Leanne Hughes 10/18/21 Leanne Hughes 10/18/21

196: Having the courage to facilitate with flair with Suzanne Rose

The magic of this podcast is that I get to connect with amazing facilitators around the world. I met today's guest through the podcast. She also lives in Brisbane and over the last couple of years we’ve hung out at various events, she's hosted some Flipchart meetups at her property and over coffees (and wine!) we've riffed off all of the topics related to group dynamics, learning and facilitation. Her passion simply shines through. So of course, I had to get her on the show!

My guest is Suzanne Rose and she is a Sergeant of the Queensland Police Service, having joined in 1998. She was poached by a spotter in recent years, and landed the perfect role for her personality, running professional development workshops for police training facilitators. This includes her favourite signature three-day facilitation skills workshop - 'Facilitate with Flair'.

Her role has led her to study the craft of facilitation beyond her organisation, and to learn what is best practice based on research from around the world, including studies from the fields of neuroscience and educational psychology.

We talk more about her Facilitate with Flair experience and how she navigates the mindset of "doing things differently" when working in an organisation which is hierarchical, and where things are done a certain way.

Suzanne is committed to transforming aspects of police organisational culture around training. She hopes to reduce the mortality rate with the cause of death being PowerPoint, and actively inspires facilitators to be brave enough to try more engaging and fun ways to deliver their sessions - even the heavy, dry and serious policing topics.

About our guest: Suzanne Rose

Suzanne Rose is a Sergeant of the Queensland Police Service in Australia, having joined in 1998. Most of her service has been in frontline street policing, with a taste of property crime investigation, and years as a Police Operational Advisor in a non-urgent contact centre. When not on COVID Deployments, she is now based at the Police Academy.

In recent years she was rescued from her mundane role of editing e-learning word documents when she was hand-picked by a supervisor who identified her presentation skills and wanted her in his team...to run professional development workshops for training staff. Her favourite is a three-day facilitation skills workshop she calls 'Facilitate with Flair'. The careful design of the content and activities led her to study the craft of facilitation beyond her organisation, and to learn what is 'best practice' based on research from around the world— including studies from the fields of neuroscience and educational psychology.

Suzanne is committed to transforming aspects of her organisation's training culture. For starters, she hopes to see long sessions morphed into bite-sized 20 minute learning episodes with a short brain break or energisers in between. Also, she wants a reduction in the mortality rate caused by 'Death by PowerPoint' - with more active learning done in its place.

What drives Suzanne is her passion for inspiring facilitators to be brave about trying new, engaging and diverse ways to deliver their sessions (which often cover heavy, dry topics). This will lead to greater participant engagement, retention of information, and transfer of knowledge and skills to the workplace. Connecting with people across her organisation and other agencies through her role lights her up, and she dreams of a world in which all facilitation is 'anti-boring'.

Suzanne is a full-time working mum who lives in Brisbane on acreage in koala habitat. She lives with her husband and their two young daughters, a Labrador, 7 pet chickens who love cuddles, and an abundance of wallabies, possums, rainbow lorikeets and kookaburras around their bush property. She spends her spare time making fun memories with her girls, and can't wait to take them on adventures through far-away lands abroad where nothing is taken for granted.

Question Leanne asked Suzanne during the interview:

What were you thinking when you jumped to facilitation?
What common mistakes do you see some facilitators make and how can you help?
Do you believe that any session can be made interesting, interactive, and engaging?
How do you develop the confidence and try different things and experiment and push the boundaries?
How do you get ready before a session?
What are your tips for first-time facilitators?

In this episode you will learn:

How to help boost participation in your workshops
How to develop confidence in the way you facilitate
Some of the common traps first time facilitators make

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Suzanne Rose on LinkedIn

Watch the episode here!

About your host: Leanne Hughes

Leanne Hughes is an international facilitator, speaker and coach who loves creating unpredictable workshop experiences, that predictably work.

She combines her experience in Marketing, with her education in Human Resources and Psychology, to help leaders create engaging everyday experiences - that are so contagious they scale across teams, functions and regions.

Leanne has facilitated leadership, onboarding and team-development workshops across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore and believes in a strengths-centred approach to learning and development. She has over 14 years’ of experience across a range of industries including mining, government and tourism sectors.

She’s the host of the First Time Facilitator podcast and is the Winner (External) in the 2021 Australian Learning Impact awards for Learning Professional of the Year.