Being comfortable (with feeling uncomfortable): My public speaking journey
This is a transcript of Episode 27 of the First Time Facilitator podcast.Usually on the show I interview amazing facilitators, speakers and leaders but I’m going solo for today’s episode. This is the third solo episode I’ve recorded and these ones are usually spurred on by questions I receive from listenersSo the question this week was from a colleague and it was this:
“Leanne, how did you get the confidence to speak in front of large groups?”
There's a bit to unpack in that question. Its different for everyone. Interestingly, this question is about confidence; not about developing the skill.I'm going to share the real opportunity I had that lead me to feel more confident and now accept opportunities where I do speak in public. In saying that, I’m still human and continue to question my ability before accepting these opportunities. However, after talking to fellow facilitators and speakers on the podcast, that appears to be a fairly normal response. I guess the good thing about type of response, is that it keeps you on your toes and not operating in autopilot.The definition of large group is also different from everyone. I think anything above 30 is pretty large. From my experience, anything above 30 or 40 requires a microphone, probably a stage and some bright lights. I can give you a short and long answer for this but I took this question as a really good opportunity to reflect on the things that I actually did to position myself to accept large group speaking opportunities, with perceived confidence.
It was October 2014
I was living in a small, coastal regional town in Western Australia called Broome. I talk about Broome in a lot of episodes as I have find memories there. Imagine a place where in winter, you can swim at the beach, in summer it’s too hot to do anything. The population is very small, about 15,000 people. The closest town is a 2 hour drive away, the nearest capital city is Jakarta, Indonesia. You don’t really do things there. Your weekend plans are dictated by the tide times, everyone drives a 4wd and you spend most of your time in air conditioning, down the beach camping and fishing, with a cold beer in hand.
It was wonderful! However living there for 3.5 years you can become pretty complacent, and outside of work, I wasn’t really achieving a lot. I wanted to create some more discipline for myself.I thought I would set myself a ridiculous goal, something that would get me out of bed nice and early… literally... and that was to run a marathon. It was a big goal because growing up, I hated running. I loved playing netball, but I loathed the fitness element - I associated running with everything negative in life. However, living in this coastal town, there were no hills, no traffic, and because nothing really happened in town, I had time up my sleeve. This gave me the ultimate entry point to start. So I signed up for the GC Marathon.Not having a clue on how to do this, I enlisted a coach Pat Carroll. He’d won a few Gold Coast marathons. My goal was to simply finish under 5 hours.On a side note, this is a speech I did at Pecha Kucha, Broome about the whole marathon training experience.I’m sharing this story as there were a couple of words of phrases he said, that I think can generally be applied to this question about gaining confidence in speaking in front of large groups.I'm going to drop one of those phrases now and then again later on, in the episode. Pat said that a lot of people approach runs and start cross-training, ie. Do weights, swim or cycle. But HE SAID - and gosh, it sounds so simple - and you’re probably going to think I’m crazy to highlight this as some kind of watershed moment - but it was for me...
He said, "The best way to train for a marathon is, to simply, run".
You need to start banking those kilometres on your legs. You don’t need to do pilates, swim, hike, or play touch footy. Just run. Bank those kilometres on your legs. I loved that concept of banking kilometres. And I banked thousands of kilometre on my legs in those nine months.My most recent podcast guest, Neen James agrees with this. If you listened to my conversation with Neen in Episode 26, you would have heard her mention the phrase ‘Time on your feet.’So my short answer to that question, ‘How did I get the confidence to speak in public?’, well it was really about banking that time on my feet as a speaker.That leads onto the next question:
How do I find time in my feet, so when a marathon-like speaking opportunity comes along, I’m prepared?
If you go through school and Uni, that’s a good start and there are opportunities there, like high school English class presentations or the dreaded group assignment preso at University.I’ve also always loved seeing others kill it on stage. I have always been fascinated by the power of strong delivery, and what brilliant presentation looks like. I guess the difference I brought, was to continually to ask myself, "What can I do that is different? Who is in the audience, what do they want, what is the hook?”When I really think about why I care so much about making sure my message hits… it probably comes back to my philosophy about how life is too short.In Episode 16, I spoke with Adam Mustoe about the Gallup Strengths Finder 2 and my second highest strength theme is Maximiser. The Maximiser theme is really around ‘Do you want fries with that?’ and taking advantage of opportunities…you get caught out sometimes, particularly when travelling as you want to cram and juggle everything into a day. How this theme plays out also is that if I’m given the opportunity to present in front of other people, I want to maximise that moment. I believe you are in a position of great opportunity the second you have more than two people in the room. Life is too short to have your time wasted by boring, irrelevant and un-memorable presentations. When you’re the one in front of that room, don’t waste everyone else's time.And that’s my real driver for doing things differently.
Sport played a role.
I was lucky getting into netball from the age of 10. Through the game, I’ve been given opportunities to speak in front of others at occasions from speaking in team huddles during quarter breaks, to club presentation nights and dinners.In University, I started coaching more junior teams and I believe being a coach had a significant impact on my ability to deliver a message succinctly and projecting my voice - particularly when you have quarter and half time breaks to do that and your audience are 13 to 15 year olds.My first official MC gig was as on-court announcer for the Queensland State League netball finals back in 2003. I called the teams on the court, thanked sponsors, talked through key highlights of the match. Through this, I learned about the importance of time-keeping, how to speak clearly into a microphone, and the realisation that the role of MC is so much more than just the delivery. There is a lot of background work involved in who you need to liaise with, what your backup plans are, etc. Now when you start doing this sort of stuff, the people around you hear about it, and that opened doors as an MC’ing at friend’s weddings.
If you’re ever asked to MC a wedding, please say yes.
For two reasons in particular:
- It keeps you off the booze for a few hours so that you can avoid a painful hangover!
- The skill to being a wedding MC is about really making it a personal experience. So this experience forces you to tailor your message -for the couple, family and friends. Having that first wedding MC gig again opened up more invites to MC other events.
Can you see from this trail how it all works?
If we’re relate speaking back to running, I believe those school, netball and uni presentations were 5km runs. MC’ing a wedding is a half marathon.And unfortunately, similarly to running, you can’t go cold turkey for 6 months and then expect to run at the same pace you did while training.
So how can you continue to get that speaking experience?
I know a lot of the listeners are split, probably about 50% working in a full-time job and 50% freelance. For those working, there are so many opportunities to put your hand up and deliver presentations from where you stand.While I was working in Marketing for a company called Wicked Campers, we were sponsors of the annual Backpacker travel expo in Melbourne. As part of the sponsorship package, the company was offered an opportunity to run some sessions on travelling around Australia.I put my hand up.In my role working in Government in regional Western Australia, we had a fortnightly Friday morning video hook-up with the other campuses in the region called Communication Corridor. 
As I needed to share internal messages, I put my hand up and asked to be in the agenda, pretty frequently. I challenged myself to out-do my previous presentations over and over again.When it came to Friday morning, I also felt like whacking myself on the head and questioning myself on volunteering for these sessions and putting myself under undue pressure. It would have been much easier not volunteering and sitting in the crowd every fortnight, But, when we held a Professional Development week for all 200 staff in the region, guess who was asked to MC the event?In late 2016, I was asked to co-facilitate some leadership training in Brisbane. A few months later and I was onboard a flight to Canada to run the same workshop over there.
Time on your feet matters.
Not only does it give you more time to practice your presentation skills and experiment with content, but more importantly, you also get used to that feeling of uncomfortable-ness. You get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It also leads you to good things and great opportunities that you would never have realised. Every time you step up, it’s an opportunity for you to market yourself and build your personal brand. You get luckier. I think the best analogy that sums this up is the one I heard on Episode #49 of the Jordan Harbinger show. In this episode, Jordan chats to Alex Banayan about mentoring. In fact, its so good, I am going to share it for you below:There's no denying that luck plays a role in anyone's success.But it was in conversation with then-Microsoft executive Qi Lu that gave Alex a real understanding of lucks role in success.Qi Lu had grown up in a village outside of Shanghai, China that was so poor to the extent that there was only one teacher per 300 children and people developed deformities from malnutrition. Being very smart and working very hard, Qi was making seven dollars a month by the time he was 27. Like so many other intelligent, hard workers in China, he dreamed of a better life in America — so, he needed an advantage over the competition.As luck would have it, Qi had the opportunity to speak to a Carnegie Mellon professor lecturing at his local university. The professor had been so impressed by the questions he was asking and the papers he had written about the professor's area of expertise that Qi was offered a full scholarship to Carnegie Mellon.How did luck play into it? Under normal circumstances, Qi would have ridden his bicycle to visit his parents on that particular night of the week — but it was raining, so he stayed on campus, attended the lecture, and happened to be the most well-informed scholar in the room on the topic at hand. Thanks to his extra months of productivity, he was prepared when opportunity knocked.To Alex, Qi imparted this nugget of wisdom: Luck is like a bus. If you miss one, there will always be the next one. But if you are not prepared, you won't be able to get on.This encouraged Alex to do a little more digging into the science of luck, and from the research, it seems one thing is clear: luck is a mindset, not a phenomenon.
When I again reflect on that question, how did you get the confidence to speak in front of large groups?
As you can see, it’s an evolution piece underpinned by three things:
- Bank that time on your feet.
- Put your hand up and find the opportunities.
- Every time you have an opportunity to present, challenge yourself to stretch and outperform your previous presentation.
The second piece of advice from my running coach, Pat Carroll was not to be concerned by the fact that your longest training run does not take you near 42.2km. Save yourself for the marathon. Prepare consistently, stay injury free, and your solid preparation combined with race day atmosphere will allow you to go all the way.Nothing will prepare you for that marathon moment in front of hundreds of people with the spotlight on you, but you’ll get pretty close by banking the thousands of kilometres prior, and you can be confident to accept the opportunity, given the success you’ve had in the past.
I'd love to hear how you got your speaking experience.
How will you find that time on your feet? Where are you banking your speaking kilometres? Comment below!
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.
Episode 23: Facilitation is the act of making something easier with Lynne Cazaly
In today’s episode, I talk to Lynne Cazaly. Lynne is a communication and engagement expert. She is obsessed with helping leaders lead their teams through transformation and change. She helps people distil their thinking, apply ideas and innovation and boost the engagement and collaboration effectiveness of teams. She believes that having the ability to build rapport and connect with people is essential in a facilitation workshop.
In today’s episode, I talk to Lynne Cazaly. Lynne is a communication and engagement expert. She is obsessed with helping leaders lead their teams through transformation and change. She helps people distil their thinking, apply ideas and innovation and boost the engagement and collaboration effectiveness of teams. She believes that having the ability to build rapport and connect with people is essential in a facilitation workshop.
Listen in to when I ask her about what her thinking or her strategies were going into on the first day of her facilitation workshop.
In this episode you’ll learn:
How you can use visuals to explain complex activity instructions
Strategies to get your audience attention and get them engaged in a workshop.
Strategies on how to embed learning in a workshop.
Essentials of creating safe environment in a workshop.
About our guest
Lynne Cazaly is a keynote speaker, a master workshop facilitator, an experienced board director and a partner with Thought Leaders and on faculty of Thought Leaders Business School. She is a published author and delivered keynotes, workshops and sessions for leaders globally including Europe, USA, Asia & NZ. Her published books are:• Agile-ish: How to create a culture of agility• Leader as Facilitator: How to engage, inspire and get work done• Making Sense: A Handbook for the Future of Work• Create Change: How to apply innovation in an era of uncertainty, and• Visual Mojo: How to capture thinking, convey information and collaborate using visuals.
Her programs in Sensemaking, Facilitation and Change are remarkable, impactful and innovative.
Send Lynne an email, say that you listen to the show and she'll share a great visual resource with you!
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 Lynne.
Quotes of the show:
“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."
“Engaging with people when it's all talk is very difficult. But as soon as you've got visuals there. Bang! Engagement goes up.”
“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."
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator episode transcript with Lynne Cazaly.
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
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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.”
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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.
Episode 20: Turn up early and read the room with Tyson Young
Tyson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Carisma, a digital application that allows your mechanic to provide you with your cars visual service history. In this episode, we talk about using humour in your deliver, adapting to your audience and using different tools and strategies to be a better facilitator. Tyson provides practical tips on calming those nerves before a big presentation and also shares a neat challenge he's been pursuing for the last 400+ days!
Tyson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Carisma, a digital application that allows your mechanic to provide you with your cars visual service history. In this episode, we talk about using humour in your deliver, adapting to your audience and using different tools and strategies to be a better facilitator. Tyson provides practical tips on calming those nerves before a big presentation and also shares a neat challenge he's been pursuing for the last 400+ days!
What you'll learn in this episode:
What Tyson learned from his first pitch
Things you should avoid right before a presentation
Why it’s important to read and understand your audience prior talking to them
Tools and strategies Tyson uses
Why Tyson is mindful of time keeping and respecting people’s time
Advice for a first-time facilitator
Like this show? Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Reach out to Tyson on LinkedIn.
About our guest
Tyson is not only the CEO and Co-Founder of Carisma, he is an accomplished MC, speaker and facilitator who incorporates humour into his presentations and adapts his style by effectively reading his audience.
In his teens, Tyson joined the Army Reserve, he then graduated from the Queensland University of Technology, where he studied business and creative industries, advertising and communication design. Tyson claims that each opportunity leads to the next.
His start-up, Carisma is on a mission to become the leading authority in a new, transparent automotive industry. This application allows you to see exactly where your hard-earned dollars are going.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Quotes of the episode:
"Turn up early and read the room, walk the stage, do whatever you can to feel comfortable in the environment. A big part of that for me is actually speaking with the audience".
"People have this misconception that if it's corporate, it's like, 'Oh, it has to be serious'. At the end of the day, people are still people. People still want to laugh and engage with you".
Episode transcript
View the First Time Facilitator transcript with Tyson Young.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Jane Anderson (Episode 21)
Here is the episode transcript from my interview with Jane Anderson on Episode 21 of the podcast.
You can listen to my interview with Jane Anderson on the First Time Facilitator podcast.
Leanne: Please welcome to the First Time Facilitator Podcast, Jane Anderson.
Jane: Thank you so much for having me, Leanne. I'm really happy to be here and feel very privileged to be part of your show.
Leanne: Oh, that's lovely to hear. You’re extremely impressive! So I was just reading your biography, you've worked with over 50,000 people, you've written five books, you have your own podcast, you’ve worked with some huge global clients now living in Brisbane. I see you and your brand everywhere.
Jane: I’m stalking you know…
Leanne: Yeah you probably got some remarketing cookie on me but for those listening around Australia or possibly haven't seen your brand or globally, can you just explain a bit about yourself and how you entered the world of personal branding and helping others in terms of building their influence capability?
Jane: Yeah sure, so I started, how I never thought that I would probably be doing this but when I started, I started working with personally branded businesses when I was 14 years old. The very first experience I had, I don't know if you remember growing up but whether you had bought shoes from “Mathers” shoes, like maybe your mom made you wear “Clarks”.
Leanne: A “Clarks”.
Jane: Yeah, but Clarks was a fact came from a personal brand, it was someone who founded the Clarks brand. Then I saw Robert Mathers and the Mathers’ family, the people who founded Mathers. Sir Robert was knighted for his services to the business community and they were my first mentors in my life and they were like family to me. I worked for them for twelve years and then I went on and did a marketing degree and then Tom Peters had this concept called “Personal branding” when I was in second-year uni. and I was like, imagine having like somebody say “I want a personal brand and here's my credit card.” and I was like, “this is…” and that was long a bit like the internet hadn't even been in store.
Leanne: Wow.
Jane: I just remember thinking “Imagine people doing that!” I have always had this love, I did a marketing degree but I ended up working in HR for working sort of between those two fields which those two connected are all about influence. So it just sort of evolved that way and I worked for the Mathers family as I said. I also worked in government and worked in large organizations but I kept coming back to. I always had an interest in people's personal branded businesses like I worked for Tony Ferguson the Weight Loss Company, Rotary Weight Chemists as part of that whole branding and then worked in for Super Retail Groups, Supercheap Auto, BCF. The CEO of that company had an incredible personal brand, he's very humble, his name is Peter Birtles and he won CEO of the year.
I was really drawn to people who had strong personal brands and it was just the value of who people are and not just about the organization brand but the individuals that work there. All those people who have had the courage to put their face on the shingle out the front and say like I always found it fascinating that the people I worked for had the courage to do that. I was such a behind-the-scenes kind of person. I was like...
Leanne: Oh, no way!
Jane: Yeah, I think I just was always in awe of what they could. That they had so much courage to put their face out there and it was something though I never had the courage to do so I was like “Yeah, I'll support you whatever you need done, if your face is on the shingle that's great as long as mine is not.”
Leanne: Isn’t it funny how times have changed?
Jane: Yeah, well that was what happened, you know we had a change of government in Queensland in 2012. I had started my business but a 70% or 80% of my contracts went overnight with the change of government because most of my contracts were government work. I was sort of hiding behind a brand because I just didn't have the courage to put my personal brand out and then I went, you know what, actually I have to change something and I have to change something very fast and I thought “Okay, I can see now why personal brand works because of social media.” because I just noticed that all the things I was doing with helping wasn't just businesses but I'd also spent five years working in career counselling and helping market people for jobs and I thought “Okay, I've danced around it long enough, I've helped everybody else and now I have to do it for me.” It’s not something that I've ever started up feeling comfortable with. I've always been a cheerleader in someone else's corner and but you know one day the time comes where you've got to do it for yourself and you know you just got to “step-up and let's do it!”
Leanne: It's really fascinating! A couple things I want to just to point out was I liked how you talked about the intersection of marketing and HR. That's my background as well as I was in marketing before I moved into HR, studied HR though but I think the similarities are that you are influencing over people you've got to sell ideas you got to persuade them particularly around culture change. Great to hear that you've got that intersection but also around having to step-up as well and have that courage, you use the word “courageous” quite a lot there which I really like. I think with our first-time facilitators a lot of them are getting their step-up by doing a lot of facilitation internally with businesses which is a great way to hone your skill and a lot of this podcast has been focusing that how you deliver those workshops but we have never really spoken about let's just say you actually get really good at this and you want to go out on your own. How do you transition and how do you create that step? and so I got your book “EXPERT to INFLUENCER” and I really wanted to point out there's one thing I was like “Oh, this is brilliant and haven't heard this word used before.” and you're talking about how do you develop trust with people because that's how people buy your brand, buy your credibility and everything else and as a facilitator we need trust in our workshops to get the great outcomes.
Now, what I thought there was under personality. You're talking about the twelve pillars of trust, an item there was called “remarkability”. How remarkable are you? I love that word! Can you just explain a bit more about that or how we actually can start finding “What does make us remarkable? What does make us unique?”
Jane: Yeah, when you think about “Why would you want to do that? Why can't I just keep doing what am I doing? Why can’t I just keep facilitating on contents that's already been out there or their stuff it's out in the market?” I could keep going with Covey’s Seven Habits forever and it's amazing and I love Covey's work so it's not saying that there's anything wrong with that but it's more on how do you make this leap and what you've got to do is be remarkable. Seth Godin talks about this with some in a lot of his work and you actually need to be the artist. What happens is when you're the facilitator, if you're using or you're working with other IP or you feel facilitating your strategy day, there's some kind of framework or context that maybe you have learned. It might be maybe you've learnt pro-side principles or maybe you've learnt add car models or maybe you're facilitating around some kind of someone else's IP and to make the transition yourself is you actually have to be the person creating the ideas. I know that's like- “How am I supposed to compete with like Myers-Briggs or DISC Co.?” All that stuff's out there, I have nothing else to add. But you have insights and experiences and knowledge that no one else has and it took me a long time to get my head around this because I went inside up for every certification possible and now because I was like “Good, I don't have to create this stuff, you've already done it. Great!” and those things still serve well in fact, I've created my own certifications for other people. But if you really want to stand out, what happens if you don't, if you want to stand out the benefits are particularly if you're making that transition now, the difference is in, first of all, what you paid. So there's a very big difference in your day rate and what you will be paid by clients because they need to see the value in what you bring and you can still bring in some of those things. So for example if it's like DISC Co. or Myers-Briggs, I might do it as part of what I do but it's not my whole practice otherwise I'm the same as everybody else and then what happens is they're going “Oh, we need a Myers-Briggs workshop.” and Myers-Briggs is great by the way, I'm not saying it you know I've done thousands of my not-wise Myers-Briggs profiles. I followed about 6,000 people.
Leanne: Wow!
Jane: Yeah, it's been a lot.
Leanne: Yeah.
Jane: But what happens is that people will say “Oh, we need a team-building thing, why don't we do that Myers-Briggs thing?” and they go out to market and look around and all the pricing is pretty much the same. So you have to be even more remarkable to try and get that work because otherwise what happens is you're like a “toothpaste on the supermarket shelf” where the customer's standing there going “Well, I don't know which one to buy so I just buy the one that's on special.”
Leanne: Yeah.
Jane: So you're competing on price now, so the problem is if you're not remarkable and the problem is we've got this “Tall Poppy” thing so we don't think we're very much remarkable at all and in fact we are. I find everybody fascinating that it's we're too close to our own stuff to think that we're “I'm not good enough or maybe I don't really know anything.” but you know that was what my problem. When I realized that I had this problem, I had this commoditization problem and so I realized that actually I'm competing on price with people and how am I differentiating myself or how am I articulating my value so that I can say something other than “You just need to buy me because I'm better!.” or “You just let me do it because I'm better.” but then you got to have a bit more than that to be able to get that over the line and so it's that fine line isn't it between the cocky and arrogant and trying to sell yourself and you're like “You look at these other people I go. How did they do it? How on earth are they’re so busy? How are they doing all this amazing work?” and so you spot on the difference. The remarkability is what makes you easy to buy and unique.
Leanne: Yeah.
Jane: And if you find out what that is then you're well-positioned and you can start to unpack your thinking and your ideas and what your experience it is. You know I've got some clients who have done you know PhDs and they get very cranky because when I work with them and they say “Are you telling me that you do this with people who haven't had to go and do a PhD and they are earning more than me?” and I said “Yes!”
Leanne: Yes. I mean isn't it interesting like ten years ago, if you wanted to be paid more I think the default response as well- just go to another course. It's so different nowadays.
Jane: Yes, but you don't need to.
Leanne: No.
Jane: You really don’t need to. If you can solve people's problems and you can help them have the insights and have the empathy to help them understand their own challenges and you're able to care. If you know how to care and run a tribe, if you know how to do that and you can solve problems, you don't need an MBA, that's just not needed anymore. But if you know your customers, if you understand them or the people in your rooms whether your customer is within an organization or outside if you're making the move. I always say the person who understands the customer the most is the persons whose business grows the fastest.
Leanne: Yeah absolutely. I love that you talk about what you said about we're so close to what we're thinking because it's in our own head so of course we take it for granted and we just assume – “Everyone thinks this way.” “Everyone would have the same response to that.”
What I like about your book though, it's you've got all these questions where you can articulate what your responses would be to different things like your values and things like that. I can totally imagine if you had thousands of people complete your book not one person would have the same answer to any of those questions, it’s like combination alone, if you put it to some paper and talk about logic we're all completely unique. So I hope all of our listeners get that and find the importance of what you're talking about because it does seem like nowadays you hop onto LinkedIn and it seems that everyone is a speaker, a coach, a facilitator so you have to get through a lot of noise.
Jane: Yes.
Leanne: Yeah and what you spoke about it's important about knowing what the customer wants. So I'd like to hear that in the context of facilitating a workshop. I mean you've run, you’ve worked with 50,000 people, what do you do beforehand to find out what they need from the day that you're there? What kind of tactics?
Jane: Great question. I wish so many people would ask that question so much more. I would say, if anyone said to me “Why do you get booked so much? Why do so many people work with you?” and it's because I spend the time on this and if there's anything that I would say that makes the big difference and this is where I’m with my clients, this is where I spend the time. So for example, let's say you're walking into a room of workplace health and safety or a consult teams in the mining industry. I've worked with lots of mining, oil and gas and so I know that getting them in the room is the first challenge.
Leanne: Big time. Hello to all my colleagues who’s listening. Yes it is, we all know it is. Time-poor. Yep!
Jane: Right? Time-poor is the first challenge. The second challenge is that you're in a highly reactive space so if something goes wrong, if you've got a mind shut down, if you've got, you know there's so much volatility and safety is a number one. So if there's something that goes wrong onside and particularly if you're dealing with workplace of health and safety, they're in a highly reactive role so then I go, “Okay!” So empathy and understanding is like dude. If you can get that then I can connect so I'll say “Okay, so what's going on for these people right now? What's going for on for them not just in their role?” so you've got what I call “Higher and lower order problems”.
Higher order problems you know they're going through a restructure, you know this particular mind sets has been going through. It's in a shutdown at the moment or there's lots of specific volatility that's happening in that specific role or there's a lot of compliance issues.
Lower order problems, they're still relevant which is around being time-poor that’s across all industries. But if you can take the time and I do this for keynoting as well so I do a lot of research. I have a research team so I get them out to go and find out. One of the specific challenges I've got the clients problems that I'm talking to them about but then I'll go and research what else is going on in the industry so I have them find out.
So for example, I spoke at a keynote I remember it was a couple of years ago and it was about working with young female lawyers like it was early career lawyers and it was particularly women and I was like “Okay, well I'm not a lawyer and I think I've got a bit of an idea.” but you can always assume too much so you've got to know that you've got a natural unconscious bias and assumptions. So I put it on Facebook and I said “Here's an early career female lawyer, you need to be in this age group. I'll pay you for your time. I need to interview you.”
Leanne: Wow.
Jane: So I say to them “Whatever you charge for client, I don't expect you to do it for free. Whatever you charged for a client you can charge me, I have a few questions.” and I usually take up about a half an hour of their time and I'll do it over the phone and they can bill me that's no problem because I know that builds my understanding not just for that client but I think I've worked something across 52 different industries now. So being able to know those problems that those different industries are facing and that's how you end up getting the work because I know that you can solve that.
Leanne: Yeah.
Jane: So I think it's worth…one of the things I find like I had a client just recently and he's done a PhD in this amazing management theory and I think there was sparks coming off him and I had so much stuff. He was amazing and I said to him “What problem does your customer say that they have?” this is after three hours of explaining his whole mission philosophy branding journey life story. I said “What problem does your customer understand that they have?” or “What problem does your customer say they has?” and he said “I don't know, that's my problem.”
Leanne: Wow.
Jane: So otherwise, it's you telling them that they've got a problem and that's like calling someone's baby “ugly”, isn't it? It sounds like “You know, you’re problem is?” So it comes from huge compassion and empathy and understanding and then only then it's like trying to land a plane- you got to clear your tarmac! You can't get anything through and you can't create change in a room and you don't have to regurgitate back to them everything that you've read. But you've got as a facilitator you've got to ask the right question and if you know the right questions to ask, the value you bring to the room is that's your job as the facilitator, isn't it? Your job is to change the room.
Leanne: Yes.
Jane: If you can have that understanding, it's not necessarily you’re being an expert in that person's job but if you can know the right questions to ask they've got the answers as you know. It's then that's really how and then that's when the value they see the value bring.
Leanne: Yeah, it's just being comfortable with the language that you're using as well and making sure that is relevant to that industry because you also talk about credibility in your book and I really I got this quote out that I loved. It's a John C. Maxwell quote that you've used in your book:
“Credibility is a leader’s currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it he or she is bankrupt.”
It’s so important to be credible! I mean I guess you've been doing this for some time since you were 14 years old you've got this bank of clients you've worked with and got such a great reputation. For someone starting out, how do they create that credibility? I can't imagine, I know I'm very uncomfortable walking into a room and saying “Yeah, this is the stuff that I've done.” I don't really want to talk myself up again, the “Tall Poppy Syndrome” but it's really not about me anyway. But you want them to trust that you are meant to be in that room, you deserve a spot. How do you create that?
Jane: Yeah, great question. So trust, there is a difference between trust and credibility. Credibility brings trust, sorry, well credibility builds trust so I say there's three things that will build trust and this is some other new IP I'm working on. You saw the 12 pieces to building trust but I've really got it down to what are the three key big things that you need to be able to do to build trust.
One is authenticity, you've got to be just you, you've got to be your best self and you know that means knowing what you're trying to do, your mission, your clarity about what, who you are as a human being and just to be your most authentic self and I know that's easy to say, that first part is authenticity. The second part is empathy and empathy is that understanding that I've got an understanding, whether it's around, whatever the challenges that audience has or the team or the group or customer, whatever. If you've got those two things, so first of all its authenticity and then empathy which is what your challenges are on your world and then the bottom one is credibility so if you can get those three things the authenticity, empathy and credibility. If those three things come together you get trust because now you suddenly “I have more confidence in you; I can see the confidence in what you're saying; I can see you have conviction.” so that empathy is what actually makes you do go deeper in your knowledge.
Leanne: Yeah and like you said I mean you gave the example before of putting out a call to lawyers and then getting billed for the time. Not a lot of people do that. No, they don't! And especially with keynotes because you think “I've got this speech. It's all packaged up. I've spent a lot of time developing it. I can just go into any kind of industry and deliver this.” and I think that's where it does fall flat so what you're doing is as part of that research contextualizing it for that audience which is amazing!
Jane: Absolutely!
Leanne: So the three things that you talk about authenticity, empathy & credibility. It all talks, we're talking maps in the facilitation context but that is really what leadership is about as well.
Jane: That’s right.
Leanne: So that's what I love about doing this podcast about facilitation. Everything I'm hearing about people in terms of the great skills facilitators bring in terms of having empathy, showing up caring for people, taking that time. All of those attributes what makes a great leader.
Jane: Yes.
Leanne: So if you're becoming a great facilitator, a side benefit is you'll probably also be an amazing leader as well.
Jane: Absolutely, you know James Hume, he was the speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and he said “Whenever you're presenting and facilitating is the same thing you're auditioning for a position of leadership.” So you're in front of a room, you're already in your… I think sometimes we go out- “I'm a facilitator; I'm a trainer; I'm not a leader, I just run training programs.” but you know if you're in front of a room but even when we're branding and positioning people and around to give that credibility, we will look for photos where they're standing in front of a group. So it doesn't matter if you've got three people, if you're the one in-charge of the room, it's your room and you're the one holding the space for everybody, you're the leader!
Leanne: Yeah, you have a leader. I love that. I did read it in your book about when you are given the opportunity to present, try and document that. So this book, I have to say I love the practical nature of it. You can read a lot of books at a very theory and you're like how does it supply but I think it's great for facilitators that do want to start stepping out of their companies. One example you gave was “Before you're traveling to a workshop, take a selfie at the airport or before you hit the road.” Like that's just something so simple but that immediately what that tell people “Well, I'm on the road, I've been asked to go somewhere else to run a workshop.” such a great little hack!
Jane: Yeah and even if you are trying to show people that you don't just work in your local town so you know when I started, my problem was because of the changing government you know 80% of my business went overnight so I realized that actually half my problem is that I have a business that is very focused on clients in Queensland so I said “Okay, I actually need to build not just a national but an international brand so that if anything goes wrong at any time I can pick up. I can go somewhere or I can work with clients. I can reach out and I'm not going to be affected by local government challenges.” and that was what happens to a lot of businesses here in particular Queensland because of our volatile government so what I did exactly that I said “Okay, every time we go check in, airport; Facebook post! So it was around building the brand to be and the communication strategy that went with that and of course people go “Oh my God, you're everywhere, every time!”
Leanne: You are!
Jane: And it's very deliberate and so I've probably settled down on a bit now. But when I first started, it was very deliberate because I had to really send the message that you know if people; “I won't worry you because you're in Brisbane or you're not in Melbourne or you're not in Sydney”. I needed to open it up and create access so people would instead say “Oh, when you're in Sydney next or when you're in Melbourne next.” so I was in Sydney or Melbourne most weeks so it was just opening it up to say “I'm prepared to get on a plane. I’m prepared. “Yes I'm in town!”
Leanne: Yeah absolutely. I want to talk about a bit of travel and environment because I know you're running a workshop at Peppers at Kingscliff.
Jane: Yes.
Leanne: For anyone, for those of you that have never been there it's absolutely amazing. It's very relaxing, this beautiful beach, the town is just if you get there and all your stresses pretty much dissolved. I would like to ask you yet just about that. Was that a deliberate move to create a strong environment for you workshop? Why did you pick that spot to run your one day workshop?
Jane: Well, it sounds like I won't be doing very much.
Leanne: Yeah, cocktails by the pool but that sounds like a perfect day.
Jane: Yes, exactly. White boards can be wheeled out to the Spa.
Leanne: That's a really good idea. You should get into hotel design and thinking about conferences and things like that? Why not?
Jane: That's right! Yeah you know one of the things that I've noticed, I'm a mentor in Thought Leaders Business School and my mentor who was the founder of Thought Leaders Business School. I’ve been in there for five years and his name is Matt Church. It has this mantra, you want to get to a point where you do work you like with people you like or love, people you love the way that you want. He said to me “If you could have a program that runs any way that you want, how would that work?” and that takes a while to build up to that so yes I was running around the country and I was running programs everywhere and I said you know like Kingscliff dope I grew up around that area so it's like home to me. The beach is like home because I live in the city now but the beach is where I reconnect, it's where I get off the treadmill and so when he said “What would that look like? What would work you love, work you like with people you love the way you want?” and I thought “Okay so what I would love is I would love to be able to have a be at a point where my business had grown enough and my brand was strong enough that people would have the courage to you know maybe not stay in Melbourne get on a plane and come and disconnect to reconnect a little bit.” but it's branding work you know you're really connecting with people's identity and the core of who they are that's quite hard to do in a corporate battleship grey office.
Leanne: And they're battling traffic to even get there on time.
Jane: Yeah. You know you've got to kind of get grounded I know because I grew up around that area maybe I'm a bit of a hippie at heart but you know it's those things that you really have to consciously stop and reconnect to who you are to actually make some of these decisions that you're making and go “Oh wow! Yeah I do, do that.” But what I had to do was create that base for me to work in to help other people so that they could see that for themselves and so that's the challenge I often start to pose to them; “What would your version of this look like?” and so there's one lady that I know that has done. She's a fantastic coach and she's a beautiful cook so what she does is she cooks in her coaching sessions so you go to her house and you sit up at the kitchen bench and she coaches while she's cooking. So she cooks, she bakes so by the end of the session so she spends the first few minutes you know putting all the recipe together and whatever. I'm not a very good cook but nothing like she’s like.
Leanne: I’m a terrible cook!
Jane: Microwaves, come in very handy sometimes. You know by the end of the session then you have that by the time she's finished cooking and then you sit down you have the meal together and so that's the end of that coaching session that goes for I think an hour and a half or whatever it might be. So you know hearing some of these stories of how people do it and its part of how they love to do it that's part of their brand that's what she's known for and that's what creates the remarkability.
Leanne: Yes. I was just that word was just coming up. I mean how many people would talk about that afterwards and that is something that's completely unique to her and I love that you know because we think of workshops and we think we're boxed in a room we've got them for half the day there's going to be pretty average catered lunch, we need to have PowerPoint slides but she's completely just gone- No! This is the way we're going to do it and but then by doing that she's attracting the type of people that she'd want so it's like hitting those three things that you spoke about earlier that's such a cool quote.
Jane: Yeah you stop trying to conform but having said that when you first starting out, you've got to be easy to buy and it's hard to buy you if you set something like that up straightaway. You haven't got enough trust, you haven't built up the credibility and all that sort of thing so you still kind of got to do the hard yards initially but build up your database, build up your relationships and once there's some you'll see in the book there are a few metrics that we look for to be able to know at what point if I did. Because people are scared to do things like that so there are certain metrics that I work with people in their businesses to say “Okay, yes you've got these numbers of certain people on data bases, certain revenue, customers types of programs” and then we say “Okay, yes now is the time to do it!”
Leanne: Yeah it's a calculated risk rather than just going “I must give this a Go!” and to be completely disappointed when no one buys it. Where did that go? Why did that fail?
Jane: Yeah you've got that trust and the relationship with those clients, they'll follow you, they'll go where you want and then because they wouldn't necessarily look for something like that but when they go, the fact that you're the one running it so you create, one is actually matters that CEO of Thought Leaders said, he said “Business is changing from the business of ideas particularly with facilitators. If you're in this space, you're working with your ideas and what your worldview is and how you articulate that to get the best out of people based on your experience.” but he said just recently that “It's not just about the ideas.” Because I can go online, I can find those ideas, I can read your blog's. It's actually the experiences you create that how those ideas are applied and how do I get to connect with that which is the whole remarkability. “What’s the essence of you that makes that experience?” because yes I can get the knowledge from you but I don't want to sit and read a blog, I want to hang out with you for a day. I want to know “Oh yeah, look at my stuff, yeah give me some attention. Look at me for a day and I want to be around your energy in the space that you hold.” and that's the real value.
Leanne: That’s what would attracts me. Yeah. I'd like to talk about energy as well, sorry I'm just coming up to like a keynote or the workshop that you're running down at Kingscliff. I've been really interested in listening to a lot of podcasts recently about the morning routine and what different people do. What do you do to get sort of psyched up or do you have to calm yourself down before you start delivering one of these?
Jane: Yes and its interesting, isn't it? Like keynote and facilitation as such different modes of delivery of ones thinking, ones “tell versus ask”. So you know you've got different energy spaces that you're working with but facilitation kind of got it. The thing they have in common is you've got to meet the room where they're at. You can come in, managing your state is everything so if you can manage your energy that's for sure. I have to fire myself up a little bit because I'm actually my natural state is mentoring so I'm very introverted ironically most people don't realize that but I'm more introverted than I am extroverted. And to facilitate in groups or to keynote and I keynote every week so it's not something that comes naturally to me, it is tiring. So I have to make sure I've got myself pumped up so it'll be things like make sure I get sleep, just eating well particularly when you travel because a lot of these conferences and things are interstate so I will never I always travel the night the day before. I also will go into the room the day before so if I fly in that afternoon if I'm the first or second one on in the morning, I'll go into the room because I need to know the energy or the space of the room. I'll do it just a quick practice on stage just so I can get a sense of how it works and it's funny I spoke at an event a few years ago and I was on straight after. I didn't know that the person who was speaking before me was going to be running a meditation session.
Leanne: Hard that to follow.
Jane: I had my headphones on and I had like you know right against the machine on and I was so fired up and then I went in and it was like “Okay.”
Leanne: You could feel that mood as “Woo!”
Jane: “Okay, we’ll slow down”. But you know you get even much the energy and then bring it out but you've got to bring, there's so much energy that comes to a keynote and to being able to prepare for that and it's knowing your stuff so that you can be present to the room and serve the room and connect with the room like things like what will give me energy is I'll stand at the door and greet people when they come in. It’s also clear that to them that “Oh, she must be somebody who's working here.” or “Oh, that's right. She's the lady that maybe she's on the hand out garden.”
Leanne: Oh yeah, and she's approachable as well which is great.
Jane: It's not me saying “I'm not coming in going right. I'm the speaker, I'll have my blue M&Ms. Thank you.” You've got to connect with the audience, my job is to change the room while I'm there so you just got to do everything you can to get that energy in connection, don't you?
Leanne: Yeah I love that my job is to change the room while I'm there. Gee! That’s pretty impactful, that's going to be the quote of the episode, love that! But I think as well, I'm entering I love seeing the room as well even the day before because then it helps you go to sleep at night because he's not wondering what does the room look like and you want to have like most your questions answered before you have that sleep so you can have a restful you know eight hours or whatever it is that you need.
Jane: Yes and unique to them. You know I've had things like I've fallen off the stage, technology hasn't worked every age.
Leanne: You’ve fallen off the stage?
Jane: Oh, you name it! Like when you do as many as I do, everything goes wrong but you know you've got to know your keynote forty-five minutes inside out back to front, if anything fails what are you going to do. You know I've had that happen before. You’ve just got to know plan ABCD and E.
Leanne: Have any times where like something's happening you're like “I just can't continue doing this, what am I doing?” Have that ever crossed your mind or you like “No, just get on back on the bike and let's just keep going.” You must have been talked at times.
Jane: Yeah there was one particular time it was actually really early and when I started speaking and I got booked for this keynote it was at the Gold Coast and it was Royal Pines. I don't know if you've ever been to Royal Pines but the meeting room is massive. It's like a nightclub like they're stripe lights, it was like a rock concept this thing.
Leanne: At the golf club, that's not, now I wouldn't have thought that but…
Jane: Yeah it's got a really big, it's really popular for conferences. It's got a great massive room so there's about a thousand people at this conference and I walked in the room and the A/V guy was there and I saw my presentation on the computer and I thought it looks a bit different though and so I went over to him and said “Hi, my name is Jane Anderson, I’m on this morning.” and he said “Yeah, marked me up.” and then I said “Can I just ask you? I think there's a slide there, I just looking at that presentation, it looks a bit different than the one I had to send through.” I had send to his head two weeks prior and he said “Ah yeah, you can have a look.”, so look through and it but there were slides missing, there were things I'd never seen before and so I was on in 20 minutes I couldn't change anything and so I said “Okay, all right I'll just work with that.”
Leanne: Gosh, well done.
Jane: “Have you got a whiteboard? and he said “Yes, I think there's one down at the back.” and so I thought all right I know where my where the breaks are I think in the content so I was like “Okay, I can work I think with it.” and then he said “Just so you know, you know the remote?” so he said “With the remote, just so you know it doesn't go backwards that only goes forwards in it.” so I said “Okay, so what happens if I have to go backwards?” he said “Oh look! I'll be at the back, I'm the A/V guy, you just yell out.” So of course I started the keynote and the slides started moving. I hadn't even touched anything and I thought “I should have known when he said that. How would he know that?” Anyway, I got it, I said on to Mr. A/V “Can you come back to the first slide again?” and so I started again and they just started moving in and I thought “Okay, I'm not touching anything!” so I just turned them off and I was in the first five minutes. Anyway, I got through it but I was kicking myself because I thought “What have I done wrong, I can't…” you know because everyone's looking at you that you're the problem so you've just got to work with. Anyway of course I got off the stage and the coordinator came running up and said “Oh my God that was amazing. I don't know how you did that but what you didn't know is that your remote was connected to the room next door and theirs was connected to yours. That was fantastic, would definitely get you back next year”. I can’t do it, I can’t do this thing!
Leanne: Oh my gosh! That’s up there! There were some of the worst stories I've heard. Wow! You handled that so well. But you wouldn't have been able to pull that off if you haven't prepared. There's no way I mean you could have, you can wing things for certain time but not for 45 minutes. Oh my gosh, well done! High five! I was getting goose bumps when you're telling me when you're framing that story that is the worst scenario and if that ever happens though at least we know “Hey, what's going on next door, I think we need to swap.”
Jane: Exactly, it’s a good tip for facilitators.
Leanne: It is really a good tip. Speaking of tips, are there any tips or words of advice that you can offer our first-time facilitators listening in?
Jane: Yeah I think if I think back to. I remember the first time I facilitated I was terrible. So I would, allow yourself to you know just be- know that you're not going to be perfect straight away and this still days where I like not very often but sometimes you just have an off day. It doesn't mean it's like your whole career is destroyed. If you have a tough day that would be the first thing is to know it's just a tough day. If something goes wrong that's all part of learning and part of growing. The other thing I would say that has made the biggest difference and I wish I did this much earlier was find your tribe, find the people who you need to be around, who are doing the same thing as you or trying to do something similar. But you want to also work out find your mentor and often the mentor will be the person leading that tribe so if you want to get really great at like it might be at training activities then find the expert who is the expert in training activities. Do some mentoring with them but work out as well- “Who are other people who are trying to solve that problem as well?” or “Where do other trainers hang out?”
So for example, I have a program which is called the “Women of Influence” and we have this power up program and so these are all women who are facilitators, trainers, coaches, speakers. So I lead the tribe but they're all trying to do the same thing but they're all different at what they do. Some do leadership, some do personal branding got three in there that do personal branding, we've got others that are business coaches but they do a lot of facilitation for businesses. Everybody's so different but to work out we'll you know particularly I think for women as well you know for women, we don't naturally get out of build the networks the blokes tend to. So find your tribe, go and ask around if it's you know whether it's the AITD may be there's some members in there if it's training, the Australian Institute of Training and Development. If you're a coach but you also include facilitation in your work maybe you do group coaching it might be that kind of space. Look at the ICF professional speakers if you're a facilitator and you're wanting to include more speaking, you'll be like this plenty of speakers who also do facilitation. So look for your associations, find your tribe get around with the right people and find a mentor.
Leanne: Excellent advice, brilliant! Jane, I've loved our conversation today I could easily talk to you for another couple of hours. I think we've just kind of touched the surface but I've learnt a lot already. A lot of what I picked up free reading your book which I will recommend to all the listeners especially if you want to start differentiating yourself in a crowded market I think it's really useful. But also hearing, you’re very authentic and vulnerable when you came out with some of those stories and I think that cheers the audience that it's okay to mess up and you need to stretch in order to develop at the end of the day. Finally Jane, where can people find you?
Jane: Yeah thank you. So they can jump on my website so its jane-anderson.com, you're welcome to jump on there and of course there's all LinkedIn and Instagram and those places so I'm always around like you said.
Leanne: Everywhere!
Jane: I’m kind of everywhere. You’ll be sick of me probably. But one of the things that you can do is when you go to the website. This could be useful actually for your listeners and you'll probably notice on the book it's got where you can do take the “Influencer Score” so I created a diagnostic to help people to understand like just the communication channels and just you know you don't have to try and do all of them immediately but just to know where to start and so you can go on it takes three minutes to fill out so you just go to the jane-anderson.com website, if you scroll right down the bottom it's actually a little bit hidden and because otherwise you go to the shop and you'll pay $80, so just go!.
Leanne: Wow that’s so cool. Okay!
Jane: There’s a little link its right down the very bottom and it's called the “Lead Generation Indicator” so if you're starting out or if maybe you're thinking about making the move or you have made the move out of corporate and you're starting to do this yourself. It gives you a seven page personal report of exactly where you sit now. I'm based on what you've got to do so you know your gaps on what and where to go from there.
Leanne: Oh that's perfect and we'll definitely link those in the show notes for sure.
Jane: Oh thank you! Yeah better, right!
Leanne: Lovely. Thanks, Jane. You've been awesome!
Jane: Thank you very much.
Leanne: Have a great evening.
Jane: Thank you.
Leanne: Well done!
First Time Facilitator podcast interview with Tyson Young (Episode 20)
Leanne: Our guest today was recommended by a mutual friend, Stephanie Yeo. I'd like to read the introduction that she sent me. These are her own words. Tyson is a CEO and co-founder of Carisma, a digital application that enables your mechanic to provide you with your car's visual service history. Outside of his work at Carisma, Tyson is an amazing facilitator, emcee extraordinaire and speaker. He's wonderfully humorous and an amazing active listener who adapts his style based on effectively reading his audience. Welcome to the show, Tyson Young.
Tyson: Thank you so much for having me. That reminds me I'm going to have to pay Steph to write all those lovely things, clearly lies but–-
Leanne: How does it feel when you read a description-- someone in your audience wrote that about you, how does that make you feel?
Tyson: It's super humbling to actually have engaged the audience and one person in particular and especially from someone like Steph who is incredible. It's amazing.
Leanne: I hope you’re listening out, Steph. Yes, we both got some very positive things to say about you. Absolutely, for someone not only to think about that and then to reach out and say, "Leanne, you need to interview this guy. It's -–" Yes, well done.
Tyson: Thank you, thank you.
Leanne: How did you stumble upon the world of training, facilitation, speaking in general?
Tyson: I mean probably it depends how far back I go. I did debating in school and I'm sure that's just because mum wanted me to redirect my energies into arguing with her with other people. I started doing public speaking but quickly dropped it out when I learned you had to do preparation beforehand. Debating was great because you could just go and you would wait for them to do that a little bit and then you'd argue the point. I think that was good a little bit of high school experience. After that, I think that the pivotal moment for me was the QUT international business Case Competition.
You would get presented with these cases. You'd go overseas and you have-- depending on the timeline. It would be like 24-48 hours crammed in a hotel room with way too much Red Bull and putting together this business case and then presenting it to the audience and a panel of expert judges. That was really good in terms of learning how to develop some kind of cohesive train of thought and a message and then deliver that in a high-pressure situation.
In addition to that, I joined the Australian Army Reserve when I was 16. I did that for 10 years and I think there is a lot of training and a lot of facilitation again in relatively high-pressure situations, so that was good and good for the maturity maybe at a younger age. Then from there, just every gig seems to lead to another one and then here I am talking to you.
Leanne: Absolutely. Let's talk about those high-pressure situations. Do you remember that first pitch that you did overseas? Could you sort of reflect on that and what have you learned from that first pitch compared to now>
Tyson: So much. I think I always joked that I was the PowerPoint guy, because I wasn't fantastic at doing the talking. I wasn't fantastic with coming up with the strategies. I knew how to move some pixels around, so that's how I snuck into the team. I was like, "I've got design skills." That was good for so many reasons, but I think working with a team especially, because you couldn't just go and do your own thing. You still had to make sure that your lines worked in with everyone else's and you were kind of vibing off one another.
I think what I learnt from that is there are, in a situation like that, often many different personalities and it comes down to compromise both from your end and their end. You end up generally with a pretty happy team. What else did I learn? Not to have too much Red Bull for a presentation. No, but it was good. I think it all came together in the end and just to enjoy the experience.
Leanne: Part of Stephanie’s feedback is that she said that you adapt your style based on reading the audience. Can you give examples of doing that? Was that something again another skill that you've honed?
Tyson: Yes, like anything, I think you do hone skills over time. One thing that has helped me, and I think this actually came from dad giving me this advice because he's done a bit of facilitation himself. He also had 20 years in the military. It's to, first of all, turn up early and read the room, walk the stage, do whatever you can to feel comfortable in the environment. A big part of that for me is actually speaking with the audience.
Steph was one of the amazing conversations I had beforehand. It's just having that genuine human connection which really puts you at ease. Then you start to feel as though you're understanding who your audience are before you're actually talking to them. Because I really hate going in cold and just talking at people. It's great to already have, oh, like you feel as though you've got some friends before you even start.
Leanne: Yes, I was given that advice as well before, like a big speech. You're kind of conflicted because sometimes you just want to be backstage getting yourself psyched up or doing whatever it takes to psych you up. But at the same time, you see the value of that you're no longer delivering to strangers. You can actually find out why you’re in this room and then somehow relate that to the person.
Tyson: Oh, it's like you feel as though you're having a conversation with people. It would be the same if I had to do this interview but you couldn't talk for 40 minutes. I'm just kind of I don't know what to talk about, just making stuff up. Whereas, when you have that back and forth engagement even if that engagement is simply them laughing or just inquisitively on looking, I think that helps bring out some of the good stuff.
Leanne: Let's talk about getting laughs. Steph mentioned that you were-- We're talking a lot about you, Steph. Wonderfully humorous, is that just your personality that you just bring into your role as a facilitator?
Tyson: I don't know if that's my personality. I mean I've often had people tell me that I'm a joke. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Now look, I'm incredibly impressed by comedians to start with because they have to get up there with the expectation that they're going to be funny. If you kind of get some laughs as a comedian, I imagine that's probably not a good thing. You want a roomful of laughter. As a facilitator, your job isn't there to be a comedian. But if you do get a laugh and people are like, "Ah, funny guy," it's a very easy one. Even if you get one joke-- I think for me it's more about going in with the expectation that there won't be any laughs and not waiting for applause or for laughter.
Leanne: Waiting for the cymbal crash.
Tyson: Yes, if a joke doesn't come off and it's -- me personally, I never deliver something with like this epic punchline. It's just if people laugh and then, ah, okay, I'll pause and I'll let you have a laugh and continue on. It feels good, it feels good for them too.
Leanne: Great. What other kind of tools and strategies do you bring into your facilitation that may make you different from the other facilitator next door?
Tyson: Look, I wrote some things down because just before this. I guess that's the first one doing a bit of research and putting some notes down. Doing a little bit of research to understand who your audience is helps a lot. Again, that helps with the kinds of jokes that are going to land. If I make lots of startup related jokes at a maybe a corporate event, they might not understand it. They won't be empathetic to that kind of humor. The next one is I'm a big fan of self-deprecation clearly. I've maybe take it a bit too far sometimes and people think I actually just hate myself but not all the time, only after a big house party. Talking with people beforehand yet walking the room, and I think remembering that it's okay to smile and laugh.
People have this misconception that if it's corporate, as soon as they hear that word "corporate," it's like, oh, it has to be serious. At the end of the day, people are still people. People still want to laugh and engage with you. What else? Find your own style. I think it's great to have inspiration but it's also okay to realize that you can be different to other people. I'm certainly not-- I wouldn't even say I'm a great facilitator, just over time I'm learning how to do it a bit better.
Leanne: Same as me.
Tyson: Yes, and I've listened to your podcast and I think they're fantastic.
Leanne: Thank you.
Tyson: Your guests are great. Hopefully, I can you have to stand with them. Just in terms of a few other tips, I'd like to write down notes like handwritten notes. Oh, just lost power. [laughs] For those--
Leanne: For those listening, we’re recording face to face and the light just went out. It went completely dark. But that's kind of-- I mean that can happen in a workshop-
Tyson: Totally.
Leanne: - where we've sort of facilitated in previous episodes, where they've said the biggest thing that ever derailed their workshop was the technology not working. How do you -- but look, that was out for half a second and we've recovered.
Tyson: I know. I started sweating profusely. I was a little bit scared but we're here. I think in terms of not just the notes, I try and avoid a lot of caffeine maybe just because it's the type of person I am. I still get quite nervous before anything like any kind of presentation. I use those nerves because anxiety and fear and excitement, for a lot of it I think it's the same physiological effect. I do use that adrenaline to keep me amped up a little bit. I don't want too much other stimulants in my system. The final one I think is just water, just making sure I'm hydrated and have a relatively clear throat.
Leanne: Well, most good tips are water and caffeine, interesting as well. Because, I've also heard there's a podcast I listen to, it's called Steal the Show by Michael Port. He always says don't drink anything with dairy in it, even the night before that you're running like a big presentation because the dairy in your system can like clog up your lungs or something along those lines.
Tyson: I don't eat dairy so that's a good stuff.
Leanne: There you go. You’re all good. For anyone else listening, I always go a Long Black in the morning of a big presentation just so it doesn't those up. You've really come a long way from preparing compared to what you're like in high school, where you just kind of wanted to wing it with your debating team now which is fantastic.
Tyson: Look, there is a certain element of preparation, but I still wing it for the most part. I absolutely hate written speeches. There are many amazing orators in the world and I think Barack Obama is one of them. I nearly said president but unfortunately some things have changed. People that can deliver a really well-structured presentation, I love watching that. I am definitely more of the style that I’ve got my key talking points and the general structure and then I’ll talk through.
Again, we don’t have written speeches when we have conversations with one another. If you were at a house partying and you're talking with someone, if you were like, “Oh, I missed that point. I’m going to have to talk about this,” it’s not natural. Again, I’d like to feel as though I’m having a one-on-one conversation even if there's 300 people in the audience, trying to finish a point looking at someone and then moving on.
Leanne: Yes, absolutely. Now, you are actually probably the youngest facilitator. Well, you’re not probably. You are the youngest facilitator we’ve had on the show today.
Tyson: I grew a whisker especially for this. It took me a month but I got there.
Leanne: Well, well done. I’d like to hear about facilitating workshops for the people in this side of community, who are generally from a younger generation and not-- like you said, you're not comparing startups to corporates. What are you doing? Do you do anything different with the startup audience? What do they want more? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
Tyson: Yes I think, again I’m not super, super experienced with facilitation or presenting or even with startups. My brother and I have run-- we ran a digital agency for about five years, Lloyd and I. Then Lloyd and I teemed up with a good friend of ours, Yohan. He is the CTO of another company we’ve got. I think over the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve gained a little bit more experience in startup lens, not just business.
People generally like to hear some of the experiences we’ve had and then they feel as though they can resonate with those stories and understand that we truly are empathetic to some of the challenges they experience as well. Startup people are, I don’t know if forgiving is the right word, but we all understand that you’re iterating quickly. You’re trying to find work and it’s the same with presenting. I don’t always have the perfect response but it’s engaging them the best way I know how.
It’s a bit of a misconception that startups is just for young people because there are many people, I think the most successful startup founders are in their 40s when they start. Life experience is actually quite good.
Leanne: Yes, they say they have been through two or three different companies that haven’t done so well, then they hit their strides in their mid to late 40s, which is so important.
Tyson: That’s my excuse currently the next one probably is a success.
Leanne: Fail three times and then you’re on to a winner. Have you ever had a time where things haven’t gone so well during a presentation that you can share with our audience?
Tyson: A time that hasn’t gone well. I’ll talk about how I got into one of the gigs that I currently do and how that nearly didn’t go so great. I got a call from the business school at QUT. I’m in the back of an Uber. We’re in Melbourne at the time and we’re heading off to this meeting. I take this call and they said, “Tyson, Bill Prad has recommended you for this new session we’re doing. It’s called, The Business Leaders Talks, where we interview successful alumni.”
I’m like, “Oh, me, successful? I didn’t actually think I was that successful, but continue.” She said, “We were wondering if you wanted to be a part of it.” I was like, “Look, totally.” They said, “Because we need someone to interview the successful people.” [laughs] I was like, “Oh, I got you.” That has been a fantastic excuse to meet amazing people. That's been running for about three years now, the QUT BLT.
I just remember the first time I ever got up and this was the first time I really ever emceed anything. I’m okay when someone else is running the workshop or whatever it is and I just can get up, grab the mic and do my little bit and sit down. This was the first time that it didn’t dawn on me until the music stopped, that I had to go to the front and actually run the workshop or the talks.
I just remember I felt as though the colour had drained out of my face. I’m in a full suit. Again, this is when I didn’t really know what my style was. I’m wearing Nikes now but I was wearing a suit and probably even had a tie on at the time, walk up to the front, it's dead silence. I can feel the eyes on me. I didn’t even know if it was that hot on the day, but I’m sweating and the sweat start to get worse. I’ve got the paper in front of me and again the things you learn, if you are going to have notes at a lectern, make sure it's really large font and it’s broken into this visual areas where you can really quickly see.
I had basically an A4 page which it felt like point seven font and I’m staring at it. I am looking at the page and I’m looking off at the audience and looking back down at the page. I swear there must have been crickets. I can feel my voice starting to tremble a little bit and I’m starting to get tunnel vision. I can almost feel the same thing happening now retelling the story. I start the first line. I've probably made a mistake already and I just look up and my first-- [laugh] I don’t know, am I allowed this way?
Leanne: Yes, that’s all right.
Tyson: My first thought as I look up at the room, I’m like, “Fuck it, I’m just going to walk out.” [laughs] I was like, “Just stay with it because you will never ever leave this down.” I was just like, “I’ll just push through.” I did the acknowledgment of the traditional owners and I’m like, “That will be right, I’m probably going to stuff this up and it’ll be really disrespectful and no one is going to want to have me back.” Anyway, I felt as though I did a fairly average job, but I think we’re always quite self-critical.
It’s good to analyze yourself and your performance after the fact, but not beat yourself up too much. Pushing through, that was probably the best thing I could have done, because by the time I got into it I really enjoyed it. It often happens, it’s really nervous at the beginning and then by the end of it I’m like, “I don’t want this to end. I’m engaging with the audience and I’m having such a good time.” It’s just gotten better and better ever since that.
There so, so much for me to learn and for me to improve still, but if you enjoy something and you take that with you to the next experience, it will just keep getting better.
Leanne: Yes, that’s hilarious. I actually had a very similar story last week. I was emceeing a big event for the company I work for over at the convention center. It was very dark, lights came up and that was me and I was on. I thought my notes would be on the lectern ready to go, but they weren’t there. I think in that moment when you pause, you feel like it's gone for an hour and just time really slows down. You get two options really. It’s like never apologize, it's I was going to keep this going and make sure improve it or--
Tyson: You’re right. You shouldn’t apologize, but I am the sort of person that like if someone throws a ball at my head, I’ll probably apologize for being in the way. [laughs] I just apologize at the drop of a hat. I can’t help it. Yes, you know you’re right, just pushing through. It’s like the pain is, this is a no-- 99% of the audience is never going to know. Yes, I know it’s good advice.
Leanne: Yes. It’s so funny when you hit your stride towards the end of it and you’re sort of in your element now and thinking, “Oh, I wish this could go on forever because I love this!
Tyson: The problem is maybe you are enjoying it so much that you forget your audience is there and it’s like-- the startup hatch is a great example. I'm pretty sure that ran an hour over time. I didn’t know if it was because I was getting up with quips in the middle of every presentation or if I just should have hurried it along, but yes, another thing I need to improve on. [laughs]
Leanne: I would love to talk about the differences between just presenting. You said it yourself you realized when you were emceeing, as you’re getting up to open it, that there was a big shift between facilitating a workshop with a group and actually setting the standard and emceeing and getting the audience involved. What are the things have you learned from-- or the differences between those two roles in particular?
Tyson: Look, I wouldn’t say I have facilitated as many days or anything like that as I have presented. I think I took for granted how easy it was just to get up and grab a mic and do the talking when someone else has done all the facilitating for you, whether it's printouts or time management or like the event details. I was basically the guy that just got to rock up, take the mic and really take the credit, but it's people at QUT like Julie McMorris and Rebecca who did all the hard work and probably so many other people that I can’t name.
They are the ones that generally make you look good. In terms of facilitation, timekeeping is a big one and respecting people’s time. As much as I do want to wait for everyone to get into the room, I’ll generally try and start it the time it says that it starts. Then from there, a big one for me is making sure that the person who looks maybe the shy-est and like they're retracting into their shell, they’re typically the ones I want to hear from first.
People like me with a big mouth, they’ll always get their say, but I think it’s those that are quieter who maybe spend more time in life observing than they do speaking, that have more important or more interesting things to say and trying to bring that out of them.
Leanne: Yes, that’s really important. Thanks for that. Now, knowing all this, what’s the best advice then that you could give to a first time facilitator?
Tyson: Well, get involved and I guess if you are a first time facilitator you already are. I would love to see more young people doing this. It's really common for the person at the front of the room to be the older wiser one, which is fantastic go along and see those. I have met some really incredible younger people doing this, people like Scott Millar. I think he just turned 18. He is currently the Creative Enterprise Australia Collider accelerator.
I don't want to say kids even but younger people are doing amazing things. I would love to see them facilitating more workshops for each other and all growing through that experience. Maybe even older people rocking along for those and getting the perspective of younger people would be great. Other advice, I think I like to watch presentations of people that inspire and motivate me. Simon Sinek is a great one. Trying really hard to step away from just passively watching a presentation.
It happens even with me, like I'll get sucked into it just because they're great. But, observing how they move, how they talk, how they change their voice and tone and how they pause, it's a big one and it's something I need to get better at it. It's like what you said, time just stands still and it feels like it can be an hour. Pausing is one of the most effective tools I think any good presenter has.
Leanne: Definitely to get attention.
Tyson: For sure.
Leanne: Because they're wondering, is this on purpose, has she has gotten the lines, what's going on? I need to reflect on what she just said. People really start paying attention the second you pause-
Tyson: Totally.
Leanne: - which is kind of counter intuitive if you want people to listen, you don't say anything.
Tyson: Well, I mean if you've been talking with verbal diarrhea for half an hour and it just all becomes the same but you pause and then something changes. You look up and you're like, "Oh, what's going on?" One of my favourite techniques with PowerPoints especially, I know we're probably talking more about the talking aspect over the PowerPoint, for me simplicity is key in a PowerPoint. You are the focus. I don't mean that from an egotistical point of view. People are there to maybe learn or listen to what you've got to say. They're not there to read what you've written on a slide.
One of my favourite tools with a PowerPoint besides just being simple is a blank slide. Because the moment it's blank, people, "Where else do I look?" They look at the presenter. Sometimes people will think that something is missing from the slide but if you continue to engage them, it becomes really clear.
Leanne: I've never heard that strategy.
Tyson: I love it. It's one of my favourites.
Leanne: Is it just a black slide?
Tyson: Yes, it can be black or it can just be the word disappears off whatever colour background you have.
Leanne: Nice. I’m going to start using that. That's really good, thank you.
Tyson: Yes, it’s cool.
Leanne: I'm interested to hear how doing all the stuff that you're doing at QUT Business School, the interviews that you're doing, how that's played out and helped you in your business life. You've created this or co-created this app for mechanics. My husband's a mechanic.
Tyson: Yes, awesome. I have to have a chat with you afterwards.
Leanne: Definitely. Talk to us-- I'd love to hear more about the app how it started. Then have you noticed that your skills in this area in terms of negotiating with other people have improved because of the communication, your skills that you're developing at the University? How has it played out?
Tyson: Yes, I think they probably feed into each other. For a long time, I like the concept of being a bit of a chameleon and not just, ah, they put their hands on their hips. You put your hands on your hips. I think it's a bit more subconscious than that for me of trying to emulate how people are. Maybe it comes down to whether they're engaging with you and being a bit attuned to that and trying to talk you know on the same level. I don't mean like if someone's not as book smart as you, talk like them. It's just the case of finding what is of interest to them and really diving into that.
I'm probably giving a terrible answer to this. For me, when it's been out there with the workshops, it's definitely been challenging for sure, as at different markets what we're expecting. I don't actually know how to give you a good answer for that one. In terms of how it started anyway, mum and dad have been running Ultra Tune Capalaba for the last must be 12, 13 years. Dad's background, as I said, 20 years military and then basically government jobs since then but then got into private enterprise.
They didn’t quite realize how bad the reputation was of the mechanic industry. I'm sure you know it all too well. Dad being dad, just thought of innovative ways to change that and started taking photos of absolutely everything they did. He would have with the mechanics on the floor digital cameras and he would be taking this onto the computer. When any customer came in, then he would just be showing them the work that that actually done and build that trust and transparency with them.
It wouldn't matter if they're a young dude who was a red head and knew everything about cars or a young female who maybe wasn't as sure. Dad would just treat everyone the same and still does. I think he's the only mechanic that I can find that has nearly 100 five-star reviews on Facebook.
Leanne: No, that’s incredible.
Tyson: A lot of it comes down to that trust that he's been able to build. He was going through this whole digital process but it was a pain because you'd have to get the SD card out of the camera, then you'd have to archive them once the photos were too much for the computer and then dig them up for the archive. They were kind of disparate. They were all over the computer, different hard drives. I was like, "Well, dad, we're nerds and we need something to work on. We'll build an app."
We've kind of learned that maybe dad is the exception to the rule. Maybe that's one of the challenges with the app, finding independent who have the time and resources and inclination to be as transparent. We turn into an app and we're almost daily getting people, like the people that have their cars serviced, signing up so that they can keep their visual history. We don't know where we're going to take it yet. We've had some really interesting conversations with car manufacturers and some larger dealer groups. It's still going to be a long journey for us. But the results from car owners themselves has been really fascinating.
Leanne: So like a really great challenge as well.
Tyson: Yes, always a challenge with staff.
Leanne: Yes, and kind of reminds me of I've got some friends that I work with that have kids in childcare. They're often getting photos sent to them during the day. I think it's the same kind of concept that develops that trust in a way.
Tyson: Transparency will be the norm for sure.
Leanne: I'm comparing kids to cars. I probably shouldn't. Yes, it is, transparency is the new norm. I think you’re absolutely right. The automotive industry, going for something and you come out and it's $3,000, and you think, "I don’t know. Was that worth it? Did I need that"
Tyson: Maybe it helps remove some of that buyer's remorse when it's like, okay, well I knew I had to pay and I really believed that I had to get brake pads. You can have someone that needed brake pads but it wasn't communicated in the same way. They're going to give you a one star because of a miscommunication. Whereas, I believe we're big on the communication piece. I often say we're not workshop software, we're transparency and communication. It will apply to so many different industries and I think we've just started with automotive.
Leanne: I wonder how that would work in a group facilitation kind of setting. If you're running a two-day workshop, you're taking-- I do it anyway and I know a lot of facilitators do is kind of document photos of activities they've done. The group loves it because I get a souvenir of the time they've spent together.
Tyson: Totally.
Leanne: I guess your client would also benefit because they can say, "Oh, wow."
Tyson: People are engaged.
Leanne: Is there anything else that you want to share with our audience about facilitating? Actually, the other thing I want to talk to you is about something we touched on before we hit the record button. This is just an interesting thing. It doesn't actually relate to facilitation but it relates to challenges. You mentioned that you've spent, what, over 400 days just having a cold shower every day. I'd love to hear more about that. Can you share why you do that with our listeners?
Tyson: Why I do that? Because I'm weird. No, so it started as a way to break complacency. It was a bit of a challenging time just with the wrapping up of one business and starting another one. At first, it was just a way to break that complacency to get in the shower to-- it's that mental break of like-- it really snaps you out of just the mundaneness of the morning maybe. It was a reminder for me that if cold water was the worst part of my day, then life isn't too bad. So it's just cold water. Saves massively on the bills as well I want to say.
The challenge was it was a bit of accountability to my co-founders was that I would do it until we were profitable because cold showers suck and I say that in jest. They're great for some things but when you're tired and cold, they really do suck. I said, look, until we're profitable, I'll have cold showers. Then after a period of time, especially through the winter months and I could see the balance sheet, it was clear we were not going to be profitable, not in the near term.
I just said, I'm going to set a new milestone that is still I think admirable and I'll do 12 months. Then I got to the 12 month mark and I built up such a good streak and I was like-- I continued to do this for myself. I pushed the goalposts. I said, well, look, I need something to actually give it some finality. What I'll do is, after Spartan Race which is another challenge from abroad that I just completed, after Spartan Race I'll have a cold beer and a hot shower, because I also took four months off drinking at the beginning of the year.
Basically, did that and then it always like, oh, look I've done Spartan Race but maybe I'll just go till the 400 day mark. Then after a while, I realized that I well surpassed it. Last week, I had my first hot shower in a while. It was amazing. Especially, like I think San Francisco was the hardest period because I was sick and it was winter, and yes, I'm an idiot. But I got through and it was one of those things, it's really not bad.
Leanne: It’s character building.
Tyson: It's certainly the character building.
Leanne: You had a few of those in the military as well I'd imagine.
Tyson: Yes, I mean you know being at bush especially on exercising Malaysia at times, back is covered in prickly heat. You've got the radio and all ammo and webbing on you. You're dehydrated and you're living
in torrential rain for weeks on end sometimes and you forget how much you appreciate porcelain when you get back to a bathroom.
[laughter]
Yes, character building for sure.
Leanne: Character building. It's been fantastic having you on the show.
Tyson: Thank you, likewise.
Leanne: I think you've got so many other stories to share, possibly that don't fit under the theme of facilitation, but it's really interesting character building stories. I've spoken to a few facilitators who always talk about the preparation and what they need to do to get them self focused. I haven't personally tried the cold shower, but maybe that's something that I will do. I love the hot and cold as a recovery method after playing sport, but I've never done it before. It would definitely wake you up I think -
Tyson: For sure.
Leanne: - if you hadn't had much sleep. Thank you so much.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Dana the Trainer (Episode 19)
Here's the transcript with Dana the Trainer, released on 18 June 2018.
Leanne: Our guest today promises bright ideas and electric training. Whether it’s technical or professional skills you need she brings her brand- that is of energy, passion and enthusiasm to every session. She remains convinced that learning can be made engaging, colourful and even fun. And it's her life's mission to make that true. Step away from sameness and say goodbye to generic courses, she's on the line in London. Welcome to the show Dana James-Edwards otherwise known as Dana the Trainer.
Dana: Hello, thanks for having me.
Leanne: It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I really wanted to just jump right in and talk about an excerpt I read on your website which I loved and probably the reason why I invited you on the show and it's this:
“One day, there was a call for internal facilitators for technical courses and I answered the call. The second I held my first box of scented markers and stood in front of a blank flipchart I fell in love.”
That’s just so beautiful. Can you tell us about that moment what was made you fall in love with facilitation?
Dana: So, I had actually done some facilitation before but very briefly like my first job out of university and then got swept up in other things so when I was offered the opportunity after working in sort of a very technical and technology focused background for several years. It was almost like I had forgotten that I loved this and the second that I got back in front of there again I felt at home. You know how people feel nervous in front of a classroom I didn't feel that I felt like “Oh my God, this is amazing when can I do it again and I also really love scented markers, it’s true I love them!
Leanne: Wait, what type do you use? Do you use the Mr. Sketch scented markers and are they are over in the UK?
Dana: I have loads of Mr. Sketch but to be honest these days I'm going for the environmentally conscious option and using Neulands the refillable ones. Yeah, but they're not as fun as the scented one so I do keep those for the learners in the classroom.
Leanne: It is funny, the scented markers for whatever kind of response you get from people but just want to try every colour and sniff the piece of paper.
Dana: All the time! It's like they forget they're grownups and they go straight back into being kids and I love it!
Leanne: A lot of people ask me how I find my guess and it's all through different things. It could be recommendations or books that I've read but you're the first person I've interviewed who I found off Instagram. Yeah, that’s how I found you I was looking through all the hashtags like hashtag learning and development, hashtag whatever public speaking. I don't know what the tag was but something about that your brand online really enticed me because it was full of colour and this is why I was talking about Sketch markers and the scents and everything and you just have that really fun brand so I'm wondering…
Dana: …My social media strategies are working!
Leanne: And you got that recorded, so you know I'm not making it up. It is just straight there absolutely. So there's only a couple weeks ago, I was like, “Who is this Dana the Trainer?” I was curious! So tell us a bit about your brand and what is it about the energy and how do you bring that into a classroom kind of setting?
Dana: So, that really is my brand, it's about energy, and it’s about passion. I feel especially in a technical setting lots of times people come in and they're dreading the day or the two days they think it's going to be really boring they're picturing like old school learning where you get a big fat manual and you have to learn off all of this theory or there's an exam some of the courses I do have an exam at the end and you can see people coming in they're already stressed out and you haven't even started and I just think “Gosh it doesn't have to be this way!” I think that's the point and really it doesn't. There are so many things that you can do to bring learning, to bring a classroom alive to make things not be so painful for people. I think that is my aim and I'm so glad that that comes across I love colour, I love things that are engaging, I love drawing people in and if you're on a training course where you're just looking at a manual for two days and it's really just intense and intensive. You want learning for the exam, I don't want people to learn for the exam or for the now I want them to actually live with stuff that they'll remember for a long time, how do you do that by making things memorable and that means by mixing things up by doing things in a different way.
Leanne: Fantastic! This is for the audience, what type of courses do you run more of the technical course as well, what of those professional skills that you can also deliver?
Dana: Okay, so you know everyone says to specialise and when I was starting out I had lots of advice which is like, you need to pick a specialism, you need to pick either soft skills or pick a soft skill that you're really good at or pick technical skills. I can't do that, I spent so much of my life working in a technical arena those are skills that I have and I don't want to lose and then at the same time when I became a facilitator for Big4, all of the soft skills courses are wrapped up into that I kind of see them going hand in hand. So from a technical perspective, I facilitate things that I learned how to do in my life when I was technical so Project management, Agile, Software Testing, right, that's my background that's the kind of thing that I do from a technical perspective but you cannot really do all of those things unless you know how to talk to people, how to interact with them or how to communicate. They go together, right? Okay, so I don't want to choose, right? and I do both and I think it's great because I never get bored there's always stuff that's interesting me and pulling me and I'm sorry but I don't want to do the one thing okay I want to do many things!
Leanne: You can have everything they're not mutually exclusive and I like that!
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: Yeah, especially when you're talking about things like Project Management and Agile and you obviously some of your audience will be technically focused people and it would be very tempting to try and like meld in without style but I love that you're exploring and saying “No! We can make this one, we don't have to be serious”.
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: Yeah, so I'd love to hear a bit about, I mean you've got this. I can tell over our Skype conversation a very bubbly outgoing personality. Growing up, were you always this way where you're always very confident in front of a classroom?
Dana: So I was a bookworm, my sister makes fun of me. When I was in Secondary School I was a library prefect. I was that quiet. On a lunchtime, I'd like to go to the library and read so I was of hot about books, about reading, I wasn't like an outdoor “Miss Popularity” kind of person. However, I have to say I was really good at debate so like from sixth form there were debate and public speaking competitions and I really excel there. I'm a bubbly person but I can't actually pinpoint maybe when this all happened, maybe it's in University when I was a little bit more free I'm not sure but if I look back through a childhood I was definitely a lot quieter and maybe more reserved, very studious and one of those exam people who loved exams as an achievement and that kind of thing so maybe it was that I was wrapped up in all of that achievement at the time and then “Dana the Trainer”, this bubbly person came a little bit later.
Leanne: Yeah I love how you talked about Dana the Trainer as a kind of another person or personality. I was looking at your website and it's again the first website I've seen where you have your own cartoon series. I mean, that's incredible! How did you get that idea? Where did that come from?
Dana: That was, what I like to call a “shower thought”. So my best ideas come to me when I’m in the shower and I thought, they always do right?
Leanne: Like always. Yeah!
Dana: I thought how fun would it be to have this and I spent a long time looking for graphic designers, etc. to be able to help me with the idea and it's just something unique and fun that you don't see very often. It just popped into my head and I did it.
Leanne: I think I was looking through a cartoon series and the ones that really well, the one that really popped out for me because it's something that I do as well is one where you're in bed and it's like 9 o'clock in the evening and it's the night before a workshop and I really need a good night's sleep because I need to be on my game tomorrow and then three till about 12:30 in the morning you're still thinking about how the session go and who's in the room.
Dana: That is my life in a cartoon.
Leanne: Yeah, that's exactly what I do and I thought I was probably, maybe I may be thinking things too much and maybe like the more that I do this the easier it will get but I find that I'm still over preparing. Is that what you're finding as well, you're still kind of overthinking it because you want it to be great?
Dana: You do. This is yourself, it's you're brand, you've invested, you want things to go really well and I did tell myself at the beginning, you know what, “the more practice you have, this is going to be great, you'll be going to sleep earlier” but still even when you know the content and you're familiar with it. You're still thinking about “Who's going to be there tomorrow? What if this exercise doesn't work? What do I have as a backup for this? Did I pack this thing? I have a packing list. You just get so wrapped up and everything I think.
Leanne: Yeah, so what kind of things are on your packing list?
Dana: So, it depends on the type of session but I will always have sharpies or Mr. Sketch markers depending on what I’m doing. I always have my trusty speaker, I do love some music in the classroom so I'm a big fan of that. Whatever exercises we are using for the day would be packed in there and that sort of varies between. I love doing paper airplanes at the end of the day to recap key learning points. I always have some coloured paper and I also lately have been super into getting delegates to use pipe cleaners to create their key learning points and so I take some of those with me. I also have something that I called a magical treat bag when groups are really competitive and someone says something really amazing in the session or they win a game or an activity or something it's always good to have a reward so I have this massive bag of Kathy that I take everywhere with me so that learners can pull from the bag also people that are feeling a little bit low-energy they can have some treats and stuff in the classroom. For those of you who are listening and saying “Oh my God that's super not healthy!” It doesn't matter, it's one day of training its fine. Yeah that kind of stuff but I'm trying to think is there any. Oh! I always have those kinesthetic learning toys: A. because they're fun and B. because it gives some people something to fiddle with and also when they come into the room it sets the expectation from the outset that things are going to be a little bit different and gives people a bit of a talking point before they even come into the room so I quite like that as well.
Leanne: Yeah, nice!
Dana: Pens, pencils, and notepads everything that's branded and says Dana the Trainer on it is there as well.
Leanne: It's like you were born to do this like your name just rhymed “the Trainer” it's perfect I love.
I really do admire your brand.
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: With these, I would like to talk about when people come into your room and they say this environment. So you set it up, you got pens it's very colourful especially for the technical people they aren't expecting it. How then that create that mood?
Dana: That is actually my favourite moment of the day when people start arriving and they're like okay this is totally not what I was expecting especially when it's the first time that I've been to a particular company and you could see it on their faces and so they exclaim and plodded like “This looks fun, this looks colourful.” and I think it sets the tone and the mood for the day but especially for technical courses I love it because no one's really expecting it so it's great.
Leanne: Do you get some people that are a little bit awkward and don't know how to really react to it or get into the kind of being back being a kid and having fun, would that take a bit of time?
Dana: It is rare when that happens usually the opposite happens which is they get super into it and they choose their seat based on the toy that they want to play with most. There might be some people who start off being more reserved but by the first break of the morning especially if the rest of the group is swept up, they are into it as well, so it might take some a little longer but usually by the end of the day they’re embraced.
Leanne: Yeah that's beautiful. So we're talking about the participants entering room at the beginning. How are you feeling about you know fifteen minutes, ten minutes to go to the workshop, what do you do to prepare or you'd already in the room greeting participants? Are you doing your power pose? What is Dana the Trainer do?
Dana: I am in the room and I am greeting the delegates for 10 to 15 minutes before. I am there, I'm talking to people, and I’m reviewing, taking minutes in between to just review what's coming up. I am NOT power posing, the power posing would happen maybe before that 50 minutes when no one is there and I'm going to say something that is completely crazy. [Leanne maybe you want to edit this out after I'm done saying it]. What really gets me hyped up and in the mood right before section is hardcore gangster rap, I love it!
Leanne: I love it too!
Dana: We go to songs. There on my iPod and sometimes I excuse myself to the loo and I just go in there have a little listen if the energy levels are feeling low sometimes I can manage to do it with one side of a headphone just in the classroom but like hike music I love it I have my game face on and ready to go for the day.
Leanne: Yeah, I love that because it's something that I do as well. You know, I've got a mixer sort of rock and a bit of rap and hip-hop and stuff like that so I've created a Spotify playlist called First-Time Facilitator and it's just all my favourite like even some ballads are on there that you can just croon along to in the car put right up because you've got a lot of nervous energy that's flailing around.
Dana: You do it, it has to come out somehow, right?
Leanne: It has to come out, you can't like just go in the boxing ring or anything you just got to unleash it somehow so isn't that nice to know that we're on opposite hemispheres and we both print the same way.
Dana: Aligned!
Leanne: We’re aligned! I want to talk about energy as well so it's very easy I mean, yeah the worst thing sometimes is that you don't get that good night's sleep because you are overthinking in and then it gets to 12:01, I really need to sleep now and but naturally you've got that adrenaline that gets you through in the morning but days you know one, two or three day workshops can be quite exhausting.
Dana: They are!
Leanne: How do you sort of balance the level of energy you're giving out to the participants and how do you make sure that you're in there for the long the long haul?
Dana: So, I saw this question on your lesson I thought, “Oh my God I'm going to answer this and everyone's going to hate me when I say this.”
Leanne: I don't think so.
Dana: I wake up this way!
Leanne: Tell us.
Dana: I know. What's really interesting is when I met my now husband, there was one day when I came home and he was like “We need to talk.” and I was like “Oh my goodness he's going to break up with me.” but actually the talk was you wake up in the morning and it's like you open your eyes and in that one second you go from zero to a hundred and I don’t want to like that can you please stop being so high energy in the morning and so we've worked out a strategy where I don't talk to him for the first thirty minutes of every day cause he's not a morning person but I just naturally have high reserves of energy and I always find that after the first day of a workshop I can sleep better so like all that angst and staying up until 12:30 a.m. by the end of the first day: A. you’re exhausted and B. you've eliminated all of those things that you were really worried about the night before the first workshop, so getting a good night's rest on the first night kind of sets you up for the remaining days, I think.
Leanne: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. It's because it's more about, it's not even about your preparation or your content or anything like that, it's more about how I anticipate what's going on.
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: And by known audience, knowing the dynamic on that first day you can rest easier plus absolutely you've been on your feet all day, you've been using your voice, yeah you're pretty naked.
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: Okay, so I'd like to on that note of preparing for the unexpected. Have you ever had a time where things didn't go to plan in one of your training sessions and could you share that story?
Dana: Of course my favourite one is where I walked into a room being me ready to start the day. So the first you know that 15 minutes when everyone's coming in started greeting people and realising that they were super grouchy like unhappy, angry even is what I would say and then listening to the discussion in the room. I realised, okay they think that this training session is some kind of punishment for an incident that had happened in the company now I was aware that something had happened but maybe not aware that people were not looking forward to the training and actually were quite resentful that the session had been put on.
So I walked into a room of 15 people mean-mugging being really angry at me with lots on their chest to get off before I even had a chance to say Good morning, I had a question from the room which was “Do you think it's fair that we have to sit in this session while senior leadership isn't there?” I didn't even get to say “Hi, I'm Dana the Trainer” and there was just this wall of anger and I realised, okay people are not going to be able to take in anything or learn anything in the session unless we get some of this emotion out so the time that I would have used for intros I had to modify that to be a kind of a “let's get it out, bring it home” kind of session so that we could talk about what precipitated the session and how they were feeling etc. so that we could get into the learning. I always think about that session because actually it has changed the way that I prepare with clients as part of the planning process now I have added in a question which goes something like “How are the learners is feeling about this session? Are they looking forward to it? Are they interested?” like I asked even more questions that I normally would to get all the background because for that scenario I thought I had asked all of the relevant and pertinent questions so I did know that something had happened that precipitated the learning but I don't think I had grasped to what was going to be happening in the room and so now I always make sure to dot the I's and cross the T's with that extra question before I go in.
Leanne: Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. That's a great sort of prevention is better than cure. I think I mean, I'm listening to that and I'm sure with some of our listeners that listening going that's probably our worst nightmare, like that you haven't even started and it's already railroaded.
Dana: It was pretty bad.
Leanne: Yeah, but I also love that you've created this question that can just cover that off when you're working with clients.
Dana: I need to know in advance, I mean if you know that's what you're going into, you can at least be a little bit more prepared. When it's a shock those are the kinds of things that keep you up until 12:50 in the morning what if it's going to happen or not.
Leanne: It's a good survival story, absolutely!
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: So, when you're talking to clients so you got this question, you know what the learners thinking about this training and that's a really great question. What if you get a client that comes to you and they're asking you to deliver a session that you don't have the content on ready. It's something that's a bit new, you know that you can deliver it. How do you approach that process?
Dana: So firstly, I want as much information from the client as humanly possible, right? Why are they running the session and why right now? What’s precipitated this? What are the learning outcomes they want? What are the behaviours and attitudes they want to see changed? If this learning intervention was successful how would they know it was successful so I really want to be clear with them on what it is that they're trying to get out of the session.
Now, I'm not one of those people who can block and say “Okay today, I'm going to spend thirty minutes on the session.” I'm more of an “it needs to marinate” girl, so I'm thinking about it and it's in my mind all the time. I'm thinking about it in the shower, I go for a walk. I'm thinking about it I get some of my best ideas outdoors. I'm constantly jotting things down. I have an app when things come to my mind that I might want to use and I want to give myself some time to come up with my own ideas before I jump into any research because for me research can skew you and kind of limit your own ideas so I want to have the bulk of my own ideas first before I go into any research and see what's out there but I'm also a big fan of utilising my Personal Learning Network so other facilitators who I know I want to reach out to them find out if they've done something similar, what kinds of things they've done in the space. I have a group of people or I've come up through the business with we're always happy to bounce ideas off of each other if I was really struggling and I needed a design assistant can also draw from that network as well to help me.
And another thing, I do which I think that people maybe don't use so much is search for the hashtag on social media and see what comes up. Why do people not do this right because people are posting so much exciting content out there and if you just type into Google you will probably never find it but if you type into Instagram or to Twitter that particular hashtag sometimes really amazing stuff comes up that can really help you with your idea generation and with the design process.
Leanne: Yeah, I mean that's how I found you but also I found some really cool Icebreakers on YouTube.
Dana: Oh my gosh, Youtube!
Leanne: Yeah, you save a bit of time like in here, you lost, you know what YouTube's like, you're looking at Icebreakers and then you're looking at like climbing Mount Everest.
Dana: And cats, there’s always cats.
Leanne: Yeah there's always cats. Hey, what app do you use to capture all of your ideas?
Dana: So, I'm a Trello girl. I do love Trello and I just like taking, it helps me keep myself on track but then it just gives me somewhere to record things if I'm in a pinch as well just the Notes app, it's good for a brain dump, you can put as many things in there but I almost live my life powered by Trello.
Leanne: Yeah and for those listening that don't know what Trello is we'll link to those in the show notes. Trello is an amazing like project tool but it's very visual it's like a visual board where you, it's kind of like virtual post-it notes almost.
Dana: Exactly and I love post-it notes in real life but being able to have them wherever I go because I travel a lot is very useful and I think that's my project management I have a background coming to the floor as well because it's a tool that we used in work that I also use for myself as well.
Leanne: Yeah and that's right you can use it. You don't have to use it only for work, I was booking up an upcoming holiday and all those ideas about what to do when in hotels and activities and just Trelloed it!
Dana: That's so true, one of my friends so I would quite closely with, did whole wedding on Trello. It was amazing!
Leanne: Well, that’s not simple. I can imagine they would be in so many different columns and deadlines.
Dana: It was next level.
Leanne: She should sell that template, I think it could be very popular. I'm interested in knowing so now you know you've worked in the one, the Big4 consulting firm and now you're a facilitator. What do you think are the key skills of not only a good facilitator but a next level facilitator? What do you think that the skills are of someone the ones to attain that kind of status?
Dana: So I think preparedness is important, right? There is a lot of work that maybe people don't see that goes into being an excellent facilitator but in the same breath of that you have to be prepared to be flexible. Like you cannot be rigid, sticking to your lesson plan or your time plan. The classroom is a place of surprise and I think the best facilitators can pull the learning out of what is happening in the room instead of sticking really strictly to a script. Sometimes you think something's going to be a big aha moment but actually the group is picking up on something else and it's having a bit of discussion around it. I think an excellent facilitator knows to let that discussion go especially if it's useful for the group, knows how to ask pertinent questions, knows how to pivot in the moment to get the best that they can out of the learners who they're with and for them so that you're still getting the learning objectives across but being prepared to do it maybe in a different way than the way that you plan. I think that is one of the skill that takes you from being just a normal training facilitator to being an amazing trainer facilitator.
Leanne: And it really does take a lot of your active listening, a lot of seeing what's going on in the room, you never really relaxed.
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: Yeah you always sort of like that night out just watching what's going on, even more doing great learning activities like what I need to observe out of these.
Dana: You’re frustrated, you wanted to hear all the groups. Exactly!
Leanne: Yeah. I want to hover but I don't want to seem like I'm listening in and it's just constant. I think there's a lot of overthinking and I think maybe over experienced you do to develop those like having at numerous things in your back pocket that you can go through but I think...
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: Yeah, that's what sort of as a first-time facilitator, the only way that you can get better at it is just by continuing to do it.
Dana: Practice!
Leanne: That's right. Now, do you have a go-to icebreaker like do favourite thing that energises people that gets everyone in the room like really…
Dana: So it depends, right? Now, if it's a public course where people don't know each other I am very conscious that the first few moments of the day can be really intimidating especially for people who maybe aren't as extroverted as the rest of the people in the group so I always about Icebreakers. I don't want to push it too far but I still want people to be able to have fun and embrace the moment.
So in a mixed group what I like to do is start off with some one-on-ones like greet as many people in the room as you can in ten minutes but I would include a fun question that you have to ask each person that you miss or a way that you have to start off greeting each person like top of the morning to you and isn't it a wonderful day good says you have to say before you get into the introduction and then a silly question that you have to ask them as part of the greeting. I think things that start off maybe a bit more one-on-one or small group instead of “Please stand and introduce yourself and say some quickly facts to the room!” puts a lot less pressure on people and gives them a bit of a chance to relaxed. So for me that is something that I'm conscious about I get that you have limited time and it's easier for everyone to stand and just introduce themselves but I guarantee there is a person or people sitting there thinking “Oh God, please no, not me.” And I don’t want that kind. I avoid that.
Leanne: Oh absolutely. I mean yeah, I mean I'm sort of, it's funny because I'm one of those people. I am a niche extrovert. I get up in front of workshops, I do lots of speeches and things like that but even in that scenario where you’re in a new group and it's going around one by one. I'm not even listening what the other people are saying.
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: So I'm thinking what am I going to say in my introduction and so you don't really in the moment yourself because you just want everyone's worried about their own introduction.
Dana: Exactly and you miss it, so I love more one-on-one small group stuff where you really get a chance to get to know the people who you're going to be learning with and more involved and I would totally advocate that for anyone who is listening.
Leanne: Yes me too, absolutely! Now, before we hit the record button on this we're talking about you know me reaching out to you and you saying yes and then that got us on to the topic of the themes for our year and I think it's nice to share something like that with our audience. So what is your theme for the year and why did you decide to choose that?
Dana: My theme for this year is say YES, sometimes opportunities are fall into my lap and I think “Oh no, I’m not sure about this.” You know there's that element of self-doubt still even though I am an experienced facilitator. At the end of last year, I went to a session that was helping us reflect on the year that had gone by and we created you know our vision for our new year and something that really popped out of me was this idea of saying yes and embracing things and seeing where they go and so that really has been what my year has been about so far opportunities and have come into my lap. I have been actively trying to say yes more, you reached out to me, I said yes! And look here we are on a podcast. I've also done another interview already for the year. I'm just saying yes to things, so anyone who's listening and wants to ask me something asked me because chances are this year is the year I'm going to say YES!
Leanne: I love it and again we've completely aligned on this, we love the same music but I am sorry my year this year was the year of action and that's kind of like saying yes but also just taking the most of the opportunities and I think having a kind of theme like that like you said it's very easy for that doubt to creep in that imposter syndrome that person in your head saying “Oh, you're not ready for this” but if you have that theme and it’s your default response, you can just, it doesn't matter because you just say yes and let's get on with it.
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: Yeah I am anyone that does have that kind of doubt within themselves it's completely normal I think we're all walking around all of us with a bit of self-doubt having a default theme like that definitely recommend.
Dana: I agree completely.
Leanne: Yeah, now Dana, is there any other advice that you could offer to our first-time facilitators that are listening in?
Dana: So the first thing is get out there as much as you can, say yes, okay? So the only way to become better at the skills of facilitation is to actually facilitate. If you're feeling nervous maybe find someone that you can buddy up with to deliver sessions always a good idea but really you want to be spending as much time as possible actually facilitating because that's how you get back to is the first thing. The second thing is don't be afraid to borrow from other facilitators who you think are awesome. What I like to do is attend training sessions myself but I like to do it incognito. I don't want to put any pressure on the facilitators facilitating until the very end. I'm there to learn what the course is about but I also find that I always pick up some facilitation tips that I can add to my arsenal as I watch other facilitators do what they do.
So don't be afraid to attend some training courses yourself, it’s always great. Go to Meetups, write anything where you can see other facilitators, other facilitators in action is great and then try and incorporate some of those things into the stuff that you do on a day to day basis.
Leanne: That's a brilliant advice and I especially agree with your role modelling. I'm actually doing, I'm in a two-day workshop at the moment as a participant and I've been picking up on so much that I can learn and just writing it down even little simple activities.
Dana: Exactly!
Leanne: Making notes, I need to get Trello on my phone actually just so because I've got like 10 different notepads at the moment. Actually, I'm getting the new iPad so I'll be carrying that with me everywhere and also role modelling. I think after this conversation a lot of people will probably wish there are in London attending one of your workshops because you can tell, you're just so passionate about this you really invest that time and to make it an energetic and fun experience and I think we all appreciate that all of us would have been to corporate sessions or technical training. We are a bit bored of the old approach of a manual and just the status quo so its love to it's great to see someone challenging that. So finally, Dana where can people find you?
Dana: Where can they find me? Well, on social media is a great place to be able to find me. My website as well www.danathetrainer.com and from there you link to all of my social media. Don't be afraid to drop me an email, to reach out, I love connecting with people like I said I'm always on there as well searching those hashtags. I think it's great to build a network especially of people who are facilitators as well so please do find me and I'm on email as well dana@danathetrainer.com you can't forget that it's really easy to remember!
Leanne: It's very sticky and I definitely suggest that you follow Dana especially because of all the colourful moments it'll just colour up your social media feed. So thank you so much for being on the show, I can't wait to share this episode with our listeners. I think you've provided some really practical advice but also you know some aspiration on how we can lift our energy levels. I wish we had your energy but other things that we can do on the room to make that fun for everyone so Thank You Dana!
Dana: Thank you so much for having me. I was so nervous but this was actually so much fun just like a conversation with a friend so it's been great thank you so much I am thrilled that I said yes!
Leanne: I'm thrilled that you said too. Chat soon!
Episode 18: Help! Suggestions needed for facilitating a two hour workshop. Listener Q&A
In today’s episode I respond to a listener’s question - I do these listener Q&A’s from time to time, to give you some practical insight into how I facilitate and approach situations.
In today’s episode I respond to a listener’s question - I do these listener Q&A’s from time to time, to give you some practical insight into how I facilitate and approach situations.
Today’s question is from Joanne Alilovic from 3D HR Legal.
Like me, Jo likes to do things a little bit differently.
In her business she takes her legal knowledge, combines that with her HR skills to help create tailored polices and procedures for individual businesses.
Her question is:
I have a client who wants to throw out their existing human resources manual and start fresh. We are thinking of creating documents such as a Code of Conduct, a performance management policy, complaints procedure etc.
In order to create something that is truly reflective of the workplace and the people who work in it, we decided it would be good to get the staff involved.
So we have scheduled a 2 hour facilitation session to discuss the types of policies and procedures they need, and the content for them.
Do you have any suggestions on how to run this session?
Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the show?
If you have a question you’d like to send through, either tweet it to me @leannehughes or send me an email – hello@firsttimefacilitator.com.
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Episode transcript
Episode transcript (Episode 18)
This is the show transcript for Episode 18 of the First Time Facilitator podcast.
Leanne: Hi everyone and THANK YOU for choosing to listen to Episode 18 of the First Time Facilitator podcast.
It’s really hard to believe that for the last 18 weeks, I’ve delivered an episode to you every Monday at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, Brisbane time.
The last time I was dedicated to anything like this was probably back in 2015 when I ran the Gold Coast Marathon. I really enjoyed having that daily discipline of waking up, lacing up the shoes and heading out the door. I liked it as I’m not typically a very disciplined type of person.
Through this, I discovered a few things that help me honour my commitments. It’s really about using the motivation to then build a habit. It’s also about having a really important vision of your end goal - so in the case of a marathon, if I didn’t get out of bed and run, then I wouldn’t make it to the 42km Finish Line. Most important is that
I also had a coach who I’d email every week with my times, and he’d respond with feedback and set my plan for the week.
Accountability for me, is key. And I guess for this podcast, I feel accountable to all of you who are listening in, sharing this podcast with colleagues and friends, tweeting me and emailing… thank you so much for helping me stay consistent and honour this weekly commitment.
Today’s episode is my second solo one and again I’m responding in to a listener question. I’ll do these listener Q&A’s from time to time, to give you some practical insight into how I facilitate and approach situations.
If you have a question you’d like to send through, either tweet it to me @leannehughes or send me an email – hello@firsttimefacilitator.com.
I’d like to thank my friend Joanne Alilovic from 3D HR Legal in Western Australia for her question. Jo and I met at a conference called ‘We Are Podcast’ in Brisbane last November.
Neither of us had a podcast back then, and we both launched our podcasts in March this year. Jo’s podcast is called The Juggle and is all about how you can balance your career and work commitments. For anyone out there who thinks their constantly juggling their priorities, I recommend listening in to her show. I’ll link to it in the show notes for this episode at firsttimefacilitator.com/episode17.
Anyway, like me, Jo likes to do things a little bit differently. She’s a lawyer. In her business she takes her legal knowledge, combines that with her HR skills to help create tailored polices and procedures for individual businesses.
Jo wrote in with the following question:
‘I have a client who wants to throw out their existing human resources manual and start fresh.
We are thinking of creating documents such as a Code of Conduct, a performance management policy, complaints procedure etc.
In order to create something that is truly reflective of the workplace and the people who work in it, we decided it would be good to get the staff involved.
So we have scheduled a 2 hour facilitation session to discuss the types of policies and procedures they need, and the content for them.
Do you have any suggestions on how to run this session?
Okay first thing first. I’m impressed that the company is getting their employees involved in the process. I know it seems obvious but sometimes organisations don’t recognise this and take the critical step of engaging with their people.
So, a big high five to your client, and a big high five to you too, Jo.
I do have some suggestions I can share with you. Let’s start with preparation.
Way back in Episode 7, my guest Sue Johnstone and I spoke about preparation and how it’s critical. One of the things she drives the most is being very clear on your workshop outcomes.
As part of your prep work, I would suggest working with your client to agree on what those outcomes are. They could include things like, ‘‘Agreeing on the 5 most urgent and important HR policies to deliver’, or ‘Creating sub-groups to tackle each policy’ or ‘Generating enthusiasm for agreed actions and next steps’.
Notice that each of these outcome starts with a verb. An action word. This gives you clarity on what the outcome looks like. Avoid starting the outcome with a word like ‘Understanding’. That’s something I learnt in my first job out of university, working as an Instructional Designer.
Now for the purposes of this podcast. I’m going to assume that the outcomes I just listed are the outcomes the client wants too (I really have no idea, but to keep this going, let’s lock those ones in).
Oh and let’s pause this for a second. If you’re listening in and also have tips for Jo on your approach, please sing out and get in touch!
Let’s talk about your participants. I I like to find out as much as I can about the people in the room. Who are they? Do they all get along? What’s their motivation for being involved (or have they been nominated)? Has anyone developed policies before? Etc.
I believe there are facilitators out there who would prefer not to know this information and arrive without pre-conceived bias, but I guess at this stage of my career in facilitation, I like to know as much as I can. If I can anticipate that there will be tension with some people in the room, that’s helpful.
When considering your participants, try to put yourself in their shoes. They can barely keep up with the hundreds of emails in their inbox and now, on top of all of their other regular meetings, they’ve been asked to attend this two hour policy session.
Jo you’re going to be working with people that are busy, some may not even know why they’re in the room and you need to extract some information from their heads PLUS get them excited about this project… oh and then leave them with action items afterwards. I mean, this isn’t Mission Impossible… but it’s not far from it!
You’ve been given two hours to work with, which isn’t a lot of time. Your outcome is to find out what HR policies and procedures they require, and what information they want in those policies, and you also want to leave with enthusiasm and action items too.
So, prior to the workshop I would create a quick definitions sheet of key HR policies and procedures that are common in most organistions. The definitions sheet would have things like:
‘A performance management policy is dot dot dot…companies use it to…dot dot dot.
Now the reason I’m suggesting this is that it’s easier for you to look at a comprehensive list of policies and procedures and eliminate the ones you don’t need; rather than looking at a blank page and starting from scratch. You’ve also set the definitions so you won’t be getting arguments over policy definitions.
Ideally, you could email this information through to the participants prior to your workshop.
Now, let’s talk about delivery
I suggest you share the following information with your group upfront. Stealing a phrase from my favourite thought leader, Simon Sinek, start with why.
Share the context: And share it by stating problem and solutions. For example,
Yes it is painful working on these policies from scratch in the short-term but in future it will save more time because you won’t have managers tapping on your door every day, asking how what the process is to onboard a new employee.
Share WHY you’ve been asked to facilitate this workshop. Jo, you can rely on your credibility and experience here… you’re in the business of overhauling HR policies…you are the guru.
Share the outcomes you want to drive in the two hour workshop and why it’s critical.
- not only in that two hour session; Check in - do they agree?
I suggest you also include engagement activities early in the piece. This helps setup expectations that you’re not there to tell them what to do…
My guess is that the people in the room know each other already, so you won’t need to do any formal type of introductions.
If I was going to run some type of opener, I’d suggest keeping it simple, to get them in small groups of about 3 or 4 people and ask them to discuss in their groups a simple question like ‘Why do we have policies?’ or for more interesting answers (and laughs), you can reverse that question and ask ‘What would a company look like without policies?’
Debrief as a group. Instead of asking one group to share all their ideas, ask for one idea per group and continue to rotate around the group.
That way, when the last group is called onto speak, they have something to contribute and won’t just say ‘Oh yeah we agree with what the other groups have said’.
Okay, so now we’ve established why policies and procedures are important.
On an aside, given your time-frame, I think a Parking Lot is a good idea. Simply write Parking Lot on a piece of flip-chart paper and pop it to the side of the room. Explain that if they start talking about a subject that is off topic, or they can’t solve quickly that we park that conversation and explore it later on (if time) or outside of the workshop.
Now, remember that policy definition sheet I asked Jo to prepare? If it was given as pre-work, great, if not, then as part of the workshop I’d hand this out and ask them to individually review the policies listed.
I would then, ask them individually to circle the 5-6 (you can change the numbers, this is an example) Policy titles they believe are ‘non-negotiable’.
Following this, I’d ask them to place draw an asterisk against two policies that would be nice to have.
Meanwhile, you’ve written the name of each policy on individual post-it notes and put them up on the wall.
Ask them to walk up and vote on the policies they believe are most important. You can use stickers and allocate 7 per person, these stickers are their voting cards.
By doing this, you’ll notice trends. Either some policies receive the most votes and are clear majorities; or they could be scattered across various policies. Whatever the outcome of the voting, you have some good discussion points here.
Because we’re talking about priorities, you could even draw something like Stephen Covey’s priority quadrant matrix (important vs urgent) and then as a group, see if you can categorise each policy within the matrix - what’s most important and most urgent; what’s important but not urgent, etc.
This is when you enter the mode of facilitator and use your arsenal of open-ended questions to encourage discussion within the group.
You’ll notice those who aren’t contributing and entice them into the conversation. If there is someone who is contributing an awful lot and may be overbearing, you can say things like, ‘‘Hey John, I appreciate your input but I’d like to hear from some others in the room’.
Once you’ve categorised each policy, the next step would then be allocating 3-4 people to each policy or the policies with the most ‘votes’.
In these small groups, you can ask them to brainstorm:
What topics do we need to cover under the policy?
Does this policy link in with another policy?
Do we have all the information we have right now to develop the policy? Yes/No (If no, what other information do we need to find out?
Who else do we need to consult with?
I would encourage this sub-group to chat for about 30mins, and then each group to share their findings as a group; for feedback.
I would then reserve the last 20-30mins for action planning.
Again, come in with a project template which will create consistency across the groups. In this template, ask them to allocate roles within the team, action items and time-frames.
To wrap up, thank the group, emphasise the importance of the feedback, what you learnt, and how you will communicate with the team to ensure those policies are ready.
Okay that’s a really quick snippet but some ideas and activities to get you started, Jo.
What I also want to mention is that I love using design thinking to brainstorm and for innovation. I though about bringing in some design thinking concepts here, like reversing assumptions and question-storming, however I believe that’s more important in the next step - the step where the group then really starts questioning what each policy should have, and what it shouldn’t have. If you’ve never heard of these design thinking concepts, I’ll explain them in a future episode - they’re gold.