Unprofessionalism

Facilitation is a lot of things: we’d all agree on and understand it as a verb. Many of us would identify it as a profession. But how many of us understand it as a business? Mireille Beumer wasn’t always in the business of facilitation. Yes, she was a freelancer offering facilitation services, but it took a little while longer for her to step into entrepreneurship and create her facilitation busin...

In times of strife - whether it’s a global health crisis or our neighbours at war - what role does facilitation play? Can we hope to change the world one workshop at a time?  These are challenging questions with wide-ranging consequences, but I can think of few facilitators better equipped to answer them than Quanita Roberson and Tenneson Woolf. Both have been guests on this show previously, but n...

What will the most successful teams look like in the future of work? How is consultancy changing? How can businesses improve their knowledge management and sharing? Believe it or not, Marilyn Zakhour and I manage to fit all of these topics (and several more) into this episode. Marilyn is a fascinating person - from her multi-hyphenate career to her ease of conversation. Since 2020, when she left h...

We meet online, we meet in-person, and sometimes we combine them to host hybrid meetings. But what happens when we bridge the gaps between physical and digital spaces and merge them together? Thomas de Ming is the person to ask - with his ongoing explorations of and research into 'phygital' meetings. The meteoric rise in popularity of the metaverse is plenty proof enough that more and mo...

If you think of adventure education, do you imagine rock climbing, swinging from trees, and kayaking down flowing streams? For Phil Brown, Lead Trainer at High 5 Adventure Learning Centre, it looks more like overcoming vulnerability and supporting one’s peers. Adventure education is facilitation in action - literally. The act of exploring and adventuring stretches far beyond the physical experienc...

We communicate with our words, our bodies, our facial expressions, our posture, our movements, and much more. So, what happens if a workshop is reduced to voices and nothing else? Are disagreements more likely? Does the structure change? How can we facilitate collaboration when most of our communicative senses are dulled? If there's anyone to answer these complex questions, it's Leanne H...

Sara Huang’s ‘three R’s’ of facilitation make for a reliable North Star in workshop environments. And, in our age of sometimes-online-sometimes-in-person-sometimes-hybrid meetings, having a reliable and familiar formula to fall back on can be a huge relief. This episode is, ostensibly, about online facilitation and how things have changed since Sara and I last spoke (episode 60) at the outbreak of...

Nicole Dessain is a consultant, Design Thinker, and proud ‘recovering perfectionist’ - and sees those three labels as closely related. Her work in HR consultancy is informed by her training in Design Thinking. In turn, this has taught her to value process over perfection. Through Design Thinking, Working Out Loud, and facilitation, Nicole has found brilliant insights into HR - some breakthroughs,...

There’s no room for frivolities like board games in the boardroom… Right? Not so, says Janek Panneitz!  Janek is a facilitator, trainer, moderator, and a certified board game superfan and, as with so many guests on this podcast, has found a fascinating way of joining dots between his professional and personal passions. Janek has been exploring and experimenting with the serious implications and ef...

David Mead is made for this podcast - and not because he's a speaker, consultant, and communicator... David's commitment and insights into leadership have taken him across the world, where he coaches teams and leaders towards closer relationships, stronger cultures, and genuine trust. In this episode, we explore what it means to build trust, create consistency, and stepping up into our r...

Is ‘facilitation’ the wrong word for what we do with corporate clients? Jordan Bower thinks it might be and proposes a new terminology to better suit our work… Welcome to ‘corporate therapy’! Jordan and I discuss some big questions in this episode, including the future of facilitation, how to focus on individuals when working with a corporate, and whether one-off workshops are a waste of everyone’...

Some might not expect an introverted, neurodivergent woman like Sharon Leigh to ‘fit’ with facilitation. But anyone can access, practice, and succeed with it – as Sharon knows from personal experience.  In fact, Sharon doesn’t just fit with facilitation – she excels at it. Together, we cover a huge amount of ground in the world of facilitation, taking in the sights of inclusion, digital spaces, an...

Manal Sayid is a fascinating person, speaker, and podcast guest - as she proves in this episode of workshops.work! Her experience ranges from the suicide prevention helpline of Distress Centres Toronto, to all manner of corporate and third sector facilitation roles. And she’s achieved it all without an obvious role model or well-trodden footsteps to follow. We bring all of this together in this ep...

Being a facilitator is one thing, but Stephen Berkeley is on a mission to live a facilitative life. This idea is incredibly intriguing - can it be done? How do we walk the line between staying curious and ‘coaching’ our relationships? Is it possible to use silence as a tool in our day-to-day lives? Stephen joins me in this episode to explore all of the above and much more. We wind our way through...

There are a few questions that come up every week - no matter who the guest is, no matter what our topic of conversation is. One of them - and possibly my favourite - is: “What makes a workshop fail?” We learn so much more from our failures than our successes, which makes this section of the podcast a veritable goldmine of facilitation advice and learnings. It’s only sensible, then, to share answe...

A game is just a game - silly, playful, and only useful for breaking the ice, right? Not if you ask Sophia and Jed Lazar, who have designed a card game that helps participants share, listen, and connect in a deep way. Cozy Juicy Real has been tried everywhere from kitchen tables to corporate board rooms and its founding partners attest to the same results - strengthened connection and communicatio...

A nickname like “The Box Guy” belies Jimbo Clark’s effervescence and brilliance. In fact, Jimbo has spent many years trying to help us open the boxes we put ourselves in (or put over ourselves). And this mindset shift sits at the heart of our conversation in this episode - understanding the boxes we operate in and under, exploring what it means to step outside of them, and seeing what changes when...

From reframing problems to taking tips from MacGyver, Thomas Lahnthaler is full of great advice for anyone who has to manage a crisis. And as our conversation in this episode revealed, facilitators are never far from a crisis – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Thomas’ second time on the podcast brought just as much value as his first (episode 39), as we dive into the depths of crisis manage...

Sonja Hanau is the person 99% of working professionals have prayed for at one point or another. For Sonja is a Meeting Designer. In fact, Sonja is one of the best Meeting Designers you’ll ever meet. And she’s the guest on this week’s episode, bringing her startling wisdom and clarity to our conversation in a way that truly energised me. We discuss everything from the big picture of the future of w...

Friday 19 November, 2021 marked the second NeverDoneBefore Festival. In keeping with the spirit of the day, I elected to do something unique and, admittedly, daunting: a live podcast recording with anyone and everyone who wished to participate. No agenda, no plans, no idea what we’d discuss.  Eight wonderful conversations with eight wonderful facilitators from across the globe followed. Now we’ve...

Using “yes-and”, following the flow, and focusing on the process as much as the outcomes… Is this improv or facilitation? The two share a lot in common! When we combine them, we can create amazing, immersive workshops. And that’s exactly what I discuss with Shannon Hughes in this week’s episode. Shannon dedicates her work to generating ‘aliveness’ – helping leaders come alive and bringing confiden...

The building blocks of facilitation can be considered as quite practical, tangible things: workshops, agendas, exercises, timing, and tools. Underpinning these facilitation essentials, though, are intricate psychological and behavioural phenomena. This week’s episode is the perfect testament to that truth. Karen Schmidt – the founder of the international innovation community, ‘Over the Fence’ – jo...

Urban planning is the discipline of creating shared, public spaces. It could easily be mistaken for large-scale facilitation by design! Peter Munthe-Kaas can speak confidently for both disciplines, as a seasoned urban planner turned facilitator. He has such a unique perspective on what it means to create a beautiful, shared space and the missteps we can take in designing collaborative, communal ex...

Circles are everywhere: in nature, our biology, our art. There’s something sacred and special about them. So what happens when we introduce them to our facilitation practice? This week, I dive into ‘circle’ facilitation with Jonathan Hefter, the Head of Experience Design, Facilitation, & Training at Circl.es. We start by setting a mutual understanding of great facilitation; before diving into...

LEGO Serious Play is an increasingly popular method of facilitation and one that we’ve explored previously on the podcast, but I wanted to dive into a little deeper and with a slightly more critical lens. I found the perfect person for the job - Sean Blair, a LEGO Serious Play trainer and facilitator and soon-to-be quadruple-published author on the topic. You could call him experienced in the subj...