge all of our listeners too, if given the option go the lapel, it's definitely more free. Just remember to have it switched off when you're offstage. [chuckles]

Mark: Yes. Also, I'm sorry to interrupt there Leanne, also, be pedantic about the battery. If there's an AV take there, they'll often say, "Just had a new battery yesterday", but I would actually respectfully ask for a new battery before your session because I've been on stage in front of quite a few 100 people when the battery's gone, just fails and you're mute. It's embarrassing for someone have to run up on stage and fiddle around with the battery pack while you're trying to do your presentation.

Leanne: Is that one of the worst things that happened to you onstage or have you had any other experiences that you can share?

Mark: Look, things are going to happen, that certainly happened a couple of times. There's been malfunctions in the warning system, you'll get alarms as if there's been a fire and so on. Once at a presentation at the MCG they were testing a siren, so they rang the siren every 15 seconds for about 10 minutes. There's been malfunctions of equipment where stages have collapsed, not in a dangerous way where anyone's got hurt or anything like that, but things are going to happen and that's when it does the audience will take the lead from you.

If you show that it's not really worrying you or you're pretending that's it's not really worrying you, they'll come along for the ride. Expect the unexpected.

Leanne: That's really good advice, to expect the unexpected, I think it's key for all facilitators to be extremely flexible, which is difficult if you want to control where it's going and those outcomes that you spoke about, your top three and waving that magic wand, I think that's a really great question. What other in terms of your delivery style, what do you think that you bring to a show or to an event. What does Mark bring?

Mark: Well, hopefully some knowledge and some expertise and some enthusiasm. When I was thinking about the chat we were going to have, and this is my number one tip if you like, it's something that even quite a few people in the industry with a lot of experience, to be honest I think don't do. It's what I call being audience centric. What I mean by that is, if you're at the front whether it's a keynote presentation or a facilitation, you've been given the privilege because either you know something that the audience don't know or you're trying to get the audience to do something that they may not be doing.

You're in a really important center of influence there. A lot of people when they're in that situation, they're thinking of themselves, "What will I say? How will I go? I hope I don't run out of time, I hope they can see my slides, I hope I get an eight out of 10." They're thinking about themselves. Even to the point where sometimes when I actually help teach presentation skills, when people are putting a practice, I'll put a plant in the audience who will actually get out their phone and pretend to send a text message or even lift up a newspaper, full tabloid newspaper and hide their head behind the newspaper in the front row.

After the person has done this practice presentation you'll say of them, "Who do you think wasn't quite engaged?" Very often they won't know.

Leanne: Wow. Okay. Because I weren't paying attention, I was more absorbed in-[crosstalk]

Mark: Exactly. By audience centric, what I mean by that is you're a servant for the audience. The more you think about the audience, how can I help the audience in your preparation phase, and then in the actual presentation or facilitation phase, it makes you look at the audience, it makes you aware if a particular person maybe isn't quite engaged or if you've really hit a note that you need to keep going on, whether it's time to pause and ask questions.

The cues are always there from the audience and I think it's the most important thing. In addition to that, audiences love it, they love it, they can sense it, they can smell it when you've got their best interests at heart. I think it enriches the experience for everyone. If as a presenter you get a bit nervous or unsure, it tends to take away all that anxiety because your focus is away from yourself and towards the audience.

I often say to people, some people present with a easier solution, "Now, what we should problem again, mentality." As a facilitator you need to have the opposite, you need to dig and find and listen and watch. I think that's the magic, I really do think that's the magic.

Leanne: That is the magic. I love audience-centric approach. What you were explaining in terms of your presentation skills training, I think that everyone's worst fears is they're out there talking and someone will pull out to find that it's very real. I think instead of seeing it as something to be fearful about, it's really a sign to you to say, instead of continuing what you're doing, why don't you break it up? Why don't you ask your question and use this as a cue to make the workshop a better impact?

I think that's a really great practical tool for all of our learners. Don't take it as a personal hit to what you're doing, take it as a sign to switch things around.

Mark: What happens from that and if you using a slide deck and where that session has gone means that the next couple of slides are no longer valid or not at that time. Then I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that because of the way the session's gone. Going to slide mode, fast forwarding through to where you want to go and just bring up the next slide.

You don't have to be a prisoner to the structure that you've set. A lot of people are worried about running out of content, they'll prepare four hours worth for an hour presentation.

I find it's always different, if certainly in a facilitation, a keynote it's a little bit different but a facilitation is always different and on forever swapping slides around and stopping and accelerating and changing the times and the breaks and so on, all really hopefully, to the benefit of the audience rather than my own comfort level.

Leanne: Wow. Yes, very challenging, great information there. You talked about people do have this fear of running out of content before the times allocated is over. What do you do in that situation if you have run out of time or do you throughout the day recognize, "We've gone quickly here, we have more time for a discussion here." Do you pace it a bit more or do you wait until the end and go, "Well, here are some other things I've thought about, let's do this now." How did you approach it?

Mark: It's a good question. To be honest, I've been doing this a long time now, I have a lot of blocks of different information and I think maybe one of the indicators that you maybe have reached a certain level of competence or beyond is that you've always got more than you have time for. That's one thing so I guess you'd say fundamentally. The second thing is I will always have more ready in the preparation phase than I think I'm going to need.

Sometimes those later ones that I wasn't going to get to because of the way the session goes, maybe will come forward and something else we wont to get to. I'm always going back to that thinking with the end in mind, "What's going to be the best thing to actually get to those outcomes we want?" That's the other, maybe a really important thing that's a little bit different to sport, to be honest.

When you were playing netball or if any of your listeners are playing sport, I found I would always perform better when I was just in a moment, I wasn't really thinking about it too much. I wasn't conscious of how many kicks I'd had, I was just doing it. As a facilitator you almost need another part of your brain because while you might even be speaking, listening and be part of discussion, part of your brain has got to be thinking, 'Where do I go next? What does that person mean? What's the context, how do I move towards that outcome?"

You almost need to split your brain to the one that's actively there, to the one that's thinking about where do I go next. That's something that probably does come from experience. When people come to me and say they want to be a facilitator, I actually [inaudible 00:19:02] focus on that audience centricity I spoke. I mentioned about the split brain and then I'll tell them, "Go away and do it a 100 times and come back", because that's what it takes I think. That's a [unintelligible 00:19:14] -

Leanne: It is. It's really, really difficult to stay in the moment and stay completely present, which as we know is really important. Then also I think, "where is this moving to? What do I need to do next?" You don't need to split your brain, but I've never heard of it being compartmentalized that. I think by doing this Podcast as well, when I first started I think this is episode 25.

When I first started I was keeping to script a lot, but I think through the journey I'm listening to what you're saying, but I'm thinking where is this conversation leading to, and directing it that way. I think live questions and interviewing is very similar to the whole and split brain in terms of facilitation too.

Mark: I agree, absolutely agree. There's a lot of synergy there and sometimes when you're being interviewed from someone and the discussion is headed in a certain direction, [chuckles] it can tell you that they're just asking you the next question that's on their run so just not no longer [unintelligible 00:20:06] relevant or is congruent. A good thing for facilitators to do is to listen to skilled interviewers. You're doing a great job.

I think the morning DJs who interview a lot of people get really skilled at-- [unintelligible 00:20:26] and really getting to the core of whatever the issue is really quickly, because they only have a short amount of time to interview someone. They maybe not get so much time for preparation. I find that terrific and sometimes when I'm listening to them I'm thinking to myself, "what question would I ask next?" Then they ask a better one than the one I have in mind and I think that's-- you always got to try to keep learning if you can.

Leanne: That's right. I think my favorite, I've got two favorites. Richard Fidler from ABC Conversations is one of mine and Andrew Denton is a bit of a legend in Australian journalism. He really gets the core, he gets a lot of emotion right there in a longest space of time. Mark, I guess being present is and then having to forecast ahead and being standing up all day, it can be pretty exhausting. You do this full time. How do you manage your energy levels through the day and through the week and make sure that you set to go and full of energy every time that you're out onstage?

Mark: That's a good question because it can be extremely draining. You might have heard the saying, it's a hard way to make an easy living. I think anyone who's been on stage for six to eight hours in a day can certainly attest to how mentally draining it is. On the day, I do get there early to make sure the room set up is right, the sound is right and so on and everything's ready to go.

Then I disappear until about five minutes before the session is going to start and I don't mean to be disrespectful to people. As soon as people know you're the facilitator, you're the speaker and they see you, they want to engage, they want to start and it's almost like your work has started little early. During the breaks, I disappear during break. Sometimes I think many people may take the wrong inference from that. I'm not trying to be arrogant at all. I'm just trying to freshen myself up to the next session.

Even to the point sometimes where I'll say, "look, sorry, but I have a quick phone call I needed to make." Just to get away and get that space.

If at all possible I try to get some fresh air. Have one coffee during the morning break. Then just really chill out even to the point where at lunchtime if I can, if there's a green room or something like that, I will actually lie down and just breathe or do a bit of meditation, that sort of stuff. Just give myself as much space and as much rest as I can. Then at the end of the day I will always stay back and talk to people and answer any questions they may have.

I absolutely try to be quite selfish during the day. I never drink alcohol the night before I'm going to present. Usually, I will fly in the night before rather than the morning for there's a few reasons for that, because you never know if you're going to get a flight delay, but then you can get a good night's sleep, be up, ready to go. Usually do a little bit of exercise on the morning of a presentation to to be ready.

I also just mentally prepare too, done all of the actual preparation the day or the days before. The actual morning of the event, I don't say that loud, but I do say to myself how great this is going to be, how much fun it's going to be.

Leanne: Fantastic.

Mark: How it's a privilege for you to be there. You're really going to help people, you really do. Pump myself up on the morning of a session.

Leanne: That's really great to hear that tip. Especially about being selfish, I think because you want to be of service to people and help everyone, but I think you do have to protect yourself particularly, when you haven't done the days workshop. I really like your excuse of just going to make a phone call because I want to get away, but I don't think people pick up on that cue sometime, so I'm going to use that one. I think some of our listeners will too, so thanks.

Now, I was wondering if you could explain, I really found that your concept of the Go Zone, that I saw on your website. I find that really interesting. I think it would be useful for you to explain that to our listeners. What that Go Zone is really about?

Mark: Yes, sure. Truly, I guess you'd say it's my signature program. It's one of those things it's been like 20 years in the making. It's really an evolution of all of the work I've done in the past because my passion is for what I call sustainable peak performance that people in corporate life achieving to a high level, but being able to maintain that level for five, 10, 20 years as opposed to someone who can reach a level of sales goals or be a good effective leader or manager, but they just can't maintain that pace.

It's also part of the issue is when I was a young footy player, the training that we actually went through was quite barbaric. I think I spent five years just being tired every day and just enduring my career rather than really enjoying it. All those things really set up a passion for me about this whole sustainable peak performance. The Go Zone is a structure in a system where you shift between keys or zones as I call them between a Go Zone, a slow zone and a no zone.

Go zone is for corporate people are usually two hours, their periods if they're at their desk where they are having the door shut. They've switched off their email arrival times and they just power through tasks. A task is anything that's up to an hour, anything beyond an a hour is a project and you break it down into smaller tasks. You have a task list, you have everything you need.

The task could be a phone call, it could be an email, it could be working on the spreadsheet, it could be writing a report, it could be doing a 101. When you're in this Go Zone, there the most important tasks for your business that day and there's no excuses, there's no distractions. You actually have a buzzer that tells you when the Go Zone is up and you just power through them. You're not trying to do five or 10. You're just trying to do one at a time to the best of your ability till the time is complete.

There's a lot of blood chemistry that sits under that the way adrenaline, cortisol work in your body and the neurotransmitters of serotonin and melatonin to balance them out because you can't be this Go Zone state all day, every day. For most people, it's a couple of hours. The slow zone is a longer zone where you're still working, it's still productive, but you do a bit of this, you do a bit of that. You maybe make a call, go out grab a coffee, check the paper, listen to another conversation. You're just going from one task to another which is fine as long as it's not your only level of performance, because a lot of people are in this slows zone, all day, every day.

Leanne: Yes.

Mark: It's like a groove that they can't get out of it. In the third zone is the recovery zone, that's what I call the no zone. This is away from work times, when you're not at work, but crucially you're not thinking about work, where you're investing in a passion or hobby, a pastime. You take it easy on yourself, your phone's off, you just do something you really enjoy.

You're trying to do these Go Zone to no zone on a two to one ratio. In the course of a week, if you had eight hours in the Go Zone, you'll be four hours in the no zone, not necessarily same day, just by [unintelligible 00:28:01] over the week. You had some structure of changing levels of intensity upwards and downwards and everything else is asleep or the slow zone. A lot of people use that to really create some rigor and structure around their performance and to get a little bit of mental toughness into their daily routine.

Leanne: What a great concept because I know that all the rage now is high intensity interval training which is the difference between doing something at a really fast rate and then recovery as well. I think what you're doing here just aligning that to the workplace. I think when you were talking about the slow zone, I was thinking, "yes, that's exactly what I'm sitting in most of the time." I'd love to share this with my colleagues and just go, "look, can we make a commitment to looking at creating a ratio like this and respecting each other's time and getting to the Go Zone two hours every day." I think that would be really-- you churn up so much work, you could- not coast, but I can imagine those two hours are high impact.

Mark: You're right, it's important. What you said it's true, there especially if you're working in an open plane environment or something like that where respecting each other's time. There's quite a few companies who do Go Zones and during the Go Zone time, it's not okay to go and interrupt someone or ask them about something or play music or have loud conversations. There's certainly that element of it.

I think the two major benefits are certainly the productivity, I think that's pretty well proven. Also, the liberation, the control of your blood chemistry. I love doing Go Zones in the morning. I usually do mine 10:30 to 12:30, lunch is the reward. I'm still working in the afternoon. [chuckles] It feels like I'm cruising a bit. It just feels like the end of the day, it's like, "wow, that's just-- how easy was that."

I don't feel comfortable doing slow zones unless I've either had a Go Zone or I've got one scheduled. That's the other thing I always schedule these things in advance, I always know when my next Go Zone is going to be, when my no zone is going be. If I have to move them because of flight changes or something like that, you tend to move it, but you don't lose it, and that's really important because a lot of people, the thing that they will neglect will be the no zones.

They'll do the work part because there's always extra work to do, but when they get busier, they won't do the no zone, the fun zone, the recovery zone, and I often [unintelligible 00:30:26] stresses and the problem, the problem is like a recovery and when people don't have recovery, it's virtually impossible long-term to get that sustainable level of peak performance. They can do it for a while with work ethic or they just grind it out, but long-term that just doesn't work like that. You'll know from your athlete days, you have to have the rest in order to get that level of performance.

Leanne: Yes, for sure. What I like that you said in the recovery zone, the no zone is to stay away from your phones because I think a lot of people think they do relax by looking at their phones, [chuckles] but I do think it's counter-intuitive, and you need to give yourself a break, so thanks for raising that. Mark, this is not even a segue but I really wanted to bring it up before our time lapses, but I loved-- on your website you got a video of you entering a stage, it's like 007 style.

I mean that's a really cool idea, kind of x-factor, what kind of other things that are x-factors that you bring into leading your workshops or all these keynotes? I do encourage, on a side note, for all our listeners to hop on there, we'll link to that video in our show notes of this episode, because I thought it was really funny and cool.

Mark: That's an interesting point you raise. It's a fine line, so that video you're talking about, that was for a company I had already presented to, I think six years in a row. In one sense, you're looking for something different, but also the people remember stories and they remember images, so I was dressed as 007 and the content of that message was O-O-7, so 'O' for organization, 'O' for optimism, and it's seven daily habits.

The whole idea of that imagery of me in a James Bond mask was meant to remind people and to create a bit of an entrance, so another time all done for a sales group, I actually dressed in a crocodile outfit to make the point that in sales you had to have a thick skin and people remembered that image. Once as a caveman with a big wooden "Why?" about finding your strong "Why" because a caveman had a very obvious "why", they just needed to eat and stay warm, so helping people remember that image.

You also have to be careful that you don't go too far, because I have a little bit of a hobby to do illusions like magic tricks and I used to do them on stage and make things disappear and so on, but you have to be really careful that the gimmicks don't take over and that audience would start waiting for the next trick because I wouldn't introduce it, I'd just do it and something funny would happen, and then you can lose the impact of the key message you're trying to convey.

You have to be clear for the audience, what is this? Is it a keynote or a magic show? I actually don't do that much anymore because the imagery and the gimmick taken too far actually detracts from the session, and I did have to learn that lesson. But stories and images, as long as they're congruent to the message, so the James Bond OO7, the crocodile skin, you've got to have a thick skin, you've got to be strong, the caveman, the strong "why?", they were congruent to the message, so it works, but if you just do a gimmick without a reason, without a link, then the people won't get it and it'll detract.

Leanne: Yes. Just a question, how did you get these ideas of the caveman and the "why?" Was that something that you thought of straight away or were you in the shower one day and thought that this was a great costume, how did you link those two kind of seemingly disparate things together?

Mark: I suppose you say it's imagination, but I think it's one of the great things if you -what we're talking about the Go Zone before, I've done the Go Zone presentation of a book, at least 300 or 400 times, I think, and most of the time it's pretty much the same and I love doing it, but as a facilitator, it's also great to have these other challenges that get thrown at you.

It's a client you've worked with before or there's a specific really strong theme, and to go away and think of something that's going to make that work, and if you can make it a lot of fun for the audience and also fun for yourself, it's an absolute winner, so I think that really comes back to the imagination, but for me it's not so much the idea that comes during the shower, it's a time when you do a Go Zone and lock yourself in the door and you just think to yourself, "right, what are we going to do in this session?"

It might take you 20-30 minutes of grinding out ideas till you come up with something, so that's that whole thing about, it's more about perspiration than inspiration. I think it's a great thing for facilitators to do to keep themselves on edge.

Leanne: Yes, I agree too. On that note, finally, what is your advice to a first time facilitator?

Mark: I think a couple things. Certainly, the audience centricity. Certainly, do your preparation beforehand. Certainly, work on splitting your brain, so that you can think about what's coming next, all those things. Certainly get every job you can, get ever [unintelligible 00:35:52], it a rotary club, do meetings, local sporting clubs, even if it means you're not getting paid for those jobs, there's no substitute for being up the front.

Also, don't be put off if you think that it's a crowded field and, "how am I going to get work?" From a marketing point of view, the absolute best way to get jobs is to do a good job, and it might be hard to break in, but there's always room for a quality facilitator in the industry. Personally, I think it's just a fantastic career because it gives you a lot of challenge, the opportunity to travel, meet great people, but it also gives you personal freedom, so you're not working a 9 to 5 job, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I love the ability to be free, almost be a performer in a way because it all comes down to your level of performance.

For people who've maybe got that aspiration or do a bit or like to do more, work on your craft, just work on your craft, look for every opportunity because it can create a - and I've been so lucky that it's created such a fantastic lifestyle and provided for my family and so on. Don't give up if it's a bit hard because there are opportunities there, more and more.

Leanne: I've got to say Mark, that's probably been one of the most inspiring responses I've heard to that question on the show today, so thank you so much. We've covered, just in these 40 minutes, there's so much that we've covered and a lot more that we could cover. We've covered everything from your tips in terms of even the detail of getting a new battery for your microphone and the type of microphone that you should use, through to the questions that you ask to clarify with the clients and the research that you do and why that's so important.

As well as how to structure your day, so you are more productive and can be the best facilitator that you can be, so Mark, thank you so much for all your insight and wisdom, it's been really great talking to you today.

Mark: My pleasure, thanks a lot, Leanne.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Sean Lavin (Episode 24)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In today's episode, I talk to Sean Lavin about his experience with facilitation and the team profile tool called the 'Team Management Profile'. Sean is a passionate, optimistic and friendly personality with a strong background in both hotel/services and open-cut coal mining operations.

Here's the episode transcript for Episode 24 with Sean Lavin.

Leanne: Welcome to the First Time Facilitator Podcast my colleague and friend, Sean Lavin.

Sean: Thanks, Leanne. It’s really nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Leanne: It's great to have you on the show. Now, Sean tell us a bit about yourself, you've got a really interesting career history and I'd love to hear how you came to the world of finding facilitation and presenting in public.

Sean: Yeah, cool. I guess it was more of an organic sort of process. So in high school, I did a little bit of public speaking more forced into it because my brother did a lot of it and I think the expectation was kind of set but I always found it quite easy. It didn't really stress me out and I saw a lot of other people who I guess found it really quiet or they would get very nervous so I sort of did a little bit of that and then I finished school and I went to uni. I did Hotel and Tourism Management so I got into the hotel industry so my job was all about service and about going up and approaching strangers and saying hello to them and welcoming them into the hotel and trying to make their days as great as possible. So I sort of just worked on that I guess, it sort of became very natural that I was very confident in front of strangers and people. I’ve always been very social and then I sort of left that career to go into mining for a bit of a sea-change.

Leanne: So what was the reason sort of behind that?

Sean: Look, honestly, I just looked at, I look to my boss and what he was doing I looked at his boss and it just wasn't what I wanted to do. I really enjoyed the sort of social aspect of working in the hotel industry but I guess that the sort of shift work, changing shifts to the last minute, we're always sort of short-staffed and running around like crazy.

Leanne: Sounds a bit like mining though.

Sean: Well, yeah I guess so. Yeah, my brother-in-law at that time was actually working in the mining industry and business was booming and he said, “Hey, if you want to sea-change come and drive a truck for a while.” and so I thought “Great. Perfect opportunity to get on and even time rest there when I go back to uni and study something.” I was really keen on doing which was the people side of things so I went back and studied, did my masters in management in HR and the rest is kind of history. I was driving a truck around in circles for about six years studying on the side and then I was fortunate enough to transition into the graduate program in the HR space within the same business and so that brought me down to down to Brisbane, down to the city about 18 months ago. I've just joined started my third rotation of the graduate program into the final straight I guess and really diving into the facilitation side of things and loving it so that's the snapshot, I guess.

Leanne: Now, we've got something in common because I know that in those trucks you're driving in circles but while you were doing that, what else were you listening to in the truck?

Sean: Yes, yeah exactly. So a really good friend of mine, Matt Linney, big shout out to Matti. I'll put him on to this so he can never listen. He asked me probably would have been around 2014, whether I listen to podcasts I said, “I really don’t know what they are. I never really heard of them.” He said “Mate, you’re like out of everyone I know, you need to be getting involved in this because you love it.” So he put me onto a few podcasts and I just loved it, you could drive around in a truck in the middle of the night because we worked a 24-hour operation. I just felt like I was sitting in a room with some amazing people having these conversations and it was just awesome and so yeah I jumped on the podcast bandwagon. My phone is just constantly telling me I've got no storage left because I've got too many podcasts banged up and yeah, so honestly podcasts have actually become quite a big part of my life in the sense of where I get information and education from nowadays, yeah.

Leanne: Yeah. I think that's where Sean and I sort of bonded over very quickly is that he told me about a podcast, The Art of Charm  was last year.

Sean: Yes.

Leanne: And so I started listening to that and I thought, “Oh yeah, Sean actually has good taste in podcasts.” and we frequently to share episodes and things. It’s so nice to know that four years later, you're appearing on your first podcast, who would have thought?

Sean: Yeah. The inaugural podcast. I was a little bit nervous but I thought, “You know what, let's just have a chat and have a conversation because that's how I used to feel listening to podcasts.” So I thought, “Well, how could I be actually be involved in one.”

Leanne: Yeah.

Sean: Yeah. So thanks for having me, this is great.

Leanne: It is great. Now, I’d like to really sort of not a very straightforward segue but really talk about I guess the focus of this episode which is a tool an assessment tool but both you and I got accreditation before quite recently we decided to use and it's called the Team Management Profile. So in a previous episode I've interviewed a guy, Adam, we spoke about the strengths finder tool and I do have quite a few HR people that listen to the podcast and I think it's really nice from time to time to talk to people with accreditation, find out what the tool is useful for and how to use it. So I guess before you even stepped into that room and did the accreditation, what did you know about the TMP that stands team management profile what did you know about it?

Sean: Yeah, very little. I'm fairly fresh, a fairly green into the world of HR and facilitation really. It's really only been about 18 months, so very little. I knew there was a really pretty coloured wheel and that meant something that was very powerful. I'd sat in on a couple of sessions prior to our accreditation with another colleague of ours who is accredited and so I kind of got a little bit of a crash course into what it was all about and that really set me up going in to do the accreditation because you know I was really excited to learn more about the amazing tool that is TMP.

Leanne: Cool. So can you let us know a bit more about the tool and what it does and why you'd use it?

Sean: Yeah. So it's actually quite simple on the surface as you basically have participants who sign up and they go through a questionnaires about 60 questions and of that it sort of spits out a personalized report. It gives you a bit of an insight into the way that you like to work and sort of I suppose your preferred role within a team. So there's lots of different tasks that sort of fall into the work scope in any sort of industry in any business globally. I think everyone sort of has a preference for what they like doing in that life cycle of work and this is just a great tool to highlight or show hey what you actually prefer doing and then you can actually structure the way the tasks are delegated and this sort of work that you take on based on what you prefer to do.

Leanne: So as part of the accreditation process we each had to complete in our Profiles, I'd like to ask you just to start, what did you find personally from your profile? Was it a surprise, shock or you completely on-board with what you read when you got your profile? And what does that profile even tell you?

Sean: Yeah, look I was completely on board. I was quite blown away and this is something that another colleague mentioned only last week was that “I can't believe how 60 questions could be so accurate.” I think a lot of people go into it, thinking it’s a little bit airy-fairy almost like it's sort of telling your future or you're reading horoscopes or something. But it was really accurate and the description that it breaks down services you know, this is the way you probably like to work, you like people to approach you in this sort of way, you get flustered if this happens and you can kind of start relating to what it's telling you about yourself and the way you like to work and for me personally it was it was probably 95% spot-on you know I get. So my major preference I guess is what they call a concluded producer or my preference is all that output so it's all about just getting things done.

So there's some people that love researching, there's some people love thinking of the great ideas, there's some people that like organizing it all and you got the people who like myself just like doing it getting it done. I think that's why I really enjoy facilitation as well because it's the output. It's you who do the prep work before it but then when you actually get up and run a workshop that's the output from a facilitator’s perspective. Then you've got those who like to actually control, make sure that what's being done is what we wanted to do in the first place and then trying to maintain it as well. So a lot of different preferences and you can be across the board and across the spectrum in with the preference.

Leanne: Yeah, that’s right. Because if you look at the wheel it's all beautiful colours, it's really nice and bright. What we usually see from people is that they have a major preference and have two minor preferences and either side of that. But Sean's, your wheel was a bit different.

Sean: Yeah. So I was what they call a “split-wheel”. Where for instance generally your preference, your major preference and you'll have actually two minor preferences and they usually sit close by because that's the kind of scope of work that you like to do and it's that sort of process. For me, it was actually split so I actually looked at my percentage breakdown and found that I'm fairly brought across the whole wheel. I think my major preference, so I should say there's eight different pieces of that wheel and seven of them are all within about six percent of each other.

Leanne: Okay.

Sean: All adding up to a hundred percent. So it's not good or bad, it's just the way that we each like to go about our work and the work that we prefer to do and I like to think that it's for me personally that I can kind of touch into lots of different aspects of say a work cycle and be you know comfortable enough doing it.

Leanne: Unlike you're unbalanced friend that you're looking at right now.

Sean: Yeah. I’m staring down at you Leanne. So there's some people that might get 0% or 1% in some areas and so for instance, if you are quite low inside the reporter advisor piece which is all about gathering information. You probably don't like going and researching and trying to find information, how to do market research or doing say cost analysis that sort of work. It's doesn't mean you can't do it, it doesn't mean that you can't learn to do it, it just means that for right now that's not your preference and so then your preference would lie in another aspect of that work. So great task to delegate.

Leanne: Yeah, sure. I agree. I don't think I was very high and reporter advisor either. So when you received your profile have you actually looked at any of the action items or what kind of value has it given you to know that “Okay, this is what I am.” What does that mean for you now seeing that profile?

Sean: Yeah, it's actually quite funny. So in the team, I mean currently we've got quite a few people that have a different preference and you can kind of see the work that they do or the sort of ideas that they have and where that fits in. I'll share the story that we had, so we had yourself Leanne who thought of this great idea you then passed it on to someone who loves organizing. She put everything in place and got everything lined up and then she gave me the PowerPoint presentation to do you know that final sort of pieces to sort that output. So we kind of, we actually without realizing it and before doing accreditation. We were actually delegating tasks in line with our preference which is quite cool.

Leanne: Now in terms of teams. How can a tool like this help a team? So you might have a support team like a finance team that comes to you again talking to the HR practitioners or anyone in a business that's been asked to run a team building session. I think we often get asked to do that we've got two hours, we’ve got to come up with something. I found, I guess the TMP is a really great tool to do that with. How does it help teams?

Sean: Yeah. I think it really helps especially a manager of a team or so there's more senior people in the team to understand what the preferences are for the people that make up that team. So if you're going to delegate a task. So there's somebody who loves organizing and you delegate them a researching task, it's probably shouldn't surprise you that maybe they don't spend as much time as they should on it, maybe what you're expecting to get out of them wasn't they didn't live up to your expectation and so when you understand that preference when either that person doesn't prefer doing the researching tasks maybe that's something that you should really be delegating to somebody else and then giving them you know a piece of work that then falls into their preference and hopefully your start getting better results because you're allowing your teammates I guess to actually work to their preference, to work in the space that they actually enjoy and they like to do.

Leanne: That's perfect and I think another thing that we sort of when we were unpacking the tool they’re all different. There's two different scales that make up, what people prefer so people at work. It’s a formula people plus work equals people at work sounds very simple but when we break down the people, there's a scale it's called the right eye scale which we won't really go into but one of those measures was making decisions and it can be based on your belief or on analytical data.

Sean: Yeah.

Leanne: Yeah. I find that's a really interesting scale because if you put people with two different mindsets into a meeting trying to create a decision based on two different criteria, you can see where there might be some conflict as well.

Sean: Yeah, absolutely. So somebody who likes to make decisions analytically they look at all the facts and the figures and the data and they go, “Yep, this is a great idea, this is what we should do.” I think if somebody on the belief side goes, “Yeah. But how is that kind of that may look good on paper but have you thought about how it's going to affect other teams you know, what about the Penguins?” There could be all these sort of pieces that don't add up in the data but that we need to consider. So if you've got someone who's very heavy on the analytical that's fine, that's absolutely normal, that's okay. But sometimes it can pay to have someone who's got that preference to be more belief-based in their decision making so you can kind of they can throw out a few things that maybe the data hadn't considered.

Leanne: Yeah. I think that's for me, in terms of the tool and what the way I've seen our team sort of mapped across all those different areas, now I understand and like you said “I understand why people doing things differently in meetings or it's why it's not the same as you.” and I think I guess the real premises that it's different, does not mean that someone else is wrong just because I don't.

Sean: Yes.

Leanne: Yes, it's a really great diversity tool if you want to really bring that up.

Sean: Yes.

Leanne: Now let's talk about, so Sean and I were accredited and then shortly after so two weeks after I was in Indonesia working on another project and Sean was left to, were given the task of running a workshop for the first time to about 25-30 people. What was your process in using this tool to create a workshop you give it a brief off for three hours. I think the outcomes were to have fun but make sure people develop self-awareness and then we also developed a team awareness. What was the process you went through to sort of structure a workshop like that?

Sean: Yeah, cool. So I guess that the first step for me was to look at what the team wanted. So what do they actually want to get out of it, “Did they want to understand the TMP and what it's all about?” Did they want some sort of tangible tools to take away?” So sort of I guess, yeah saying “What's the end goal? What are you trying to get to?” and then they working back from there when it comes to your planning. So fortunately myself Leanne went and saw a general manager and asked her so “Hey, what do you want us to get out of the group or you know what do you want to see them see at the end?” and her response was great you know number one thing was just to have fun and I love that because I think that's you know the variety and the novelty that really makes any sort of workshop, it's amazing. So that was a really cool brief in the sense that “Alright.  We're going to keep it light, we're going to keep it fun but we're all going to learn something about ourselves and we're going to learn how we can use the TMP to really engage or collaborate better as a team.” So that was the sort of the first step look at the end goal and what we actually wanted to get out of it. I then sort of had wanted to tailor the material to the audience.

So the team management profile is massive in the sense that the amount of information, the amount of data, the amount of things you can do with is huge and honestly you'd need weeks you know, a two-week workshop to get through at all which is great because there's so many resources but at the same time you've got to be very selective as to what you want to use depending on the I guess the time you've got for the workshop and then yeah really was going back and focusing on fun. So we had three hours, we probably spent the first half an hour, they had nothing to do with TMP at all purposely. We did that deliberately just to really break the room out really, we did with the networking, icebreaker, we did trivia, we had all this crazy stuff on the tables for everyone to play with. So we made it really fun in the sense that when we actually jumped into the material everyone was really relaxed, really comfortable and really instead of engaged and switched on and it works seamlessly.

Leanne: Yeah. I remember sort of turning to you after the first 20 minutes and go “Wow feels really good in this room,it just felt really nice and light.” and Sean, he’s underselling himself I think something happened and he kind of made this equip to one of our participants, one of our class clowns who's also my former manager and I just really lifted the mood as well so I think just moments like that you seized it. Share! I’d love you to share what was the Icebreaker question that you've got everyone to answer.

Sean: Yeah so one of my favourite things or favourite themes is around networking and that's something that I think especially in a workshop setting you kind of go back to your school days just naturally. So walk into a room and there's you know some people you might know, some people you're friendly with, somebody might not and you just sort of sit there, you've got a designated seat or you just sit anywhere except for the front row of course. And you just sort of sit there quietly not really sure whether you're allowed to talk, whether you know you can might say hello to someone next to you and then that's it and then you start looking at your phone you start looking around the room waiting for it to start.

Leanne: Hmmm, so true.

Sean: And I think the networking thing is just giving people the permission to speak to each other. It's okay, we're all here to learn and to you know enjoy our time together we may as well use it as best as possible. So when it comes to icebreakers, I think you've got all the resources you need in the room and that's just people. So all you need to do is basically give them the permission but also a little bit of guidance on how to do that so I love throwing out so you know to start with, just turn to the person next to you either say “Hello” or introduce yourself if you don't know them and then giving them a sparry sort of thought-provoking question or a scenario just to discuss.”

So the one that we use for instance was that some: “Life has given you 24 hours of leave effective immediately, you know you've got no commitments, you've got no kids, you've got no family, you've got no jobs to do, and you have 24 hours to do whatever you want. How are you going to spend it?” And so you say all right turn to the person next to you say hello, introduce yourself and then what are you going to do?- You're free 24 hours. And it's great, some of the responses were “I'm just going to put my feet up and read a book.” Someone says that “I'm going to call my friends and see if anyone wants to go to the pub.” Like it was really cool some of the responses and then you sort of debrief that quickly afterwards and you find some really interesting things out about each other about how they would spend 24 hours with no commitments.

Leanne: It was a really great question that's why I wanted you to sort of explain it on the podcast because I think if you are struggling for like another icebreaker or something that's really easy like you said you don't need any materials at all. You could use a sort of halfway through as an energizer as well but everyone sort of lights up and thinks, “Wow, what an opportunity.” I mean, how often would we ever get 24 hours free for ourselves, right?

Sean: Yeah, never happens you know.

Leanne: Yeah.

Sean: It was great because it's one of those questions where you think “Oh yeah, actually I don't really know what I do.” and then you start thinking a bit more “Okay, well if I'm completely free and I have no kids and that I have no work, Wow! I don't know.” Because it's such a strange thing for us to have very rarely you know in the modern sort of world and corporate society that's we actually don’t get 24 hours where there is no obligation.

Leanne: What a dream.

Sean: Yeah. So that's just one simple thought-provoking question and they're the sort of ones I'd like to use because they're really simple, you need no resources and you can have a bit of fun with it.

Leanne: Yeah, it’s gold. So it lasts sort of twelve months. You have really started developing your skills as a facilitator. You've been travelling around Australia visiting small towns, my sites also different levels within the office that we're in.

Sean: Yeah.

Leanne: What have you sort of developed or notice about the important skills that a facilitator needs both personally and also what you sort of model from others and where do you want to sort of grow in that area?

Sean: Yeah. Okay cool. So I think one of the best things that our facilitator can do and I think any facilitator will tell you this is you've got to have an open mind and you've got to be able to approach everything with curiosity. So you can't really go into a session or a workshop with this set agenda that at 9:50 we're going to talk about this at 9:55 we're going to have a break. It just doesn't work and you'll the kill room by doing it that way so I think you got to be really open, really try and engage everybody try and get everybody interacting because the real goals really lies in the conversations that they have when you sort of debrief at the end of a session he says “Hey, you know tell me one thing you learned today, one thing you're going to take away.” Many times in my short career doing this, it's been “Oh, it's been great just to talk with like-minded people or people that understand my job and the role and what I have to do and what I have to deal with.” and just they suck a lot out of the conversation that they're having with each other and then the material in this sort of learnings goes with that. But yeah, I think as a facilitator, it's great to really focus on that interaction and then the day you got to make it fun- that's the best. Because the best workshops or the best say seminars and things you go to are the ones that are fun and get you laughing or you know thinking about something that's just completely silly and that's the sort of stuff that you take away. So if you can blend a lot of fun and humour with serious content the stuff that you're actually trying to get across to the audience I think it makes for a really good session.

Leanne: Yeah, cool. So I guess before you're really sort of having a stubborn facilitation. Do you kind of see it as an exercise where it was a structured thing and you need to really know your content and be all over the content and have you kind of relaxed that now or as a result?

Sean: Yeah. I think I approached it more like I was a teacher and that's not the way you should do it. I mean it's a natural because you're standing up there. Everyone's looking at you and you've almost feel this obligation like you have to give them education or you have to give them tools or tricks or whatever it is that you're trying to get across to them and it just doesn't work. It doesn't work at all because as I mentioned before I think the gold is in the conversation. So as a facilitator, it's about you know really trying to steer the ship as opposed to making sure it gets to its destination as fast as possible. So yeah, I think you can really kill the room by trying to teach people about unless that is what you're there for if you’re a lecturer.

Leanne: Yeah, that’s purely training in.

Sean: Exactly. So that's the sort of difference between I guess training and facilitation. And there's nothing better than as a facilitator when you can sit back say nothing for 10 minutes because there's people just chewing out you know some fantastic or really working on a problem or an issue and they're talking it out.

Leanne: Yeah.

Sean: Yeah and that's so good, that's the best.

Leanne: It is. It’s kind of like invisible but the reason that they have such a stimulating conversation is because you sort of you've set the context, you've made it comfortable for them to do so.

Sean: Yeah, exactly. So it's okay, this is a safe place we can say whatever we want, we're going to you know we're going to be respectful obviously and I think everyone is in any way and yeah you can just have real genuine conversations and I think that's the best and the facilitator really that's the responsibility of the facilitator to make sure that it's okay for people to drop their guard and have those conversations.

Leanne: 100% agree. Now, did mention before that you've had a short career in facilitation.  I'm just curious is anything happened in a training session so far that you've learned a lot from that didn’t go to plan that you can you can share your experience with our listeners so they may avoid things like that in their career?

Sean: Yeah. So I was tasked a few months ago to roll out some training around having or teaching our supervisors on our mine sites to have I suppose more difficult conversations with people and their crew. You know times we have some of those issues that pop up which you know it doesn't really aligns with supervisors day to day job but it is something that they have to deal with. So we put together a bit of a training package. It was a bit of a crash course for them but it was just to give them a bit of a model and a bit of a guide to follow when they had to have these conversations. So one of the first sessions I think at no fault of anyone's, it was just everything was wrong, the timing was wrong and the environment was wrong, the way I tried to deliver the training was completely wrong for the room.

Leanne: In what way?

Sean: I think I tried to make it more of a brainstorming-type education piece to you know basically it was a group that were up. I didn't realize at the time but they were literally walking out of the training session and going on their days off, they were finished work and it was the last thing before they leave.

Leanne: Yeah. That was a poor timing, isn’t it? It’s the last thing they need before they go.

Sean: Poor-time in the room. It was a good-sized room but we had a couple of extra people so it was sort of a bit crammed. It was only an hour session. I had two people walk in about half an hour just over half an hour late. It was just everything was terrible and I remember walking out of that going that was “I've got to change everything.” you know because I felt it was on me as the facilitator or as the you know the trainer in this sense I guess to make sure that the content is getting across to them and I just felt like I totally failed. So I had a session that next night and I just changed it completely. I turned it, I sat down, I didn't stand up, and I didn't use a whiteboard. I pretty much threw the script out and I just stuck, we had a few slides and I just sat down and we literally had a discussion piece to turn into a conversation piece and not a training education piece.

Leanne: Yeah, right.

Sean: It was so much better. It was great and I sort of I needed that terrible a home situation in that environment to realize that I wasn't rolling this out the way it needed to have been done to get them.

Leanne: Wow, so how are you feeling you would've been pretty bummed I guess?

Sean: Yeah. I was like “That was just awful.” But you know I was there for a reason and I think they were all the guys in the room. It just wasn't right, it wasn't right I mean and it wasn't really anyone's fault because I was on site, my time was very restricted. We only had small windows and the sites for a 24 hour operation so you literally pulling people away from their job and they've got deadlines, they've got things happening and they've got thing to go away to talk to some clown from head office about how to have a difficult conversation- “I don't have time for this.” you know. So it's really, it was a tough room, it's a tough crowd and the way I want about it was completely wrong but I didn't know that until I’d crashed on them.

Leanne: Until you crashed. Yeah, well, tough is the best way, isn’t it? Unfortunately.  And we can talk about it a lot and share these experiences with all our listeners as well but sometimes you just have to go through the fire and not to come out.

Sean: Yeah, I didn’t know that's exactly what it was, it was baptism by fire. But I sound a bit bummed out but you know what I just need to change it, I need to make this. If I try and do that again I'm going to get the same result. So I didn't I totally changed and I sat at the back of the room and I sort of had everyone facing the screen and I was sitting behind them so they look at the screen but I actually had to turn around to then have a conversation or talk about certain dot points or pieces of the material. So it’s good, so they couldn't stare at the screen the whole time but they also weren't staring at me trying to educate them the whole time. It was great- “This is so much better.”

Leanne: It's interesting how the dynamics of the environment and the way that it's set up can have a huge impact and I think I'd like to explore that in future episodes with any sort of thing Feng Shui experts or…

Sean: Yeah, because the environment matters.

Leanne: Because I think, the second that you sort of stand up there, people looking at you for that information whereas if you want facilitate a conversation and I think Bob Dick spoke about this and one of my previous conversations around where he actually positions what he does with the furniture.

Sean: Yeah.

Leanne: And it’s good to explore what really works the best for different situations and yeah.

Sean: Yeah, environment’s huge. There's nothing better than especially when you show up, you've been asked to travel to facilitate something and you show up and you're like “This room is perfect, this is going to be so good.” Then you can see how you're going to set it up, what you want to do and especially if you're trying to throw some novelty and a bit of fun in there when you've got a great room it really sets it.

Leanne: Yes it does, unfortunately that's probably only 20% of the time.

Sean: I think you’re like, you got to work with what you've got.

Leanne: That's right.

Sean: Once again it's up to you as a facilitator to do that because your participants are walking in and they're expecting you to you know to give them something or educate them so it's totally up to you how you go about it you know. If you've got a terrible environment, you got to work with that.

Leanne: That's right. So you're on your new journey in facilitation. What advice could you offer to someone beginning their journey?

Sean: A 100% just say YES! It's kind of been a motto. One of my good friends used to say to me he's like, “Just be a yes-man, just say yes and just do it.” and so it was kind of this so much of a mantra I just say yes to everything.

Leanne: So in terms of life as well or just…

Sean: Generally.

Leanne: Yeah.

Sean: If the opportunity comes up or someone asks you if you want to do something, just say yes!

Leanne: I can actually validate that. Every time I ask Sean to do something. But I only give you the cool, sexy task. Don’t I?

Sean: Yes, far as you know, yeah.

Leanne: Yeah but he does, he's very, he says yes and I think it's opened up so many doors for you. It's a great philosophy.

Sean: Yeah. I think if you say No straightaway, you shut it down whereas if you say Yes straightaway and then you think about it and go it's not going to work. You can kind of get out of it a lot easier and save a lot of face you know. If someone says, “Oh, can you travel you know halfway across the country next week to do this training session?” and you go “Yep, cool. I'll make it work.” and then you have a look at your calendar and you think about what you've got on personally and you go back and say, “Look, you know I said yes but it's really going to be very difficult so I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to do it.” and I think you get a lot more respect that way as opposed to just saying “No, I'm busy. No, find someone else I can't do it.” you said instead of you know always going back to No or answering everything with a No, if you answer it with a Yes, you know you get a little bit of leverage if in terms it doesn't work out. But I guess I sort of say yes to everything and try and follow through with that all the time and do as best as I can.

Leanne: That concluded a producer in you.

Sean: Maybe. Yeah, it's all that output. It’s like “Let's just get it done you know something needs doing. Yep I'll jump in and make sure it gets done.” Yeah, exactly.

Leanne: Everyone needs Sean on their team.

Sean:  But it's great too because it opens up the opportunity you know. I've had many instances in the last 18 months on this graduate program where I've just said “Yes I put my hand out, yeah I'll do it, no problem.” and I think that's the mentality as a graduate you need to have because that's where the opportunities really coming up. People know they can rely on you that you are going to be flexible and the opportunities are massive. The people you meet you know all of a sudden you end up you're just having a conversation and you find out they are you know an executive of the company and yeah and if had you not said yes to being at that event or in that situation you'd never, you wouldn't be having the conversation you be yeah sitting there staring in an Excel spreadsheet wondering what you're doing with your life.

Leanne: Blaming everyone else of your second chances.

Sean: Exactly.

Leanne: Now, I’d like to a bit about talking about facilitation. The other thing that you've been doing and this is another opportunity that you said yes to has been getting into roles which include emceeing like a big event so you had a huge event earlier this year and it was based on a goal that you set yourself after attending the same event last year. Emceeing, I do find from time to time that a lot of facilitators because they are confident speaking in front of groups are often tapped on the shoulder and say “Hey, you can emcee as well.”

Sean: Yeah.

Leanne: But they’re kind of two different skill sets yeah.

Sean: Yeah.

Leanne: Yes. So I'd like to know what your approach was for the emcee gig that you said yes to. How much lead-up time you were given and what you actually prepared? How you prepared for that?

Sean: Yeah, cool. So basically it was a big quite a large induction. Had about two hundred and thirty old people in the room. I'd actually put my hand up to present at that induction so I sort of said “Oh, look I really I think there's some value, I can add value. I want a 20-minute window where I can present.” and it was a really big goal for me because I was really interested in the facilitation stuff and I thought well what better way to try and you know jump in the deep end then get up on stage in front of 230 random people and the subject was actually on networking so I was talking to them about networking. So yeah, I did that and it was received with you know welcome arms, welcomed open arms and said “Yeah, we cry. So no one ever puts their hand up to present, we'd love to have somebody come down and do something a bit different so that was cool.” and about a month before that, I got a call and they said “Hey, why don't you just emcee the whole event?” I actually can emcee the event I should say with the colleague of mine Amanda and I just said yes. I was like “Yep.” I didn't even hesitate and I said “Yep, sounds great.” and then I hung up the phone and thought “Okay, what does that involve?” Like I said, I never emceed before so I thought “Yeah sure, I can do that. I just introduce a few people and say thank you can't be that hard.” and then I started thinking I actually got into the content and how big this event was for someone who'd never done it before and it was I wouldn't say I was afraid of it or nervous about it but I was definitely “Alright. I've got to be on my A-game. I've got to do some serious prep.”

So I guess the big thing was knowing the content as in knowing the sort of how big the room is, how many people you've got, what their background is, it was basically majority graduates. So a lot of people who are green to say full-time work or say corporate or site sort of work I guess so it's good to kind of understand the background of fortunately a majority of my audience and yeah and then I suppose knowing the content more who's going to be speaking you know, do you have their buyers, do you have their backgrounds and I really tried to make it fun and put a bit of novelty in there and so I get for instance get one of the managing directors profiles and his bio and then I just try and add something personal. I'd worked with a few of them fortunately and just add something from my piece you know, something I'd seen them do or something that talked about and try and relate it and just go completely off script in a very positive way.

Leanne: That’s good.

Sean: And it was great. It was received really well and I think it instead of just being many like reading off a teleprompter, it might have been more personal and yeah it was great.

Leanne: Natural and authentic.

Sean: Natural yeah.

Leanne: And has a personal touch. That person would have felt really good that you've actually noticed something about them as well.

Sean: Yeah. It was a lot of them I would met. The first thing they would say was replying to whatever I said.

Leanne: Nice.

Sean: For instance, I welcome one of our managing directors up and had the big buyer about what he had studied and how long he'd be in the industry and his assets look and on top of all that he is the nicest man you'll ever meet. So I welcome out you know this person and the first thing he said was get up he's like “Wow. I didn't realize I was so nice. It’s so great that you know…” He’s like, “It's so nice of people noticing how nice I am. This is amazing.” And that’s how we started.

Leanne: And everyone would’ve laughed and created off that mood.

Sean: Broke the tension like the boredom of you know just reading someone's bio and it was great, received really well.

Leanne: Oh, fantastic. Sean, if we've got some instances want to get in contact with you or find you or connect with you. How would they do that?

Sean: Yeah, look probably LinkedIn is the best way to get to me so it's just Sean Lavin. It's spelled  L A V I N. You see me working for a company for Thiess which is a global mining services provider. So absolutely reach out to me a message I'll definitely respond as soon as I can. And I am on the other sort of strains as well on the other aspects of social media but more of the personal sort of things so I don't use them too often to be honest. I'm more of a stalker than a poster.

Leanne: Thanks for being so honest. So we'll have a link to Sean's LinkedIn profile on the show notes for this episode which I'll mention in the introductions so you can find them there.

Sean, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you again for saying Yes when I asked you on again this whole personal philosophy I said would you like to be on the podcast. As someone that's not becoming facilitator without hesitation he agreed so I think we've learnt a lot about the profile. I guess the stepping stones and it's become it's so recent for you becoming a facilitator so it's really great hearing the detail around what you did and the daunting experience has happened to you in the first sort of six months of doing it but how that shaped you as well as been really positive so thanks so much for your time being on the show and I'll let Sean head off now and head off on his holiday. I've kept him captive in our office.

Sean: Yeah, the beach is calling but no thank you. It's kind of cool that you know being a first-time facilitator I’m in my mind anyway and actually getting to come on a podcast of the same title is been great. So thank you so much for having me.

Leanne: No problem. Thanks Sean.

Sean: Cheers!

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Lynne Cazaly (Episode 23)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In today's episode, I talk to Lynne Cazaly. Lynne is a communication and engagement expert. She is obsessed with helping leaders lead their teams through transformation and change.

Here is the episode transcript from my interview with Lynne Cazaly on Episode 23 of the podcast.

Leanne: Welcome to the First Time Facilitator Podcast, Lynne Cazaly.

Lynne: Great to be here.

Leanne: It's so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for giving us your time. I really appreciate it.

I'd love to start just by asking you the question on how you found your feet in the world of training and facilitation. Was it always something that you aspire to or is it something that you fell into?

Lynne: It's definitely something I fell into so my sense is a lot of people don't kind of leave school or during school girl. I'm going to be a facilitator. I think that they've got some capabilities that kind of lend themselves to being great facilitators.

So my background was as a Communications Specialist so I had a background in public relations, I worked in health, sports, art, media government and I did some lecturing at university and communications and consulting and communications and so I was learning a lot about what people think and how they communicate with each other. But the constant theme through all of those roles that I had was that I was playing this interpreter role, I was kind of working for a company, listening to what the management and leadership and the board and directors and everything was saying and then interpreting that for their community and their stakeholders and then I'd be listening to the community and stakeholders and interpreting that for the organization so I became this what I think you could call a boundary rider like in sports, you know it's a person who's got one leg on either side of the boundary lot.

Leanne: Yeah, it’s really a cool time.

Lynne: So yeah, there I was really what I was doing was facilitating communication between different parties and different stakeholders and groups as well as working with communication. And people started asking me, “Oh, will you facilitate our strategy day or our comms plan or our sales plan?” and I thought, “Oh, I'll be able to do that. I’ll have a crack at that.” and that's what I did.

And then in early 2000s, I did an Advanced Diploma in facilitation with the Groupwork Institute here in Victoria and I kind of just topped off my experience with some of the great theory around facilitation. So yeah, it certainly wasn't a planned journey or a planned process but yeah I'm happy I found it. I wish I did know about it in those years when you're trying to make a decision about “What am I going to study? What am I going to be?”

Leanne: Yeah, you’re right because I think a lot of the facilitators that I've spoken to have been launched from different careers and it could be Project Management Communications like you said my background is in marketing as well.

Lynne: Right.

Leanne: We've got people that are Software Engineers.

Lynne: Yeah.

Leanne: And I think, one of the thing is the theme is within their organizations or their own context they are being asked to explain what they know and so they want to become really good at explaining it to people which is why they find facilitation and realize, “Hey, I actually really enjoy this.”

Lynne: Yes. So it becomes less about their subject matter knowledge and more about the act of helping people and helping people get their work done or helping people understand something.

Leanne: That's right. So when you ask to facilitate your first strategy day, we're talking all these years ago because you're very experienced now. I don't know if you can reflect on that time and sort of share what you were thinking or what your strategies were going into that day because it would have been pretty daunting if you had that experience.

Lynne: Yes, it was. Yeah, I was really nervous and you know just the thumping heart most of the day and couldn't sleep well the night before and wondering you know, “Will I stuff this up?” and “What will I do if they don't know what to do?” and “Is my agenda good?” So all of this self-doubt and so I think this is one of the things that is the biggest challenge is that this confidence and we end up being too much worried about ourselves and we forget about actually helping the people that were there to help. So yeah, I had the classic doubt, you know, paranoia- “I'm not good at this.” “I'll crash and burn.” “This will ruin my career.” Okay, I still have some of those thoughts.

Leanne: I was just going to ask you that question. I mean, are there nights where you've got some workshops there and keynote speeches that you've sort of refined over the years. Even with refined content to new audiences do you still sort of think the night before? Like, “Oh, gosh. How am I going to go…?”

Lynne: Yeah.

Leanne: Ah.

Lynne: Yeah and even if I'm not using much content that is I've crafted an agenda with them and so it's about them the participants contributing the content. Yeah I'm still thinking, “Gee, I don't even know these people and I'm going to walk into this room.” and every time I walk into a room to facilitate, a bunch of strangers, every time. So you've got to have this ability to rapidly build rapport and connect with people because you need them to be on your side to trust you really quickly that you're there to help them. Not to tell them what to do but to work with them and I don't think that just comes from cockiness like, “I'll be out of do this.” That gets you into a lot of trouble whereas more of the humility of going “Gee!” and curiosity of “Wow! I wonder what they need help with today.”

Leanne: Yeah.

Lynne: I wonder what I'll be able to help them do rather than “Gee, I hope it all goes well.” It may not go well you know and I'm hanging on to “Oh, it better go well.” Well, it's going to go, it's going to go.

Leanne: So coming from the place of curiosity is what we're experienced.

Lynne: Yeah, definitely! I wonder why that person said that. I wonder where they're going with that rather than “Gee, what a douche.” like “What's he doing and why she being such a…”  No! Just going “That's really interesting. Hmm...” So that's some stuff I think that comes from the Groupwork Institute and their philosophy around facilitation which was you know just slowing things down and really being more of service to the room rather than thinking you've got to control everything.

Leanne: I think that's kind of difference between when you're delivering a speech which is a very it's kind of like a solo event and you definitely want to engage people and not want to be arrogant. The facilitation is about drawing people in and like you said make them feel comfortable and I think it is you need to show that authentically you are curious about what's going on for them especially I guess people come into your room from all walks of life and they come in with all different attitudes as well and sometimes it's very noticeable when someone just doesn't want to be there.

Lynne: Yeah.

Leanne: It's that something, how do you cope with that? It's like, I know from my experience when I first started it was my worst nightmare when I knew that someone wasn't interested I felt instantly  a little bit anxious but now sought after talking to facilitator it's interesting finding out what their strategies are so how do you cope with that?

Lynne: Well, it happens all the time. Even last week I was facilitating a session and there was someone in the room and they're doing niche most of the time and then they're eating their lunch at the time that wasn’t lunchtime and in and out of the room, kind of going, “Yeah, do they not want to be here?” or you know “What's going on?” and I remember facilitating some workshops for a Logistics Firm and we had a lot of the drivers of the vehicles that would you know they had to come along to the sessions and a lot of the other team you know people working in the warehouse and mechanical people and admin, a customer service. A lot of them were very keen but the people who were driving the vehicles were just, it was totally this every time. They're like “What's…?” They'd look around the room that I'd set up with you know nice post-it notes and markers and stuff and they go, “What's this shit?” Literally what they would say. “This looks like my kid's room. What's this crap, what are we doing today?” and I never engaged in an “Oh, you're here to do blah blah blah…” You know I never went into that parental or teacher mode. I just zip it and think, “Yeah of course, they're going to come in here.” and wonder “What this is? I just want to be in their truck delivering, you know delivering the products and doing that sort of work. I don't want to be in a workshop.”

Leanne: No.

Lynne: So again, I think I'm not here to fix them but I'm here to again build trust as quickly as I can and build engagement throughout the session and time and time again in those sessions around changed. Some of those drivers would come up to me at the end and they shake my hand they go, “Yes, thanks. That was good I didn't fall asleep, yeah it was really good.” So kind of thinking I don't have to win them over at all and I don't have to win them over in the first five minutes but just carry on you know.

Leanne: Steady-steady.

Lynne: Yeah, steady-steady and time and again they kind of came on board throughout the workshop and participated in activities and contributed and yeah we were able to draw them out.

Leanne: Awe, that is a bit of a win. I know you’re not winning them over but you would have been pretty happy.

Lynne: Oh, I look at- Yes!

Leanne: Got a smile!

Lynne: Yeah and as soon as they're contributing you know and participating. Even tiny things like what's your name or how long have you worked here or gee you must have seen a lot of change in the organization you know as soon as someone contributes a story about what they do or what they've seen. I just think, “Yes, great you know, I've got them now contributing to something that this whole groups going to be working on. That's good, it’s safe for them to speak up here.”

Leanne: Yeah, fantastic. So let's just say I'm in a workshop of say 20 people and there is like that one or two to people that aren't engaging at all. Do you try to cook them in it anyway like pay special attention to them or you do you sort of focus on the 18 other people that are engaging? Well, does it depend on the context environment? These are one of the variables here.

Lynne: Yeah, it does. It does depend on that. But I like to look at people's behaviour and think of their behavioural styles not their characteristics or personality but what's the behaviour they're exhibiting at the moment. And if they're quiet and not actively participating then my thinking is “Well, maybe they're thinking. Maybe they're not disengaged.” and I use visuals all the time in my workshops. So you know, here’s a flip chart, you see my office at the moment what's always here but I'll always be using flip charts in my workshops and the effect that visuals have on people, on their eyes, their mind, they can't help but look and engagement naturally, automatically goes up. So yeah, engaging with people when it's all talk is very difficult, can be very difficult. But as soon as you've got visuals there. Bang! Engagement goes up. “I can't help but look at the stuff that you're capturing from around the room.”

Leanne: Yeah. I was just on the back of what you’ve been showing me is a flipchart. Saw your website and a light bulb and like you said “You just can't unsee that, you've seen it, it's in your head.” You've sort of thinking, “What’s that about?” I'm seeing some really beautiful handwriting which I also saw on your website and the way that you draw is its really simple but it's effective and I know what you're trying to convey. Have you always been interested in drawing or as again just a tool that you've brought into your facilitation toolkit because you think yeah visuals are so important?

Lynne: Yeah. I have no art training at all. This is not about art, I say, it’s smart not art. So it's how we’re capturing and reflecting back to people the stuff that they're saying. I don't like the idea of someone sitting in the corner you know typing into a laptop “Oh, you know, I'm the scribe. I'm capturing what's happening today.” I think we don't know what you're capturing and its useless going into a computer so let's make it visible and then people can see and because using the tools of a visual is facilitation. So if facilitation means to make ease, to make easier, visuals do that. They instantly help make engagement easier, communication easier, collaboration easier, impact easier. It makes it easier to get to outcomes by about 25%, recall is easier by about 33%. So if we're not using visuals and we're facilitators we're really pushing sinopia. We're making it harder for us and for the group.

Leanne: Yeah, really good point and then you've written a book about this called Visual Mojo. In that book do you actually explain how we can use visual cues as a facilitator? What’s involved in that book?

Lynne: Yeah. It's Visual Mojo, so that's around the confidence of using visuals because most of us think we're crap at drawing.

Leanne: Yup.

Lynne: So this is about how to capture your thinking, convey information and collaborate using visuals. So I go through how to draw simple shapes and use lines. How to draw people because I think the sooner you put people in some of the pictures and charts you know anytime we capture anything on a flip chart or a whiteboard. Don't just write words.

Leanne: Yeah.

Lynne: We have to work too hard to digest that. So some words and visuals will really help get the message across. So whether you're you know capturing, you're eliciting information from the group and you write some of that up there with an anchor image as I call it. Something that helps people attach that those words with an icon or whether you're explaining something you know you might be explaining, “Okay, now we're going to break into three groups.” and you know those long-winded instructions that facilitators sometimes have. And sure enough someone in the room will go, “What? What’ll we have to do?” So I find that if I sketch out you know groups of three and I'll draw three people, draw a clock fifteen minutes and then a speech bubble and I'll put the keywords what we're going to talk about in groups of three for 15 minutes then that flip chart is there and no one asks you “What are we doing?” They’ll just look at it and you explain it and point to it, break into groups of three, talk for 15 minutes on this topic and I'll remind you know when it's time to wrap up and that just works every time.

Leanne: Where has that information been all my life? Our colleague and I just ran a workshop this morning and it was yeah I was trying to make this very complicated instruction very simple so I was staging it and checking in every now and then. But if I had just drawn it. The time limit and this is where you go. I guess that is something I'm going to start implementing straightaway and I’ll iterate drawing skill if they can draw a circle and letters and numbers.

Lynne: Exactly, that's it. Even keywords if there are three steps to this activity and go, “Here's the first step on the first chart, and we’re doing this. The second steps on the next chart, the third steps on the next chart.”

Leanne: Yeah, fantastic.

Lynne: You can have all three charts pinned up at once. So those that need to see the big picture can see everything and you know compartmentalizes information so we've got information in chunks. All of this is making it easier, that's facilitation. How do we make this thing easier and breaking down something like complicated instructions for an activity is you know we need to be really good at that. We need to have great clarity when we're delivering information.

Leanne: Yeah, that’s right.

Lynne: Yeah. Don't just rely on words for that.

Leanne: No. Thank you. That's excellent! I just wanted to share a quote that you said. So you mentioned that “Every time you're working with more than one other person, it's time to put facilitation skills to work.” So why do you think is the case and I guess the flip side of that, do you think people in organizations recognize that because I think, I mean I'm going to give you my opinion here. I think people think that facilitation is a skill that somewhere else is that the trainer or facilitator needs to have it, that it's not a role of a leader?

Lynne: Yeah.

Leanne: What I'm saying in here is every meeting if you've got more than one person you're going to have to draw on these skills so can you explain that a bit further?

Lynne: Yeah. Well, this is coming from the book called Leader as Facilitator which is about how to inspire, engage and get work done. So this book I wrote in 2016 and this is exactly that point which is helping leaders realize that every time they get the team together or even just have a one-on-one or one-on-two, one-on-three conversation, they need to just switch into the role of facilitator because they've got to make that little meeting easier. We know how much meeting suck so bad, right? They're run badly and that's the main problem, they're run badly. We can talk about lots of other things about them but mainly meetings are run really poorly. So with some facilitation skill, a leader cannot become a full-time facilitator but just swing into that role and think “Okay, how do I need to make this environment safe for these people to speak?” which probably means they need to shut up more. You know, “What are the questions? What’s the topic? What are they actually bringing this group together for?” And every time there's more than one person, they've now got the opportunity to draw that information out of those people because I see it a lot you'll have one loudmouth in a small group meeting and two other people don't feel like speaking. Well, it's the leaders job to you know just quiet in the loudmouth down and help lift up and encourage the other to not shut the loudmouth down and not expect those quieter people like, “Now come on, lean in and speak up!” No, it's not their job. It’s the leader’s job to make the environment great and elicit that information. So yeah I'm seeing more and more workplaces wanting to do this because they realize leadership's changing and they have to create more collaborative, co-created environments.

Leanne: Yeah. I'm looking at leadership in the aspirational requirements of a leader and it's sometimes it seems like it is this unicorn. They've got to be just great people but also have some technical capability, be a great role model listen to people, coach them. It's like wow and especially in the world we're living in now which is just subject to so much change and I was on your website before and I loved there's a workshop that really caught my eye and it was called The Sensemaking Workshop. I'd love to talk to you about that. So you said that the Institute for the future predicts it since making it to be the number one skill we need for 2020 which is only a couple years away. What is the skill of sense-making? I'm sure our audience, it may be the first time I've heard that term.

Lynne: Yeah. It kind of sounds a bit my lab tease the word “wanky”?

Leanne: Of course, this is an Australian podcast.

Lynne: Okay. I’ll probably say that instead of the other swear words that I probably get in trouble for and you know in the States. But since making can sound like “Oh, it's a made-up word or don't you mean making sense?” So sensemaking is when you connect the dots with information and try and work out what the hell's going on and we're often trying to do that in teams and groups. We get people together particularly in meetings and workshops, we're trying to make sense of what's going on, make some decisions and some plans and put stuff into practice and I think challenges come when we bring people together and we just expect that they're going to start collaborating and working well. But if we do some sensemaking, we give them some skills about how to maybe map out their ideas or think or talk together and the facilitator can be a sense makeup. So you can very much use visual skills, you can be a sensemaker using visuals. So it's kind of creating a map you know, whenever we're traveling somewhere or we're looking for a coffee shop, we get our phone out, we're great cartographers, you know we're great users of maps and in sensemaking, maps really are the visual charts it is showing, “This is where we are.” “This is where we want to go to.” and this is “Let's talk about now how we're going to get there.” Because that's kind of the overriding model that most workplaces and meetings are following. “This is where we are.” “This is where we need to get to know how we're going to get there.” So sensemaking helps people connect the dots and see, “What's really going on here?” and then it helps us make better decisions.

Leanne: Yeah, cool. A lot of the time I guess in meetings because we are so time poor and there's a something that's thrust upon us and we need to solve it and nobody goes straight into solution mode.

Lynne: Oh, really?

Leanne: You never really step out and talk about the process of how we're going to solve it because we have no time it needs to be solved and you think but by going through that process, it's very easy to clear and clear to see you know “What are the risks?, What's going on here?”, “Do we agree with that?”, “Okay, this is what will inform our decision process then.”

Lynne: Yes. So now you're uncovering a better process which great facilitation is having a really good process underlying. The work that the team's going to do and you're going to help them you know get through that work easier than if you weren't there in the room or if they had someone else to believe.

Leanne: You made with yourself redundant.

Lynne: Yeah.

Leanne: So you love the variety of workshops that you do offer. I'd like to hear a bit about let's just say you get approached by a client and they want something that's not off-the-shelf not within your range but you know that you can deliver it. I’d like to know, what is your process of putting together a package or a course for someone? They'll give you their objectives. What’s then, what do you do next?

Lynne: So this is probably a little bit more like a training design or learning design which is one of my earlier roles was working in a sales team and we helped all of the business development team that were out there on the road selling. We designed and delivered all of their professional development so I was constantly having to create new programs. So this happened a lot in one of these consulting roles that I had. But what we do is kind of find out those similar questions, “Where's the team at now?”, “Where do we need to get them to?” So what's that gap of performance and until we can identify that gap I think it's all just waffle. You know, if we start saying, “Oh let's run an activity about this and let's get them to read Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why”. Let's get them to watch that TED talk where there's a single guy dancing at the festival.”

Leanne: Oh, the second follower. Yeah, I've seen that everywhere.

Lynne: So I think there's a lot of biggest kind of I'd say cliched tools that we might throw into a training program thinking, “That'll do. That'll make them learn.” But I'd come back and go so, “Where's this team or group at now?, “What are the main things they're doing really well and what's the stuff we need them to either do better?” or “Where's the new capability?, “What's the new thing that we need them to do?” And often I see teams or groups trying to achieve and consultants learning and development consultants trying to fit too much into one day and so we've got “Okay, today here's 15, you know learning at home.”

Leanne: I know.

Lynne: It's crazy. It's not going to happen. So if you can blow that down and go, “Let's just focus on one or two, maximum three.” You know “What are the absolute must-haves?” and then maybe some of those other ones. If you're following that 70-20-10 model of learning on the job and learning through coaching and then for more face-to-face learning then use that as some of the on the job or the coaching like you've pushed some of those other modules or learning outcomes or topics off to other ways that people are going to learn. Not in that 10% when you're doing face to face. So that's how I do, I find out what this gap is that we're closing and try and narrow and get this gap as specific and as miserable as possible rather than you know,  “Come and teach us  conflict resolution.”

Leanne: We won’t training on communication.

Lynne: So you want to go, “What's going on in communication?”, “Where are the problems?”, “What are the issues?”, “Are these two people aren't talking well to each other?” Okay, well that's not to be covered in the workshop. you know we want something that's going to be and value to the whole group and not just be of value to them but it’s delivered in a way that they actually we've got some chance at making some sort of shift. We're not going to totally change them but some but some chance and that's the visual mojo or sensemaking workshop. I've refined that over a number of years and I just keep the elements that work and that people like and I keep getting rid of the stuff that doesn't work and that people don't like. So every time I run that visual session, I know I'm closing a gap around confidence in people's ability to think and communicate visually.

Leanne: Yeah fantastic. You do, you iterate it over and over again.

Lynne: Yeah. Keep that gap as narrow as possible. Here’s the thing that these sessions going to address. Not all of these 15 things.

Leanne: Yes, it's too confusing, too ambitious. Yes.

Lynne: So if you fluff up for failure like failure sexy. But not that sort of failure.

Leanne: No. I've never had fairly been described as sexy before.

Lynne: Oh, it’s everywhere now. That’s the right thing to do.

Leanne: Oh, I must have been in the cave. Okay. So when you are designing these programs are there any particular ice-breakers or energisers that lean on that you know yet this works every time?

Lynne: Oh, well I could be you know speaking an unpopular opinion here but I don't use icebreakers. So I don't have a go-to icebreaker. I think my view is they’re a little bit dated and a little cliched and lots of people have seen and coached and work with use quite dated and tacky activities that have elements.

Leanne: The “Two lies and one truth”.

Lynne: Oh, please. I am about to just go off my mind about this. Why would you get people together and you're trying to work with them for the day. Why would you encourage them to lie to each other and you’re trying to let things passed.

Leanne: I don’t know. I’ve sat through 15 workshops so that's been…

Lynne: It must be stopped immediately that activity is not good unless you're training for ACO and you're trying to work out, you're trying to catch liars, right? That's a great activity for them. But I think generally in the business world, get rid of stupid activities and anything that involves a blindfold. No! Just don't put blindfolds on people, stupid! We're trying to build trust.

Leanne: I think hopefully. I think that was stamped out in the 90’s because I don’t remember in my adult years. How safe we were in legislation and...

Lynne: Oh no. People still suggest it.

Leanne: Yeah and with big markers trying to people to try out to trust exercise.

Lynne: No. It's not. That is not how you build trust.

Leanne: Setting people up to trust you. Yes.

Lynne: I'm always saying you know “For what purpose, for this activity. Why am I running this?” If I'm trying to break the ice then there are ways to break the ice. The best way to get people to break the ice is to get them start working on something. Like they're probably there for work so let's get them to start working on something. Why make them play some silly game?

Leanne: Yeah.

Lynne: What issue that people have about actually starting some of the work? There are some pieces of work that you could begin working on. The best way to get people working together is to get them to start working together.

Leanne: It sounds so simple.

Lynne: It does, though I think Ben's icebreakers and games are kind of hang overs from the 50’s 60’s and 70’s and they were probably the ways that our teachers were taught and then that's carried on we think, “Oh, that's what you do.” or the training and assessment certificate says you must conduct an icebreaker. But I would say “Well, who decided that?” you know, so there's some of my views on icebreakers. I think it can cause more damage to people by making them feel embarrassed, socially awkward and I think you've got to keep a very safe environment and very low risk early on in a workshop yeah and icebreakers to me most of them are too they're too risky and I think what's the most socially awkward, socially anxious, introverted person going to think about this?

Leanne: Yeah. Completely shut off. Yeah.

Lynne: It's not good. So yeah, a lot of experiencing engagement challenges in teams and at workshops and maybe it could be because we've done some things that are negatively impacting how we're building engagement and building trust.

Leanne: Yeah. I spoke to a guy called Sean D'Souza on the podcast last week and he pretty much said: “No one cares about your bullet points, nobody cares about your content until they feel safe.”

Lynne: Yeah.

Leanne: I was like, “That is such a good point.”

Lynne: Yeah, it's so true. It's like…

Leanne: Yeah, because they're seeing where they are in the workshop, what's comfortable, what's going to happen to them. So, it's all about them. They're not actually looking and seeing what the information is because they don't feel that they can trust the environment yet.

Lynne: Yes, exactly. And some by the end of the day are still going, “No. I still can't trust the environment.” and that's why they've set their arms crossed you know disengaged-looking face. However, they might still be thinking. We think you know we can't lie consumption that someone's disengaged simply on how they look.

Leanne: Yes. I love that mindset. So let's just say when you've gone in, you've identified the gaps, you've written the most amazing content, everyone's engaged, thinking about it taking action. They walk out. How then can you in some way, how can you embed the learning from that day's workshop or what strategies do you have so that when they leave that day feeling inspired and motivated, fantastic that they do something. Well, they change some behaviour following that. So, in three months’ time, I mean this such a tough thing to do and I'm just curious what are your thoughts around that?

Lynne: Yes so three months for me is a long time.

Leanne: Yeah.

Lynne: But how do I get a behaviour change in a lot shorter time? So I'm looking for behaviour change on the day in the workshop. So I'm wanting to see people particularly with my visual thinking, visual mojo, and visual sensemaking workshop. I'm checking and testing throughout the day to see are these people shifting like “Are they getting a new behaviour?” Not waiting till the end and then trying to do some follow-up webinar two weeks later to check in with learning.

I'm looking for little points throughout the day like probably thirty of them and I'm checking have they got that did they get that and then the beautiful task of reincorporation. So then I'll be running some activities later on in the day, “Are they reincorporating stuff we covered in the morning?” So now they're starting to put this stuff to practice and is there thinking shifting, is their behaviour in their team or their group whatever the topic is, is that starting to change? Now they're trying it out, you know they're trying it on. I think we expect a lot that you know “Watch on my PowerPoint slides and now go behave differently.” and it just isn't like that. So what opportunities are you giving people throughout the day to try some new behaviours on.

Leanne: Yeah fantastic. That's so embedding it in the terms of the content and the way that you structured the course of learning.

Lynne: Absolutely, yes.

Leanne: Awe, that's really good. Yep love that.

Lynne: So if you come back to going, well the gap now is a very narrow gap that we've defined now. I can make some really good stuff happen to close that narrow gap rather than having this broad topic of communication. Maybe you know the much narrower gap, I'm covering is delivering 90 second explanations in meetings maybe that's the narrow gap and now I can deliver skill around that and we can practice it and they can by the end of the day they will have new behaviours and they will not want to let those behaviours go because I'll have tried them on they'll go “Yeah, actually that feels pretty good. I've now seen it in other people in the room. I'm seeing how effective it is.” And one of my favourite tasks is just to give people some homework just within 72 hours. So I give them a task that they have to come back to me with just individually. So safe, just come back to me, doesn't support cast to the whole team or group, you just straight back to me. Here’s a demonstration of one of their skills or behaviours connected with the workshop.

Leanne: Oh cool. Yeah.

Lynne: Yeah.

Leanne: Yeah that sounds really fair, 72 hours, a non-confrontational, yeah.

Lynne: Yeah and I found the people who do that go on and do really good stuff with the program and the people who are still don't quite have the confidence. I've got an online program then that I send people in enrolment to and I find that the people who haven't sent me their homework are the ones that go straight in to the online program because they want to learn a bit more or they want to feel it out a bit more and they'll take a little bit longer and then their homework will come through.

Leanne: Awe, that's good at least they’re still completing the homework.

Lynne: Yeah.

Leanne: That’s fantastic.

Lynne: Yeah and majority of people do, “Because I want some feedback.” or “How am I going?” or you know maybe they feel like “Oh, this is looking pretty crappy.” and I’d go, “No, it looks really good.” you know. So you would come back to this mojo, all this confidence not only does the facilitator need it but in a training situation you kind of have to confirm or affirm that when people have got that competency like let them know, you know let them know that they're going well or I might say give them that social proof or I'll go “Look, I've seen you know three and a half thousand people do this program and I can tell you, you're doing really well.” and they'll go, “Oh, okay so compared to others, I'm doing okay.” “Oh, yeah. Yeah you've got this.”

Leanne: Oh that's so, yeah great strategy.

Lynne: With some feedback.

Leanne: Yeah.

Lynne: You know direct feedback to them. “I can see you're doing well with this.” So some of that growth mindset stuff. “I can see you've worked really hard on this.”

Leanne: Yeah.

Lynne: Yeah, it’s like acknowledgement.

Leanne: Yeah. Look we're getting so many practical tips from you Lynne. What is one piece of a practical advice that you could offer to a first-time facilitator or to yourself say you know 15, 20 years ago whenever you started that one-day strategy session. If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice what would that be?

Lynne: As a facilitator I'd say, don't go in thinking that you know the answer and some of the best ways to build engagement in a team or group is to push what we say, “Push the work into the room or push the questions out into the groups.” So rather than you’re playing consultant or subject matter expert or teacher as in “I have the answers to this. I know, I'm going to share.” That that you put the challenge or the questions out to the group and that's the work that they're going to start doing. You know have I said don't play silly icebreakers maybe some of the icebreaking years get them to answer some of the initial questions about this topic: What are their thoughts? What do they know about it? And this get them participating, contributing and you've been more of the facilitator not the person who has all the answers.

Leanne: That's fantastic advice and on that Lynne, I like to thank you so much for all of your time, your insight. I don't know if you've noticed but I've been like scribbling, you can’t read my writing, it's not as good as yours.

Lynne: Did you use any shapes or icon?

Leanne: I did use some circles and I've used some arrows that would sort of link things together

Lynne: Oh, good.

Leanne: Yeah. So some kind of taking some baby steps on what you recommended in terms of your visual mojo. I'm not a mojo level yet.

Lynne: Yeah, but with some, the podcast if you want to put a link there for people to shoot me an email and if they just say, “Look, I heard about, I heard you on this podcast.” Oh, I'll send back. I've got like a PDF with some icons on it that people can follow and draw and practice. So I couldn't send that right on back to them for now you know just a little gift or something.

Leanne: Oh, well gift for the audience.  That's the first time we've had a gift from what about. Actually, now sorry, we had a template sent through back in Episode Eight. So Lynne, your website is a lynnecazaly.com and we’ll write that on the show notes as well and you've also got a huge following on Twitter so we'll put your Twitter account on there if anyone starts using questions on that.

Lynne: Thank you. Yes.

Leanne: Thank you so much for your time and all your insight. The stuff that you're rattling off is just it's so yeah, I mean some of the stuff I've kind of heard before but majority of things are just simple tweaks in terms of the way that you can explain an instruction using symbols that's going to improve my game like by 10% straightaway. So I really appreciate that.

Lynne: Yes. You’ll save time. The message will land and they'll go “Wow, she is a smooth facilitator.”

Leanne: Yeah. I love that. Thanks again, Lynne. I'm sure you'll get a bit of a feedback from this one.

Lynne: All right. Thanks. Great to speak to you.

Leanne:  Thank you.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Sean D'Souza (Episode 22)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In today's episode, I talk to Sean D'Souza. Sean is a cartoonist, author, online marketing strategist, a pretty good cook (judging from his social media photos) and an energetic facilitator who applies his skills in creating a different kind of workshop.

Here is the episode transcript from my interview with Sean D'Souza on Episode 22 of the podcast.

You can listen to my interview with Sean D'Souza on the First Time Facilitator podcast.

Leanne: Welcome to the show from across the ditch, Sean D'Souza.

Sean: Hello. Hi, Leanne.

Leanne: Hi Sean. Sean, I really want to get into it because I've given you a really fantastic introduction to who you are and what you do. But I want to talk about the time and a lot of these days when we run workshops and organizations or you know even outside. We're really limited with the amount of time that we have so in the two days we try and cram as much information into our participants heads as we can. But when I went to Singapore and went to your workshop it was a three-day workshop and in that you spent I think it was the first five minutes of the workshop explaining that “Hey we can cover all this content in half a day.” So I really like to hear your philosophy around embedding information in people's heads and guaranteeing a skill by using time a bit more differently to everyone else.

Sean: Yeah. First of all the reason why I say that at the start of a workshop is because of the objection that comes up you know it's like we seem to be loitering around a lot we have lots of breaks but the point is “Why do you go to a workshop?” and it depends on why you go to a workshop. If you're with a corporate you go there to waste time, right? But if you're a small business for instance, the chances are that you're looking for a skill. But even if you're in a corporate, there is a pretty good chance that you're looking for a skill and what the person needs to do, the person conducting the workshop is they need to understand that whatever they understand is not easily assimilated by the participant and then once they assimilate that they still have to practice it and so there's lots of this breaking down that goes on. So the formula that I have is like one-fifth or one-sixth of the time needs to be spent by me you know with slides and stuff like but the rest of the time is for them to work on the assignments that I give them and the group assignments and individual assignments in you know breaking it down to the point where they walk away with the elk notes and they know what to do. That is very crucial because if you need to go back and read a whole bunch of notes just to get something done that's like you know having to drive a car and going, “Oh, where are my notes?”

Leanne: Yeah absolutely. So on that, how do you confidently say then that you do guaranteed this skill and why do you think time giving people a space to reflect and talk about it? Why is that more effective than just saying than just throwing that information at someone? Why is that sort of group engagement giving them the space so effective?

Sean: Because information is very tiring. So what we do is we look at 4:00 p.m. and you look at 4:00 p.m. on day 1, 4:00 p.m. on day 2, 4 p.m. on day 3. You look at people's faces and they get very tired and if at 4 p.m. they are all bubbly and stuff and they're not exhausted that tells you that the volume of information is not too great and that means that they're able to assimilate it. Just like you would on a normal day, you have tasks to do and 4 p.m. doesn't necessarily tire you out but when you're at a workshop people just give you more and more information thinking that is the most important thing but it's not it's. What you really want from the workshop is you go in there not to get more information. You could sit at home, you go there specifically to come back after 3:00 so if I go to say a Photoshop workshop, when I come back from the Photoshop workshop I can have a 200 page book, I can have all of these slides I can have the notes and videos and stuff but can I do masking in Photoshop? - That’s the goal. So as a presenter, you have to go “Wait! How am I going to design this stuff?” so that everyone and this is without exception, everyone can do masking in Photoshop and it might well be that masking involves seven days. So in that case you go, “Okay, we won't do everything in masking, we'll do something that we can manage in five days.” and then maybe you can't do in five days and so you have to almost break it down to the point where you go, “Okay, if we do A, B and C then in three days it's guaranteed that everyone in the room will be able to do it.”

Leanne: I like how you said talked about A B and C and chunking it down because I've noticed something very similar in your podcasts you really talk about three things in every episode over the space of say 20 to 30 minutes. It is the number three something special to you or am I just reading too much into that?

Sean: The first thing is what I tend to do is I tend to say “Okay, I'll tell you three things about why you need to make workshops really safe.” and then I usually can think of one thing or the second thing and then ask to force myself to put the tether third thing in so from my perspective it's good because it forces me to elaborate on a specific point. But from a client's point of view as well, it's not that hard to focus or to work on three things you know if I do A B and C, they can kind of remember that. I don't think there's any science to it. We seem to like three things but I'm at the moment you go to 4 and 5 and 6, it's much harder because you have to remember these are not things these are concepts so when I say “Okay, safety in workshops.” Well, that's not a thing that looks like a bullet point but it's really, it could be a whole workshop in itself. That's what you know facilitators and presenters don't understand that one little bullet point that you just made. If you could just go deeper into that, that would be so much, I mean that would be useful to me rather than you jumping to point two and point three and point four and onwards.

Leanne: Yeah and you brought up a really good point about all those notes from a Photoshop workshop, we could take away a 200 page guide but how often do we really go back to our desks and refer to it? I think you know, let's put it on the shelf and think “Yeah. One day I'll read that but five years later it's still gathering dust.” So it's a very good point.

Sean: Yeah, because that should be the purpose of the workshop. The purpose of a workshop is to get people out of their house, out of their office space and you know give them time to travel because the travel to the workshop gets you to think, the travel after the workshop gets you to think. So those are very crucial but also in the workshop, because we give them so many breaks so you say, well, people often ask me, well, “How do you know that people aren't checking their email during the workshop?” Well, if you have like 12 breaks or 6 breaks and they have enough time to do all that stuff. So they're not going to do it in the workshop, in the workshop they're participating so this design of something is very crucial.

Leanne: And I think, if you're an external consultant going into a company I think you really want to guarantee that output but at the same time if it may be difficult extremely explaining to your client “Hey, I do need to give these people frequent breaks.” The first the client may be thinking, “What the hell are you doing?” you know it actually earning your hourly rate. So I guess it's important to convince that these kind of concepts are really important to guarantee that skill.

You've brought up the concept of creating a safe environment for your workshop. Is that something that you, I know you have Renuka in the corner there that helps you and with preparing and setting all of that up? How do you create a safe space with people that aren't really confident in asking questions or speaking out? How do you ensure that you guarantee them the skill by creating a safe place where they do feel safe to raise issues and questions?

Sean: Yes, so one of the things that people don't realize is that people don't care about your content. They don't care about your slides and they don't care about anything.

Leanne: Okay.

Sean: Yeah, they don’t. They only care until they feel safe. So they're not going to do anything if they end up looking like a fool or they end up, whatever! You have to think of them almost like five-year-old kids like you know, the five-year-old kid in the house is bouncing around laughing and stuff and then you take her out and then she's wiggling between the father's toes trying to stay away from your gaze because the father just said “Sing a song, come on Emily. Sing a song!” No, not going to sing a song, right? But you give Emily enough space and enough time and she will do that. So what we do is we set it up so that people are safe. Now, one of the things now, I don't know people have you know multiple questions to this and this becomes a whole workshop in itself but essentially what we do is for most workshops and not the one you did but for most workshops, what we do is we create the notes and we send it to them a month in advance. You’ll say “Well, if you're going to send them all a notes a month in advance then why are you going to show up to the workshop, as in the presenter, what's the point?” and the point is that I feel safe as a person reading the notes. Now there's no shock and awe, there's no “Oh, I have to come and I have to see all these slides for the first time.” and after you assimilate all the stuff- No! You're there, you’ve read the notes, you understand it, and so what's the job of the presenter? Well, the presenter has to show up there and now explain the same concept with different examples. So now you're getting a much deeper understanding of the same thing, different angles- same concept!

So if I say safety and I send you a book with several examples of how you create safety in workshops or how you create a safe zone then when you come to the workshop I show you different examples. How does it work in a corporate environment? How does it work if you're having a course online and you can't see anybody? So now you're getting depth in it. Now that creates one level of safety, the second level of safety and it depends on who's having the workshop. But what we do is we get people to show up before the workshop as in the day before.  Now, in Singapore you know the workshop you attended, we landed just the night before. It doesn't usually happen but we tend to have a meet and greet the previous night. In Brussels, we went to the Tintin Museum.

Leanne: Oh, great.

Sean: Yeah. Yeah I know you missed out.

Leanne: I know. I got all the photos, thanks for that while I was sitting in my cubicle.

Sean: So all of this stuff is done as a preparation then we have soft toys that people chuck around. We have sometimes when you come to the workshop you'll get maybe a little postcard with your name written on it. These are all these little things that enable people to go “Oh, this is a fun environment. This is not a place where I'm going to be put down and made a fool of.” and this takes a long time. When you get to a Psychotactics workshop you don't realize it but until about 11 o'clock you're doing nothing.

Leanne: Ah yeah.

Sean: Yeah absolutely nothing. You just had a bunch of introductions which are also engineered for you not to introduce yourself but to introduce somebody else. You’re doing a whole bunch of stuff until you finish the first coffee break which is at 10:30 and then at 11 o'clock that's when you're actually doing the first assignment.

Leanne: Yeah, you're right. I'm actually just sort of reflecting on our days in Singapore and yeah there is a bit of a science behind it, good to hear.

Sean: Yeah. So this just goes on through the days and then as people you know they get to know so we put them in groups but of course we've had really bad examples in groups. So the point is how do you make that safe as well which is you know on Day 1, we'll have a group and it's random it's not even like necessarily the same groups and then sometimes if we find that we need to change the groups the next day we change the groups and what that does is now you say, “Well, that's uncomfortable.” but it is safe at some level because you feel “Okay, I don't have to be with this person all the time.”

Leanne: Yeah, absolutely.

Sean: And so, there are lots of very small things but essentially if you start thinking of it as an adult workshop and going, “I've got a whole bunch of 10-year-olds. How do I keep them comfortable and happy?” then yeah, lots of breaks, stuff toys. Think of it as a ten-year-old party and I think you'll have a formula out there.

Leanne: That it sounds really fun. Interesting point that you said that “No one really cares about the presenter, all the slides until you make them feel safe.” It's the first time I've heard anyone say that. A lot of people talk about the importance of getting everyone to know each other and feel comfortable but no one's said it like in those words which is really great.

You talked about the levels of safety so giving up the notes in advance again that's another new concept I've never heard and a lot of people would think “Hang on! Well yeah, what is the point of me showing up here?” and I think that challenge on the facilitator to start figuring out more examples or then putting more emphasis on how we're going to make this more relevant for the people in the room at the time especially if they've read their notes prior. And then I like the idea of the meet and greet beforehand, it takes that mystery away of who's in the room because like you said when you're rocking up to a workshop you could be pretty apprehensive of who's going to be in there, how I even get there, all these thoughts going through your head before you even see the first slide.

Now, I want to talk about the way that you introduce topics as well and you always start from a high level overview. So in Singapore you spoke about the Manhattan Skyline and then you're really just teaching us the importance of foundations. Sorry, is that the way that you introduce the concepts a lot of the time, is it through using stories and looking at things that are going out in the world and then trying to make that relevant to the concept you're exploring?

Sean: Yep, because that's what you remember. So information again is very tiring and most of us thinking that that's what the clients want. The clients don't actually want that, if you know, we know how, what clients really want in a workshop and that is they want to leave the room and you say, “That's not possible!” Well, do this the next time you're having a workshop tell them, “Look, all of you are here for the information, right? And they'll all say “Yes!” and you go “Okay, so we're going to do this workshop until 9:00 p.m. tonight.” and then watch their faces. Yeah, it's the same thing as school, right? So you know, if you tell a bunch of 10-year-olds “Hey, school ends at 4 o'clock every day but if we do all stuff really well, we can all go at 3 o'clock.” and they go “Okay, yes!” and if you take 30-year-olds in a room or 50-year-olds in the room and you do that it's exactly the same. I've gone away from your question but the point is that people are looking for the exit sign and so if you design your workshop around an exit sign which is, “How can I get people moving all the time?” then that's the way they learn because they don't really learn sitting down there while you're droning on forever. That's not when they're learning. That's when they're just hearing not even listening to you, that's when they're checking their email. But once you've given them stuff to do, once they're starting to move, once they're starting to discuss stuff, once they're going to the cafe and back and you know how many trips we did to the cafe and back. I mean, we pretty much spent an hour and a half just going back and forth.

Leanne: And I don't think anyone was looking at their watch thinking “We need to get back, we're enjoying all of our time away.” as well.

Sean: Right.

Leanne: I think what we're talking about, what we were learning as part of that drinking great coffee.

Sean: Yeah, but in that section, that's where you're doing all your learning where you're doing all your assimilating and your question was “the concepts”. So if you give people like a whole bunch of bullet points, it's very hard to remember but if I tell you a story like for instance, we have this book called “The Brain Audit” and in that I talked about how you land at an airport and you have seven red bags and stuff and then if I meet that person six years later and they go “Hey, you know I still remember that story.” So finding that story at the top of your presentation and then in the different sections of your presentation that makes a big difference because I can remember the stories and yeah after that and like for instance, you did the Sales Page Workshop and now you know that to build the Sales Page, you don't start, see, tell me, I'm putting you on the spot now. How do you build a Sales Page?

Leanne: Well, we started by writing all the bullet points.

Sean: Yeah, but where do you start from the headline?

Leanne: No.

Sean: Yeah, exactly!

Leanne: The benefits and features and you bullet points.

Sean: So what effectively, what are you saying is you're starting at the bottom?

Leanne: We are.

Sean: And that's where the Manhattan example comes in. You build a building a skyscraper from the bottom up not from the top down. So the concept stays in your head and then you don't have to refer, you don't even have notes until now but if I gave you that assignment to do, you could do it, right?

Leanne: Yep, absolutely.

Sean: And it needs to be something that you can fit on the back of a postcard. If you can do that then you've said too much.

Leanne: I have to upload an image of the postcard to the show notes for this episode because they're beautiful. So Sean hand drawn these- the postcards, which had all the important points and the process for writing a sales page and yeah I could look at that right now and write a sales page just from looking at the artwork on that.

Sean: And this is the interesting part that you know anyone listening to this will go, “Okay, I got the whole workshop. I don't have to go to the workshop.” See? That's the beauty of it. That all those three days are encapsulated in their postcard and in your head you can expand all of it.

Leanne: Yep.

Sean: But the person looking at it has no idea, I mean they have some idea but they don't have the same idea that you have.

Leanne: Yeah like the real substance and experience, yeah that's right.

Sean: Right and it's important to note that you still don't have notes or slides or anything and you can still do it, that's important!

Leanne: Hmm yeah, that is important. Yeah. So, do you use the same concept? I'm trying to, I'm trying to draw parallels now, so you put your DaVinci course out for sale, so what is Sean and his team can teach anyone how to cartoon which is just a skill that everyone thinks that they can't do. Everyone I know is, “Oh, I can't draw!” so cartooning is a bit of a stretch. You teach this to all system made, it create a structure so you can teach people around the world that are online not even in the same room or in the same time zone. How do you take to school like cartooning to an audience that's all around the world?

Sean: Okay, so one of the things that you went through and most people go through is what we call a “layering system”. So a layer consists of A then AB then AB and C then AB and C and D. So every time you're doing, you're always still doing A and then you're always adding B and then you're always adding, so what most training does is they go A B C D E and that's overload. But if you do A, AB, AC, AD, ABCD sorry then every time you're going back to the original, you're going back and practicing that and you're getting better at A, getting better at A, getting better at A and that's what we call tiny increments.  So we increased it but all the time you're repeating it and I'm repeating myself here. So that is one of the things that we do.

The second thing that is even more crucial is this whole factor of getting people in the safe zone. So almost everyone who joins a course like we teach different skills like writing or presentations or whatever. And cartooning is so from left field because people say “I could never do that.” So the first point is to get them to the point where they're not making fools of themselves because everyone who draws like a six-year-old stop drawing when they were six years old which is why they draw like six-year-old. But having now been you know and now they're 35 or 55 or 75, it doesn't mean that they have to do 69 years more of drawing to get to a 75-year-old. Because a very fluent artist is like a very fluent speaker of a language. It takes about six to nine months to get very fluent in any language and what we do is instead of going “Okay, you have to practice every day you have to…” You just build this in tiny increments and then that builds a huge amount of confidence.

In fact, the first assignment for the cartooning course is to draw circles just random circle what we call “circly circles”. So it's just it's like a two-year-old could do so you get your first gold star as it were for doing stuff that any two-year-old could do very easily. And you know what? A lot of people struggle on that one, they try to draw a perfect circles and then we have to break that to the point where you go, “I want you to take a crayon with your thumb with your fist or whatever and how you draw it on the wall.” So you have to break those patterns and then very quickly within a few weeks they're drawing Snoopy, within a few weeks they're drawing complex stuff like stuff from Ice Age and they go, “Wait a second, this is what animators do. How am I doing this in five weeks?” So the confidence is what we're working on. We're now working on the skill because they don't have the skill and they don't have the practice. The main thing is they don't have that volume of cartoons in their head. They don't know how the finger goes, how the hand goes, how the legs go and then we get them to another level of practice which is copying.

Now, in almost every age, copying was the way to go about stuff. So Van Gogh, he copied all of Hokusai’s work from Japan. All of the Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, all, they're not sitting there and going, “Oh, what's in my brain?” –No!  They have this model in front of them and they're copying and in our age we have confused copying with plagiarism. Like taking credit for somebody else's work but this is not taking credit and this is copying, as a kid you trace. So anyway, to answer the question in a briefer manner, what do you have to really work on when you're teaching people is you have to get their confidence up. Because when you get their confidence up then they use less energy thinking, “Oh, am I doing the wrong thing? Am I doing the, you know, am I a fool?” Because they burn up all of this energy trying to be so smart and you're giving them tasks that don't require so much energy and that boosts the skill level because now they go, “Okay I can do this.”

Leanne: Yeah. I mean because you taught us how to draw the whale as part of the workshop and when you said that “Draw a whale.” and I just draw any whale. Yeah mine looked like a of six-year-old’s whale and then you broke it down and said “Draw a rectangle and do this.” and the confidence I guess of all of us was we thought it was excellent because you broke it down into those layered steps and made it really easy and yeah while all the whale is just a combination of all different strokes.

Sean: Yeah and this is the problem that a lot of facilitators do. So the facilitator is also not in the safe zone. They're also feeling like they're being judged, right? So they're always in that safe zone themselves and so they try to be smarter than the audience and that kind of comes across. The audience figures it out that you're smarter, you're standing there on this pedestal as it were. So when you bring the audience, so often a client will tell you, “Oh, it's so easy for you to do that.” So now if you go, “Okay, wait a second, how do we get rid of this objection? It's so easy for you to do that and how do we get you to do it? Now you go, “Wow! If I can do this, what else can I do?” All the time you're working between these factors of: “How am I going to increase their confidence? How are they going to feel more safe? How are they going to use less energy?” Puff! We get skill. So skill is really…What people think, skill is “I'll just practice and practice.” but practice, it gets you there but it takes very long.

Leanne: Yeah. Would you say it's like a transfer of confidence?

Sean: The first thing is, it's a factor of energy so if it takes you a long time or it's a complex thing to do then you're going to use up a lot of energy and if you lose up a lot of energy, you lose confidence and then you never acquire the skill.

Essentially it's an equation, which is an equation is “this plus this equals to this”, right? So energy plus confidence is equal to skill. That's what it is! It's not “I will practice, practice, practice, practice and get skilled.” No! If you have continuously difficult tasks like “Okay, now go build a computer.  Okay, now go destroy the building.” It’s like “This is really hard!” But if you say “Okay, go get me a glass of water.” Then you say, “Okay, go and make some noodles.” as in you know, the two-minute noodles. You can accomplish all of those things and now this is again you go back to a 10-year-old and the 10-year-old goes, “I'm so smart. I brought water today. You know at home I don't get to bring water but in school I did bring water today.” - Okay fine! So now they're excited about that activity because it requires a little energy and then you can say “Okay now we're going to chop onions with a chef's knife.” right? And you go “How am I going to give a nine-year-old to chop onions with a chef's knife.” 

This is all the task of energy. The reason why people grow up and go “I can't cook. I can't draw.” it's because the first time they're given a recipe, it's like, “Okay, here are 30 ingredients go make a great Indian dish.” Sure! I mean it doesn't work like that.

So the facilitation process is the same thing which is if you give me tiny increments I don't have to burn up so much energy to learn it. I don't have to burn up so much energy to wonder if I'm a fool or whatever and I know that you're not trying to show off as a facilitator. So now because I have that energy, I can put it to use and gain more confidence and then as I gain more confidence I get more skill and in that whole formula you have all these brakes so you're like, you're confused you speak with someone else, you speak to the presenter. You have space to get rid of all the objections and the problems and stuff which otherwise it's like, “Ah I got stuck at five, at 10:30 and now it's 12 o'clock and now it's 2 o'clock.” and you know the biggest problem is that clients will not stop you, they will say, “I'm sure, he'll cover this on Day 2.”

Leanne: Yes.

Sean: And you never covered that on Day 2 because you have no idea that they have that problem and they're waiting for Day 2 by which point they're completely confused. So there are all of this and I'm not saying our system is perfect. In fact, we have to keep tweaking it for this very reason which is we want people to have that skill and they still have all of these obstructions that they put in their way and so we have to keep tweaking that, it's just how it is.

Leanne: Yeah, so you're actually writing a book on talent, aren’t you?

Sean: Yes.

Leanne: I know you've been talking about it for a while but I think you're getting momentum which is really great.

Sean: Yeah, we have to pre-sell it. Yeah that’s the only one I’m going to write.

Leanne: Oh, this a great podcast to talk about talent man. This can over-the-line build up momentum even more. So do you believe that you can teach anyone anything? Or do you think the person coming in to learn the skill has to have some degree of motivation to want to learn the skill depending on the complexity of that skill?

Sean: I'll give you an example of my niece, Marsha and I'll give you an example of the other niece Cara. So one was 8 in the other was 13 when we started this exercise. Now both of them were not motivated, as in Cara point-blank told me. We said we're going to have these Friday sessions and both of you can draw and paint like with real watercolours and in real watercolour books and stuff. Cara point-blank at 8 has decided, “I can't draw.” and “Okay, I come to paint because I can just throw colour on the paper.” right? – So, I can't draw.  Then we have Marsha and Marsha is like “Okay, I'll do whatever you want but swimming, I rated it as a ten and painting or drawing is five.” So there's really no motivation on the part of both of these kids and what we decided was “Look!  It's not about the content, it's about the energy.” and so we got them there and we give them Cola and they have you know they dance, they run around, they eat chips, they listen to music and stuff and in the last half an hour that's when they're drawing and painting.

Leanne: Ah.

Sean: If you see their work, you will be astounded. So what's really driving their stuff is first of all, its “Oh, this is so much fun!” So they would put up with the pain of drawing because 70% of it is fun. So okay, I'll humour you. But what happens is in the process that we teach them in tiny increments so it's like “Let's draw a snowman today.” or “Tomorrow, let's draw something.” We're starting to build it up and then you only figure out what it is right at the end, right? So it's still all this fun, fun, fun, fun and their drawings are superb. So now Marsha looks at her paintings and goes “Wow, that's so good.” and she's a teenager and you know pretty much like a teenager looks in front of a mirror and goes “Oh, I look so great.” or whatever they spend time in front of the mirror. Marsha does that with her paintings and Cara's like “What are you looking at your painting for so long?”

But Cara, if her parents say “Oh, do you want to go for painting class?” and she's like “Yeah.” and what she did was she said “I have these photos on my iPad.” and I let her draw on the iPad as well and she said “Where's my work?” because she did like three or four drawings and I said it's in this folder and she says “That folders called I can’t draw.” and I said “Yeah, because you said you couldn't draw so I put them in the ‘I can’t draw’ folder and she said “But that was two months ago.” So this is the level, this is how you start to get into this factor of talent which is you have to understand what causes people to be motivated in the first place and it's not your stupid bullet points, it's not your content, it's not all of that stuff. They are motivated by fun, if you want to teach spelling get the kids out on the playground and you say, “How do we spell appetizer? You’re A, your P, your P, your E.” and then move them around and then you say ,“Okay, now can we break up appetizer, so you’re the letter T, right? so you go and find other kids and you make a letter so you make a letter like taser, T, A, S, E, R or a sitter and now the kids are running around they're learning spellings but they're having fun. If you say “Tomorrow, who wants to learn spellings?” Well, everyone is like, “Yay, spelling time, what is wrong with this school?”

Leanne: That sounds really fun.

Sean: I know but that's the whole point. The point is that if I'm having fun, I'm not burning up energy. If I'm not burning up energy, I'm getting confident and I know that I'm learning. It's not like I'm saying “Oh, I'm just having fun I'm not learning anything.” So it’s a fun designed in a way that gets people to understand or to learn it. That builds the confidence all the time and then that leads to skill, well that's how we do it.

Leanne: Yeah, so that's how you do it and that's something that you've refined say over the last what 15 to 20 years, so it didn't start out this way?

Sean: Yep.

Leanne: I'd love to hear about a time where, was there a time that you can think, reflect on where things didn't go so well in a workshop or some of your Peterson's participants were still scratching their heads afterwards? Like we're going back quite a few years, I'd imagine and then when you started to think, “Hey, I actually really need to start thinking about how I deliver this now.” or have you always been this good as a teacher?

Sean: No one's, I mean, one of the things that we do is we always ask for feedback like not praise. We interview everyone for testimonials that's for sure but we also ask for specific feedback. So when I left Singapore after your workshop, I had like 25 points. 25 things that I had to fix from that workshop to the next workshop.

Leanne: Really? 25?

Sean: Yes, I can send you the list.

Leanne: Okay.

Sean: And you know, you thought, “Oh, that was a pretty good workshop.” but there are 25 and then the Brussels workshop, there are 25 and then when we do the same workshop. So we've been doing the article writing course for instance online since 2006 and at the end of the course people are expected to write a thousand words on what was wrong with the course. So now, say let's say 250 people have written what was wrong with the course, we have 250,000 words of feedback. This is how you fix things. It's not helpful, you need a stiff drink at the end of the day because they all sound very ungrateful.

Leanne: Yes. So you need to get yourself into a safe space before you rave in. Wow! 250,000 words.

Sean: Yeah but the good thing is what we do is we have that mix. So we have, “Okay, you give us your feedback, what you can…?” and it's not just feedback is like, “What do you suggest? How do we go about it?” and I have this conversation with them. “How do we fix it? What do we do? But what if I have this problem?” and then the clients come up with the solution.

The next stage is the testimonials where they talk about how much. So the client looks at feedback as, “Look. I really am giving you feedback not because I hate you but because I love your stuff and I want to see.” So they're trying to fix something that they see is broken. But you see it as, “Oh goodness, I gave everything and they want all of this more.” So that is a definite problem, you have to get yourself into loving feedback and if you can't do that, then do the feedback first and the very next thing you do is the testimonials. Because the energy that comes from the testimonial will kind of reduce the impact or the brutality of that feedback.

The problems that we've had in the past have really stemmed from me getting exhausted. So when I used to do any workshops or presentations before, I had to literally rest for a week. And I thought “Why am I having to rest for a week? I already know this stuff, I'm so exhausted. These guys must be really exhausted.” So started to think about this whole topic about what people want and it's to do with marketing rather than, because people, they say one thing and then they mean something else but it's not like they know what they mean. A good example of this is Weight Watchers and if you say, “What is Weight Watchers slogan?” Well, when they started out it was eat all the food you want and you think, “That doesn't make any sense?”

Leanne: No.

Sean: Yes, it does! It makes perfect sense. The people that get in trouble and go to Weight Watchers are people who eat all the food they want. 

Leanne: Yes.

Sean: The people who don't have the problem don't have to go to Weight Watchers. So Weight Watchers is effectively saying is, “You can eat all the food you want, we'll show you how to eat it.” right?

Leanne: Yeah.

Sean: So that's the one factor, that is. I can't express that, I can't express that I want to eat everything in sight. I can't express that, I don't want to admit that. But when I see the slogan, I just go “Oh yeah, that's the right place.” So we had to look at our workshops and go “What do people really want?” and the answer is they want to have fun. Whether you look at a corporate event or you look at a small business event or any event. Everybody who comes there says, “I want to have fun.” So then you know you speak to your partner, you speak to your accountant and they say, “You're going to a three day workshop, you're going to spend all this money what are you going to do?” and you go, “I'm going to have fun!”  No! That's not going to work, it's not going to work for you, it’s not going to work for them, and they aren't fun. You can have fun here, why spending all this money? So I can't admit that to myself but that doesn't mean as a facilitator that you can't teach while letting them have a blast.

Leanne: No.

Sean: Yeah.

Leanne: That's what I'm finding. I find the most effective facilitators are the ones that bring in the most fun and then learning is kind of like the side effect of having a great time.

Sean: Yes and the worst facilitators always said at the start they say, “Okay, are you guys ready to have fun?” and then you sit through three days of complete agony.

Leanne: It's like, yeah my husband says if he meets anyone that ever says that introduces themselves as easy going but you've got to watch out!

Sean: Yeah, it's overcompensation.

Leanne: It is overcompensation.

Sean: Yeah.

Leanne: So what is some advice that you could give to people that are starting their journey in facilitating and leading workshops in their own context? What would you tell them Sean?

Sean: Well, I think the main thing is that they have to get very comfortable with themselves and that's quite a journey. It's got nothing to do with the audience, it's got everything to do with how much authority you have in that space. And so if you look at say Photoshop, well, no one has the authority in everything in Photoshop but maybe in masking and then maybe in the sub subset of masking. So what you want to do is you want to be comfortable, you feel like you're in a safe space and any questions that come within that space you can talk about it.

Then the second thing that you want to do is you want to take that little subset or sub subset and then expand that so that say, you could cover that material I don't know half a day. Well, you don't have to go for three days, you have to be really confident to take a half day material for three days but let's say you said, “Okay, we'll do this in one day or one and a half days.” Well, now what you have to do is you have to go, “Okay, I have to explain in one third of the space. I have to get them to work in half one third of the space and then I have to get them to build exercises or do something like that in one third of the space.” and then the clients go, “Yeah. So I learnt it, I practiced it, I made mistakes and I fixed it.” and now you have one and a half days. When you get more proficient at it, well, now you can go “Okay, we've got three days I've got more examples for you. I've got more activity for you.” and I don't feel any fear that our tea break is going for 45 minutes.

Leanne: Yeah. That's a black belt status for facilitators being that comfortable and confident to do that.

Sean: Right. Because you also have to know like when we went to Brussels for instance. The stuff that you guys covered in the first day, they hadn't covered in the first day but they were a much larger group and it seems like, “Oh damn, I haven't covered. I'm going to get into trouble.” And you have to be I think as a facilitator, you have to be comfortable in your own skin. So you have to be comfortable that you're going to goof up 50 to 60 percent of your early days before you start getting to do the comfort level. But breaking it up is always a good way because once you're confident then you don't have to overcompensate and you don't have to be “I'm the boss here and you're just minions.”

Leanne: Yeah, that's right and just “Respect me because I'm the one that's standing up in front of the room.” It's actually the respects coming from what you're giving them in terms of the skill and your authority.

Sean: The best way to do that is to get them to tell you what you've already told them and if they can do that, well, now you've given them slides.

Leanne: Yeah. That's an excellent point to finish on. Sean, thank you so much for your time and I know that you're known as “the online marketing” kind of Guru. We've spoken about a topic though that I think you're going to grow through in terms of bringing out your book and you're going to be another expert on talent as well. So you've got three hats. Yeah, I talked about your Singapore workshop in a previous podcast and told everyone I'd bring you one so I'm sure they're all looking forward to this. Where can people find you if they want to sort of follow up and see what else that you do?

Sean: Well, we're at PsychoTactics, I don't know if you can spell it but Google can so look up PsychoTactics and that PsychoTactics outcome, that's where we are.

Leanne: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Sean. It’s been great having you on the show.

Sean: You're welcome.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Jane Anderson (Episode 21)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. I chat with Jane Anderson on her experience delivering workshops and content to over 50,000 people. She shares why personal branding is so important, how you can craft your own (remarkable) facilitator brand and how she developed the courage to share her brand with the world.

Here is the episode transcript from my interview with Jane Anderson on Episode 21 of the podcast.

You can listen to my interview with Jane Anderson on the First Time Facilitator podcast.

Leanne: Please welcome to the First Time Facilitator Podcast, Jane Anderson.

Jane: Thank you so much for having me, Leanne. I'm really happy to be here and feel very privileged to be part of your show.

Leanne: Oh, that's lovely to hear. You’re extremely impressive! So I was just reading your biography, you've worked with over 50,000 people, you've written five books, you have your own podcast, you’ve worked with some huge global clients now living in Brisbane. I see you and your brand everywhere.

Jane: I’m stalking you know…

Leanne: Yeah you probably got some remarketing cookie on me but for those listening around Australia or possibly haven't seen your brand or globally, can you just explain a bit about yourself and how you entered the world of personal branding and helping others in terms of building their influence capability?

Jane: Yeah sure, so I started, how I never thought that I would probably be doing this but when I started, I started working with personally branded businesses when I was 14 years old. The very first experience I had, I don't know if you remember growing up but whether you had bought shoes from “Mathers” shoes, like maybe your mom made you wear “Clarks”.

Leanne: A “Clarks”.

Jane: Yeah, but Clarks was a fact came from a personal brand, it was someone who founded the Clarks brand.  Then I saw Robert Mathers and the Mathers’ family, the people who founded Mathers. Sir Robert was knighted for his services to the business community and they were my first mentors in my life and they were like family to me. I worked for them for twelve years and then I went on and did a marketing degree and then Tom Peters had this concept called “Personal branding” when I was in second-year uni. and I was like, imagine having like somebody say “I want a personal brand and here's my credit card.” and I was like, “this is…” and that was long a bit like the internet hadn't even been in store.

Leanne: Wow.

Jane: I just remember thinking “Imagine people doing that!” I have always had this love, I did a marketing degree but I ended up working in HR for working sort of between those two fields which those two connected are all about influence. So it just sort of evolved that way and I worked for the Mathers family as I said. I also worked in government and worked in large organizations but I kept coming back to. I always had an interest in people's personal branded businesses like I worked for Tony Ferguson the Weight Loss Company, Rotary Weight Chemists as part of that whole branding and then worked in for Super Retail Groups, Supercheap Auto, BCF. The CEO of that company had an incredible personal brand, he's very humble, his name is Peter Birtles and he won CEO of the year.

I was really drawn to people who had strong personal brands and it was just the value of who people are and not just about the organization brand but the individuals that work there. All those people who have had the courage to put their face on the shingle out the front and say like I always found it fascinating that the people I worked for had the courage to do that. I was such a behind-the-scenes kind of person. I was like...

Leanne: Oh, no way!

Jane: Yeah, I think I just was always in awe of what they could. That they had so much courage to put their face out there and it was something though I never had the courage to do so I was like “Yeah, I'll support you whatever you need done, if your face is on the shingle that's great as long as mine is not.”

Leanne: Isn’t it funny how times have changed?

Jane: Yeah, well that was what happened, you know we had a change of government in Queensland in 2012. I had started my business but a 70% or 80% of my contracts went overnight with the change of government because most of my contracts were government work. I was sort of hiding behind a brand because I just didn't have the courage to put my personal brand out and then I went, you know what, actually I have to change something and I have to change something very fast and I thought “Okay, I can see now why personal brand works because of social media.” because I just noticed that all the things I was doing with helping wasn't just businesses but I'd also spent five years working in career counselling and helping market people for jobs and I thought “Okay, I've danced around it long enough, I've helped everybody else and now I have to do it for me.” It’s not something that I've ever started up feeling comfortable with. I've always been a cheerleader in someone else's corner and but you know one day the time comes where you've got to do it for yourself and you know you just got to “step-up and let's do it!”

Leanne:  It's really fascinating! A couple things I want to just to point out was I liked how you talked about the intersection of marketing and HR. That's my background as well as I was in marketing before I moved into HR, studied HR though but I think the similarities are that you are influencing over people you've got to sell ideas you got to persuade them particularly around culture change. Great to hear that you've got that intersection but also around having to step-up as well and have that courage, you use the word “courageous” quite a lot there which I really like. I think with our first-time facilitators a lot of them are getting their step-up by doing a lot of facilitation internally with businesses which is a great way to hone your skill and a lot of this podcast has been focusing that how you deliver those workshops but we have never really spoken about let's just say you actually get really good at this and you want to go out on your own. How do you transition and how do you create that step? and so I got your book “EXPERT to INFLUENCER” and I really wanted to point out there's one thing I was like “Oh, this is brilliant and haven't heard this word used before.” and you're talking about how do you develop trust with people because that's how people buy your brand, buy your credibility and everything else and as a facilitator we need trust in our workshops to get the great outcomes.

Now, what I thought there was under personality. You're talking about the twelve pillars of trust, an item there was called “remarkability”. How remarkable are you? I love that word! Can you just explain a bit more about that or how we actually can start finding “What does make us remarkable? What does make us unique?”

Jane: Yeah, when you think about “Why would you want to do that? Why can't I just keep doing what am I doing? Why can’t I just keep facilitating on contents that's already been out there or their stuff it's out in the market?” I could keep going with Covey’s Seven Habits forever and it's amazing and I love Covey's work so it's not saying that there's anything wrong with that but it's more on how do you make this leap and what you've got to do is be remarkable. Seth Godin talks about this with some in a lot of his work and you actually need to be the artist. What happens is when you're the facilitator, if you're using or you're working with other IP or you feel facilitating your strategy day, there's some kind of framework or context that maybe you have learned. It might be maybe you've learnt pro-side principles or maybe you've learnt add car  models or maybe you're facilitating around some kind of someone else's IP and to make the transition yourself is you actually have to be the person creating the ideas. I know that's like- “How am I supposed to compete with like Myers-Briggs or DISC Co.?” All that stuff's out there, I have nothing else to add. But you have insights and experiences and knowledge that no one else has and it took me a long time to get my head around this because I went inside up for every certification possible and now because I was like “Good, I don't have to create this stuff, you've already done it. Great!” and those things still serve well in fact, I've created my own certifications for other people. But if you really want to stand out, what happens if you don't, if you want to stand out the benefits are particularly if you're making that transition now, the difference is in, first of all, what you paid. So there's a very big difference in your day rate and what you will be paid by clients because they need to see the value in what you bring and you can still bring in some of those things. So for example if it's like DISC Co. or Myers-Briggs, I might do it as part of what I do but it's not my whole practice otherwise I'm the same as everybody else and then what happens is they're going “Oh, we need a Myers-Briggs workshop.” and Myers-Briggs is great by the way, I'm not saying it you know I've done thousands of my not-wise Myers-Briggs profiles. I followed about 6,000 people.

Leanne: Wow!

Jane: Yeah, it's been a lot.

Leanne: Yeah.

Jane: But what happens is that people will say “Oh, we need a team-building thing, why don't we do that Myers-Briggs thing?” and they go out to market and look around and all the pricing is pretty much the same. So you have to be even more remarkable to try and get that work because otherwise what happens is you're like a “toothpaste on the supermarket shelf” where the customer's standing there going “Well, I don't know which one to buy so I just buy the one that's on  special.”

Leanne: Yeah.

Jane: So you're competing on price now, so the problem is if you're not remarkable and the problem is we've got this “Tall Poppy” thing so we don't think we're very much remarkable at all and in fact we are.  I find everybody fascinating that it's we're too close to our own stuff to think that we're “I'm not good enough or maybe I don't really know anything.” but you know that was what my problem. When I realized that I had this problem, I had this commoditization problem and so I realized that actually I'm competing on price with people and how am I differentiating myself or how am I articulating my value so that I can say something other than “You just need to buy me because I'm better!.” or “You just let me do it because I'm better.” but then you got to have a bit more than that to be able to get that over the line and so it's that fine line isn't it between the cocky and arrogant and trying to sell yourself and you're like “You look at these other people I go. How did they do it? How on earth are they’re so busy? How are they doing all this amazing work?” and so you spot on the difference. The remarkability is what makes you easy to buy and unique.

Leanne: Yeah.

Jane: And if you find out what that is then you're well-positioned and you can start to unpack your thinking and your ideas and what your experience it is. You know I've got some clients who have done you know PhDs and they get very cranky because when I work with them and they say “Are you telling me that you do this with people who haven't had to go and do a PhD and they are earning more than me?” and I said “Yes!”

Leanne: Yes. I mean isn't it interesting like ten years ago, if you wanted to be paid more I think the default response as well- just go to another course. It's so different nowadays.

Jane: Yes, but you don't need to.

Leanne: No.

Jane: You really don’t need to. If you can solve people's problems and you can help them have the insights and have the empathy to help them understand their own challenges and you're able to care. If you know how to care and run a tribe, if you know how to do that and you can solve problems, you don't need an MBA, that's just not needed anymore. But if you know your customers, if you understand them or the people in your rooms whether your customer is within an organization or outside if you're making the move. I always say the person who understands the customer the most is the persons whose business grows the fastest.

Leanne: Yeah absolutely. I love that you talk about what you said about we're so close to what we're thinking because it's in our own head so of course we take it for granted and we just assume – “Everyone thinks this way.” “Everyone would have the same response to that.”

What I like about your book though, it's you've got all these questions where you can articulate what your responses would be to different things like your values and things like that. I can totally imagine if you had thousands of people complete your book not one person would have the same answer to any of those questions, it’s like combination alone, if you put it to some paper and talk about logic we're all completely unique. So I hope all of our listeners get that and find the importance of what you're talking about because it does seem like nowadays you hop onto LinkedIn and it seems that everyone is a speaker, a coach, a facilitator so you have to get through a lot of noise.

Jane: Yes.

Leanne: Yeah and what you spoke about it's important about knowing what the customer wants. So I'd like to hear that in the context of facilitating a workshop. I mean you've run, you’ve worked with 50,000 people, what do you do beforehand to find out what they need from the day that you're there? What kind of tactics?

Jane: Great question.  I wish so many people would ask that question so much more. I would say, if anyone said to me “Why do you get booked so much? Why do so many people work with you?” and it's because I spend the time on this and if there's anything that I would say that makes the big difference and this is where I’m with my clients, this is where I spend the time. So for example, let's say you're walking into a room of workplace health and safety or a consult teams in the mining industry. I've worked with lots of mining, oil and gas and so I know that getting them in the room is the first challenge.

Leanne: Big time. Hello to all my colleagues who’s listening. Yes it is, we all know it is. Time-poor. Yep!

Jane: Right? Time-poor is the first challenge. The second challenge is that you're in a highly reactive space so if something goes wrong, if you've got a mind shut down, if you've got, you know there's so much volatility and safety is a number one. So if there's something that goes wrong onside and particularly if you're dealing with workplace of health and safety, they're in a highly reactive role so then I go, “Okay!” So empathy and understanding is like dude. If you can get that then I can connect so I'll say “Okay, so what's going on for these people right now? What's going for on for them not just in their role?” so you've got what I call “Higher and lower order problems”.

Higher order problems you know they're going through a restructure, you know this particular mind sets has been going through. It's in a shutdown at the moment or there's lots of specific volatility that's happening in that specific role or there's a lot of compliance issues.

Lower order problems, they're still relevant which is around being time-poor that’s across all industries. But if you can take the time and I do this for keynoting as well so I do a lot of research. I have a research team so I get them out to go and find out. One of the specific challenges I've got the clients problems that I'm talking to them about but then I'll go and research what else is going on in the industry so I have them find out.

So for example, I spoke at a keynote I remember it was a couple of years ago and it was about working with young female lawyers like it was early career lawyers and it was particularly women and I was like “Okay, well I'm not a lawyer and I think I've got a bit of an idea.” but you can always assume too much so you've got to know that you've got a natural unconscious bias and assumptions. So I put it on Facebook and I said “Here's an early career female lawyer, you need to be in this age group. I'll pay you for your time. I need to interview you.”

Leanne: Wow.

Jane: So I say to them “Whatever you charge for client, I don't expect you to do it for free. Whatever you charged for a client you can charge me, I have a few questions.” and I usually take up about a half an hour of their time and I'll do it over the phone and they can bill me that's no problem because I know that builds my understanding not just for that client but I think I've worked something across 52 different industries now. So being able to know those problems that those different industries are facing and that's how you end up getting the work because I know that you can solve that.

Leanne: Yeah.

Jane: So I think it's worth…one of the things I find like I had a client just recently and he's done a PhD in this amazing management theory and I think there was sparks coming off him and I had so much stuff. He was amazing and I said to him “What problem does your customer say that they have?” this is after three hours of explaining his whole mission philosophy branding journey life story. I said “What problem does your customer understand that they have?” or “What problem does your customer say they has?” and he said “I don't know, that's my problem.”

Leanne: Wow.

Jane: So otherwise, it's you telling them that they've got a problem and that's like calling someone's baby “ugly”, isn't it? It sounds like “You know, you’re problem is?” So it comes from huge compassion and empathy and understanding and then only then it's like trying to land a plane- you got to clear your tarmac! You can't get anything through and you can't create change in a room and you don't have to regurgitate back to them everything that you've read. But you've got as a facilitator you've got to ask the right question and if you know the right questions to ask, the value you bring to the room is that's your job as the facilitator, isn't it? Your job is to change the room.

Leanne: Yes.

Jane: If you can have that understanding, it's not necessarily you’re being an expert in that person's job but if you can know the right questions to ask they've got the answers as you know. It's then that's really how and then that's when the value they see the value bring.

Leanne: Yeah, it's just being comfortable with the language that you're using as well and making sure that is relevant to that industry because you also talk about credibility in your book and I really I got this quote out that I loved. It's a John C. Maxwell quote that you've used in your book:

“Credibility is a leader’s currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it he or she is bankrupt.”

It’s so important to be credible! I mean I guess you've been doing this for some time since you were 14 years old you've got this bank of clients you've worked with and got such a great reputation. For someone starting out, how do they create that credibility? I can't imagine, I know I'm very uncomfortable walking into a room and saying “Yeah, this is the stuff that I've done.” I don't really want to talk myself up again, the “Tall Poppy Syndrome” but it's really not about me anyway. But you want them to trust that you are meant to be in that room, you deserve a spot. How do you create that?

Jane: Yeah, great question. So trust, there is a difference between trust and credibility. Credibility brings trust, sorry, well credibility builds trust so I say there's three things that will build trust and this is some other new IP I'm working on. You saw the 12 pieces to building trust but I've really got it down to what are the three key big things that you need to be able to do to build trust.

One is authenticity, you've got to be just you, you've got to be your best self and you know that means knowing what you're trying to do, your mission, your clarity about what, who you are as a human being and just to be your most authentic self and I know that's easy to say, that first part is authenticity. The second part is empathy and empathy is that understanding that I've got an understanding, whether it's around, whatever the challenges that audience has or the team or the group or customer, whatever. If you've got those two things, so first of all its authenticity and then empathy which is what your challenges are on your world and then the bottom one is credibility so if you can get those three things the authenticity, empathy and credibility. If those three things come together you get trust because now you suddenly “I have more confidence in you; I can see the confidence in what you're saying; I can see you have conviction.” so that empathy is what actually makes you do go deeper in your knowledge.

Leanne: Yeah and like you said I mean you gave the example before of putting out a call to lawyers and then getting billed for the time. Not a lot of people do that. No, they don't! And especially with keynotes because you think “I've got this speech. It's all packaged up. I've spent a lot of time developing it. I can just go into any kind of industry and deliver this.” and I think that's where it does fall flat so what you're doing is as part of that research contextualizing it for that audience which is amazing!

Jane: Absolutely!

Leanne: So the three things that you talk about authenticity, empathy & credibility. It all talks, we're talking maps in the facilitation context but that is really what leadership is about as well.

Jane: That’s right.

Leanne: So that's what I love about doing this podcast about facilitation. Everything I'm hearing about people in terms of the great skills facilitators bring in terms of having empathy, showing up caring for people, taking that time. All of those attributes what makes a great leader.

Jane: Yes.

Leanne: So if you're becoming a great facilitator, a side benefit is you'll probably also be an amazing leader as well.

Jane: Absolutely, you know James Hume, he was the speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and he said “Whenever you're presenting and facilitating is the same thing you're auditioning for a position of leadership.” So you're in front of a room, you're already in your… I think sometimes we go out- “I'm a facilitator; I'm a trainer; I'm not a leader, I just run training programs.” but you know if you're in front of a room but even when we're branding and positioning people and around to give that credibility, we will look for photos where they're standing in front of a group. So it doesn't matter if you've got three people, if you're the one in-charge of the room, it's your room and you're the one holding the space for everybody, you're the leader!

Leanne: Yeah, you have a leader. I love that. I did read it in your book about when you are given the opportunity to present, try and document that. So this book, I have to say I love the practical nature of it. You can read a lot of books at a very theory and you're like how does it supply but I think it's great for facilitators that do want to start stepping out of their companies. One example you gave was “Before you're traveling to a workshop, take a selfie at the airport or before you hit the road.” Like that's just something so simple but that immediately what that tell people “Well, I'm on the road, I've been asked to go somewhere else to run a workshop.” such a great little hack!

Jane: Yeah and even if you are trying to show people that you don't just work in your local town so you know when I started, my problem was because of the changing government you know 80% of my business went overnight so I realized that actually half my problem is that I have a business that is very focused on clients in Queensland so I said “Okay, I actually need to build not just a national but an international brand so that if anything goes wrong at any time I can pick up. I can go somewhere or I can work with clients. I can reach out and I'm not going to be affected by local government challenges.” and that was what happens to a lot of businesses here in particular Queensland because of our volatile government so what I did exactly that I said “Okay, every time we go check in, airport; Facebook post! So it was around building the brand to be and the communication strategy that went with that and of course people go “Oh my God, you're everywhere, every time!”

Leanne: You are!

Jane: And it's very deliberate and so I've probably settled down on a bit now. But when I first started, it was very deliberate because I had to really send the message that you know if people; “I won't worry you because you're in Brisbane or you're not in Melbourne or you're not in Sydney”. I needed to open it up and create access so people would instead say “Oh, when you're in Sydney next or when you're in Melbourne next.” so I was in Sydney or Melbourne most weeks so it was just opening it up to say “I'm prepared to get on a plane. I’m prepared. “Yes I'm in town!”

Leanne: Yeah absolutely. I want to talk about a bit of travel and environment because I know you're running a workshop at Peppers at Kingscliff.

Jane: Yes.

Leanne: For anyone, for those of you that have never been there it's absolutely amazing. It's very relaxing, this beautiful beach, the town is just if you get there and all your stresses pretty much dissolved. I would like to ask you yet just about that. Was that a deliberate move to create a strong environment for you workshop? Why did you pick that spot to run your one day workshop?

Jane: Well, it sounds like I won't be doing very much.

Leanne: Yeah, cocktails by the pool but that sounds like a perfect day.

Jane: Yes, exactly. White boards can be wheeled out to the Spa.

Leanne: That's a really good idea. You should get into hotel design and thinking about conferences and things like that? Why not?

Jane: That's right! Yeah you know one of the things that I've noticed, I'm a mentor in Thought Leaders Business School and my mentor who was the founder of Thought Leaders Business School. I’ve been in there for five years and his name is Matt Church. It has this mantra, you want to get to a point where you do work you like with people you like or love, people you love the way that you want. He said to me “If you could have a program that runs any way that you want, how would that work?” and that takes a while to build up to that so yes I was running around the country and I was running programs everywhere and I said you know like Kingscliff dope I grew up around that area so it's like home to me. The beach is like home because I live in the city now but the beach is where I reconnect, it's where I get off the treadmill and so when he said “What would that look like? What would work you love, work you like with people you love the way you want?” and I thought “Okay so what I would love is I would love to be able to have a be at a point where my business had grown enough and my brand was strong enough that people would have the courage to you know maybe not stay in Melbourne get on a plane and come and disconnect to reconnect a little bit.” but it's branding work you know you're really connecting with people's identity and the core of who they are that's quite hard to do in a corporate battleship grey office.

Leanne: And they're battling traffic to even get there on time.

Jane: Yeah. You know you've got to kind of get grounded I know because I grew up around that area maybe I'm a bit of a hippie at heart but you know it's those things that you really have to consciously stop and reconnect to who you are to actually make some of these decisions that you're making and go “Oh wow! Yeah I do, do that.” But what I had to do was create that base for me to work in to help other people so that they could see that for themselves and so that's the challenge I often start to pose to them; “What would your version of this look like?” and so there's one lady that I know that has done. She's a fantastic coach and she's a beautiful cook so what she does is she cooks in her coaching sessions so you go to her house and you sit up at the kitchen bench and she coaches while she's cooking. So she cooks, she bakes so by the end of the session so she spends the first few minutes you know putting all the recipe together and whatever. I'm not a very good cook but nothing like she’s like.

Leanne: I’m a terrible cook!

Jane: Microwaves, come in very handy sometimes. You know by the end of the session then you have that by the time she's finished cooking and then you sit down you have the meal together and so that's the end of that coaching session that goes for I think an hour and a half or whatever it might be. So you know hearing some of these stories of how people do it and its part of how they love to do it that's part of their brand that's what she's known for and that's what creates the remarkability.

Leanne: Yes. I was just that word was just coming up. I mean how many people would talk about that afterwards and that is something that's completely unique to her and I love that you know because we think of workshops and we think we're boxed in a room we've got them for half the day there's going to be pretty average catered lunch, we need to have PowerPoint slides but she's completely just gone- No! This is the way we're going to do it and but then by doing that she's attracting the type of people that she'd want so it's like hitting those three things that you spoke about earlier that's such a cool quote.

Jane: Yeah you stop trying to conform but having said that when you first starting out, you've got to be easy to buy and it's hard to buy you if you set something like that up straightaway. You haven't got enough trust, you haven't built up the credibility and all that sort of thing so you still kind of got to do the hard yards initially but build up your database, build up your relationships and once there's some you'll see in the book there are a few metrics that we look for to be able to know at what point if I did. Because people are scared to do things like that so there are certain metrics that I work with people in their businesses to say “Okay, yes you've got these numbers of certain people on data bases, certain revenue, customers types of programs” and then we say “Okay, yes now is the time to do it!”

Leanne: Yeah it's a calculated risk rather than just going “I must give this a Go!” and to be completely disappointed when no one buys it.  Where did that go? Why did that fail?

Jane: Yeah you've got that trust and the relationship with those clients, they'll follow you, they'll go where you want and then because they wouldn't necessarily look for something like that but when they go, the fact that you're the one running it so you create, one is actually matters that CEO of Thought Leaders said, he said “Business is changing from the business of ideas particularly with facilitators. If you're in this space, you're working with your ideas and what your worldview is and how you articulate that to get the best out of people based on your experience.” but he said just recently that “It's not just about the ideas.” Because I can go online, I can find those ideas, I can read your blog's. It's actually the experiences you create that how those ideas are applied and how do I get to connect with that which is the whole remarkability. “What’s the essence of you that makes that experience?” because yes I can get the knowledge from you but I don't want to sit and read a blog, I want to hang out with you for a day. I want to know “Oh yeah, look at my stuff, yeah give me some attention. Look at me for a day and I want to be around your energy in the space that you hold.” and that's the real value. 

Leanne: That’s what would attracts me.  Yeah. I'd like to talk about energy as well, sorry I'm just coming up to like a keynote or the workshop that you're running down at Kingscliff. I've been really interested in listening to a lot of podcasts recently about the morning routine and what different people do. What do you do to get sort of psyched up or do you have to calm yourself down before you start delivering one of these?

Jane: Yes and its interesting, isn't it? Like keynote and facilitation as such different modes of delivery of ones thinking, ones “tell versus ask”. So you know you've got different energy spaces that you're working with but facilitation kind of got it. The thing they have in common is you've got to meet the room where they're at. You can come in, managing your state is everything so if you can manage your energy that's for sure. I have to fire myself up a little bit because I'm actually my natural state is mentoring so I'm very introverted ironically most people don't realize that but I'm more introverted than I am extroverted. And to facilitate in groups or to keynote and I keynote every week so it's not something that comes naturally to me, it is tiring. So I have to make sure I've got myself pumped up so it'll be things like make sure I get sleep, just eating well particularly when you travel because a lot of these conferences and things are interstate so I will never I always travel the night the day before. I also will go into the room the day before so if I fly in that afternoon if I'm the first or second one on in the morning, I'll go into the room because I need to know the energy or the space of the room. I'll do it just a quick practice on stage just so I can get a sense of how it works and it's funny I spoke at an event a few years ago and I was on straight after. I didn't know that the person who was speaking before me was going to be running a meditation session.

Leanne: Hard that to follow.

Jane: I had my headphones on and I had like you know right against the machine on and I was so fired up and then I went in and it was like “Okay.”

Leanne: You could feel that mood as “Woo!”

Jane: “Okay, we’ll slow down”. But you know you get even much the energy and then bring it out but you've got to bring, there's so much energy that comes to a keynote and to being able to prepare for that and it's knowing your stuff so that you can be present to the room and serve the room and connect with the room like things like what will give me energy is I'll stand at the door and greet people when they come in.  It’s also clear that to them that “Oh, she must be somebody who's working here.” or “Oh, that's right. She's the lady that maybe she's on the hand out garden.”

Leanne: Oh yeah, and she's approachable as well which is great.

Jane: It's not me saying “I'm not coming in going right. I'm the speaker, I'll have my blue M&Ms. Thank you.” You've got to connect with the audience, my job is to change the room while I'm there so you just got to do everything you can to get that energy in connection, don't you?

Leanne: Yeah I love that my job is to change the room while I'm there. Gee! That’s pretty impactful, that's going to be the quote of the episode, love that! But I think as well, I'm entering I love seeing the room as well even the day before because then it helps you go to sleep at night because he's not wondering what does the room look like and you want to have like most your questions answered before you have that sleep so you can have a restful you know eight hours or whatever it is that you need.

Jane: Yes and unique to them. You know I've had things like I've fallen off the stage, technology hasn't worked every age.

Leanne: You’ve fallen off the stage?

Jane: Oh, you name it! Like when you do as many as I do, everything goes wrong but you know you've got to know your keynote forty-five minutes inside out back to front, if anything fails what are you going to do. You know I've had that happen before. You’ve just got to know plan ABCD and E.

Leanne: Have any times where like something's happening you're like “I just can't continue doing this, what am I doing?” Have that ever crossed your mind or you like “No, just get on back on the bike and let's just keep going.” You must have been talked at times.

Jane: Yeah there was one particular time it was actually really early and when I started speaking and I got booked for this keynote it was at the Gold Coast and it was Royal Pines. I don't know if you've ever been to Royal Pines but the meeting room is massive. It's like a nightclub like they're stripe lights, it was like a rock concept this thing.

Leanne: At the golf club, that's not, now I wouldn't have thought that but…

Jane: Yeah it's got a really big, it's really popular for conferences. It's got a great massive room so there's about a thousand people at this conference and I walked in the room and the A/V guy was there and I saw my presentation on the computer and I thought it looks a bit different though and so I went over to him and said “Hi, my name is Jane Anderson, I’m on this morning.” and he said “Yeah, marked me up.” and then I said “Can I just ask you? I think there's a slide there, I just looking at that presentation, it looks a bit different than the one I had to send through.” I had send to his head two weeks prior and he said “Ah yeah, you can have a look.”, so look through and it but there were slides missing, there were things I'd never seen before and so I was on in 20 minutes I couldn't change anything and so I said “Okay, all right I'll just work with that.”

Leanne: Gosh, well done.

Jane: “Have you got a whiteboard? and he said “Yes, I think there's one down at the back.” and so I thought all right I know where my where the breaks are I think in the content so I was like “Okay, I can work I think with it.” and then he said “Just so you know, you know the remote?” so he said “With the remote, just so you know it doesn't go backwards that only goes forwards in it.” so I said “Okay, so what happens if I have to go backwards?” he said “Oh look! I'll be at the back, I'm the A/V guy, you just yell out.” So of course I started the keynote and the slides started moving. I hadn't even touched anything and I thought “I should have known when he said that. How would he know that?” Anyway, I got it, I said on to Mr. A/V “Can you come back to the first slide again?” and so I started again and they just started moving in and I thought “Okay, I'm not touching anything!” so I just turned them off and I was in the first five minutes. Anyway, I got through it but I was kicking myself because I thought “What have I done wrong, I can't…” you know because everyone's looking at you that you're the problem so you've just got to work with. Anyway of course I got off the stage and the coordinator came running up and said “Oh my God that was amazing. I don't know how you did that but what you didn't know is that your remote was connected to the room next door and theirs was connected to yours. That was fantastic, would definitely get you back next year”. I can’t do it, I can’t do this thing!

Leanne: Oh my gosh! That’s up there! There were some of the worst stories I've heard. Wow! You handled that so well. But you wouldn't have been able to pull that off if you haven't prepared. There's no way I mean you could have, you can wing things for certain time but not for 45 minutes. Oh my gosh, well done! High five! I was getting goose bumps when you're telling me when you're framing that story that is the worst scenario and if that ever happens though at least we know “Hey, what's going on next door, I think we need to swap.”

Jane: Exactly, it’s a good tip for facilitators.

Leanne: It is really a good tip. Speaking of tips, are there any tips or words of advice that you can offer our first-time facilitators listening in?

Jane: Yeah I think if I think back to. I remember the first time I facilitated I was terrible. So I would, allow yourself to you know just be- know that you're not going to be perfect straight away and this still days where I like not very often but sometimes you just have an off day. It doesn't mean it's like your whole career is destroyed. If you have a tough day that would be the first thing is to know it's just a tough day. If something goes wrong that's all part of learning and part of growing. The other thing I would say that has made the biggest difference and I wish I did this much earlier was find your tribe, find the people who you need to be around, who are doing the same thing as you or trying to do something similar. But you want to also work out find your mentor and often the mentor will be the person leading that tribe so if you want to get really great at like it might be at training activities then find the expert who is the expert in training activities. Do some mentoring with them but work out as well- “Who are other people who are trying to solve that problem as well?” or “Where do other trainers hang out?”

So for example, I have a program which is called the “Women of Influence” and we have this power up program and so these are all women who are facilitators, trainers, coaches, speakers. So I lead the tribe but they're all trying to do the same thing but they're all different at what they do. Some do leadership, some do personal branding got three in there that do personal branding, we've got others that are business coaches but they do a lot of facilitation for businesses. Everybody's so different but to work out we'll you know particularly I think for women as well you know for women, we don't naturally get out of build the networks the blokes tend to. So find your tribe, go and ask around if it's you know whether it's the AITD may be there's some members in there if it's training, the Australian Institute of Training and Development. If you're a coach but you also include facilitation in your work maybe you do group coaching it might be that kind of space. Look at the ICF professional speakers if you're a facilitator and you're wanting to include more speaking, you'll be like this plenty of speakers who also do facilitation. So look for your associations, find your tribe get around with the right people and find a mentor.

Leanne: Excellent advice, brilliant! Jane, I've loved our conversation today I could easily talk to you for another couple of hours. I think we've just kind of touched the surface but I've learnt a lot already. A lot of what I picked up free reading your book which I will recommend to all the listeners especially if you want to start differentiating yourself in a crowded market I think it's really useful. But also hearing, you’re very authentic and vulnerable when you came out with some of those stories and I think that cheers the audience that it's okay to mess up and you need to stretch in order to develop at the end of the day. Finally Jane, where can people find you?

Jane: Yeah thank you. So they can jump on my website so its jane-anderson.com, you're welcome to jump on there and of course there's all LinkedIn and Instagram and those places so I'm always around like you said.

Leanne: Everywhere!

Jane: I’m kind of everywhere. You’ll be sick of me probably. But one of the things that you can do is when you go to the website. This could be useful actually for your listeners and you'll probably notice on the book it's got where you can do take the “Influencer Score” so I created a diagnostic to help people to understand like just the communication channels and just you know you don't have to try and do all of them immediately but just to know where to start and so you can go on it takes three minutes to fill out so you just go to the jane-anderson.com website, if you scroll right down the bottom it's actually a little bit hidden and because otherwise you go to the shop and you'll pay $80, so just go!.

Leanne: Wow that’s so cool. Okay!

Jane: There’s a little link its right down the very bottom and it's called the “Lead Generation Indicator” so if you're starting out or if maybe you're thinking about making the move or you have made the move out of corporate and you're starting to do this yourself. It gives you a seven page personal report of exactly where you sit now. I'm based on what you've got to do so you know your gaps on what and where to go from there.

Leanne: Oh that's perfect and we'll definitely link those in the show notes for sure.

Jane: Oh thank you! Yeah better, right!

Leanne: Lovely. Thanks, Jane. You've been awesome!

Jane: Thank you very much.

Leanne: Have a great evening.

Jane: Thank you.

Leanne: Well done!

First Time Facilitator podcast interview with Tyson Young (Episode 20)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. Tyson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Carisma, a digital application that allows your mechanic to provide you with your cars visual service history. In this episode, we talk about using humour in your deliver, adapting to your audience and using different tools and strategies to be a better facilitator.

Leanne: Our guest today was recommended by a mutual friend, Stephanie Yeo. I'd like to read the introduction that she sent me. These are her own words. Tyson is a CEO and co-founder of Carisma, a digital application that enables your mechanic to provide you with your car's visual service history. Outside of his work at Carisma, Tyson is an amazing facilitator, emcee extraordinaire and speaker. He's wonderfully humorous and an amazing active listener who adapts his style based on effectively reading his audience. Welcome to the show, Tyson Young.

Tyson: Thank you so much for having me. That reminds me I'm going to have to pay Steph to write all those lovely things, clearly lies but–-

Leanne: How does it feel when you read a description-- someone in your audience wrote that about you, how does that make you feel?

Tyson: It's super humbling to actually have engaged the audience and one person in particular and especially from someone like Steph who is incredible. It's amazing.

Leanne: I hope you’re listening out, Steph. Yes, we both got some very positive things to say about you. Absolutely, for someone not only to think about that and then to reach out and say, "Leanne, you need to interview this guy. It's -–" Yes, well done.

Tyson: Thank you, thank you.

Leanne: How did you stumble upon the world of training, facilitation, speaking in general?

Tyson: I mean probably it depends how far back I go. I did debating in school and I'm sure that's just because mum wanted me to redirect my energies into arguing with her with other people. I started doing public speaking but quickly dropped it out when I learned you had to do preparation beforehand. Debating was great because you could just go and you would wait for them to do that a little bit and then you'd argue the point. I think that was good a little bit of high school experience. After that, I think that the pivotal moment for me was the QUT international business Case Competition.

You would get presented with these cases. You'd go overseas and you have-- depending on the timeline. It would be like 24-48 hours crammed in a hotel room with way too much Red Bull and putting together this business case and then presenting it to the audience and a panel of expert judges. That was really good in terms of learning how to develop some kind of cohesive train of thought and a message and then deliver that in a high-pressure situation.

In addition to that, I joined the Australian Army Reserve when I was 16. I did that for 10 years and I think there is a lot of training and a lot of facilitation again in relatively high-pressure situations, so that was good and good for the maturity maybe at a younger age. Then from there, just every gig seems to lead to another one and then here I am talking to you.

Leanne: Absolutely. Let's talk about those high-pressure situations. Do you remember that first pitch that you did overseas? Could you sort of reflect on that and what have you learned from that first pitch compared to now>

Tyson: So much. I think I always joked that I was the PowerPoint guy, because I wasn't fantastic at doing the talking. I wasn't fantastic with coming up with the strategies. I knew how to move some pixels around, so that's how I snuck into the team. I was like, "I've got design skills." That was good for so many reasons, but I think working with a team especially, because you couldn't just go and do your own thing. You still had to make sure that your lines worked in with everyone else's and you were kind of vibing off one another.

I think what I learnt from that is there are, in a situation like that, often many different personalities and it comes down to compromise both from your end and their end. You end up generally with a pretty happy team. What else did I learn? Not to have too much Red Bull for a presentation. No, but it was good. I think it all came together in the end and just to enjoy the experience.

Leanne: Part of Stephanie’s feedback is that she said that you adapt your style based on reading the audience. Can you give examples of doing that? Was that something again another skill that you've honed?

Tyson: Yes, like anything, I think you do hone skills over time. One thing that has helped me, and I think this actually came from dad giving me this advice because he's done a bit of facilitation himself. He also had 20 years in the military. It's to, first of all, turn up early and read the room, walk the stage, do whatever you can to feel comfortable in the environment. A big part of that for me is actually speaking with the audience.

Steph was one of the amazing conversations I had beforehand. It's just having that genuine human connection which really puts you at ease. Then you start to feel as though you're understanding who your audience are before you're actually talking to them. Because I really hate going in cold and just talking at people. It's great to already have, oh, like you feel as though you've got some friends before you even start.

Leanne: Yes, I was given that advice as well before, like a big speech. You're kind of conflicted because sometimes you just want to be backstage getting yourself psyched up or doing whatever it takes to psych you up. But at the same time, you see the value of that you're no longer delivering to strangers. You can actually find out why you’re in this room and then somehow relate that to the person.

Tyson: Oh, it's like you feel as though you're having a conversation with people. It would be the same if I had to do this interview but you couldn't talk for 40 minutes. I'm just kind of I don't know what to talk about, just making stuff up. Whereas, when you have that back and forth engagement even if that engagement is simply them laughing or just inquisitively on looking, I think that helps bring out some of the good stuff.

Leanne: Let's talk about getting laughs. Steph mentioned that you were-- We're talking a lot about you, Steph. Wonderfully humorous, is that just your personality that you just bring into your role as a facilitator?

Tyson: I don't know if that's my personality. I mean I've often had people tell me that I'm a joke. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Now look, I'm incredibly impressed by comedians to start with because they have to get up there with the expectation that they're going to be funny. If you kind of get some laughs as a comedian, I imagine that's probably not a good thing. You want a roomful of laughter. As a facilitator, your job isn't there to be a comedian. But if you do get a laugh and people are like, "Ah, funny guy," it's a very easy one. Even if you get one joke-- I think for me it's more about going in with the expectation that there won't be any laughs and not waiting for applause or for laughter.

Leanne: Waiting for the cymbal crash.

Tyson: Yes, if a joke doesn't come off and it's -- me personally, I never deliver something with like this epic punchline. It's just if people laugh and then, ah, okay, I'll pause and I'll let you have a laugh and continue on. It feels good, it feels good for them too.

Leanne: Great. What other kind of tools and strategies do you bring into your facilitation that may make you different from the other facilitator next door?

Tyson: Look, I wrote some things down because just before this. I guess that's the first one doing a bit of research and putting some notes down. Doing a little bit of research to understand who your audience is helps a lot. Again, that helps with the kinds of jokes that are going to land. If I make lots of startup related jokes at a maybe a corporate event, they might not understand it. They won't be empathetic to that kind of humor. The next one is I'm a big fan of self-deprecation clearly. I've maybe take it a bit too far sometimes and people think I actually just hate myself but not all the time, only after a big house party. Talking with people beforehand yet walking the room, and I think remembering that it's okay to smile and laugh.

People have this misconception that if it's corporate, as soon as they hear that word "corporate," it's like, oh, it has to be serious. At the end of the day, people are still people. People still want to laugh and engage with you. What else? Find your own style. I think it's great to have inspiration but it's also okay to realize that you can be different to other people. I'm certainly not-- I wouldn't even say I'm a great facilitator, just over time I'm learning how to do it a bit better.

Leanne: Same as me.

Tyson: Yes, and I've listened to your podcast and I think they're fantastic.

Leanne: Thank you.

Tyson: Your guests are great. Hopefully, I can you have to stand with them. Just in terms of a few other tips, I'd like to write down notes like handwritten notes. Oh, just lost power. [laughs] For those--

Leanne: For those listening, we’re recording face to face and the light just went out. It went completely dark. But that's kind of-- I mean that can happen in a workshop-

Tyson: Totally.

Leanne: - where we've sort of facilitated in previous episodes, where they've said the biggest thing that ever derailed their workshop was the technology not working. How do you -- but look, that was out for half a second and we've recovered.

Tyson: I know. I started sweating profusely. I was a little bit scared but we're here. I think in terms of not just the notes, I try and avoid a lot of caffeine maybe just because it's the type of person I am. I still get quite nervous before anything like any kind of presentation. I use those nerves because anxiety and fear and excitement, for a lot of it I think it's the same physiological effect. I do use that adrenaline to keep me amped up a little bit. I don't want too much other stimulants in my system. The final one I think is just water, just making sure I'm hydrated and have a relatively clear throat.

Leanne: Well, most good tips are water and caffeine, interesting as well. Because, I've also heard there's a podcast I listen to, it's called Steal the Show by Michael Port. He always says don't drink anything with dairy in it, even the night before that you're running like a big presentation because the dairy in your system can like clog up your lungs or something along those lines.

Tyson: I don't eat dairy so that's a good stuff.

Leanne: There you go. You’re all good. For anyone else listening, I always go a Long Black in the morning of a big presentation just so it doesn't those up. You've really come a long way from preparing compared to what you're like in high school, where you just kind of wanted to wing it with your debating team now which is fantastic.

Tyson: Look, there is a certain element of preparation, but I still wing it for the most part. I absolutely hate written speeches. There are many amazing orators in the world and I think Barack Obama is one of them. I nearly said president but unfortunately some things have changed. People that can deliver a really well-structured presentation, I love watching that. I am definitely more of the style that I’ve got my key talking points and the general structure and then I’ll talk through.

Again, we don’t have written speeches when we have conversations with one another. If you were at a house partying and you're talking with someone, if you were like, “Oh, I missed that point. I’m going to have to talk about this,” it’s not natural. Again, I’d like to feel as though I’m having a one-on-one conversation even if there's 300 people in the audience, trying to finish a point looking at someone and then moving on.

Leanne: Yes, absolutely. Now, you are actually probably the youngest facilitator. Well, you’re not probably. You are the youngest facilitator we’ve had on the show today.

Tyson: I grew a whisker especially for this. It took me a month but I got there.

Leanne: Well, well done. I’d like to hear about facilitating workshops for the people in this side of community, who are generally from a younger generation and not-- like you said, you're not comparing startups to corporates. What are you doing? Do you do anything different with the startup audience? What do they want more? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

Tyson: Yes I think, again I’m not super, super experienced with facilitation or presenting or even with startups. My brother and I have run-- we ran a digital agency for about five years, Lloyd and I. Then Lloyd and I teemed up with a good friend of ours, Yohan. He is the CTO of another company we’ve got. I think over the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve gained a little bit more experience in startup lens, not just business.

People generally like to hear some of the experiences we’ve had and then they feel as though they can resonate with those stories and understand that we truly are empathetic to some of the challenges they experience as well. Startup people are, I don’t know if forgiving is the right word, but we all understand that you’re iterating quickly. You’re trying to find work and it’s the same with presenting. I don’t always have the perfect response but it’s engaging them the best way I know how.

It’s a bit of a misconception that startups is just for young people because there are many people, I think the most successful startup founders are in their 40s when they start. Life experience is actually quite good.

Leanne: Yes, they say they have been through two or three different companies that haven’t done so well, then they hit their strides in their mid to late 40s, which is so important.

Tyson: That’s my excuse currently the next one probably is a success.

Leanne: Fail three times and then you’re on to a winner. Have you ever had a time where things haven’t gone so well during a presentation that you can share with our audience?

Tyson: A time that hasn’t gone well. I’ll talk about how I got into one of the gigs that I currently do and how that nearly didn’t go so great. I got a call from the business school at QUT. I’m in the back of an Uber. We’re in Melbourne at the time and we’re heading off to this meeting. I take this call and they said, “Tyson, Bill Prad has recommended you for this new session we’re doing. It’s called, The Business Leaders Talks, where we interview successful alumni.”

I’m like, “Oh, me, successful? I didn’t actually think I was that successful, but continue.” She said, “We were wondering if you wanted to be a part of it.” I was like, “Look, totally.” They said, “Because we need someone to interview the successful people.” [laughs] I was like, “Oh, I got you.” That has been a fantastic excuse to meet amazing people. That's been running for about three years now, the QUT BLT.

I just remember the first time I ever got up and this was the first time I really ever emceed anything. I’m okay when someone else is running the workshop or whatever it is and I just can get up, grab the mic and do my little bit and sit down. This was the first time that it didn’t dawn on me until the music stopped, that I had to go to the front and actually run the workshop or the talks.

I just remember I felt as though the colour had drained out of my face. I’m in a full suit. Again, this is when I didn’t really know what my style was. I’m wearing Nikes now but I was wearing a suit and probably even had a tie on at the time, walk up to the front, it's dead silence. I can feel the eyes on me. I didn’t even know if it was that hot on the day, but I’m sweating and the sweat start to get worse. I’ve got the paper in front of me and again the things you learn, if you are going to have notes at a lectern, make sure it's really large font and it’s broken into this visual areas where you can really quickly see.

I had basically an A4 page which it felt like point seven font and I’m staring at it. I am looking at the page and I’m looking off at the audience and looking back down at the page. I swear there must have been crickets. I can feel my voice starting to tremble a little bit and I’m starting to get tunnel vision. I can almost feel the same thing happening now retelling the story. I start the first line. I've probably made a mistake already and I just look up and my first-- [laugh] I don’t know, am I allowed this way?

Leanne: Yes, that’s all right.

Tyson: My first thought as I look up at the room, I’m like, “Fuck it, I’m just going to walk out.” [laughs] I was like, “Just stay with it because you will never ever leave this down.” I was just like, “I’ll just push through.” I did the acknowledgment of the traditional owners and I’m like, “That will be right, I’m probably going to stuff this up and it’ll be really disrespectful and no one is going to want to have me back.” Anyway, I felt as though I did a fairly average job, but I think we’re always quite self-critical.

It’s good to analyze yourself and your performance after the fact, but not beat yourself up too much. Pushing through, that was probably the best thing I could have done, because by the time I got into it I really enjoyed it. It often happens, it’s really nervous at the beginning and then by the end of it I’m like, “I don’t want this to end. I’m engaging with the audience and I’m having such a good time.” It’s just gotten better and better ever since that.

There so, so much for me to learn and for me to improve still, but if you enjoy something and you take that with you to the next experience, it will just keep getting better.

Leanne: Yes, that’s hilarious. I actually had a very similar story last week. I was emceeing a big event for the company I work for over at the convention center. It was very dark, lights came up and that was me and I was on. I thought my notes would be on the lectern ready to go, but they weren’t there. I think in that moment when you pause, you feel like it's gone for an hour and just time really slows down. You get two options really. It’s like never apologize, it's I was going to keep this going and make sure improve it or--

Tyson: You’re right. You shouldn’t apologize, but I am the sort of person that like if someone throws a ball at my head, I’ll probably apologize for being in the way. [laughs] I just apologize at the drop of a hat. I can’t help it. Yes, you know you’re right, just pushing through. It’s like the pain is, this is a no-- 99% of the audience is never going to know. Yes, I know it’s good advice.

Leanne: Yes. It’s so funny when you hit your stride towards the end of it and you’re sort of in your element now and thinking, “Oh, I wish this could go on forever because I love this!

Tyson: The problem is maybe you are enjoying it so much that you forget your audience is there and it’s like-- the startup hatch is a great example. I'm pretty sure that ran an hour over time. I didn’t know if it was because I was getting up with quips in the middle of every presentation or if I just should have hurried it along, but yes, another thing I need to improve on. [laughs]

Leanne: I would love to talk about the differences between just presenting. You said it yourself you realized when you were emceeing, as you’re getting up to open it, that there was a big shift between facilitating a workshop with a group and actually setting the standard and emceeing and getting the audience involved. What are the things have you learned from-- or the differences between those two roles in particular?

Tyson: Look, I wouldn’t say I have facilitated as many days or anything like that as I have presented. I think I took for granted how easy it was just to get up and grab a mic and do the talking when someone else has done all the facilitating for you, whether it's printouts or time management or like the event details. I was basically the guy that just got to rock up, take the mic and really take the credit, but it's people at QUT like Julie McMorris and Rebecca who did all the hard work and probably so many other people that I can’t name.

They are the ones that generally make you look good. In terms of facilitation, timekeeping is a big one and respecting people’s time. As much as I do want to wait for everyone to get into the room, I’ll generally try and start it the time it says that it starts. Then from there, a big one for me is making sure that the person who looks maybe the shy-est and like they're retracting into their shell, they’re typically the ones I want to hear from first.

People like me with a big mouth, they’ll always get their say, but I think it’s those that are quieter who maybe spend more time in life observing than they do speaking, that have more important or more interesting things to say and trying to bring that out of them.

Leanne: Yes, that’s really important. Thanks for that. Now, knowing all this, what’s the best advice then that you could give to a first time facilitator?

Tyson: Well, get involved and I guess if you are a first time facilitator you already are. I would love to see more young people doing this. It's really common for the person at the front of the room to be the older wiser one, which is fantastic go along and see those. I have met some really incredible younger people doing this, people like Scott Millar. I think he just turned 18. He is currently the Creative Enterprise Australia Collider accelerator.

I don't want to say kids even but younger people are doing amazing things. I would love to see them facilitating more workshops for each other and all growing through that experience. Maybe even older people rocking along for those and getting the perspective of younger people would be great. Other advice, I think I like to watch presentations of people that inspire and motivate me. Simon Sinek is a great one. Trying really hard to step away from just passively watching a presentation.

It happens even with me, like I'll get sucked into it just because they're great. But, observing how they move, how they talk, how they change their voice and tone and how they pause, it's a big one and it's something I need to get better at it. It's like what you said, time just stands still and it feels like it can be an hour. Pausing is one of the most effective tools I think any good presenter has.

Leanne: Definitely to get attention.

Tyson: For sure.

Leanne: Because they're wondering, is this on purpose, has she has gotten the lines, what's going on? I need to reflect on what she just said. People really start paying attention the second you pause-

Tyson: Totally.

Leanne: - which is kind of counter intuitive if you want people to listen, you don't say anything.

Tyson: Well, I mean if you've been talking with verbal diarrhea for half an hour and it just all becomes the same but you pause and then something changes. You look up and you're like, "Oh, what's going on?" One of my favourite techniques with PowerPoints especially, I know we're probably talking more about the talking aspect over the PowerPoint, for me simplicity is key in a PowerPoint. You are the focus. I don't mean that from an egotistical point of view. People are there to maybe learn or listen to what you've got to say. They're not there to read what you've written on a slide.

One of my favourite tools with a PowerPoint besides just being simple is a blank slide. Because the moment it's blank, people, "Where else do I look?" They look at the presenter. Sometimes people will think that something is missing from the slide but if you continue to engage them, it becomes really clear.

Leanne: I've never heard that strategy.

Tyson: I love it. It's one of my favourites.

Leanne: Is it just a black slide?

Tyson: Yes, it can be black or it can just be the word disappears off whatever colour background you have.

Leanne: Nice. I’m going to start using that. That's really good, thank you.

Tyson: Yes, it’s cool.

Leanne: I'm interested to hear how doing all the stuff that you're doing at QUT Business School, the interviews that you're doing, how that's played out and helped you in your business life. You've created this or co-created this app for mechanics. My husband's a mechanic.

Tyson: Yes, awesome. I have to have a chat with you afterwards.

Leanne: Definitely. Talk to us-- I'd love to hear more about the app how it started. Then have you noticed that your skills in this area in terms of negotiating with other people have improved because of the communication, your skills that you're developing at the University? How has it played out?

Tyson: Yes, I think they probably feed into each other. For a long time, I like the concept of being a bit of a chameleon and not just, ah, they put their hands on their hips. You put your hands on your hips. I think it's a bit more subconscious than that for me of trying to emulate how people are. Maybe it comes down to whether they're engaging with you and being a bit attuned to that and trying to talk you know on the same level. I don't mean like if someone's not as book smart as you, talk like them. It's just the case of finding what is of interest to them and really diving into that.

I'm probably giving a terrible answer to this. For me, when it's been out there with the workshops, it's definitely been challenging for sure, as at different markets what we're expecting. I don't actually know how to give you a good answer for that one. In terms of how it started anyway, mum and dad have been running Ultra Tune Capalaba for the last must be 12, 13 years. Dad's background, as I said, 20 years military and then basically government jobs since then but then got into private enterprise.

They didn’t quite realize how bad the reputation was of the mechanic industry. I'm sure you know it all too well. Dad being dad, just thought of innovative ways to change that and started taking photos of absolutely everything they did. He would have with the mechanics on the floor digital cameras and he would be taking this onto the computer. When any customer came in, then he would just be showing them the work that that actually done and build that trust and transparency with them.

It wouldn't matter if they're a young dude who was a red head and knew everything about cars or a young female who maybe wasn't as sure. Dad would just treat everyone the same and still does. I think he's the only mechanic that I can find that has nearly 100 five-star reviews on Facebook.

Leanne: No, that’s incredible.

Tyson: A lot of it comes down to that trust that he's been able to build. He was going through this whole digital process but it was a pain because you'd have to get the SD card out of the camera, then you'd have to archive them once the photos were too much for the computer and then dig them up for the archive. They were kind of disparate. They were all over the computer, different hard drives. I was like, "Well, dad, we're nerds and we need something to work on. We'll build an app."

We've kind of learned that maybe dad is the exception to the rule. Maybe that's one of the challenges with the app, finding independent who have the time and resources and inclination to be as transparent. We turn into an app and we're almost daily getting people, like the people that have their cars serviced, signing up so that they can keep their visual history. We don't know where we're going to take it yet. We've had some really interesting conversations with car manufacturers and some larger dealer groups. It's still going to be a long journey for us. But the results from car owners themselves has been really fascinating.

Leanne: So like a really great challenge as well.

Tyson: Yes, always a challenge with staff.

Leanne: Yes, and kind of reminds me of I've got some friends that I work with that have kids in childcare. They're often getting photos sent to them during the day. I think it's the same kind of concept that develops that trust in a way.

Tyson: Transparency will be the norm for sure.

Leanne: I'm comparing kids to cars. I probably shouldn't. Yes, it is, transparency is the new norm. I think you’re absolutely right. The automotive industry, going for something and you come out and it's $3,000, and you think, "I don’t know. Was that worth it? Did I need that"

Tyson: Maybe it helps remove some of that buyer's remorse when it's like, okay, well I knew I had to pay and I really believed that I had to get brake pads. You can have someone that needed brake pads but it wasn't communicated in the same way. They're going to give you a one star because of a miscommunication. Whereas, I believe we're big on the communication piece. I often say we're not workshop software, we're transparency and communication. It will apply to so many different industries and I think we've just started with automotive.

Leanne: I wonder how that would work in a group facilitation kind of setting. If you're running a two-day workshop, you're taking-- I do it anyway and I know a lot of facilitators do is kind of document photos of activities they've done. The group loves it because I get a souvenir of the time they've spent together.

Tyson: Totally.

Leanne: I guess your client would also benefit because they can say, "Oh, wow."

Tyson: People are engaged.

Leanne: Is there anything else that you want to share with our audience about facilitating? Actually, the other thing I want to talk to you is about something we touched on before we hit the record button. This is just an interesting thing. It doesn't actually relate to facilitation but it relates to challenges. You mentioned that you've spent, what, over 400 days just having a cold shower every day. I'd love to hear more about that. Can you share why you do that with our listeners?

Tyson: Why I do that? Because I'm weird. No, so it started as a way to break complacency. It was a bit of a challenging time just with the wrapping up of one business and starting another one. At first, it was just a way to break that complacency to get in the shower to-- it's that mental break of like-- it really snaps you out of just the mundaneness of the morning maybe. It was a reminder for me that if cold water was the worst part of my day, then life isn't too bad. So it's just cold water. Saves massively on the bills as well I want to say.

The challenge was it was a bit of accountability to my co-founders was that I would do it until we were profitable because cold showers suck and I say that in jest. They're great for some things but when you're tired and cold, they really do suck. I said, look, until we're profitable, I'll have cold showers. Then after a period of time, especially through the winter months and I could see the balance sheet, it was clear we were not going to be profitable, not in the near term.

I just said, I'm going to set a new milestone that is still I think admirable and I'll do 12 months. Then I got to the 12 month mark and I built up such a good streak and I was like-- I continued to do this for myself. I pushed the goalposts. I said, well, look, I need something to actually give it some finality. What I'll do is, after Spartan Race which is another challenge from abroad that I just completed, after Spartan Race I'll have a cold beer and a hot shower, because I also took four months off drinking at the beginning of the year.

Basically, did that and then it always like, oh, look I've done Spartan Race but maybe I'll just go till the 400 day mark. Then after a while, I realized that I well surpassed it. Last week, I had my first hot shower in a while. It was amazing. Especially, like I think San Francisco was the hardest period because I was sick and it was winter, and yes, I'm an idiot. But I got through and it was one of those things, it's really not bad.

Leanne: It’s character building.

Tyson: It's certainly the character building.

Leanne: You had a few of those in the military as well I'd imagine.

Tyson: Yes, I mean you know being at bush especially on exercising Malaysia at times, back is covered in prickly heat. You've got the radio and all ammo and webbing on you. You're dehydrated and you're living

in torrential rain for weeks on end sometimes and you forget how much you appreciate porcelain when you get back to a bathroom.

[laughter]

Yes, character building for sure.

Leanne: Character building. It's been fantastic having you on the show.

Tyson: Thank you, likewise.

Leanne: I think you've got so many other stories to share, possibly that don't fit under the theme of facilitation, but it's really interesting character building stories. I've spoken to a few facilitators who always talk about the preparation and what they need to do to get them self focused. I haven't personally tried the cold shower, but maybe that's something that I will do. I love the hot and cold as a recovery method after playing sport, but I've never done it before. It would definitely wake you up I think -

Tyson: For sure.

Leanne: - if you hadn't had much sleep. Thank you so much.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Dana the Trainer (Episode 19)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In today's episode I talk to Dana the Trainer. Dana promises bright ideas and electric training, and likes to do things a little differently in her training environment. Her philosophy is really about ensuring that people learn the skills they need to learn, while having a really great time.

Here's the transcript with Dana the Trainer, released on 18 June 2018.

Leanne: Our guest today promises bright ideas and electric training. Whether it’s technical or professional skills you need she brings her brand- that is of energy, passion and enthusiasm to every session. She remains convinced that learning can be made engaging, colourful and even fun. And it's her life's mission to make that true. Step away from sameness and say goodbye to generic courses, she's on the line in London. Welcome to the show Dana James-Edwards otherwise known as Dana the Trainer.

Dana: Hello, thanks for having me.

Leanne: It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I really wanted to just jump right in and talk about an excerpt I read on your website which I loved and probably the reason why I invited you on the show and it's this: 

“One day, there was a call for internal facilitators for technical courses and I answered the call. The second I held my first box of scented markers and stood in front of a blank flipchart I fell in love.”

That’s just so beautiful. Can you tell us about that moment what was made you fall in love with facilitation?

Dana: So, I had actually done some facilitation before but very briefly like my first job out of university and then got swept up in other things so when I was offered the opportunity after working in sort of a very technical and technology focused background for several years. It was almost like I had forgotten that I loved this and the second that I got back in front of there again I felt at home. You know how people feel nervous in front of a classroom I didn't feel that I felt like “Oh my God, this is amazing when can I do it again and I also really love scented markers, it’s true I love them!

Leanne: Wait, what type do you use? Do you use the Mr. Sketch scented markers and are they are over in the UK? 

Dana: I have loads of Mr. Sketch but to be honest these days I'm going for the environmentally conscious option and using Neulands the refillable ones. Yeah, but they're not as fun as the scented one so I do keep those for the learners in the classroom.

Leanne: It is funny, the scented markers for whatever kind of response you get from people but just want to try every colour and sniff the piece of paper.

Dana: All the time! It's like they forget they're grownups and they go straight back into being kids and I love it!

Leanne: A lot of people ask me how I find my guess and it's all through different things. It could be recommendations or books that I've read but you're the first person I've interviewed who I found off Instagram. Yeah, that’s how I found you I was looking through all the hashtags like hashtag learning and development, hashtag whatever public speaking. I don't know what the tag was but something about that your brand online really enticed me because it was full of colour and this is why I was talking about Sketch markers and the scents and everything and you just have that really fun brand so I'm wondering…

Dana: …My social media strategies are working!

Leanne: And you got that recorded, so you know I'm not making it up. It is just straight there absolutely. So there's only a couple weeks ago, I was like, “Who is this Dana the Trainer?” I was curious! So tell us a bit about your brand and what is it about the energy and how do you bring that into a classroom kind of setting?

Dana: So, that really is my brand, it's about energy, and it’s about passion. I feel especially in a technical setting lots of times people come in and they're dreading the day or the two days they think it's going to be really boring they're picturing like old school learning where you get a big fat manual and you have to learn off all of this theory or there's an exam some of the courses I do have an exam at the end and you can see people coming in they're already stressed out and you haven't even started and I just think “Gosh it doesn't have to be this way!” I think that's the point and really it doesn't. There are so many things that you can do to bring learning, to bring a classroom alive to make things not be so painful for people. I think that is my aim and I'm so glad that that comes across I love colour, I love things that are engaging, I love drawing people in and if you're on a training course where you're just looking at a manual for two days and it's really just intense and intensive. You want learning for the exam, I don't want people to learn for the exam or for the now I want them to actually live with stuff that they'll remember for a long time, how do you do that by making things memorable and that means by mixing things up by doing things in a different way.

Leanne: Fantastic! This is for the audience, what type of courses do you run more of the technical course as well, what of those professional skills that you can also deliver?

Dana: Okay, so you know everyone says to specialise and when I was starting out I had lots of advice which is like, you need to pick a specialism, you need to pick either soft skills or pick a soft skill that you're really good at or pick technical skills. I can't do that, I spent so much of my life working in a technical arena those are skills that I have and I don't want to lose and then at the same time when I became a facilitator for Big4, all of the soft skills courses are wrapped up into that I kind of see them going hand in hand. So from a technical perspective, I facilitate things that I learned how to do in my life when I was technical so Project management, Agile, Software Testing, right, that's my background that's the kind of thing that I do from a technical perspective but you cannot really do all of those things unless you know how to talk to people, how to interact with them or how to communicate. They go together, right? Okay, so I don't want to choose, right? and I do both and I think it's great because I never get bored there's always stuff that's interesting me and pulling me and I'm sorry but I don't want to do the one thing okay I want to do many things!

Leanne: You can have everything they're not mutually exclusive and I like that!

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: Yeah, especially when you're talking about things like Project Management and Agile and you obviously some of your audience will be technically focused people and it would be very tempting to try and like meld in without style but I love that you're exploring and saying “No! We can make this one, we don't have to be serious”.

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: Yeah, so I'd love to hear a bit about, I mean you've got this. I can tell over our Skype conversation a very bubbly outgoing personality. Growing up, were you always this way where you're always very confident in front of a classroom?

Dana: So I was a bookworm, my sister makes fun of me. When I was in Secondary School I was a library prefect. I was that quiet. On a lunchtime, I'd like to go to the library and read so I was of hot about books, about reading, I wasn't like an outdoor “Miss Popularity” kind of person. However, I have to say I was really good at debate so like from sixth form there were debate and public speaking competitions and I really excel there. I'm a bubbly person but I can't actually pinpoint maybe when this all happened, maybe it's in University when I was a little bit more free I'm not sure but if I look back through a childhood I was definitely a lot quieter and maybe more reserved, very studious and one of those exam people who loved exams as an achievement and that kind of thing so maybe it was that I was wrapped up in all of that achievement at the time and then “Dana the Trainer”, this bubbly person came a little bit later.

Leanne: Yeah I love how you talked about Dana the Trainer as a kind of another person or personality. I was looking at your website and it's again the first website I've seen where you have your own cartoon series. I mean, that's incredible! How did you get that idea? Where did that come from?

Dana: That was, what I like to call a “shower thought”. So my best ideas come to me when I’m in the shower and I thought, they always do right?

Leanne: Like always. Yeah!

Dana: I thought how fun would it be to have this and I spent a long time looking for graphic designers, etc. to be able to help me with the idea and it's just something unique and fun that you don't see very often. It just popped into my head and I did it.

Leanne: I think I was looking through a cartoon series and the ones that really well, the one that really popped out for me because it's something that I do as well is one where you're in bed and it's like 9 o'clock in the evening and it's the night before a workshop and  I really need a good night's sleep because I need to be on my game tomorrow and then three till about 12:30 in the morning you're still thinking about how the session go and who's in the room.

Dana: That is my life in a cartoon.

Leanne: Yeah, that's exactly what I do and I thought I was probably, maybe I may be thinking things too much and maybe like the more that I do this the easier it will get but I find that I'm still over preparing. Is that what you're finding as well, you're still kind of overthinking it because you want it to be great?

Dana: You do. This is yourself, it's you're brand, you've invested, you want things to go really well and I did tell myself at the beginning, you know what, “the more practice you have, this is going to be great, you'll be going to sleep earlier” but still even when you know the content and you're familiar with it. You're still thinking about “Who's going to be there tomorrow? What if this exercise doesn't work? What do I have as a backup for this? Did I pack this thing? I have a packing list. You just get so wrapped up and everything I think.

Leanne: Yeah, so what kind of things are on your packing list?

Dana: So, it depends on the type of session but I will always have sharpies or Mr. Sketch markers depending on what I’m doing. I always have my trusty speaker, I do love some music in the classroom so I'm a big fan of that. Whatever exercises we are using for the day would be packed in there and that sort of varies between. I love doing paper airplanes at the end of the day to recap key learning points. I always have some coloured paper and I also lately have been super into getting delegates to use pipe cleaners to create their key learning points and so I take some of those with me. I also have something that I called a magical treat bag when groups are really competitive and someone says something really amazing in the session or they win a game or an activity or something it's always good to have a reward so I have this massive bag of Kathy that I take everywhere with me so that learners can pull from the bag also people that are feeling a little bit low-energy they can have some treats and stuff in the classroom. For those of you who are listening and saying “Oh my God that's super not healthy!” It doesn't matter, it's one day of training its fine. Yeah that kind of stuff but I'm trying to think is there any. Oh! I always have those kinesthetic learning toys: A. because they're fun and B. because it gives some people something to fiddle with and also when they come into the room it sets the expectation from the outset that things are going to be a little bit different and gives people a bit of a talking point before they even come into the room so I quite like that as well.

Leanne: Yeah, nice!

Dana: Pens, pencils, and notepads everything that's branded and says Dana the Trainer on it is there as well. 

Leanne: It's like you were born to do this like your name just rhymed “the Trainer” it's perfect I love.

I really do admire your brand.

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: With these, I would like to talk about when people come into your room and they say this environment. So you set it up, you got pens it's very colourful especially for the technical people they aren't expecting it. How then that create that mood?

Dana: That is actually my favourite moment of the day when people start arriving and they're like okay this is totally not what I was expecting especially when it's the first time that I've been to a particular company and you could see it on their faces and so they exclaim and plodded like “This looks fun, this looks colourful.” and I think it sets the tone and the mood for the day but especially for technical courses I love it because no one's really expecting it so it's great.

Leanne: Do you get some people that are a little bit awkward and don't know how to really react to it or get into the kind of being back being a kid and having fun, would that take a bit of time?

Dana: It is rare when that happens usually the opposite happens which is they get super into it and they choose their seat based on the toy that they want to play with most. There might be some people who start off being more reserved but by the first break of the morning especially if the rest of the group is swept up, they are into it as well, so it might take some a little longer but usually by the end of the day they’re embraced. 

Leanne: Yeah that's beautiful. So we're talking about the participants entering room at the beginning. How are you feeling about you know fifteen minutes, ten minutes to go to the workshop, what do you do to prepare or you'd already in the room greeting participants? Are you doing your power pose? What is Dana the Trainer do?

Dana: I am in the room and I am greeting the delegates for 10 to 15 minutes before. I am there, I'm talking to people, and I’m reviewing, taking minutes in between to just review what's coming up. I am NOT power posing, the power posing would happen maybe before that 50 minutes when no one is there and I'm going to say something that is completely crazy. [Leanne maybe you want to edit this out after I'm done saying it]. What really gets me hyped up and in the mood right before section is hardcore gangster rap, I love it!

Leanne: I love it too!

Dana: We go to songs. There on my iPod and sometimes I excuse myself to the loo and I just go in there have a little listen if the energy levels are feeling low sometimes I can manage to do it with one side of a headphone just in the classroom but like hike music I love it I have my game face on and ready to go for the day.

Leanne: Yeah, I love that because it's something that I do as well. You know, I've got a mixer sort of rock and a bit of rap and hip-hop and stuff like that so I've created a Spotify playlist called First-Time Facilitator and it's just all my favourite like even some ballads are on there that you can just croon along to in the car put right up because you've got a lot of nervous energy that's flailing around.

Dana: You do it, it has to come out somehow, right?

Leanne: It has to come out, you can't like just go in the boxing ring or anything you just got to unleash it somehow so isn't that nice to know that we're on opposite hemispheres and we both print the same way. 

Dana: Aligned!

Leanne: We’re aligned! I want to talk about energy as well so it's very easy I mean, yeah the worst thing sometimes is that you don't get that good night's sleep because you are overthinking in and then it gets to 12:01, I really need to sleep now and but naturally you've got that adrenaline that gets you through in the morning but days you know one, two or three day workshops can be quite exhausting.

Dana: They are!

Leanne: How do you sort of balance the level of energy you're giving out to the participants and how do you make sure that you're in there for the long the long haul?

Dana: So, I saw this question on your lesson I thought, “Oh my God I'm going to answer this and everyone's going to hate me when I say this.”

Leanne: I don't think so.

Dana: I wake up this way!

Leanne: Tell us.

Dana: I know. What's really interesting is when I met my now husband, there was one day when I came home and he was like “We need to talk.” and I was like “Oh my goodness he's going to break up with me.” but actually the talk was you wake up in the morning and it's like you open your eyes and in that one second you go from zero to a hundred and I don’t want to like that can you please stop being so high energy in the morning and so we've worked out a strategy where I don't talk to him for the first thirty minutes of every day cause he's not a morning person but I just naturally have high reserves of energy and I always find that after the first day of a workshop I can sleep better so like all that angst and staying up until 12:30 a.m. by the end of the first day: A. you’re exhausted and B. you've eliminated all of those things that you were really worried about the night before the first workshop, so getting a good night's rest on the first night kind of sets you up for the remaining days, I think.

Leanne: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. It's because it's more about, it's not even about your preparation or your content or anything like that, it's more about how I anticipate what's going on.

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: And by known audience, knowing the dynamic on that first day you can rest easier plus absolutely you've been on your feet all day, you've been using your voice, yeah you're pretty naked.

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: Okay, so I'd like to on that note of preparing for the unexpected. Have you ever had a time where things didn't go to plan in one of your training sessions and could you share that story? 

Dana: Of course my favourite one is where I walked into a room being me ready to start the day. So the first you know that 15 minutes when everyone's coming in started greeting people and realising that they were super grouchy like unhappy, angry even is what I would say and then listening to the discussion in the room. I realised, okay they think that this training session is some kind of punishment for an incident that had happened in the company now I was aware that something had happened but maybe not aware that people were not looking forward to the training and actually were quite resentful that the session had been put on.

So I walked into a room of 15 people mean-mugging being really angry at me with lots on their chest to get off before I even had a chance to say Good morning, I had a question from the room which was “Do you think it's fair that we have to sit in this session while senior leadership isn't there?” I didn't even get to say “Hi, I'm Dana the Trainer” and there was just this wall of anger and I realised, okay people are not going to be able to take in anything or learn anything in the session unless we get some of this emotion out so the time that I would have used for intros I had to modify that to be a kind of a “let's get it out, bring it home” kind of session so that we could talk about what precipitated the session and how they were feeling etc. so that we could get into the learning. I always think about that session because actually it has changed the way that I prepare with clients as part of the planning process now I have added in a question which goes something like “How are the learners is feeling about this session? Are they looking forward to it? Are they interested?” like I asked even more questions that I normally would to get all the background because for that scenario I thought I had asked all of the relevant and pertinent questions so I did know that something had happened that precipitated the learning but I don't think I had grasped to what was going to be happening in the room and so now I always make sure to dot the I's and cross the T's with that extra question before I go in.

Leanne: Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. That's a great sort of prevention is better than cure. I think I mean, I'm listening to that and I'm sure with some of our listeners that listening going that's probably our worst nightmare, like that you haven't even started and it's already railroaded.

Dana: It was pretty bad.

Leanne: Yeah, but I also love that you've created this question that can just cover that off when you're working with clients.

Dana: I need to know in advance, I mean if you know that's what you're going into, you can at least be a little bit more prepared. When it's a shock those are the kinds of things that keep you up until 12:50 in the morning what if it's going to happen or not.

Leanne: It's a good survival story, absolutely!

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: So, when you're talking to clients so you got this question, you know what the learners thinking about this training and that's a really great question. What if you get a client that comes to you and they're asking you to deliver a session that you don't have the content on ready. It's something that's a bit new, you know that you can deliver it. How do you approach that process?

Dana: So firstly, I want as much information from the client as humanly possible, right? Why are they running the session and why right now? What’s precipitated this? What are the learning outcomes they want? What are the behaviours and attitudes they want to see changed? If this learning intervention was successful how would they know it was successful so I really want to be clear with them on what it is that they're trying to get out of the session.

Now, I'm not one of those people who can block and say “Okay today, I'm going to spend thirty minutes on the session.” I'm more of an “it needs to marinate” girl, so I'm thinking about it and it's in my mind all the time. I'm thinking about it in the shower, I go for a walk. I'm thinking about it I get some of my best ideas outdoors. I'm constantly jotting things down. I have an app when things come to my mind that I might want to use and I want to give myself some time to come up with my own ideas before I jump into any research because for me research can skew you and kind of limit your own ideas so I want to have the bulk of my own ideas first before I go into any research and see what's out there but I'm also a big fan of utilising my Personal Learning Network so other facilitators who I know I want to reach out to them find out if they've done something similar, what kinds of things they've done in the space. I have a group of people or I've come up through the business with we're always happy to bounce ideas off of each other if I was really struggling and I needed a design assistant can also draw from that network as well to help me.

And another thing, I do which I think that people maybe don't use so much is search for the hashtag on social media and see what comes up. Why do people not do this right because people are posting so much exciting content out there and if you just type into Google you will probably never find it but if you type into Instagram or to Twitter that particular hashtag sometimes really amazing stuff comes up that can really help you with your idea generation and with the design process.

Leanne: Yeah, I mean that's how I found you but also I found some really cool Icebreakers on YouTube.

Dana: Oh my gosh, Youtube!

Leanne: Yeah, you save a bit of time like in here, you lost, you know what YouTube's like, you're looking at Icebreakers and then you're looking at like climbing Mount Everest.

Dana: And cats, there’s always cats.

Leanne: Yeah there's always cats. Hey, what app do you use to capture all of your ideas?

Dana: So, I'm a Trello girl. I do love Trello and I just like taking, it helps me keep myself on track but then it just gives me somewhere to record things if I'm in a pinch as well just the Notes app, it's good for a brain dump, you can put as many things in there but I almost live my life powered by Trello.

Leanne: Yeah and for those listening that don't know what Trello is we'll link to those in the show notes. Trello is an amazing like project tool but it's very visual it's like a visual board where you, it's kind of like virtual post-it notes almost.

Dana: Exactly and I love post-it notes in real life but being able to have them wherever I go because I travel a lot is very useful and I think that's my project management I have a background coming to the floor as well because it's a tool that we used in work that I also use for myself as well.

Leanne: Yeah and that's right you can use it. You don't have to use it only for work, I was booking up an upcoming holiday and all those ideas about what to do when in hotels and activities and just Trelloed it!

Dana: That's so true, one of my friends so I would quite closely with, did whole wedding on Trello. It was amazing!

Leanne: Well, that’s not simple. I can imagine they would be in so many different columns and deadlines.

Dana: It was next level.

Leanne: She should sell that template, I think it could be very popular. I'm interested in knowing so now you know you've worked in the one, the Big4 consulting firm and now you're a facilitator. What do you think are the key skills of not only a good facilitator but a next level facilitator? What do you think that the skills are of someone the ones to attain that kind of status?

 Dana: So I think preparedness is important, right? There is a lot of work that maybe people don't see that goes into being an excellent facilitator but in the same breath of that you have to be prepared to be flexible. Like you cannot be rigid, sticking to your lesson plan or your time plan. The classroom is a place of surprise and I think the best facilitators can pull the learning out of what is happening in the room instead of sticking really strictly to a script. Sometimes you think something's going to be a big aha moment but actually the group is picking up on something else and it's having a bit of discussion around it. I think an excellent facilitator knows to let that discussion go especially if it's useful for the group, knows how to ask pertinent questions, knows how to pivot in the moment to get the best that they can out of the learners who they're with and for them so that you're still getting the learning objectives across but being prepared to do it maybe in a different way than the way that you plan. I think that is one of the skill that takes you from being just a normal training facilitator to being an amazing trainer facilitator.

Leanne: And it really does take a lot of your active listening, a lot of seeing what's going on in the room, you never really relaxed.

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: Yeah you always sort of like that night out just watching what's going on, even more doing  great learning activities like what I need to observe out of these.

Dana: You’re frustrated, you wanted to hear all the groups. Exactly! 

Leanne: Yeah. I want to hover but I don't want to seem like I'm listening in and it's just constant. I think there's a lot of overthinking and I think maybe over experienced you do to develop those like having at numerous things in your back pocket that you can go through but I think...

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: Yeah, that's what sort of as a first-time facilitator, the only way that you can get better at it is just by continuing to do it.

Dana: Practice!

Leanne: That's right. Now, do you have a go-to icebreaker like do favourite thing that energises people that gets everyone in the room like really…

Dana: So it depends, right? Now, if it's a public course where people don't know each other I am very conscious that the first few moments of the day can be really intimidating especially for people who maybe aren't as extroverted as the rest of the people in the group so I always about Icebreakers. I don't want to push it too far but I still want people to be able to have fun and embrace the moment.

So in a mixed group what I like to do is start off with some one-on-ones like greet as many people in the room as you can in ten minutes but I would include a fun question that you have to ask each person that you miss or a way that you have to start off greeting each person like top of the morning to you and isn't it a wonderful day good says you have to say before you get into the introduction and then a silly question that you have to ask them as part of the greeting. I think things that start off maybe a bit more one-on-one or small group instead of “Please stand and introduce yourself and say some quickly facts to the room!” puts a lot less pressure on people and gives them a bit of a chance to relaxed. So for me that is something that I'm conscious about I get that you have limited time and it's easier for everyone to stand and just introduce themselves but I guarantee there is a person or people sitting there thinking “Oh God, please no, not me.” And I don’t want that kind. I avoid that.

Leanne: Oh absolutely. I mean yeah, I mean I'm sort of, it's funny because I'm one of those people. I am a niche extrovert. I get up in front of workshops, I do lots of speeches and things like that but even in that scenario where you’re in a new group and it's going around one by one. I'm not even listening what the other people are saying.

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: So I'm thinking what am I going to say in my introduction and so you don't really in the moment yourself because you just want everyone's worried about their own introduction.

Dana: Exactly and you miss it, so I love more one-on-one small group stuff where you really get a chance to get to know the people who you're going to be learning with and more involved and I would totally advocate that for anyone who is listening. 

Leanne: Yes me too, absolutely! Now, before we hit the record button on this we're talking about you know me reaching out to you and you saying yes and then that got us on to the topic of the themes for our year and I think it's nice to share something like that with our audience. So what is your theme for the year and why did you decide to choose that?

Dana: My theme for this year is say YES, sometimes opportunities are fall into my lap and I think “Oh no, I’m not sure about this.” You know there's that element of self-doubt still even though I am an experienced facilitator. At the end of last year, I went to a session that was helping us reflect on the year that had gone by and we created you know our vision for our new year and something that really popped out of me was this idea of saying yes and embracing things and seeing where they go and so that really has been what my year has been about so far opportunities and have come into my lap. I have been actively trying to say yes more, you reached out to me, I said yes! And look here we are on a podcast. I've also done another interview already for the year. I'm just saying yes to things, so anyone who's listening and wants to ask me something asked me because chances are this year is the year I'm going to say YES!

Leanne: I love it and again we've completely aligned on this, we love the same music but I am sorry my year this year was the year of action and that's kind of like saying yes but also just taking the most of the opportunities and I think having a kind of theme like that like you said it's very easy for that doubt to creep in that imposter syndrome that person in your head saying “Oh, you're not ready for this” but if you have that theme and it’s your default response, you can just, it doesn't matter because you just say yes and let's get on with it.

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: Yeah I am anyone that does have that kind of doubt within themselves it's completely normal I think we're all walking around all of us with a bit of self-doubt having a default theme like that definitely recommend.

Dana: I agree completely.

Leanne: Yeah, now Dana, is there any other advice that you could offer to our first-time facilitators that are listening in?

Dana: So the first thing is get out there as much as you can, say yes, okay? So the only way to become better at the skills of facilitation is to actually facilitate. If you're feeling nervous maybe find someone that you can buddy up with to deliver sessions always a good idea but really you want to be spending as much time as possible actually facilitating because that's how you get back to is the first thing. The second thing is don't be afraid to borrow from other facilitators who you think are awesome. What I like to do is attend training sessions myself but I like to do it incognito. I don't want to put any pressure on the facilitators facilitating until the very end. I'm there to learn what the course is about but I also find that I always pick up some facilitation tips that I can add to my arsenal as I watch other facilitators do what they do.

So don't be afraid to attend some training courses yourself, it’s always great. Go to Meetups, write anything where you can see other facilitators, other facilitators in action is great and then try and incorporate some of those things into the stuff that you do on a day to day basis.

Leanne: That's a brilliant advice and I especially agree with your role modelling. I'm actually doing, I'm in a two-day workshop at the moment as a participant and I've been picking up on so much that I can learn and just writing it down even little simple activities.

Dana: Exactly!

Leanne: Making notes, I need to get Trello on my phone actually just so because I've got like 10 different notepads at the moment. Actually, I'm getting the new iPad so I'll be carrying that with me everywhere and also role modelling. I think after this conversation a lot of people will probably wish there are in London attending one of your workshops because you can tell, you're just so passionate about this you really invest that time and to make it an energetic and fun experience and I think we all appreciate that all of us would have been to corporate sessions or technical training. We are a bit bored of the old approach of a manual and just the status quo so its love to it's great to see someone challenging that.  So finally, Dana where can people find you?

Dana: Where can they find me? Well, on social media is a great place to be able to find me. My website as well www.danathetrainer.com and from there you link to all of my social media. Don't be afraid to drop me an email, to reach out, I love connecting with people like I said I'm always on there as well searching those hashtags. I think it's great to build a network especially of people who are facilitators as well so please do find me and I'm on email as well dana@danathetrainer.com you can't forget that it's really easy to remember!

Leanne: It's very sticky and I definitely suggest that you follow Dana especially because of all the colourful moments it'll just colour up your social media feed. So thank you so much for being on the show, I can't wait to share this episode with our listeners. I think you've provided some really practical advice but also you know some aspiration on how we can lift our energy levels.  I wish we had your energy but other things that we can do on the room to make that fun for everyone so Thank You Dana! 

Dana: Thank you so much for having me. I was so nervous but this was actually so much fun just like a conversation with a friend so it's been great thank you so much I am thrilled that I said yes!

Leanne: I'm thrilled that you said too. Chat soon!

Episode transcript (Episode 18)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In today's episode I respond to a listener's question - I do these listener Q&A's from time to time, to give you some practical insight into how I facilitate and approach situations. Today's question is from Joanne Alilovic from 3D HR Legal.

This is the show transcript for Episode 18 of the First Time Facilitator podcast.

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• Listen to the episode or view the show notes for this episode here.

Leanne: Hi everyone and THANK YOU for choosing to listen to Episode 18 of the First Time Facilitator podcast.

It’s really hard to believe that for the last 18 weeks, I’ve delivered an episode to you every Monday at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, Brisbane time.

The last time I was dedicated to anything like this was probably back in 2015 when I ran the Gold Coast Marathon. I really enjoyed having that daily discipline of waking up, lacing up the shoes and heading out the door. I liked it as I’m not typically a very disciplined type of person.

Through this, I discovered a few things that help me honour my commitments. It’s really about using the motivation to then build a habit. It’s also about having a really important vision of your end goal - so in the case of a marathon, if I didn’t get out of bed and run, then I wouldn’t make it to the 42km Finish Line. Most important is that

I also had a coach who I’d email every week with my times, and he’d respond with feedback and set my plan for the week.

Accountability for me, is key.  And I guess for this podcast, I feel accountable to all of you who are listening in, sharing this podcast with colleagues and friends, tweeting me and emailing… thank you so much for helping me stay consistent and honour this weekly commitment.

Today’s episode is my second solo one and again I’m responding in to a listener question. I’ll do these listener Q&A’s from time to time, to give you some practical insight into how I facilitate and approach situations.

If you have a question you’d like to send through, either tweet it to me @leannehughes or send me an email – hello@firsttimefacilitator.com.

I’d like to thank my friend Joanne Alilovic from 3D HR Legal in Western Australia for her question.  Jo and I met at a conference called ‘We Are Podcast’ in Brisbane last November.

Neither of us had a podcast back then, and we both launched our podcasts in March this year.  Jo’s podcast is called The Juggle and is all about how you can balance your career and work commitments.  For anyone out there who thinks their constantly juggling their priorities, I recommend listening in to her show. I’ll link to it in the show notes for this episode at firsttimefacilitator.com/episode17.

Anyway, like me, Jo likes to do things a little bit differently. She’s a lawyer. In her business she takes her legal knowledge, combines that with her HR skills to help create tailored polices and procedures for individual businesses.

Jo wrote in with the following question:

‘I have a client who wants to throw out their existing human resources manual and start fresh. 

We are thinking of creating documents such as a Code of Conduct, a performance management policy, complaints procedure etc. 

In order to create something that is truly reflective of the workplace and the people who work in it, we decided it would be good to get the staff involved.

So we have scheduled a 2 hour facilitation session to discuss the types of policies and procedures they need, and the content for them.

Do you have any suggestions on how to run this session?

Okay first thing first. I’m impressed that the company is getting their employees involved in the process. I know it seems obvious but sometimes organisations don’t recognise this and take the critical step of engaging with their people. 

So, a big high five to your client, and a big high five to you too, Jo.

I do have some suggestions I can share with you. Let’s start with preparation.

Way back in Episode 7, my guest Sue Johnstone and I spoke about preparation and how it’s critical.  One of the things she drives the most is being very clear on your workshop outcomes.

As part of your prep work, I would suggest working with your client to agree on what those outcomes are. They could include things like, ‘‘Agreeing on the 5 most urgent and important HR policies to deliver’, or ‘Creating sub-groups to tackle each policy’ or ‘Generating enthusiasm for agreed actions and next steps’.

Notice that each of these outcome starts with a verb. An action word. This gives you clarity on what the outcome looks like.  Avoid starting the outcome with a word like ‘Understanding’. That’s something I learnt in my first job out of university, working as an Instructional Designer.

Now for the purposes of this podcast. I’m going to assume that the outcomes I just listed are the outcomes the client wants too (I really have no idea, but to keep this going, let’s lock those ones in). 

Oh and let’s pause this for a second. If you’re listening in and also have tips for Jo on your approach, please sing out and get in touch!

Let’s talk about your participants.  I I like to find out as much as I can about the people in the room. Who are they? Do they all get along? What’s their motivation for being involved (or have they been nominated)? Has anyone developed policies before? Etc.

I believe there are facilitators out there who would prefer not to know this information and arrive without pre-conceived bias, but I guess at this stage of my career in facilitation, I like to know as much as I can. If I can anticipate that there will be tension with some people in the room, that’s helpful.

When considering your participants, try to put yourself in their shoes.  They can barely keep up with the hundreds of emails in their inbox and now, on top of all of their other regular meetings, they’ve been asked to attend this two hour policy session.

Jo you’re going to be working with people that are busy, some may not even know why they’re in the room and you need to extract some information from their heads PLUS get them excited about this project… oh and then leave them with action items afterwards.  I mean, this isn’t Mission Impossible… but it’s not far from it!

You’ve been given two hours to work with, which isn’t a lot of time.  Your outcome is to find out what HR policies and procedures they require, and what information they want in those policies, and you also want to leave with enthusiasm and action items too.

So, prior to the workshop I would create a quick definitions sheet of key HR policies and procedures that are common in most organistions.  The definitions sheet would have things like:

‘A performance management policy is dot dot dot…companies use it to…dot dot dot.

Now the reason I’m suggesting this is that it’s easier for you to look at a comprehensive list of policies and procedures and eliminate the ones you don’t need; rather than looking at a blank page and starting from scratch. You’ve also set the definitions so you won’t be getting arguments over policy definitions.

Ideally, you could email this information through to the participants prior to your workshop.

Now, let’s talk about delivery

I suggest you share the following information with your group upfront. Stealing a phrase from my favourite thought leader, Simon Sinek, start with why.

Share the context: And share it by stating problem and solutions. For example,

Yes it is painful working on these policies from scratch in the short-term but in future it will save more time because you won’t have managers tapping on your door every day, asking how what the process is to onboard a new employee.

Share WHY you’ve been asked to facilitate this workshop. Jo, you can rely on your credibility and experience here… you’re in the business of overhauling HR policies…you are the guru.

Share the  outcomes you want to drive in the two hour workshop and why it’s critical.

- not only in that two hour session;  Check in - do they agree?

I suggest you also include engagement activities early in the piece. This helps setup expectations that you’re not there to tell them what to do…

My guess is that the people in the room know each other already, so you won’t need to do any formal type of introductions.

If I was going to run some type of opener, I’d suggest keeping it simple, to get them in small groups of about 3 or 4 people and ask them to discuss in their groups a simple question like ‘Why do we have policies?’ or for more interesting answers (and laughs), you can reverse that question and ask ‘What would a company look like without policies?’

Debrief as a group. Instead of asking one group to share all their ideas, ask for one idea per group and continue to rotate around the group.

That way, when the last group is called onto speak, they have something to contribute and won’t just say ‘Oh yeah we agree with what the other groups have said’.

Okay, so now we’ve established why policies and procedures are important.

On an aside, given your time-frame, I think a Parking Lot is a good idea. Simply write Parking Lot on a piece of flip-chart paper and pop it to the side of the room.  Explain that if they start talking about a subject that is off topic, or they can’t solve quickly that we park that conversation and explore it later on (if time) or outside of the workshop.

Now, remember that policy definition sheet I asked Jo to prepare? If it was given as pre-work, great, if not, then as part of the workshop I’d hand this out and ask them to individually review the policies listed.

I would then, ask them individually to circle the 5-6 (you can change the numbers, this is an example) Policy titles they believe are ‘non-negotiable’.

Following this, I’d ask them to place draw an asterisk against two policies that would be nice to have.

Meanwhile, you’ve written the name of each policy on individual post-it notes and put them up on the wall. 

Ask them to walk up and vote on the policies they believe are most important. You can use stickers and allocate 7 per person, these stickers are their voting cards.

By doing this, you’ll notice trends. Either some policies receive the most votes and are clear majorities; or they could be scattered across various policies. Whatever the outcome of the voting, you have some good discussion points here.

Because we’re talking about priorities, you could even draw something like Stephen Covey’s priority quadrant matrix (important vs urgent) and then as a group, see if you can categorise each policy within the matrix - what’s most important and most urgent; what’s important but not urgent, etc.

This is when you enter the mode of facilitator and use your arsenal of open-ended questions to encourage discussion within the group. 

You’ll notice those who aren’t contributing and entice them into the conversation. If there is someone who is contributing an awful lot and may be overbearing, you can say things like, ‘‘Hey John, I appreciate your input but I’d like to hear from some others in the room’. 

Once you’ve categorised each policy, the next step would then be allocating 3-4 people to each policy or the policies with the most ‘votes’.

In these small groups, you can ask them to brainstorm:

• What topics do we need to cover under the policy?

• Does this policy link in with another policy?

• Do we have all the information we have right now to develop the policy? Yes/No (If no, what other information do we need to find out?

• Who else do we need to consult with?

I would encourage this sub-group to chat for about 30mins, and then each group to share their findings as a group; for feedback.

I would then reserve the last 20-30mins for action planning.

Again, come in with a project template which will create consistency across the groups.  In this template, ask them to allocate roles within the team, action items and time-frames.

To wrap up, thank the group, emphasise the importance of the feedback, what you learnt, and how you will communicate with the team to ensure those policies are ready.

Okay that’s a really quick snippet but some ideas and activities to get you started, Jo.

What I also want to mention is that I love using design thinking to brainstorm and for innovation. I though about bringing in some design thinking concepts here, like reversing assumptions and question-storming, however I believe that’s more important in the next step - the step where the group then really starts questioning what each policy should have, and what it shouldn’t have. If you’ve never heard of these design thinking concepts, I’ll explain them in a future episode - they’re gold.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Bob Dick (Episode 17)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. Bob Dick is a change agent and facilitator who has been in the business 45 years. He believes that teachers don't teach, learners learn.

Leanne: Our guest today has the longest CV I've ever seen and that's because he has over 45 years experience in helping to make the world a better place. He is an independent scholar, an educator, facilitator coach and change consultant. He uses concepts and processes from action lining, narrative and facilitation to help people, including himself, teams, organizations and communities to improve their work, learning and life. Welcome to the show, Bob Dick.

Bob: Thanks

Leanne: It's great to meet you. I want to hear a bit about yourself and how you wound up 45 years ago entering the field of training and facilitation.

Bob: It was all an accident really, I applied for a position in the department of labor and they invited me instead of that position to apply for the position of industrial psychologist. I hadn't applied for it because I didn't think I was qualified. In three years, I was expected to know everything about industrial democracy and employee participation. I did research in that area, including local case studies of interesting practices. I was expected to spend a couple of days a week reading in that area to be up to date and then the university borrowed me for six months to plug a gap and then that extended and became 21 years. I wanted to take what I had learnt from those three years in the department of labor into the classroom thinking that all I had to do was to invite my classes to have their say in what they wanted to be the syllabus and the processes and that was so different to their expectations that it just made them anxious.

We finished coming up with a collaborative design but it was fairly pedestrian and so I set out to experiment with how to engage people so that they would want to take on more self-management and I didn't think that it was facilitation. It was just trying to be a better educator but really that was the foundation of most of what I now think of today as facilitation.

Leanne: When you approached that group, in the beginning, you said that it was a very different approach, is that because they were used to being in workshops where they were spoken to and it wasn't really participative? Is that what they thought was different about your style?

Bob: This was a fairly traditional psychology programme in one of the sandstone universities and people were used to sitting in lecture theatres in rows where somebody at the front would lecture them often reading out the lectures from a set of notes. What I learnt to do eventually was I'd get into the room early, I'd ask for a room where the furniture was moveable, I'd stark the tables at the back of the room, I'd arrange the chairs in a circle as a way of saying, people when they came into the room, this isn't going to be a lecture you don't know yet what it is but it won't be a lecture.

Leanne: That's really fascinating. Who did you take the lead from in terms of the furniture design and making it a more welcoming environment because back then doesn't sound like it was a very common thing? Is it just some ideas that you came up with one night to make the environment better for learning?

Bob: It didn't happen overnight, it happened over the first two or three or four years that I was at Queen's Uni. In fact, I deliberately stayed away from the literature in adult education and experiential learning at first because I thought that if I found my own way, it would be a better fit for my own style and then I could use the literature to further refine what I was doing.

Leanne: That's really good and that's why I like talking to facilitators from all different backgrounds and industries. Everyone's got something that they do that's a little bit different that works for them but you might be able to resonate with some of our facilitators that think that is a cue that I can pick up and already that furniture design and the environment of the room is important. That leads me on to the question around your website you had a statement, I believe that the term teaching is a misnomer. I assume the teachers don't teach, learners learn. Teachers so-called create an environment in which learning is enabled and encouraged and rewarded. So, how do teachers create this environment?

Bob: That was really what I was experimenting within the first three or four years and every year since then, I keep on fiddling with what I am doing [LAUGHING] and looking for ways of making it more effective, and when things don't work I then change things until they do. But the main thrust of it all the time was that- that saying about teachers don't teach, learners learn, that was my own experience as a learner and it was those educators who did most to engage my curiosities that I learnt the most from and so I wanted to offer the same opportunity to others.

Leanne: I find it fascinating that after 45 years you are still refining what you do. How do you keep learning on the job and what keeps you excited about being in this industry still?

Bob: I would do it for fun if I wasn't doing it for a living. It's a great buzz and if I keep looking for ways of improving that keeps me engaged and in the moment. I notice more of what's going on and so while I am facilitating, I'll work out what I want to say to take the next step. I'll watch the expressions on peoples faces and ask, does it look as if they are taking this in an understanding, if not I can think to myself, well, that wasn't the right way to say that, let me have another go and rephrase it in different words and see if that works better.

Leanne: Yes. It's really is about constantly refining what you doing and then just seeing what the reaction is in the room. Given all the changes with technology as well, have you tried to implement some of that in your teaching method?

Bob: I haven't. I've deliberately tried not to use any technology, I don't use powerpoint.

Leanne: That's great I like that. I like hearing that.

Bob: In the early days I used fancy stuff like those soft koosh balls and things like that and did a lot of play time of activities and then the thought occurred to me, people don't have gear like this is their normal work setting and I'll probably get better learning transfer if I stick with stuff that's pedestrian and day to day for them and rely on the ideas and their engagement to create the excitement. Now I'm not recommending that this is really the way to go, I'm saying that suits my style and what I'm trying to achieve.

Leanne: I have been talking to a facilitator yesterday and I was pitching these innovation problems to some graduates and the questions were very rush there wasn't a lot of information and he said that was deliberate because in the workforce you're not given much time to do anything and you can't sometimes clarify what the question is, what the problem is you're solving. You just need to run with it and solve it in the best way that you can, so I think keeping it really really is important.

Okay. I was looking at one of your facilitator guides, your A- guides which was fantastic, really great resource and you talk about two things that's content and process. Can you explain the difference between the two things? What is content and then what is the process and why is that important for us as facilitators to know?

Bob: Usually, when we are involved in meetings for decision making or problem-solving or we're doing planning or we are in any kind of task-oriented discussion, we pay attention to what goals we want to achieve and what information is relevant to achieving those goals. How we interact, we run on automatic, we don't pay conscious attention to it at all. So, what then calls out fast brain handles all the complexity of the process and our slow brain- our analytical brain, focuses only on the task and the information that's directly relevant to it. As a friend of mine David Natale says, if you're chewing gum, gum is the content, chewing is the process.

Leanne: Oh, I like that. So how then do you get out of that autopilot of focusing on the content and then how do you think, right we need to work on our process because we are not really getting so far? Who does that who should take that initiative to change that focus?

Bob: I would guess that some of the facilitators that you've talked to have talked about the importance of facilitators staying out of the content and merely being a process guide because that seems to be the generally accepted belief and so it's as if the facilitator is responsible for the process because the participants aren't paying attention to it and the participants are left free to pay attention to the content but it seems to me that it's really hard to choose the best process if I'm not also tuned in to what the content is and I'm asking are people exchanging the information that's relevant to the decisions they're trying to make for instance. If not, how can I modify the process so that the relevant information is more likely to be exchanged? Or things like, they're probably not ready yet to move into decision making but they’re starting to talk about that. How can I use a process that will slow them down so that I make sure that all the relevant information is exchanged and understood before we try to do something with it? I need to pay attention to process and content too.

Leanne: Yes.

Bob: I think that whatever the facilitation style that a person has, there's some requirement to do that.

Leanne: Yes.

Bob: It's not something we do naturally. We tend to focus on one or the other. It's almost as if we have to keep switching quickly between them and remain curious about both so that we stay tuned into both.

Leanne: That can be exhausting, can't it? Because not only are you having to pay attention to the content, you're actively thinking ahead. Thinking where is this going? What strategies will I use now to intervene? It's a really tricky and fine line that whole intervention piece. What kind of things do you use when people mention an example they've moved into decision-making mode really quickly? What steps would you take to reel them back to say, hey we haven't really explored a lot of the solutions or identified what the problem really means?

Bob: If I can address that before the problem happens and that's even better, one of the things I invite people to do early on is I make the point that our task is to reach these outcomes or to achieve this purpose or goal. To do that we have to make some decisions about who will carry this out, who will do what by when. To make good decisions, we have to recall the correct information and we have to share that so that we all understand it because that body of information constitutes the building blocks out of which we construct the decisions.

The decisions then lead us into helping to choose who are the right people to carry those forward into action. I let them know ahead of time that we'll be structuring this in a number of phases. That also makes it easier to intervene because I can then say to them I think there's still some information to be exchanged, can we postpone the decisions until we've checked them? Because I would prefer that they don't leave responsibility for the process entirely to me.

Leanne: Yes.

Bob: I prefer to share that responsibility with them. Some preparation as well as being willing to intervene when it happens is a bit of combination than either one on its own.

Leanne: Yes, absolutely. Setting those ground rules sounds like it's very important. Have you ever been in really high-pressure situations where you need to drive an outcome and there's been a bit of conflict in the room and over that time, where a really important decision needs to be made and needs to be the right decision, have you been in any environment where that's occurred?

Bob: I mentioned earlier before we started recording some of the work I did in the mining industry and some of the- and particularly the really bright miners tend to be quite willing to be competitive about things. They could often be a pretty lonely group to work with. I've also worked with research scientist in CSIRO from time to time. That was where I met David Natale that I mentioned earlier and research scientists weren't satisfied until they had demonstrated to me and themselves that they were brighter than I was. Sometimes I had to feign being dumber than I am to keep them on site.

Leanne: You’re sacrificing a bit of your ego to drive a result.

Bob: I was lucky to be born with a fairly manageable ego.

Leanne: [laughs] Okay. Really diverse audiences. It's interesting that you have to shift your mindset as well and the way you behave in that room just so you can enable them to all work really well collaboratively too.

Bob: Yes. One of the tasks I've set myself over the years is broadening my repertoire so that I can more easily work in a wider range of situations and with a wider range of people. My preferred style is relatively unstructured. I plan in detail but then I don’t expect to follow the plan. I want to be responsive to what’s happening in the moment in the room but if there's a lot to do and time is short and particularly if there are a lot of participants, then that doesn't work and so I have to move to the other end of the continuum and structure things tightly and push things along a bit rather than work at a more natural pace.

Leanne: Yes, absolutely. Do you ever -- Now that you've done this for 45 years, do you ever get nervous anymore or were you ever nervous when you first started going into these workshops where you may not know the industry or the content? This is quite new to you because we've got some little first-time facilitators here that are slowly building up that confidence develops to present and talk in front of people and shift conversations along. How did you deal with the notes if you had them and are there any situations now we you'd walk into a workshop and think, "I don't know how this is going to go, the brief is pretty interesting”?

Bob: I aim for a balance between nervousness and confidence. That the nervousness helps to lift my arousal level and helps me be more present and paying more attention. There's an enormous difference in how much information I can take in when my arousal is fairly high and I have that in the back of my mind that I have my safety net. And that is that if the process isn’t working, I will drop the content and engage with the participants about why the process isn't working and invite them to join me in figuring out what process will work better for all of us.

Leanne: That is such a cool little trick that you can rely on.

Bob: And keeping that in the back of my mind means that if I feel my arousal getting too high, I can say to myself, "don't worry if it does blow up in my face we'll deal with that when it happens."

Leanne: [laughs] Wow. You've got to be pretty vulnerable to have that approach as well. I think a lot of people will expect that if I'm at their facilitating workshop, I need to be professional, I need to do all these things. But what you're saying is you can actually let down your guard and let other people into the conversation and say, "why isn't this process working? Let’s addressed this if it's an elephant in the room." Does it really need strategy?

Bob: The assumption I work on and I don't always manage to achieve it- but the assumption that I work on is that the more real I can be, the easier it will be for the other people in the room to be real and authentic. That means that things that might otherwise be censored become surfaceable. That means that the information exchanged and understood is more complete. That means the decisions are better and the actions are likely to be better and there's likely to be more ownership of them.

Leanne: Yes, fantastic. I want to talk about the action because I also read about this in your facilitation guide especially in my early experience. Much of my facilitation was of meetings, decision-making and problem-solving. Did it work? Often, I couldn't tell. The meetings were to decide what to do. Then doing happened later and more often than not I wasn’t there later. How do you control then what happens after you leave that workshop to ensure that they are continuing with those outcomes?

Bob: I've learned over the years to give more and more attention to what happens before the decision-making starts and what happens at the end before we leave the room. Time for meeting anything I can do to create more of a sense of community in the room so that people can afford to be a bit more authentic with each other. The greater the extent to which I can negotiate expectations with the people I'm working with so that they and I are on the same page and the greater the extent to which they're willing to share with me the responsibility for making this a success the easier everything becomes during the middle.

Then at the end, trying to achieve a state where people will be committed to acting on the decisions that they've made is crucial. The literature is a bit demoralizing there if you look at the literature on learning transfer for instance. The amount of learning transferred from most workshops is distressingly small. I now regard that as an essential piece of any meeting. It's about having the actions specific enough that people know what actions they've agreed to and getting a commitment from somebody in the room that they will themselves take the actions or if they have to get somebody else to do it, that they will monitor how that proceeds. I try to build commitment to the final stage of the meeting because if the decisions don't lead to actions, why did we just wasted their time having a meeting?

Leanne: Absolutely and we often find that you do a lot of work on trying to find the solutions and then it's only the last five minutes when everyone's exhausted, they're ready to go out the door because you meant to finish at five o'clock or whatever it is and it's a really rushed process. I think building it into and that commitment all three workshops is a really great idea.

Bob: I try to design processes that take less time than the time I'm given, so that I have a quarter of an hour, half an hour, a bit more of flow time to deal with the unexpected that is going to chew up some minutes on its own because I agree with you, being rushed at the end helps to kill the learning transfer or the carrying forward of the decisions into action.

Leanne: It really does. I'd like to talk about the concept you raised which is action learning. Can you tell us- you've got an example that you wrote on your CV, I loved reading that by the way, when you advise the Electoral commission in a developing nation to improve their electoral system. Can you explain first of all, what is action learning and then how you used it in that context.

Bob: There are two very different varieties that just happened to have somewhat similar origins and the same name. The British style, which developed is that a group of people from different organizations come together regularly or semi-regularly. One of them offers a problem or issue that she or he faces and the others then ask curiosity motivated questions to deepen the problem owners understanding. Then the problem owner goes back to her or his own organization and uses this deep and understanding to do a better job, that's the British style.

It tends to be unfacilitated  - I would provide some early facilitation but then he would assume these are all senior responsible managers, they're capable of managing their own process. I think it was brave of him to make that assumption with some groups of people. When the Americans took it over, the usual pattern there except in tertiary education, where it's used for educational purposes is that it's a shared project. It's within an organization and a diverse team usually from within the organization is set up to take that project on and they work collaboratively together to resolve it. There's usually a facilitator often called a coach or a set advisor who really makes sure that people do what they're supposed to do, that keeps them on the process.

Leanne: Yes, you need that accountability buddy, that's right.

Bob: The process that I use is a bit of both. I usually work with a single project and in-house teams because that's what I'm asked to do. It can be a bit different in the university classroom or in Ph.D. supervision where I also use it but often, the aim is to help people expand their leadership skills by increasing their ability to facilitate because increasingly, leaders are being asked to facilitate that collaborative problem solving rather than telling people what the answer is. A bit like the shift from presentation to facilitation in training.

Leanne: Two very different skill sets.

Bob: If we learn to ride a bicycle by riding a bicycle, I don't think anyone ever learned to ride a bicycle by studying a book, then surely we learn facilitative leadership by practicing facilitative leadership. To do that it acts against that if I'm present all the time and guiding them very rigorously through a very set process. Instead, I facilitate the first meeting relationship building and being clear about the project in outcome terms so that they know what achievement will look like and negotiating expectations and negotiating process guidelines and making sure that they understand who the other stakeholders are that they can engage them.

Helping them to understand what they want to get out of it for themselves as well as for the organization so that they're motivated to hang in there and fine-tune it until it works the way they want it to. At the second meeting, one of them facilitates and I'm there as a supportive coach. By the third meeting, I'm there but I hope not to have to intervene so that at the end of the third meeting I can say, "You've just demonstrated to me that you're entirely capable of managing your own process. I'd be delighted to be invited back at any time but from this point on it's your show".

Leanne: How do they feel when you say that to them must be pretty happy with that.

Bob: Because one of them has facilitated the second meeting and been supported in doing that and because I insist that there's a process review at the end of that meeting and because the process review is then facilitated by somebody else within the group, that person is then likely to volunteer to facilitate the third meeting and the reviewer of that can then volunteer to facilitate the fourth meeting. They're invited into it so that at any stage the step they're being asked to take they know is within their capacity.

Leanne: Yes. It's not a huge leap at all. Especially the whole co-facilitating model is actually really useful and that's how I started in facilitation was, it's always nice having someone that you can lean on. It's a bit more professional then you learn from them and then when you're on your own it's okay because it's not that set from sitting in a room to then leading but stepping in the room to co-facilitating to leading is much easier. It's a great idea. In your observation what are the good skills that a facilitator really needs? If you're to pick say your top two or three which I know is difficult, what do you think those skills are?

Bob: Some of them are conceptual. I'm reluctant to offer advice to other people because in terms of my own preferences and personality, I'm surprised that I finished up as a change agent and facilitator. I can say with some honesty that I'm one of the most introverted people that I know and I'm much more intellectual in my approach to facilitation than a lot of really good facilitators are. What works for me doesn't necessarily work for others. I can talk about what I found most useful for myself.

Leanne: I think that'd be great particularly as we do have quite a few introverts that listen in, again to get that confidence. We want to dismiss the myth that every facilitator needs to be this extrovert that's really confident. That's absolutely not true at all as we can see from your success. I'd love for you to share the skills that you brought to the role.

Bob: There is one conceptual skill which is probably common across all or almost all facilitation and that's to understand the distinction between process and content. For example, the usual ground rule about facilitators not intervening in the content is useful because when a facilitator does that, the danger is that the participants think that the facilitator has an agenda and that can contaminate the process.

Knowing where that boundary between process and content is, is a useful skill for anyone who does facilitation. Then there are times when you need to intervene in content and somehow rather that has to be done so it doesn't contaminate the process. For instance, if I'm holding a marker I would deliberately put it down and I would move to a different part of the room.

Leanne: You actually physically change where you are?

Bob: Move away from the whiteboard and/or the front of the room and say, "I'm now going to speak to you as Bob Dick citizen and it's entirely up to you whether you pay any attention or not to what I'm going to say". It seems to me that that decision that you were about to make has some dangers that I don't think you may realize and I would invite you to reconsider that. Then I move back to the front of the room and take up the marker pen and stand by the whiteboard and say something like, "Okay, what do you want to do now?"

Leanne: Just that tiny shift of moving your physical location and is it just more of a status thing and saying, I'm actually out of the role of facilitator now. Is that what it does subconsciously to your audience and participants?

Bob: That's the intention that people denote authority to facilitators to look after the process. That's why they ask a facilitator in. If I intervene in content from the front of the room in my facilitator persona, then the danger is that they will pay attention to that because I've said it. The danger is what I mentioned before that they may think I have some agenda about a particular outcome. At the end of a facilitation session, the ideal for me is they don't know what views I had about the content or even better is that they think I'm on their side whether I'm or not.

Leanne: Have you ever had a client approach you just on that and asked you to drive a specific outcome? What would your response be if that was the case?

Bob: I say, "I don't think I'm the person for this. Would you like me to suggest some other people who might be able to do what you want?"

Leanne: Absolutely, great. Let's say you're talking to Bob 45 five years ago, Bob just stepped up as a facilitator, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Bob: Whatever happens, you're going to survive it.

Leanne: That's brilliant.

Bob: That means you can afford to experiment if things aren't working. If the process isn't working, it's pointless to continue with it. Drop the content, fix the process, then when the process is fixed you can return to the content.

Leanne: That's really good advice. I think this whole content and process, not philosophy but the way that you approach that as a mode of delivery is really useful. I've never really thought about that before. I know that I've been in meetings and frustrated with because you're not actually making progress but you continue ahead and talk about the content no one really stops that conversation and says, what we're doing here sitting in this room is not working maybe we need to go for a walk or maybe we need to rethink. Do we need more information, should we consult with someone else? I think that's really helpful. Bob, is there anything else that you'd like to add to any of our first time facilitators that are starting the journey?

Bob: Facilitation can be an enormous buzz and it seems to me that the way in which we structure our organizations and our teams and meetings and our social structures generally suit the world we moving from and often spectacularly unsuited to the world we're moving towards with much more ambiguous and complex environments and much faster rates of change and solutions that don't stay appropriate for as long as they used to. The more of us that can be competent in both content and process, the better placed we are to help the world survive some of the trauma that's headed towards us down the road.

Leanne: Yes. It's a very volatile environment we're heading into and I think the today's of going into a meeting with a set agenda and 10 minutes on this topic, it's no longer relevant. I think your strategy of being prepared but also being flexible and open to where the discussion could lead is such a crucial step for any facilitator. Finally, Bob, you're also running workshops for facilitators, where can people find more information about you and those workshops?

Bob: I have quite a large website, some of it about facilitation, most of it about action research really, which is the mindset that I carry around with me in most of what I do. The URL for the website is www.aral.com.au. The A-R-A-L is short for action research and action learning.

Leanne: I was wondering what that stood for.

Bob: There is a load of material there. If after that URL you finish with a slash, it will automatically give you an index to the main versions of the site. One of the links that come up on the index page will be workshops and that will take people through to a description of my program for the year and some of the other workshops that I've offered in the past or plan to operate in future years or offer in-house.

Leanne: Fantastic. We will link to your website and those workshop details on our show notes for this episode. Bob, thank you so much. It's been great meeting you and talking and you've really broadened my perspective on facilitation in terms of splitting up into content, process and keeping focused on what's actually happening and what we need to fix in that situation. I've learned a lot from you and I'm sure our listeners have as well as. Thank you for taking the time out for our conversation.

Bob: My pleasure.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Adam Mustoe (Episode 16)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In this episode, we hear from Adam Mustoe - a Gallup certified Strengths Coach and second-generation pastor. He uses an assessment tool called CliftonStrengths to help people find the intersection of their unique talents and rewarding work.

Leanne: Our guest today is on a mission to guide people to the place where they are gifted and called. He uses that assessment tool called Clifton strengths to help people find the intersection of their unique talents and rewarding work. He first discovered his strength in 2009 and it changed his life. He holds masters of divinity degree and is a Gallup certified strength coach. Welcome to the show, all the way from Kansas City Missouri. Adam Mustoe.

Adam Mustoe: Leanne, thank you so much, happy to be with you.

Leanne: It's great to have you on the show. Now, Adam, that's a very bold statement about finding your strength in 2009, changed your life. Can you tell us that story?

Adam: Sure. I was on staff at a church and we took the-- at the time it was called strength finder. There is a book called strength finder 2.0, and I was in my early 20s starting off being an employee for the first time, really being an adult for the first time and a lot of stuff was falling through the cracks. I kept thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh. I have such a long way to go.’ What Clifton Strengths helped me do was start with what's right, like take a look as opposed to the things I knew I was terrible at. It reminded me of the unique talents I do bring. Just starting from that place really changed everything for me.

I found out for instance that I have really low discipline, but I have really high strategy, and so I came up with a system or a strategy to be disciplined, in order to cover my gap. A lot of that just really changed how I operated as an employee, and just went from there. I had a huge impact on my life. Again that idea that, let's start with what's right and find people to partner with on maybe the places where I do have some gaps.

Leanne: Did you feel like you were kind of floundering around before you found the strength tool, and now you like, ah that all makes sense, now I can approach things more systematically, or I can build up my weaknesses somehow by complementing them with optimizing by strengths of yours.

Adam: Absolutely that's a great word is optimizing. Yes, what it did was it gave me a vocabulary for some things I already knew to be true, but could never really name. It made me be like, oh wait I'm not weird or I am weird in my own unique way, and so let me work with what I got as opposed to trying to work really hard to be not so bad at some things. I knew and everyone else knew that I just wasn't going to be good at.

It made it safe to admit those things and just to concentrate on the unique gifts you bring because that's going to be your greatest potential for growth. Is getting even better at the things you're already great at, and focusing there as opposed to trying really hard to be at best mediocre.

Leanne: That's absolutely why I love the tool as well, and I know found it probably about a year and a half ago when I was reading a book, it was called pivot by Jenny Blake, she used to run the coaching program over at Google. We thought of using it now organization as well. I think it takes a lot of people some time to think about it-- because a lot of times with development we focus on boosting those weaknesses. You said optimization is the key.

Adam: In the sense that we pretend those don't exist, by the way. That we don't have weaknesses, this is not where we start. Do you mind telling me the top five? Can I put you on the spot?

Leanne: Sure, we actually shared two of the top five.

Adam: I like it, tell me.

Leanne: My number one is ideation, maximizer, futuristic, activator, and positivity. So we share positivity and activator.

Adam: Very good, that's great. I love it you speak the language too.

Leanne: Am I normal?

Adam: You're totally normal.

Leanne: I love-- I think it's one in – you got one in 33 million chance of having the same combination of strengths with anyone else in the world.

Adam: That's right. There's a one in 278 thousand chance of meeting someone with the same top five in a different order. Last month I was working with a team from Detroit, and one of the guys was a strength squad of mine.

Leanne: No way.

Adam: Yes, we took a picture and I came home it was like Christmas day or something. It was it was a lot of fun. That's right.

Leanne: That's interesting, so you did the tool and you loved the tool. What actually prompted you to then get accreditation in it?

Adam: Sure. I was on staff at a church. I'm a pastor, that's what I do for my actual job. I had had a project in grad school to put together some type of development event. I thought okay, I have some interns I work with, and some senior is in high school and college-age people, and thought well, most people I know love learning about themselves. How can we leverage that and help people discover their gifts especially at that really opportune time, when in that kind of young adult range. We just had a blast and said, okay, there may be something to this.

We put together a class from my church and out of 600 people like 20% of them signed up for the class, and we thought, okay there's something here. Did that and then I came over to Kansas City? I used to live in St. Louis and offered it here and had a great response here. So, I put together some things like I guess one tip I would say to anybody wanted to get started, is if you're willing to work for free. Most people will open the door for you. I let some workshops for some teams in Kansas City, some people I trusted and I knew they would tell me if it was bad and went from there.

So, my goal is to use strength's to get to get beyond the walls of my church. So often the model for church is, hey you should come to us, or you need to come be like us. I just wanted to break out from the mindset of the church being like a fortress, and go into my community and bring them something of value that I thought really made a difference to me, whether or not they show up to my church or not. I've worked with my wife’s school and some other companies here in Kansas City. I wanted to get accredited so that I wasn't just the guy who likes this a lot, but rather the expertise you get and the commitment that it shows really was important to me to have that legitimacy. That's why I decided to go. And I'm so glad I did. It was amazing.

Leanne: Yes that’s how we sort of actually met. Was through there is a strength scallop community on Facebook. I love it; Were your positivity and activated strength, plus communication I think within a minute to posting you were straight on there. Messaging saying, hey I'm really came for this.

Adam: That’s right I said, ‘Hey, holla at me,’ I think was what I said. Am glad you did.

Leanne: I did. Let's talk about your top five. Ben how have they helped you and your career? Because as a pastor, you're up the front. You're actually leading sermons and you're leading groups all the time. Plus it this day brief as well. You've actually day brief for over 1,200, that's incredible. How are your top five strength? Firstly, what are they and how have they helped you in a public facing role?

Adam: Sure. My first one is strategic, and that means when I go to the grocery store I make my list in order of the different sections that I will encounter. First is produce, then meat, then cereal or whatever. My second one is positivity; I tend to be quick with praise. I was going to compliment your website but I didn't have the chance to do so. My wife we joke that that's not something she shares. When I ask her, hey how is such and such? Her default is, fine. But with positivity-- if you asked me how something went. My default is, it was good. Yes, it was good.

My third is communication, so I'm watching the clock to make sure I don't take up this entire time with just me blabbing. I love turning things into stories. I think that makes things memorable. Communication is also about trying to make information survive. How can I get things down to the absolute essential thing that needs to be communicated, and it makes me happy to make those type of things and memorable. My fourth one is activator. Activators can often be impatient, they like to get things going. I'm the guy at my office that thinks we have too many meetings. Everyone's very well aware of that. I'm a guy who's always like, all right, what are we going to do about this? Every sermon I give, oh gosh I hope there's an action step at the end, or also it is just a nice talk.

Then finally my last one is called woo. That stands for winning others over. Probably the most fun strength to say. That means I really don't go through life-- there's no strangers, they're just friends I haven't met yet. It's like I was excited to meet you and learn about you. My family will get annoyed because I will talk to the person at the grocery checkout or the waitress like 10 minutes after everyone's ready to leave. Those are my top five, and it's been really helpful to see how those kind of pair up and complement the staff of the people around me.

Just knowing those things about myself, like for instance, if I have a new initiative or a new project, I need to sit down and do some strategy time and to give myself ample time to think through the different options and to select the best path forward. Knowing that about myself is helpful, because I'm often reminded that not everybody is. I tend to have a bias for action which can make me helpful, but sometimes you need other folks to kind of pump the brakes so you don't fire away on maybe the wrong thing.

Leanne: Yes, that's probably something that I do and I can very much relate to your call about meetings. I do my best to try and get out of them or just try what's the outcome here, can drive it any other way rather than sitting down for an hour or so. I love your comment about Woo - a colleague of mine has Woo in her top five and she always says about these conversations she has with strangers on the train. It works  for her and I always can’t think of anything worse. I love people but I'm not very good at, just talking to that stranger on the train.

Adam: If you stood by me on a plane you better look out.

Leanne: [laughs] The other thing about positivity, it was obviously now interactions because both of us just dropped a lot of exclamation marks. I know I have to - I have to hone it back when I know the people don't share the same positivity strength. You talked about your wife as well and her response to how's your day. Strengths we talk about it, some talk about it in organization context, but can use it outside of work in things like your relationships with people. Is it helpful then?

Adam: Yes. The applications are outstanding. In fact, last month, my [unintelligible 00:11:13] Sarah and my wife helps me. We call it, strengthening your marriage workshop and It was amazing. What we did was we actually got our-- you can pay extra money to find out all 34 of years, so we compared ours together and four of my top five are in her bottom five. It's just about pretty close to vice versa.

It was encouraging because it's not that we're not compatible, I like to think it was just being complimentary and that's what draws us to each other. She's different than me and I'm different than her and our gap would say that those differences are advantages they're not things that you should feel bad about that's what makes your relationship what it is.

You know that and complement each other. You have the applications for strengths are so wide so wide from the corporate world to the religious realm to like you said talking about in the context of a marriage. I use it with people that I'm going to do their wedding so they'll come in and for some kind of pre-marital counseling stuff and we'll just have absolute blast talking about strength, because they've known these things about each other but never had a name for it. All I do is facilitate, set the table and then just watch the light bulbs go off and it's so fun.

Leanne: That would be so much fun. My husband and I don't share any of the top five. I have futuristic and he has context.

[crosstalk]

Adam: Oh, thats good. It's not paradoxical. Actually, there was a guy at that event that had both of them. He had both futuristic and context in this top five so we enjoyed him that he was omnipotent. That he was all-seeing.

Leanne: Have you talked about these activities each day with married couples or that workshop you ran last week. Do you have like a template for what is the right session with the clock for tame context when you are debriefing it, but you them contextualize or do you approach it quite differently depending on the group?

Adam: Sure. I would say there's rarely a time while I would just run the template back. One of the things Gallup taught at the certification was, you need to meet with the leadership to understand before the session to understand what their outcomes are. Does the activator appreciate it and you tailor it to what their needs are?

Maybe there's a lot of new stuff that has just come on board or maybe there's some shallowing between the different layers of the organization. You can do some things in your content to scratch, that different hitches that they may have in terms of when I do it for churches staff teams. I've got, I would call them modules. I've got five or six modules and say, "Okay, these are the options you can pick from."

One thing that's always vital and this is again from Gallup, is this threefold process called Name, Claim, and Aim. What are your strengths, what does Gallup even mean by these words? Some of your listeners will be like, "What are they talking about who you’re? What about context? Input for example but doesn't mean you love to give a lot of input, it means you like to receive, you're going to research a television for two weeks before you actually buy one.

That's not what it may look like it at first glance. They want you to understand how to define then you need to claim them and think how are these actually showing up in my life and then finally self-awareness and self-discovery is great, but what I'm actually going to do with them and how can aim them at the things expected of me as an employer, as a spouse or as a friend.

No matter what I do, especially in what I do for the most part which is come in the first time, those three elements name, aim and claim are always part of it whether its marriage or faith-based anything or in the corporate space. That always remains.

Leanne: Excellent. Like I said over 1,200 people that you've day briefed and I can still hear that you're very enthusiastic about the tool. Is that what keeps you motivated and keeps you going, because you love the tool so much and you love sharing it with people?

Adam: Honestly, people want to know that you're smoking what you're selling. For me, this will be my second drug metaphor here in two sentences but, when I turn people loose and they turn and talk to their partners in these workshops and you hear the harm of conversation and you start seeing the light bulbs go off. The end is like a drug. It's so fun to watch people think, ‘Oh my gosh. I knew about 15% of that or I knew a part of this can name it’ That's why and then they start filling in the blanks with their friends or they think like, "Okay, just yesterday my buddy here at church and our other buddy's to other pastors here, Gallup was running a special on finding all your 34 strengths. So we called it Strength Christmas. I've like whistle coupon platform and everything.

Brian, his literal last two strengths are the same as our other pastors top two. So we just laughed them like no wonder they cross the streams so much in meetings, but again that's part of what makes them unique and that makes our team here what it is and we love that. Just the strength in these conversations, whether it's around a workshop or here at home base, because I do a ton of stuff with our church here, it's like music to my ears. So that feeling is really what keeps you going.

My number six strength is belief and when I have a conviction about something that's what drives me to get it done.I'll drive across the state of Missouri and back in one day sometimes because it's the motivation of these people discovering this amazing thing that is helped me so much.

Leanne: I agree. That's why I want to encourage people out there that are listening that haven't yet had the confidence to step up in front of a room to listen in to some of the tips and tools at all that that the facilitator is sharing and then try to take that way, because it is an incredible feeling when you hit that white ball moment. You can't beat that.

Adam: Yes. I think as a facilitator you have this advantage, you can swoop in, do your deal and swoop out which for me means I can be just super authentic and super honest because of they don't like, I'm still cashing the check. I don't mean to sound crass. What I mean is a lot of times and your experiences as a pastor my old pastor used to call it the 50-mile rule.

If you bring in an expert from more than 50 miles away and they say the same thing you said you must have everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, that was so profound," just because they're this outside voice. So, being able to be privileged to be that outside voice to other folks is a big deal and for me especially in the corporate space, there's a big difference between people opting into a workshop like a class at church or being told by their boss, you will come to this workshop.

That's for me where the rule comes in because I know a lot of these people are sitting there, crossing their arms and rolling their eyes thinking, here's one more thing. You've got the element of surprise. If you really nail it and you bring the energy and sincerity, it can really make a difference to people and that to me is a lot of fun.

Leanne: I'd love to ask you, what kind of things do you do to bring in that element of surprise? You can share.

Adam: If you connect well and teach well but don't apply it well, then it's irrelevant.

If you connect well, your content is weak and then you apply it, then it ends up being shallow, because the actual content wasn’t really there, you didn’t have a firm foundation. If you teach great content and apply it really well but you never connect with the audience, it’s going to be boring and they're never going to give you a shot. I try to have those things in mind, "How can I connect with folks, how can I be authentic, how can I not take myself too seriously?"

I think people want to just experience a real person, so how can I connect with them usually through some self-effacing story or something. How can I deliver this content with energy and precision? Finally, what’s the value in actually doing something about this and how can we lead them with concrete mixed steps. All this three of those things are vital not all of us are great at all of them, so if you can at least be-- I don’t want to say mediocre. If you can be at least adequate in all of those areas, and really do one of them well, I think that’s what leads to success.

Leanne: Yes, fantastic, and I guess most people differentiate on if at least you got the baseline for all three. Some people I’ve sometimes differentiate on the content and that is the expert in that field.

Adam: Yes, and just blow people's minds.

Leanne: Yes, they are an entertainer but they can still hit the mark with content and the application, but they differentiate on their ability to bring the fun in to that. Yes, that’s interesting.

Adam: It makes them memorable in its own way.

Leanne: Yes, for sure. So your communications rank has been with you, were you a great storyteller when you were a kid? Is this some new skill that you've developed because you've become a pastor and leading teams and you've realized it’s an effective way of connecting with people?

Adam: Sure, that’s a great question, I’ve always loved good stories, and my dad was a great storyteller. I'm a second-generation pastor, so listening to him practice on Saturday nights and watching how a well-placed and well-delivered narrative can speak to people and touch people in a meaningful way. I saw light growing up. I out of college did a lot of youth ministry and what I loved about middle school and high school kids is, when you’re trying to talk to them. When you are facilitating or presenting, they let you know if it wasn’t going very well, because they would look at their phone. Their lights would be evident and it would be like, "Guys I can see your phones," and I think that was a great way to cut my teeth because instant feedback.

To me it was about, "Okay if I’ve got a limited amount of time with people’s attention, how can I really capitalize on the time that I do get, and how can I maximize the impact of the point of whatever we're gathered around." I was a shy kid but I moved around a little bit and I figured out, "Wait if I don’t make any friends myself I won’t have any," I think that’s partially where it came from, it’s just necessity.

Leanne: I love that you talk about the brutality of middle school kids and their phones, because you work with a lot of older audiences, their poker faces are good. Actually, we've got to be intuitive to find out are their eyes glazing over of are they just faking their interest, what’s going on.

Adam: Yes, that’s right, as adults we fake it in the name of being polite, I’d rather they give it to me straight. Play candy crush or whatever and I’ll know how I really seem.

Leanne: I also get it interesting that you observed your dad practicing his sermon on a Saturday night. That obviously provided the really great role model for you in terms of rehearsal being important. Is rehearsal an important element for you, or are you just so confident now that you can wing it?

Adam: That’s a good question. What I do is, any time I’m going to preach, I have a manuscript and I read it a bunch. Some of that is so I don’t make some off colored joke that sounds funny to me in the moment and then I realize after I said it, it’s not appropriate. That’s like gag rails for me, I probably should practice more if I’m being honest, I will say, I’m never not nervous. Not necessarily nervous when I’m doing it but Saturday night I sleep great all the time and that’s when I’m doing a sermon or a Strengths workshop. In the morning I always feel a little nauseous, have some stomach stuff going on, so my nerves occur more before the event than during the event, which I’m thankful for in an odd way.

I have a regime of I try and get everything done on Tuesday and then read over during the week and run through it on Sunday morning. Yes, I never want to do a Saturday night special, that’s what they call it in the business where you haven’t prepped, because people can tell and you’re not giving your best, which is what you owe them. It’s important to me to not do the Saturday night special and it’s important to me to do what Andrew Stanley who's our very influential pastor in Southern America, which is different than South America. The Southern portion of the United States of America, it’s all right, he says, "What I try to work for," is what he calls, "Internalizing the message," I think that’s applicable to what type of facilitator you are.

People know if you’re just reading stuff, it seems weird, but if you’re speaking from a place of sincerity and this content is coming from you not just being an expert, but from you believing it. That makes it compelling to people.

Leanne: Audiences can detect if the message is inauthentic but you can’t actually tell what’s different about it. Only that the heart was in it the second time as an example.

Adam: Yes, it’s just more of a feeling.

Leanne: You can’t actually put your finger on it; you can’t go all out because their voice was at this level. It’s more like "No I actually can tell I believed it was something that I heard that just triggered that response.

Adam: Yes, there is a conviction that speaks, even without seeing them just in the audio. If you ask me a question I have a wooden paragraph answer, the audience would be like, "What are we doing here?"

Leanne: That’s right. Now, tell us a bit about, so delivering a sermon is very different to running an interactive workshop. What do you think the skills are required for someone to be a good facilitator or a trainer in that group workshop environment?

Adam: I actually looked around your website and I was like, "Those were some of the things I was going to say." I think one of the best tips is to-- I think great facilitators ask great questions, in a Socratic way if I try and sound like I have a Master’s degree. Socrates would ask his pupils questions until they arrived at the answers themselves. As a Strengths Finder, Clifton Strengths Finder facilitator my job isn’t just to tell them information, it’s to help lead them to their own self-discoveries, and you do that through great questions. That’s one thing I would say, is ask great questions.

The second thing I would say is get them talking within the first few minutes in under five minutes for sure, even under two or three. That sets the pace for the rest of the session, “This person isn’t here to give us the big information down, they want us to interact and have some conversation around these ideas." I think that really sets the tone and it changes the environment when people understand, "Okay this is participatory and not just audible.

Leanne: Yes, and they're so grateful, the audience is so grateful like, "Thank you for making it interactive."

Adam: Yes, not just another-- in church we call that sit and get, not just a sit and get. The other thing is-- I have discovered people are really willing to turn and talk to each other in a group of two or three. After that’s over if you ask for feedback or some type of answer or call out to the general group, oh, its crickets. Sometimes if I hear somebody overhear something like a great nugget, I will go to the individual and say, "Hey would you mind sharing that with the group?" I've stopped doing the, "Hey, who wants to share a great thing they said," because if you’re in a group of even as few as 10 people, it takes on a different dynamic, from when it’s just you and a partner to the whole group.

I guess that’s what I would say is, getting them talking quick, ask great questions, and don’t necessarily surprise people by asking to talk in front of the whole group. You may not mind that as the facilitator, but it turns out a lot of people do.

Leanne: Yes, so you hover around, wait for something good and then target them, that’s fantastic. I get the same thing, I’ve actually gone the group approach and you’re lucky when there is one or two extroverts in the room, they are usually the ones answering every question anyway. It would be good to go, "Hey," and then give them the time to think about it, so they have time to prepare their response when they do end up sharing it.

Adam: That’s right, most people don’t mind if they know what to expect, people don’t like being caught off guard. That’s another sharing space thing is I assume everyone is like me and has no problem; I can’t wait for someone to ask me my opinion of something. Not everybody is like that, that's been a good discovery, I’m glad to hear you’ve had the same experience.

Leanne: Yes, absolutely. I'm interested in hearing, have you had any situations when running strengths that have not gone the way that you planned. Maybe someone says, "This aren’t my strengths, I don’t agree," or there's been a conflict in the room or something’s derailed your workshop. Has anything like that happened in your experiences?

Adam: Sure. The first thing that I thought of when you were talking about that is, some of my stuff has been technical. Like the HDMI cable wasn't present, or they told me to bring X adapter and I did, but it was really something else. Slides aren't a big deal. You can certainly survive without then but, sometimes I think that visual aspect is important. It helps people understand, "Oh, I should write this down, it's on the slide." Not having those kind of threw me off a little bit once. But it wasn't anything that irrecoverable.

One of the first things I do in my workshops is what someone coined, "uncovering resistance". I actually try and ask--That's the first thing I ask is, "What questions do you all have?", or I invite their questions and even skepticism to some degree. I always begin my workshop establishing the sociological research about strengths, and I try and head off some of those things that they pass. I talk about, "Sometimes you may not feel like this on you, that's alright." I have a little deal I go through where I check the boxes on four or five different objections people might have. So, I try and take a proactive approach. Probably my biggest bomb, this is something I use in my workshops is, "It wasn't a workshop facilitation, it was a public workshop service."

My first year in Kansas City we had big outdoor Christmas service at one of our shopping centers, it’s like this outdoor mall, where there's a big Christmas tree and very scenic, and all of that. There was like 200 something folks there. As it was starting, our music leader was playing some Christmas songs and her guitar wasn't on. I was like, "Oh, man. What happened?" Well, her cord had fell out. So later on as a part of the gathering I'm going to talk for about 10 minutes, and as I go out to pick up her guitar plug, I bend down and rip my pants.

[laughter]

Like split them wide open, and it's like, "Oh my gosh. This is the stuff nightmares are made of." You know what I mean? In December, in Kansas City, Missouri, it is not like real warm. So the cold breeze was a blow I’m like. I just had to gut it out. I just-- For the rest of the time I just waddled around like a father penguin, trying not to let anybody know that, "Here's this guy with his pants that have ripped." That was terrible. That was my one gory story of having to power through, yes. Yikes.

Leanne: Yikes, yes. I like-- We could all-- I could probably relate to the technology one. That always hurts, when you can't project those slides up, even though you don't rely on them, but it's just like you said, something extra for-- That stimulation for your audience. I can relate to situations where in the workshop things haven't worked out so well, and-- But not the pants one, that hasn't happened to me yet.

Adam: Well, okay-.

Leanne: Hopefully never.

Adam: Knock on wood, my friend. That's right. That's right.

Leanne: Now, what's some practical advice that you could offer to our listeners, those who are first-time facilitators?

Adam: I would say-- Again, people can tell when you're being yourself or not. Whatever it is that makes you authentically you, again going back to those three areas of teaching, connecting and applying, just do--- Use your strengths. Do your workshop in a way that's natural to you. Don't try and be like, Leanne, or whoever you've seen on TED, or whatever, because people can tell if you're trying to play a part. I would say, "Be yourself, and don't take yourself too seriously." People will find it energizing and compelling and maybe even fun, when they can tell that you're energized and compelled by the subject matter. You can have a little fun. That doesn't mean you've got to stand up and tell stories about ripping your pants or whatever.

However it is, you can make it evident to people, "Hey, I didn't ride in here on my high horse." I think that's really, really good. Again, I would say, get them talking early. Early, and often.

Leanne: I love that, yes. Early and often is a great note to end on. Now Adam, I've loved talking to you, and I can very much see clearly your top five strengths in everything that you've just mentioned. Just in the way that you present and talk about things, and how you actually make that extra effort to make sure that your audience are connected. It looks like you got to spend a lot of time figuring out your own strategies, that works for you. Thanks for sharing that with our audience. Where can people find you?

Adam: Sure. You can find my strengths consulting website at www.findyourwaypoint.com. I'm on Twitter and my handle is my last name, which is just @mustoe, M-U-S-T-O-E.

Leanne: Fantastic. We will link to all of Adam's Twitter account and his website on our show notes, as well as the Clifton Strengths assessment tool. Because I-- If you haven't done it yet, you probably-- I don't know if you're driving a car listening to this but, pull over now and sign up. It's like, I think-

Adam: That's right.

Leanne: -it's one of the better assessment tools out there. I love, I love it.

Adam: Leanne, thank you so much. This was great to meet you, and I really enjoyed our time. Thank you.

Leanne: Thanks Adam, loved having you on the show.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript (Episode 15)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. In this First Time Facilitator episode, you'll hear from Therese Lardner, a psychologist, leadership coach, speaker and workshop facilitator. She shares how being thrown into the deep end helped build her confidence in public speaking, and why your choice of words matter as a facilitator.

Leanne: Our guest today is a leadership and engagement coach, workshop facilitator, speaker, executive coach, and psychologist with a simple no-nonsense approach to building leaders and businesses. Her natural way of engaging with people means that she's just as comfortable in the boardroom as she is on the factory floor. That's a fantastic description. Welcome to the show Therese Lardner.

Therese Lardner: Thank you so much for having me.

Leanne: It's great to have you here. Now, Therese and I met each other as we were both speakers at Disrupt HR last year. I completely agree the way that she comes across is effortless and completely natural. Now, Therese that's I know a bit about you, but I'd love you to share with our listeners. How did you enter the world of this career in terms of training facilitating and working with businesses?

Therese: Sure. I started out straight from school, going into psychology. Not really knowing exactly what it is that that meant, and what that was going to entail, but knew that I always wanted to work with people and loved working with people. Fast forward through my degree and getting out into the workplace as an organizational development consultant, one of the first things that I was tasked with doing as a recent graduate was facilitating workshops and training. Which for a new grad was completely nerve-wracking, but I was still talking about topics that I really enjoyed.

Things like change management and leadership. Back then it was the multi-generational workforce, which is gained a lot of pace these days, but 10 years ago that was a really big topic. I was thrust into the world of facilitation you could say, [laughs] but have always enjoyed being with people and being in front of people as well. I don't mind being on a stage that's for sure.

[laughter]

Leanne: That would have been very daunting. Did anything in university prepare you for actually stepping up in front of corporate people and trying to communicate, or change their opinion, shift their behavior?

Therese: In small ways, yes. What I really learned in terms of the transition from university into the workplace is that I almost had to forget all of my academic training, how we would structure arguments. It was all around what will happen as opposed to what may happen. May is a big word in psychology.

[laughter]

We like to catch all kinds of things, but the language that you use presenting to a corporate audience is very different. As I said, how you structure the argument is quite different. I really had to navigate my way through that vocabulary and that structure to be able to connect with the corporate audience. I think one of the best pieces of advice I was given when I was starting out and facilitating, rightly or wrongly, was that you know more about this topic than your audience will. If you use a wrong word here or there, if you mark up the order that the content is meant to be in and you revised version three instead of version two, they're not really going to know.

What they're going to remember are the key objectives that you were going to take them through. The key elements that they had to walk away with, as opposed to a misstep here and there. That really took the weight off my shoulders as I was starting out.

Leanne: That's really good advice. It's all about what's the end goal here, and the journey, you might have an idea of what that map looks like, but I think you do find in facilitation depending on where the conversation goes or what stories are brought up with your group, instead of going from ABC, you might go AC through to B and--

Therese: It's absolutely okay. [laughs]

Leanne: I'd love to talk about the language. Coming from an academic background you talk a lot, might use some big words or talk about statistic. I really need to back up a lot of what you say with facts and evidence. It's a very evidence-based approach being a science. How did you lose that, not armor, but that vocabulary and switch over to more of the corporate talk where you could relate to more people?

Therese: I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you were talking about outcomes. It really is about what is it that this person will walk away with, as opposed to what will make me as the facilitator seeing the smartest person in the room, and what's the biggest word I could use to possibly describe that. In terms of what problem you're solving and the outcome that they need to walk away with, that's what you really focus in on when you're shifting that language away from the very scientific or the very academic.

Leanne: I love it. You've come from this background and now you travel quite interstate, to mine sites, construction sites, but you're also very comfortable in boardrooms. When preparing for the different types of audiences. Do you do anything--? How do you prepare for that? Do you dress differently? Do you come in with different approaches? What does that look like for you?

Therese: It will vary depending on the client and what it is that I'm doing. Sometimes I will dress differently. Particularly if I'm out on site if I'm out in a rural or remote area. If I'm wearing PPE, there's no use wearing high heels, it's just not going to work. [laughs] Sometimes I do dress differently. It's really about understanding what the drivers and motivators of my audience are?

What's important to them? What drives, what motivates them? What do they need out of the communication? Then, going from there. Sometimes that might mean me using slightly different language, different ways of explaining things, and sometimes in multiple ways of explaining things if I've got a wide variety of people in the room. It would just depend on who I'm speaking with.

Leanne: Now, you mentioned earlier that you're very comfortable on stage. That came across with your speech last year. You absolutely killed it. laughs]

Therese: Thank you.

Leanne: Have you always had that confidence? Have you always felt comfortable presenting in front of people growing up, or is it something that now that you're doing more of it, it's just evolved and now over the course of the years you've got this great experience under your belt?

Therese: A bit of both. As a fairly young child, I was involved in lots of choral work. Lots of choirs and voice work and singing. That just gave me a natural level of comfort with being in front of potentially thousands of people and that being okay. As a young kid I heard that, but then moving into the workplace you have this extra pressure of judgment that you don't necessarily have outside of that environment.

I certainly had to overcome what do they think of me or I've said the wrong word or I'm losing track of this. Certainly had to overcome that but have always had that level of confidence in terms of being in front of people to fall back on. There's always been a bit of a performer and me. [laughs]

Leanne: That is so cool. I never knew that about you. It's just fascinating.

Therese: There you go.

Leanne:  I think the best thing about this is that it doesn't matter what industry you're from, there's always something to take away that will give you that confidence. Love that, Now, I'd love to talk about an upcoming trip that you have on. Would you like to share that with the audience? 

Therese: I'm off to New York shortly to speak at a World Summit on positive psychology, mindfulness and psychotherapy. It's a very long title.

Leanne: Tell us, how did you score that gig? I'd love to hear that. Also, what are you sharing with the audience over there?

Therese: Sure. The story behind this is very serendipitous. I had started out in the land of Twitter, which I don't still really understand. I'm not big on tech, but I'm getting there. I had accidentally followed a conference. Then, they got in touch with me, obviously having seen my website and looked at some of my work on LinkedIn externally and said, "Would you like to present?" I submitted an abstract, they loved it and the rest is history. [laughs]

Leanne: Congratulations.

Therese: Thank you.

Leanne: I could virtually give you a high five now. Love to hear what you're sharing with them.

Therese: One of my biggest areas of passion is around employee engagement. I'll be talking through the future of employee engagement and how what we'll be doing for the last decade or so really isn't working and some different ways forward. I've done some very cool research and partnered with an organization here in Australia to do that and to trial an awesome app that has just come onto the market as well, based on my research so yes.

Leanne: Nice. Now, a lot of our listeners, they aren't actually full-time speakers, they all work in-- Well, the most of them that I've heard from, work in organizations, a lot of them and are in HR roles. I'd love to hear what's one take away regarding employee engagement? I guess that we've done wrong. That we can change for the future.

Therese: Yes. I don't know that we've done it wrong, but it's not working. If we keep on doing the same old thing, we're going to get the same old results. In my mind, the biggest thing is that we're focusing on head engagement. We're focusing on are we giving people interesting work? Are we giving them the right salary, the right benefits? Have I communicated a compelling vision? Which is all very important, but what the research is telling us and what we know from our experience as well, is that we need to engage people's hearts. We need to provide that inspiration.

We need to make sure that the work they're doing is energizing. That they have that sense of flow and connection to what they're doing in their team. That's the future of engagement is head and heart engagement. In the context of leading from an area of growth. Making sure that we're investing in our people. My real passion is that head and heart engagement.

Leanne: That is such great terminology. Head and heart. From what you're saying, I think you're absolutely right in terms of creating that flow in your work because you can work on some assignments and it plays to your strengths. If something isn't-- You're not losing time involved when you're actually working through it and time just seems like it goes on. It's gone so quickly. You're not actually structuring that work in the right way. That's really interesting. Are there any sort of practical takeaways that a leader, who's out at say a project or at a site knowing that, what's something that they could do to start bringing in the hearts of their staff?

Therese: It might sound very simple, but the simplest things are often the most powerful. It's having real conversations with people. Not the superficial stuff. Not the, "Hi. How are you going?" It's, "What's going on for you at the moment?" Really getting to understand some terminology that I used earlier. Understanding what drives and motivates them. What gets them out of bed? What puts fire in their belly? Because it might be their work or it might be something else.

Even if it's something else, you can't hope to connect someone to their work unless you understand what drives and motivates them. I think that's the essential part that's missing from engagement as well. There's real conversations that backs up all the surveys and all the steps that we do to really understand what makes people tick. How we can connect what they love into what we would love them to do.

Leanne: That sounds very similar. You recommended a book to me when I last saw you. That was Simon Sinek's, Find Your Why, the workbook. I have started reading that. It's very similar. I think he starts off with everyone has the right to wake up in the morning and feel motivated to do something that means something for them. Links it all really nicely. Now, you spoke about the practical tool which is shifting the language and saying-- Instead of asking, "Hey, how are you going?" You think something a bit more substantial.

That leads into the talk that you did at Disrupt HR last year which was amazing. We'll link to your video as part of the show nights for this episode. Can you share with our audience why you're so passionate about this topic? Why leaders of today need to really work on their emotional vocab?

Therese: Yes. At Disrupt HR, I spoke on this topic of leaders needing emotional vocabulary. The reason I'm so passionate about that is I see so many leaders who have the internal drive to have conversations with people. They know that they need to have these great conversations, but they don't necessarily have the vocabulary to have those conversations. They don't have the words to use. What I spoke about at Disrupt HR is if you track that back, it can go back to childhood. Not from Sigmund Freud, "Let's lie down on a couch" type thing.

We don't encourage even babies to express how they feel. We shush them up. We tell them that we don't want to hear they have to say. As kids grow, we're not, again, encouraging them to use nuanced language. Does a child know the difference between being angry and frustrated? A simple example, but that then translates in to schooling. That translates into the workplace. If we're not encouraging people to express themselves and we haven't given them the tools to do it, then they pop out the other end of high school, go into uni, go into the workplace and, all of a sudden, we're expecting them to have these amazing human conversations and they struggle.

I also know that the HR systems and trends of the '90s had a lot to do with that as well. When we're telling people to leave their baggage at the door, and not to speak about themselves at work, then we've created this whole-- Well, a range of generations who are in the workforce who can't be themselves. They can't be whole human beings at work. It's compacting in terms of not being able to express yourself. Not knowing how to express yourself. Then, it not being appropriate when you go into the workplace.

Leanne: Wow. Let's just say an organization has recognized the need for this and they've called on Therese to come in and help them, what is your approach to helping leaders and managers develop this vocabulary and really recognize how their feeling and how they should communicate?

Therese: Yes. I think a lot of it is actually breaking down the barriers that are there to having the conversations to begin with. That's the most uncomfortable part. [laughs] It's the part that lots of people like to skip over and "Let's just go and do the workshop. Let's get on with it." Unfortunately, you need to unpack some of that stuff and understand how it is that you've arrived at this spot of not being able to feel comfortable having those conversations. There is a certain element in--

That's done 101 because it needs to be done in a very safe, sensitive environment because folks are pretty vulnerable having those conversations. What you can then do is back that up with some group work or small team work around pure vocab. Introducing people to new phrases, new terms, new perspectives on situations. You also need to back that up with giving people an understanding of the physiological reactions and feelings that they have that connect to those words, so that when they start to actually experience them in their body, they have this new nuanced, subtle, lots of detailed language they can use to describe what they're actually feeling because again, one without the other is useless.

If you have the words without actually knowing what that attaches to, it's useless. If you go, "I'm feeling that my heart rate is going up. I've got a frog in my throat. I'm starting to get a headache, but I can't describe that." Again, useless. They need to go together.

Leanne: Wow. That's so fascinating. You do this 101 first, then-- That makes so much sense. Because it is, it's quite a delicate topic. You possibly are uncovering some things that have happened in their past which have led to that. Then, do you start to get-- I'm not too sure what you do. Do you get them to start thinking like, "If I was angry, how would I react?" Or getting them to think of a time where they think they were frustrated and what that felt like?

Therese: Yes. It needs to be very relatable because otherwise, again it's too theoretical and people just don't understand it. Emotional vocabulary is one very specific part emotional intelligence. It's a tiny subset of it. Recognizing that if you start then to increase emotional self-awareness, that has a flow-on effect to the other parts of emotional intelligence which is exactly what you're talking about. Now that I know this about myself, how does this relate to how I regulate my emotions? How do I manage the ups and downs as part of my day?

How do I use that information in decision making really effectively, in a way that makes sense for me and my organization and my team? How do I manage very strong emotions like excitement, passion, anger, in a way, that again, is appropriate? Because I've got this awareness to fall back on, it's the first building block that has to go down before the tower can start getting stacked on top of that.

Leanne: Such a fascinating topic. Your organizational psychology is also huge. It covers so many different things. What really attracted you to the emotional intelligence space when you could be working on motivation or team dynamics? What was it about this in particular for you?

Therese: I was introduced to emotional intelligence fairly early on in my consulting career. Number one, just found it fascinating. I find feelings and emotions fascinating. Another area that I had been involved in more recently though is working with the fly-in fly-out workforce. A lot around mental health in that type of workforce. Again, given that it's a male-dominated environment, one of the things that is really predominant in that type of work is helping, particularly males, to identify what it is they are going through and be able to have conversations around that, so they can either support each other or seek support for themselves.

That really prompted that passion again. Even more recently because I have two children, my first is a girl and my second was a boy. Lord help them both, they have a psychologist for a mother. I've recognized that how people were interacting with him and his emotional expression was different because he was a boy. I thought, "There’s something here." Then, I started to really look into, again, emotional expression as a child, and how we foster that as a society or we don’t foster it as a society. Then, it built from there, or in the last two, three years.

Leanne: That bit of a merger between what you're noticing in the workplace as well as family life. You could bring into the niche that you're now doing really well in and presenting in New York on. I love how that all integrates together.

Let’s just say, you come in, you’ve done some intervention work one on one, then in little groups. Let's just say then you have to lead the organization. How do you feel, how is learning transferred or embedded into their behavior change once they get back to work? Are there any great strategies that you could recommend or--?

Therese: Because as you and I know, the transfer of knowledge from pure classroom learning to the workplace is pretty ordinary if you don’t manage it really well. One of the things that I really like to do, again depending on the culture of the organization, is sustainability sessions. After the one on one coaching is finished and the small group work is finished, actually going back on a regular basis and holding sessions to allow people to brief and then debrief on what it is they are implementing.

They have an action plan. How are you going to implement that? How have you implemented that so that there's this ongoing check-in supporting their learning back in their workplace? As opposed to, "Here's an action plan. See you later." Best of luck.

[laughter]

Leanne: I love that action plans keeping everyone accountable, especially if you’ve got peer support and you've made these commitments to check-in following that. Nice idea. Love it. In your observation, what are the skills that every good facilitator needs?

Therese: That’s a big question, Leanne.

Leanne: It is.

Therese: Funnily enough, I think that one of the first things to cover off is the capacity to listen because folks think that particularly facilitation, which is quite different to presenting, facilitation is just talking. It’s not just covering off content because you need to be able to facilitate those back and forth group discussions. You need to be able to pick up on the cues of all the different people in that group to see number one, "Are they getting it? Are they engaged in the content? Is there a different way that I can explain something? Do I need to draw someone out a little bit more?"

The only way that you can recognize that is by listening and observing because if you just talk at them, it's about you and not about them. It’s a presentation and not a facilitation.

Leanne: That is such a great point. I think it really relates to what you’re doing in the terms of emotional intelligence space. Actually being aware of firstly, that you need to hold back and listen but also observe and say, "Okay, that person, their physiological response is this. I feel like they might be getting a bit nervous about the subject." As a facilitator, you really need to be aware yourself.

Therese: Yes. I think the other element of being a facilitator is just being switched on the whole time which can be exhausting if you’re doing lots of facilitation, which I have been recently. You do need to be present. You need to be switched on because the group or the team is relying on you to connect dots for them. Again, if you're just throwing content out there and you’re not connecting what Sue said in this morning's discussion with the piece of content that we're discussing this afternoon, then you’re not drawing them in and engaging them in that discussion.

You're not connecting the dots for them and helping them to understand how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Being present and being checked in, I think is super important for facilitators. That’s where I see some fall down is that they just don’t understand the need to just be in the room and not thinking about everything else that's going on.

Leanne: It’s so hard but it’s also a relief to hear that other people are getting really tired after running a workshop because I thought it was just me. It really is. At the end of the day, you're like, "I need a glass of wine, I need to put my feet up, and reflect back on what could I have done there?" Every time it’s a learning opportunity, every time you’re in the room, I think.

Therese: Absolutely. I’ve had periods just recently where I’ve done a number of workshops, I’ve done recently four days of facilitation in a row. You’re right, the only way that I was able to stay present and mindful through that time is, as soon as I've finished, I put on my running shoes and went for a run. Even though I was exhausted, it still allowed me to disconnect from what had happened during the day, get some fresh air. Then, later on, come back, circle back and reflect, as you said, "What could I have done differently? What do I need to focus on tomorrow knowing what I’ve seen and heard today?"

If you don’t allow yourself that space and you just keep on pushing through and chugging through, you can’t be present. It’s just not physically possible.

Leanne: It is. It really is. A fellow facilitator I spoke a couple episodes ago said, "It is actually a really physical job." We can’t just remember it’s all just a brain, we actually have to prep ourselves. Physically, we're walking around, we're listening, we're focusing. It can be exhausting. Not to put any facilitators off because it's a great career field to head down. [laughs]

Did you find in those four days that you were actually modifying some content, like shaping it because you heard some things, or was it just quite structured approach?

Therese: A bit of both actually. It was two two-day workshops back-to-back. I had two different groups. I was delivering the same content twice to summarize. There was a certain level of needing to be able to get a certain amount of content across to both groups because there needed to be quite a lot of overlapping similarity in terms of what the two groups were hearing. I subtly took the learnings from previous workshops because I think that was the fifth time that I had run that particular workshop for that organization.

I was subtly taking the learnings from each one, and modifying as I went depending on who was in the room. How they were feeling. Were they very chatty? Were they quiet reserved? Skipping over content that I knew wouldn’t draw them out. Focusing on content a little bit more if I thought it'd be more engaging. That type of thing.

Leanne: That’s great. Great advice for facilitators on how to modify, or what you need to do to modify some of the content. Especially when you’re delivering to the same company’s similar workshop material. You’re just learning every time and going, "Okay, I think they know this, so the next group will.” Nice one. You've offered a lot of practical advice for first-time facilitators. Is there anything else you’d like to add as a piece of advice for them?

Therese: I wouldn’t downplay some of the fear that folks have around facilitating because not everybody feels as comfortable with public speaking as we do. What I would say is if you’re able to prep yourself, be mindful and in the room, what you might get out of facilitation can be quiet amazing.

You get such a buzz from being in a room with a group of people getting a message across and them just really getting it. No matter how scared you are, no matter how underprepared you think you might be, just give it a red hot go because odds are on the other end of that will be such an amazing feeling for you and a group of people who have learned something they've never known before.

Leanne: That’s very powerful. In fact, if I wasn’t a facilitator-- I'm already like, “Yes, I want to go and facilitate again.” It’s so true that amazing feeling that you get, the adrenaline, but also to know that you’re actually on that one-to-many ratio, just impacting so many people. When the lights switch on in their eyes, and they brighten up, and they start using the language through the workshop, there's nothing better.

Therese: Absolutely.

Leanne: That’s great advice to finish on. Now, Therese, where can our listeners find you?

Therese: Sure. You can find me by my website mindsetcoachconsult.com.au, or places like LinkedIn and Facebook, Mindset Coaching and Consulting or Therese Lardner on LinkedIn.

Leanne: Fantastic. Therese posts up some incredible words of advice, some wisdom on her LinkedIn page. I do recommend that all our listeners follow her on that. I love seeing all your updates. Therese, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. I've learned so much from you. I can't wait to share this chat with our listeners. I also wish you the best of luck. You're flying out to New York on Saturday morning. I can't wait to hear how that goes.

I think they've done really well getting you on the speaker card. This is going to be such a huge gig for you. Congratulations.

Therese: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a wonderful experience.

First Time Facilitator podcast transcript (Episode 14)

Listen to this episode from First Time Facilitator on Spotify. Hello fellow first time facilitators and welcome to the show this week. This is the first solo episode I'm recording and it's come in response to some feedback I received from a listener, Aminata N'Doye from Toronto, Canada.

Hello fellow first time facilitators and welcome to the show this week.

This is the first solo episode I’m recording and it’s come in response to some feedback I received from a listener, Aminata N’Doye from Toronto, Canada. She asked if I could incorporate listener questions periodically. I think it’s great suggestion, it allows variety for the show and typically, we’ll keep these ones short -they won’t run for longer than 15mins.

If you have a question you’d like answered, there are a few ways you can submit it:

• You can email me: hello@firsttimefacilitator.com

• Send me a tweet @leannehughes

• Message me your question on Instagram and that’s @ firsttimefacilitator

Given Aminata had the idea for this segment, I threw it over to her to ask the first question, and her question is this:

“Along the way, you've seen a number of tricks from fantastic facilitators. What were some of the amazing tricks where you thought, "Wow! I need to add this to my facilitation!"? 

Aminata, thanks for your terrific question. It’s a good one, as it forces me to really reflect back on all those years of sitting in group workshops and taking the best pieces of what they do, into the training room if it resonates with me.

I have put together my six tricks for now. I’m pretty sure I’ll publish this episode and think ‘Ahh!’ I forgot that one time that a facilitator did x, y, z…so we may need a part 2 to this response sometime down the track.

Trick #1: Airdropping notes

The first trick I’ll start with requires a bit of skill and it’s not something I’ve personally used YET… But I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped when this happened in the workshop, in a good way!

I recently attended a three day course on how to write a website landing page.  This course was held in Singapore. It was run by a guy called Sean De’Souza.  He has a podcast called the ‘Three Month Vacation’, is an internet marketing legend, teacher, author and a cartoonist.

On the first day, we worked as a group to brainstorm benefits and features related to selling a public speaking course. 

There were two groups; and after our brain dump, we shared our ideas - a representative from each group spoke through the points. Nothing new, right?

Sean was listening to each point; and questioning any points he wanted clarified further. Again, nothing new.

After the exercise, he asked if we all had iPhones (which, surprisingly, everyone in class did) and then he asked us to turn on our Bluetooth so he could AirDrop an image to us.

It was the coolest drawing of all the points our group had just brainstormed! It was so cool - we immediately had the notes but they were drawn beautifully and a fantastic souvenir of the conversation.

I will link to a couple of these images in the Show Notes for this episode - at firsttimefacilitator.com/episode14.

So, how did he do this? He was using the latest iPad which you can draw on. Plus he’s an amazing artist.

But let’s just say you aren’t a great artist, it’s still something you can do.  Your end product may not look as good as Sean’s, however your participants will have real-time access to your workshop notes.

If you’re like me, you may be thinking, well hang on - I can’t listen to what my participants are saying; and draw at the same time!

Well, maybe you can ask your participants to draw notes on the iPad and share them at the end of each topic.

This also double as an engagement strategy; and everyone has access to the notes. To be inclusive though, each participant will need an iPhone for the airdrop feature and if not, you can share via a Dropbox link or email at worst.

Tip #2: Frequent Breaks

My next tip is also from Sean’s Singapore workshop (I think I’ll have to interview him on an upcoming show). That tip is that we took frequent breaks.  Now, this is more relevant if you’re in the training mode for a workshop that runs over a few days and really building a new skill with your group. So, as an example the workshop ran from 9am to 4.30pm, we broke at 10.30am for around 40mins; broke at lunch at 12.30 for 75mins and then had 30mins for afternoon tea.

This was a tactic from Sean. He believes it’s important to have a break, let the information seep into your subconscious, and attack the topic after the break with a fresh head.

I hadn’t seen this as a strategy used before and I liked it, it worked. I was not tired at any stage over the three day program, even though everything I learnt was all new. We also developed a really strong bond within our group, because we were interacting so frequently. Frequent breaks people - it’s the new black!

Trick #3: Explain before standing

What’s another trick?  Well, on Episode 3 of the podcast, Nikki McMurray shared an awesome tip that I have starting using… the tips is this: When you’re going to break out into an activity and you need to explain what to do; explain it when your participants are sitting down. 

Don’t ever say the words ‘Stand up’ and then try to explain what’s going on, because you’ll lose them.  The second they stand up, they’ll be checking their phones, off to the toilet, off to grab a second cup of coffee.  She said your instructions should go along the lines of ‘In a moment, I’m going to ask you to stand up for an activity…’ THEN you explain how the activity works. If there are any questions, answer them, and then ask them to get into their groups. It’s such a simple, effective hack.

Trick #4: Walk/Stop

Another facilitator I had on Episode 5, our Humour Engineer Andrew Tarvin also runs an excellent icebreaker or energiser if you’re working with a big group of people. I ran this recently for a group of 80 people as part of a leadership day. It also works well for smaller groups.

We did this after lunch. It’s called ‘Walk/Stop’. The instructions are really simple, so I’ll explain them now and also link to Andrew’s video explanation in the show notes.

So you need to be in a room, everyone is standing up; scattered around the room. The rules are - when you, the facilitator says walk, the participants should walk; when you say ‘Stop’, they stop walking.

Do this a few times. It’s pretty simple. 

Then explain the rules are changing - now walk means stop; and stop means walk; try that combination a few more times.

The, add the words ‘Name’ and ‘clap’.  Name means you yell your name out; clap means you clap. Then reverse the order.  So now, Walk means Stop; Stop means Walk; Name means Clap; Clap means Name.

Experiment with those four words and yell out a combination of words. 

Then it’s time to add the final two words - ‘Dance’ and Jump; then you reverse all of them. It’s fun, makes everyone move around, listen in closely and laugh. Like I said, I’ve used it before and it works a treat.

Trick #5: Think, pair, share

When I was working for a TAFE in the Northwest of Australia (for those of you who don’t know what TAFE is, it’s vocational education, similar to Community Colleges in the US).  One of our principal lecturers, Carol Howe wanted to encourage our first time facilitators to stop presenting material all the time and create more interaction in their workshops.

And this trick is an oldie but a goodie. It’s the very simple ‘Think. Pair. Share’ exercise. It takes little or no energy from you and it creates excellent engagement.

How simple is it? Well, you may present content, either through a story, powerpoint, diagram, video, news article etc.  Then you pause, and ask each person on their top takeaways from that information; or what it means for them. You can ask them to write it down if you like. That’s the ‘Think’ part.

Then you ask them to pair up and discuss your thoughts.  That’s the ‘Pair’ part.

The ‘Share’ part is bringing it back as a group and discussing.

By using think-pair-share; you’re giving everyone time to reflect on the question and also the confidence to share their responses to the group, as they’ve had a chance to verify their thoughts with their partner.

It’s simple - quick word of warning, don’t user-use it. You don’t want an entire workshop run on the back of think-pair-share, it could get exhausting for everyone!

Trick #6: Game Show

And finally, a colleague of mine, Phil Woods listens in to the show. Last year he wanted to participate in a welcome day I was hosting. The agenda was full. So I issued him a challenge - I said, ‘Phil, if you can create a fun, amazing, engaging activity that helps pass on information, I’ll let you have 30mins.

Phil was up for the challenge and he delivered.  He used an online tool called Kahoot to run a game-show type quiz for the group. And they lapped it up.

How it works, is you create your free quiz on their website at kahoot.it. You write questions with 4 multiple responses, similar to the ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ type format. There’s a 20 second time limit. 

When you play it, you project the Kahoot website on the big screen; and the answer options simultaneously display on their participants phone; they need to select the right answer within 20 seconds.

It’s super fun, gets that inter-group competition happening and is also a great way to test knowledge.

Great stuff Phil - I did steal this idea for a recent workshop, and the participants loved it, so thank you!

—

So Aminata, those are some neat things I’ve seen quite recently that are cool. There’s a variety of simple techniques, and also ones that rely on technology.

So, just to recap they are:

• Writing real time notes on an iPad and airdropping it to your participants

• Giving time for your participants to reflect and absorb information by having regular breaks

• Explaining activity instructions and then asking your participants to stand up and move (not the other way around)

• Think, pair, share

• A fun icebreaker for large groups called Walk/Stop

• Using technology, like kahoot.it to create an interactive, competitive element.

Catch you next time!