Episode 166: Creating a learning atmosphere of “serious fun" with Dana the Trainer #bestof
Energy is the most important thing when it comes to your workshops, and I discovered this nice and early when I geeked out on an energetic conversation with today’s guest, Dana Jane-Edwards.
This is a #bestof episode - I spoke to Dana back in 2018, when she called herself “Dana the Trainer”. Through a series of pivots and discovering her passion, she is now known as “Diversity Dana”.
Energy is the most important thing when it comes to your workshops, and I discovered this nice and early when I geeked out on an energetic conversation with today’s guest, Dana James-Edwards.
This is a #bestof episode - I spoke to Dana back in 2018, when she called herself “Dana the Trainer”. Through a series of pivots and discovering her passion, she is now known as “Diversity Dana”.
Today’s conversation is as relevant as ever - you’ll learn
Ways to make facilitation more fun, colourful and engaging
How to balance or lift your energy levels when required
What to do when things don't go to plan (hint: prevention is better than cure)
How to create content for new workshops
I want to share her website copy on her About page as a way of introducing her.
Here we go:
My favourite word is the F-Word – FUN
(Wait a minute … what F word were you thinking about?). Seriously!
As you can tell I take an unconventional approach to learning focusing on fun, colour, enjoyment and making things as practical and relevant as possible to make sure that key learnings make it back to the workplace.
What is it that I facilitate? Great question!
I have my fingers in many pies, but my 3 core areas are *drumroll please*
Diversity & Inclusion, Train-The-Trainer (or Coach) and Agile
And if that sounds like an eclectic mix of things that shouldn’t go together and make no sense you’re going to have to read the rest of my bio to find out why and how it all came about. To confuse you even further I sometimes even dabble in some Management & Leadership bits … but that’s a story for another day.
Read the rest of Dana’s story.
What’s new with Leanne and First Time Facilitator?
So excited to share that I’m partnering with Slido on their Online Meetings Revolution trend report. Come along to the launch and hear the interesting data + predictions to make your online meetings as engaging and relevant as possible. It’s on 14 April 2021, here’s the link to sign up.
Join the conversation when the show is over with 1300 facilitators from all over the world in our free group called The Flipchart
Support the show (and my ideas) by buying me a coffee
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Quotes of the show:
"There are so many things that you can do to bring learning, to bring a classroom alive to make things not so painful for people".
Even when you know the content and you're familiar with it, you’re still thinking, '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?'
'You cannot be rigid, sticking to your lesson plan. The classroom is a place of surprise. The best facilitators pull the learning out of what is happening in the room, instead of sticking to the script'.
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Dana the Trainer.
Episode 49: Great facilitators notice patterns in the room with Oscar Trimboli
There’s really common theme when I ask facilitators what skills they think are necessary for facilitation. The answer? It’s about the ability to listen. Not only to the words, but listening in to what’s happening in the room, listening to what’s not being said, listening into the nonverbal cues. Knowing this, I brought on a listening expert for today’s episode, to hear his perspective on ‘Deep Listening’, and also his tips for First Time Facilitators.
There’s really common theme when I ask facilitators what skills they think are necessary for facilitation. The answer? It’s about the ability to listen. Not only to the words, but listening in to what’s happening in the room, listening to what’s not being said, listening into the nonverbal cues. Knowing this, I brought on a listening expert for today’s episode, to hear his perspective on ‘Deep Listening’, and also his tips for First Time Facilitators.
On this episode you’ll learn
When and how he realised he had a knack for listening
What he describes as Deep Listening, and his definition of the five levels of listening (hint: Great facilitators need to be at the third level of listening)
His Big Hairy Audacious Goal for changing 2% of the world’s population
The 125:400 rule (and how this can be used to explain why we get so distracted)
Why breathing can help you listen at a deeper level
His never-fail pen for post-it notes in workshops
How he uses a colour scheme for sticky note activities
About Oscar Trimboli
Oscar Trimboli is a coach supervisor, speaker and author of Deep Listening: Impact beyond words, The 125/400 Rule: The Art and Science of Listening and Breakthroughs: How to confront your assumptions.
Through his work with chairs, boards of directors and executive teams in local, regional and global organisations, Oscar has experienced firsthand the impact leaders and organisations can have when they listen beyond the words.
He consults to organisations including Cisco, Google, News Corp, PayPal, Qantas and TripAdvisor helping executives and their teams listen to what’s unsaid by the customers and employees.
Giveaway alert!
If you’re interested reading a copy of Oscar’s book, Deep Listening, we have an awesome surprise for listeners. Oscar is kind enough to have donated 5 books for a First Time Facilitator giveaway.
To go in the draw to win, I’d like you to upload a screenshot of this podcast episode into either your Instagram feed, or Instagram stories, and tag both @leannehughes and @oscartrimboli.
I’ll give you util Friday 8 February to be in the run to win a copy!
Resources mentioned in this episode
What’s on in First Time Facilitator land?
The 50th episode celebration is on this week, Friday 18 January. Find out the details on the First Time Facilitator 50th evepisode Facebook event page.
Finally, if you want to connect with listeners following the show, join our community on Facebook it’s called ‘The Flipchart’. Once you’re in, please introduce yourself, where you’re from!
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Tweet your thanks to Oscar
Episode 37: Announcement: Facebook Group is finally here (p.s. It's called 'The Flipchart')
This week’s episode is a bit unusual, it’s a lot shorter than others and it’s really an announcement episode. For a while, like more than six weeks, I’ve promised to launch a Facebook group for the First Time Facilitator audience, or really, anyone that wants to become a better facilitator, trainer or workshop content developer.
This week’s episode is a bit unusual, it’s a lot shorter than others and it’s really an announcement episode. For a while, like more than six weeks, I’ve promised to launch a Facebook group for the First Time Facilitator audience, or really, anyone that wants to become a better facilitator, trainer or workshop content developer.
Where can I find The Flipchart group on Facebook?
The Facebook group is called ‘The Flipchart’, like the name of my e-newsletter. email newsletter.You may be wondering why it's called The Flipchart and not First Time Facilitator. The reason is that I know many of you are beginning your side hustles, or consultancy, business in this space, and you probably don’t want to be seen in a Facebook group called ‘First Time Facilitator’,as it may create an incorrect assumption.The reason I started this group is because, as a facilitator, I spend a lot of time scouring the internet and YouTube, trying to find a perfect activity, exercise, game, video, image to support my learning material. I'm sure there's a few of you out there who are doing the same thing! Let's make it easier for each other. This is a global community for facilitators who want to get better at their craft, and also more efficient at developing their workshop content. In this group, we share awesome training tips, hacks and recommendations to help you with the next workshop you deliver. I haven’t gone too prescriptive on what this page really looks like but to give it a bit of guidance, here are some of the daily hashtags - but don’t worry if you want to post something and it’s not related to the daily hashtag, just go ahead and post it!
Group daily Hashtags are:
And then at anytime,
I’d love for you to join the group. Just head on over to The Flipchart on Facebook
Episode 36: 7 attributes of a superhero facilitator (and how to rescue a workshop from a fate worse than death) with Leanne Hughes
What does it take to get to get to superhero status in the facilitation game?In this solo episode, Leanne Hughes explores and explains the 7 key attributes she thinks are critical to becoming a superhero facilitator.So, how does a facilitator carry out the responsibilities of a facilitator like a superhero (Lycra optional)? Listen in!
What does it take to get to get to superhero status in the facilitation game?In this solo episode, Leanne Hughes explores and explains the 7 key attributes she thinks are critical to becoming a superhero facilitator.So, how does a facilitator carry out the responsibilities of a facilitator like a superhero (Lycra optional)? Listen in!
In this episode you'll learn
The seven key attributes that First Time Facilitators should consider when wanting to level up their game
Key questions/statements facilitators can use in their next workshop
The APPLE technique, and how you can employ this the next time you're in front of a group
About your host
Leanne Hughes is the host of the First Time Facilitator podcast and is based in Brisbane, Australia. She works in the field of Organisational Development. She loves to shake up expectations and create unpredictable experiences and brings over 12 years’ of experience across a variety of industries including mining, tourism, and vocational education and training and believes anyone can develop the skills to deliver engaging group workshops.
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!Let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode! (or, leave a comment below)
Episode transcript
View the transcript of Episode 36 with Leanne Hughes.
Your thoughts
What do you think? Did Leanne miss any? Do you think any of these attributes are more important than others? Let us know! Comment below.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript
This is the transcript of my conversation with Steph Clarke. Alternatively, you can listen to my First Time Facilitator conversation with Steph.
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.
Episode 32: Does co-facilitating mean half (or double) the work? with Leanne Hughes
Today’s episode is all about co-facilitating. I’ve been wondering how to do it more effectively - particularly if you need to develop the actual content together as well. If you’re handed something off the shelf to deliver, it’s a lot easier to co-facilitate- but doing both the development and delivery together sometimes can be a little tricky.
Today’s episode is all about co-facilitating. I’ve been wondering how to do it more effectively - particularly if you need to develop the actual content together as well. If you’re handed something off the shelf to deliver, it’s a lot easier to co-facilitate- but doing both the development and delivery together sometimes can be a little tricky.
In this episode you'll learn:
The advantages of co-facilitation
A process to use the next time you co-facilitate
A core document called the ID map that should underpin your workshop development plans
Learning objectives: Why they're so critical
Systems, tools and apps that enable better collaboration between you and your co-facilitator
Resources mentioned in this episode
About your host
Leanne Hughes is the host of the First Time Facilitator podcast and is based in Brisbane, Australia. She works in the field of Organisational Development. She loves to shake up expectations and create unpredictable experiences and brings over 12 years’ of experience across a variety of industries including mining, tourism, and vocational education and training and believes anyone can develop the skills to deliver engaging group workshops.
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!Let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode! (or, leave a comment below)
Episode 31: It’s time to stop recreating content: How to be a more productive facilitator with Sally Foley-Lewis
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. It drives me crazy. I wish I had a better way, or system to store these resources.
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. It drives me crazy. I wish I had a better way, or system to store these resources.
If you listen in our guest today, Sally Foley-Lewis has a solution for you.
Sally is obsessed with productive leadership, helping dedicated professionals (like you), achieve more, reduce your stress and take back two hours per day!
Listen in to her when I ask about her tips on how she embeds learning on her workshop.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Valuable and time-saving hacks for first-time facilitators
Coping mechanism on dealing with feedback
The three big elements of productivity: personal productivity, professional productivity and people productivity.
Essential questions you need to to ask yourself before standing in front of your audience.
Skills needed as a first-time facilitator.
About our guest
Sally Foley-Lewis is a dynamic and interactive presenter, MC, and much sought after facilitator and executive coach. Blending 20+ years of working with a diverse range of people and industries, in Germany, the UAE, Asia, and even outback Australia, with exceptional qualifications; a wicked sense of humour and an ability to make people feel at ease, she’s your first choice for mastering skills and achieving results. Obsessed with productive leadership, Sally helps you achieve more, reduce stress and take back two hours per day!
She has written three books, her latest is The Productive Leader and she gives presentations and runs workshops to help people become Productive Leaders. Sally's clients rave about her because she leaves the audience equipped to take immediate positive action.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Click here to tweet your thanks to Sally.
Quotes of the show:
“The goods are good; don't devalue good. It's good and that's a positive word.”
“I think for facilitators, it's being okay to play, be flexible and adaptive and to continue trying to work things out because your audience wants to get it".
“The more content you shove in; the more shallow you're going to be. I think that's that balancing act that makes it very hard for facilitators sometimes.”
Transcript
View the transcript of my conversation with Sally Foley-Lewis.
Episode 26: When you stand in service, you can’t be nervous with Neen James
In today’s episode, I talk to Neen James. Neen is a sought-out, high-energy keynote speaker in the States who challenges her audiences to leverage their focus and pay attention to what matters most at work and in life. Audiences love her practical strategies they can apply personally and professionally, and meeting planners love working with her – they often describe Neen as the energizer bunny for their events. She believes that when you stand in service; you can't be nervous.
In today’s episode, I talk to Neen James. Neen is a sought-out, high-energy keynote speaker in the States who challenges her audiences to leverage their focus and pay attention to what matters most at work and in life. Audiences love her practical strategies they can apply personally and professionally, and meeting planners love working with her – they often describe Neen as the energizer bunny for their events. She believes that when you stand in service; you can't be nervous.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How a happy little Aussie wound up killing it on stages in the US
The differences between Australian and US audiences
Why it’s important to change your focus and stand in service (and how this helps with overcoming nerves)
Understanding the importance of the three types of attention and how you can apply that to your facilitation
Her speaker role models (and the mad genius they focus on)
How the three types of attention drive profitability, productivity and accountability
Tips and tricks on how to contextualise your training content and marketing collateral
Strategies on how to engage with your audience.
About our guest
Neen James is the author of Folding Time™ and Attention Pays™. In 2017, she was named one of the top 30 Leadership Speakers by Global Guru because of her work with companies like Viacom, Comcast, and Abbot Pharmaceutical, among others. She earned her MBA from Southern Cross University and the Certified Speaking Professional designation from National Speakers Association. She has received numerous awards as a professional speaker, is a partner in the international education company Thought Leaders Global, and is a member of the prestigious League of Heroic Public Speakers. Neen has boundless energy, is quick-witted and always offers powerful strategies for paying attention to what matters so you can get more done and create more significant moments at work and home.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Attention Pays Sample Chapters (a gift from Neen)
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode! (or, leave a comment below)
Quotes of the show:
“I want to make sure that every interaction they have, they feel like they are getting the attention that they want and need and deserve.”
“When people are making behavioural shifts, that's far more important to me than a standing ovation.”
“It's not about you and it's not about them, it's simply about a conversation you're going to create in the room.”
“One of the best engagement techniques is to keep it really practical. So as soon as they leave your workshop, they can share with someone else what they learned and they can implement it in their everyday life.”
“There’s always the next opportunity, the next level of performance, the next skill to develop, the next way to challenge an audience”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Neen James.
Episode 25; Split brain workshop facilitation: How to balance the now with the ‘What’s next?' with Mark McKeon
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.
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? Mark provides that in this episode, along with some extremely practical tips which you can start implementing in your facilitation game. We talk about the practicalities of workshop room setup, how to balance being in the moment with forecasting ahead to drive your workshop outcomes, maintaining energy levels and the key question he asks from client's to determine workshop outcomes.
Listen in to him when he talks about ways you can structure your day to be more productive using his Go Zone methodology.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How Mark pivoted from professional footballer, to high performance coach and facilitation/speaking
Parallels between playing and coaching in high performing footy matches/game day and preparing for a big workshop/stage
His requirements in terms of rooms setup and audiovisual setup (including practical takeaways for keeping your voice in check over a day’s workshop)
Why it’s important to be a little selfish during the day to maintain peak performance
The key question he asks clients to clarify the outcomes of a workshop (and why this is critical)
How to structure your day to get the most sustainable performance (and how we under-estimate the importance of recovery)
Why he channelled his inner James Bond to create a memorable message
What you need to know about using gimmicks and props in your workshops
About our guest
Mark McKeon is one of Australia’s leading experts on leadership, efficiency, productivity, work life balance and team cohesion. His latest book "Go Zone" reinforces all these factors.
He spent 16 years as the high performance coach at Collingwood, with the team also outsourcing their entire fitness and training function to Mark’s team. He was also Club Runner for more than 250 games, an AFL record, and worked with Victoria’s State of Origin Team on five occasions.
Mark previously played football in the VFL with the Melbourne team, and represented Victoria in the VFA. He presents keynotes and tailored sessions, and along with his team, conducts workshops and conference programs in lifestyle, team building and leadership. Mark consistently rates as, ‘exceedingly funny with a great message’ or ‘best conference speaker’. He spends time with delegates, and can MC or facilitate as well as present keynotes and workshops.
Mark has an insightful and engaging style and his uplifting presentations have been a conference highlight with lasting impacts for many years.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Like this show? Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode! (or, leave a comment below)
Quotes of the show:
“You don’t have to be a prisoner to the structure you’ve set for your workshop…I’m forever swapping slides around and stopping, accelerating and changing the times, all hopefully to the benefit of the audience”
“The best clues are always in the audience”
“The best facilitators approach their workshops with an audience-centric mindset’
“Start with the end in mind. One of the great dangers is that your outcomes are vague and you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve.
“Work on your craft. Look for every opportunity to speak in front of a room”
Video: Mark channelling his inner 007
Episode 24: How to develop a workshop using a team profiling tool (while keeping it light and fun) with Sean Lavin
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.
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.
He is firmly focused on growth and learning, whilst simultaneously gaining as much insight and experience throughout the vast Human Resources sector. Sean’s favourite workshop theme is around networking, and giving people the permission to speak to each other. He believes that a great workshop is the one that is focused on interaction, with a sprinkling of humour and fun.
Listen in to him when I ask him about his experience as a first-time facilitator and how that experience shaped him.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How to craft a team workshop using the Team Management Profile tool
The questions Sean uses to identify learner’s requirements for a workshop
Essential skills of a facilitator
What he’s changed since starting his facilitation journey
How his philosophy saying yes has opened up fantastic opportunities
Sean’s recommended opening icebreaker for a workshops
Strategies to keep a workshop light and fun.
About our guest
Sean is a professional, enthusiastic and passionate HR Graduate. His background stems from a mix of hotel/services management and open cut coal mining operations. Early in 2017, after obtaining his Master of Management (HR), he transferred internally from the coal face into the graduate program to begin his next professional adventure in the vast realm of human resources and facilitation. He's passionate about his family, consistently delivering high quality work outcomes and striving for personal happiness and fulfilment every day.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Like this show? Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Quotes of the show:
“So when it comes to icebreakers, I think you've got all the resources you need in the room and that's just people.”
“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.”
“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.”
“If the opportunity comes up or someone asks you if you want to do something, just say Yes!”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Sean Lavin.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Sean Lavin (Episode 24)
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)
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.
Episode 22: What clients really want from a workshop (and no, it’s not information) with Sean D’Souza
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. He reads on average 100 books a year. Teaching runs in his blood, as his father, mother and grandmother were teachers too. He's that good, I flew to Singapore to attend one of his three-day workshops.
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. He reads on average 100 books a year. Teaching runs in his blood, as his father, mother and grandmother were teachers too. He's that good, I flew to Singapore to attend one of his three-day workshops.
In this episode, we talk about the motivation of the people coming to your workshops… are they really there for the information, or are they there for another reason? We explore workshop design and giving your participants time to reflect on content. We also discuss creating a safe workshop environment - not only for the people in the room, but for you as well…because, as the facilitator - it’s important that you feel safe, too.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Sean’s ratio for instructing vs group discussions and activities
The power of frequent breaks
Why it’s important to create a safe space for your participants
Why he shares his learning materials prior to a workshop
What clients really want out of a workshop (and it’s not information)
A winning formula that features energy, confidence and skill
The importance of feedbacks and testimonials in a workshop.
Tips for facilitators starting their journey in facilitating and leading workshops in their own context.
About our guest
Sean D’ Souza is a cartoonist and an online marketing strategist who runs a zany online marketing site named PsychoTactics. He is also the author of “The Brain Audit” which is about how customers make decisions.
Originally working as a freelance cartoonist, Sean somehow found himself indulging his talent for marketing and understanding consumer psychology by helping out others with their marketing efforts. It wasn’t long before he started writing about his own experiences with marketing and slowly but surely, he began to gather an audience hungry to learn more.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Sean’s online home Psychotactics
Sean's book, The Brain Audit
We Are Podcast conference
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Click here to tweet your thanks to Sean. https://twitter.com/seandsouza?lang=en
Quotes of the show:
“What 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, they use less energy.”
“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.”
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.
“You have to be comfortable that you're going to goof up 50 to 60 percent of your early days before you start getting comfortable But breaking it up is always good because once you're confident, then you don't have to overcompensate. You don't have to be, ‘“I’m the boss here and you're just minions.’”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Sean D’ Souza.
Episode 21: Crafting your (remarkable) facilitator brand with Jane Anderson
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.
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.
Jane is passionate about helping industry experts to be fully self-expressed and bring their authentic personality to life in their interactions with their customers to create influence and impact. She is best known for her ability to bring out the best in people in a pragmatic, resourceful and authentically inspiring way. She believes that being connected with the audience, getting their energy in connection and at the same time changing the room while she’s in there is the essence of a great facilitation.
Listen in to her when I ask her about the tactics she uses beforehand to find out what the audience needs from their workshop.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Great ways to hone your skills as a facilitator
How to craft your own facilitator brand and stand out in a saturated market
What it takes to be a remarkable facilitator
The difference between trust and credibility
The three key big things that you need to be able to do to build trust
About our guest
Jane Anderson is a Business Growth expert specialising in Personally Branded businesses since the age of 14. She has worked with over 50,000 personal brands to build more trust and influence for revenue and market growth. Her clients include Virgin Australia, Lego, Ikea, Rio Tinto and Origin Energy. Jane’s blog was recently voted in the top 25 branding blogs globally. She is the host of the iTunes podcast "The Jane Anderson Brand You Show" and has been featured in Business Insider, Sky Business, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Jane has been nominated for the Telstra Business Women’s Awards in 2014, 2016 and 2018, and the author of five books including her latest “EXPERT to INFLUENCER: 12 Key Skills to Attract New Clients, Increase Sales and Leverage your Personal Brand to Become an Industry Leader.”
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Like this show?
Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
Click here to tweet your thanks to Jane.
Quotes of the show:
“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.”
“I've always been a cheerleader in someone else's corner but you know one day the time comes where you've got to do it for yourself and you just got to step-up and say to yourself, let's do it!”
“Find your tribe, get around with the right people and get a mentor.”
“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.”
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Jane Anderson.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Sean D'Souza (Episode 22)
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.