Facilitation Lab Podcast

"Once people have the experience [to step] outside and they're willing...to create, to model, to look at the world with a new perspective and they realize, 'Oh my, the power is not the things. The power is my willingness and my openness to interact with these things and give it my imagination.'" -Liya James   In this episode of Control the Room, Liya James and I discuss the value of environment sh...

"We have two really strong capacities [as human beings]. One is about discipline, finishing things and staying aligned. ...We'll call that the discipline muscle.  The other muscle is the initiative muscle. That's where we're going out on a limb, we're taking a risk, we're being creative, we're curious about what might happen if." -Diana Joseph Diana Joseph is the Founder of the Corporate Accelerat...

"Learning by being with an expert and learning how they think and why they think is super important, but not necessarily an expert who's the best. ...The best ways that you can learn are from people who just learned it. Scaffolding your learning and putting yourself in environments where you're learning from someone who just learned something is the fastest way you can basically learn things in th...

"As leaders, I think it's very important to determine 'what kind of community are you building?' 'What kind of space are you providing?' Leaders then have to decide 'what kind of communities are we creating [in the organization], what kind of spaces and what kind of empathy do we have for the people on our team?'" -Elizabeth Maloba Elizabeth Maloba is the Co-Founder of Nahari, an organization buil...

"The way that your organization and your team meet is either something that can emerge out of habit and grow organically, which may or may not be a good thing, or it's something that you can design. It...starts by actually looking at what you're doing and having an honest conversation about whether that's working for you." -Elise Keith Elise Keith is the CEO of Lucid Meetings, a company that leads...

"This work really is about the design of human connection because there is a design. There's a design to conversations that turn out well, and there's a design to conversations that don't. If you...start to understand the design of what brings people together to actually produce more than you might imagine, you can create that magic...regardless of the circumstances." -Robin Anselmi   Robin Anselm...

"More and more people are starting to recognize that the problems that we're having usually aren't issues of good versus evil.  It's differences of perspective. And if we can take the time to learn these skills and use negotiation as a tool to resolve these conflicts, we could leave these conflicts with stronger relationships and better deals." -Kwame Christian   Kwame Christian is the Director at...

" I realized...that I could teach people[leaders in organizations] to pay attention to their own body all day and all night, but that doesn't change the system unless that person has a motivation to look outside themselves and make a change with the people around them. " Jade Duggan is the Strategic Counselor at Mindbody Leadership, a Communications Culture Design expert, and Wellness Coach in Hol...

" I think the first question a facilitator should ask is, 'Do I have a model or does the model have me?'...As a facilitator, we want to encounter the other methods, so that frankly, we're more resilient to shocks in our group. " Marcus Crow is the Co-Founder of 10,000 Hours and a scholar practitioner for over 20+ years, where he masterfully inspires teams to develop new skills to reach their maxim...

" Because there is this law or that law, or people started giving us all the reasons that things don't have to change or all of the things that are preventing change, [it] prevents people from dreaming about something different . How do we create these just, equitable, and diverse futures moving forward? "   Lesley is the NC State University Asst. Professor of Design and Author & Creator of the De...

"If you've got a breath and you're a warm body, then I know that fun is going to be the magic, my most potent weapon...to be able to invite you to participate."   Mark Collard is the Founder of Playmeo, a company that provides a group-game wonderland with over 440+ games & activities towards team building and experiential education. He inspires facilitators, educators, and managers to empower grou...

"It's all about how you work with teams, not as a collection of individuals, but as a team, as an organism essentially. And that just completely changed the way that I facilitate and work with teams. "   Sara Nelson is the Senior Director of Design at PepsiCo, where she leads the charge of design thinking programs forward to drive key outcomes.  Sara seeks to uncover the patterns & relationships h...

"Universities have the opportunity to create micro-credentials, unbundle their education and then drive them[students] to a different ecosystem in terms of a lifelong learning model that is aligned to industry. "   Matt Alex is the Co-Founder of Beyond Academics, where he guides the Future of Work and Digital Transformation divisions to gather the most brilliant minds of higher education, entrepre...

"I think there's a real power in a community and having a community of diverse backgrounds.  I feel our unique position with the Facilitation Lab gives facilitators the opportunity to not only practice in a safe and inclusive environment with other facilitators of different backgrounds, but also that there aren't a lot of unique spaces for and by facilitators to openly do just that. "   Kierra Joh...

"I think that people have been trying to facilitate these virtual meetings and they're pretty dry in a lot of ways, but they get the point across and that's good, but they're finding maybe a lack of productivity that happens when people just feel like this mundane day-to-day. "   Rachael Green is the CEO and Founder at Rach Green Cocktails, where she uses high level hospitality, spirits and cockta...

"The only assumptions that can hurt our products are the ones we don't know about. I lean into the assumptions, I say, "Let's get them all out on the table." Let's align around them, because until we get all of you guys aligned, we're not going to be able to change your minds anyway. "   Tamara Adlin is a UX expert and consultant who helps startups, and companies who want to behave more like start...

"Using the other person's words is the nearest thing that the FBI has to a Jedi mind trick, because when the other person hears their words coming back, what they think is that person is using words like mine, therefore, they must be like me, therefore, I should like them. "   Judy Rees is a consultant at Rees McCann where she leads a community of trainers, facilitators, producers and others who w...

" I think about creativity as toggling between wonder and rigor to solve problems and the way we can get better at that toggling, the way we can get better at exercising our creativity is through what I call the three I's. And the three I's are inquiry, improvisation and intuition."   Natalie Nixon is a creativity strategist and president of Figure 8 Thinking, where she helps leaders achieve trans...

" I often say that the facilitators who have been in this profession for over seven, eight, 10 years, we've been very fortunate to learn through trial and error. We made some errors, we got feedback, et cetera. Today I think there's less room for errors, which means peer reviews. I like what you said, if you are doing those practice sessions, that's when you have got to put people through situatio...

" Well, with this pandemic, I decided I'm going to buy a Nintendo Switch. And I bought the Switch, and I'm very excited because everybody talked about Animal Crossing, and I was like, "I can't wait to play." And "I can't wait to play Mario Kart." And so, I got my Switch, and years ago I had carpal tunnel issues in my right hand, and so I started doing a lot of things with my left hand. And when I...

" Well, it's funny you say that, because the biggest issue I find is that people overestimate their ability, simple term is cultural competence, but more accurately is, they overestimate their ability to navigate across cultures effectively. They think they're in one place, because they made an investment. They're super excited about this work. They know it's the right thing to do. They made the b...

"S eeing patterns in the data, that's where framing insights matter. And the massive amount of data that I've collected, what are the insights, the key insights that come out? What are the patterns that I can see, that point to an opportunity for the future? What are the patterns and problems that people are facing that tells me there is a need that needs to be solved. So all those questions about...

"... developing a model around strategic conversation, which answers two critical questions of strategy, where are we going? And how will we get there? And constantly focusing on those two questions and understanding that. Within about 10 years, I learned that there was an underlying structure to these conversations. That there's an underlying predictable structure to the conversations. They're fi...

" That playbook is completely outdated, and it's dangerous. If you applied a 20th century mindset to a 21st century world, we're going to be much more hurt. How can we think about a way in which business and society can thrive together? We have to exist in a place of constant learning, a place of much more caring, and a place where we think about long-term value creation as opposed to short-term p...

"... part of what we're looking at is what you're describing with meeting airtime and inclusivity. There's also a whole other element to how AI can support the right behaviors in meetings and be able to, for example, not only take in information around who's talking, but things like voice level. When people are getting heated, when their body level changes, they shift from leaning in, to sitting b...