Unprofessionalism

Bitten by the magic bug at a bar mitzvah when he was 12-years old, and led on a lifelong journey from teacher, to coach, to psychologist and magician, is Dr Ben Levy. Now the founder of Magic Lessons, he’s on a mission to make learning feel exactly that – magical! Blending magic and psychology, Ben teaches a five-ingredient secret formula for high achievement in the classroom and the boardroom, al...

The conversations we dread, the ones we avoid, and the ones that hold so much emotional weight – are often the ones we wish we’d had sooner. So why do we fear them so much? As a recovering people-pleaser, I know the drill all too well: the bubbling resentment, the unmet needs, and the stories we fabricate in our minds. But rather than run from the difficult conversations in my life, I’ve learnt ho...

When we stop looking for the perfect question, when we choose to reflect rather than react, and when we wait and listen, for just a little while longer – it can change everything. Public speaker, serial entrepreneur and owner of Consider, Chedva Ludmir has made it her mission to help others embrace curiosity, listen deeply, and make friends with uncertainty.  Together, we explore the power of aski...

Leaders, who’s really running the business? Is it you, or is it your inner child in the boardroom chair, with all of your messy, unresolved childhood patterns, triggers, and attachment styles running the show? Here to help us find the healed, playful inner child is Jason Perelso! He has spent the past quarter of a century helping brilliantly flawed humans to better understand themselves, destigmat...

Stale, stuffy boardrooms, awkwardly arranged furniture, and scratchy marker-pens that have nearly run dry. A facilitator’s lament – and perhaps, our worst enemy. Tired of the constant shapeshifting to squeeze into spaces that were never meant for facilitation, Matt Homann moved into the business of hosting people – in his own space. He built Filament, a facilitation space with a codified approach...

One of the greatest paradoxes of leadership is that to lead well, you must learn to let go. To get comfortable with not having all the answers! To release your grip, relinquish control, and know that the wisdom already exists in everyone around you. Professor, coach and facilitator to the next generation of leaders, Rob Lion has spent the last 20 years fostering self-leading workplace cultures tha...

Context is everything. But when we remove ourselves from the tried-and-tested playing board of our work environment, to rewrite the rules and become new characters on fresh, unchartered ground? Everything changes. On a mission to create a world where people play to learn, Mohsin Memon returns to the show, now as the mastermind of Evivve. His new multiplayer, leadership strategy simulation immerses...

If facilitation was a mirror, what would you see? Would there be frameworks propping you up, a lingering desire to be liked, or insecurities sat atop your shoulder, quietly whispering in your ear? In his new book Facilitating Reflections, the one and only Thomas Lahnthaler holds up this mirror for us all. He invites us to go inward, to step out of the buzzword charade, to close the theory books, a...

Curation is far more than an artistic act – it is a political one! It’s what’s to leave in, what to take out, what to filter and what to frame. And through this sense-making assembly, it becomes an invitation: to pay attention, to expand our minds, and to stumble into serendipitous encounters. And nothing masters this quite like TED. Curator of ideas, and a 20-year shaper of the TED conferences, B...

Hailing from Quaker circles and Berkeley’s grassroots community movements in the 1960s, is the sagacious Parker J. Palmer – activist, facilitator, teacher and author. His unconventional entry into facilitation was piqued by a fascination with circle-work, which inspired a 30+ year career spent holding space for the mutable truth to emerge. This is a wise, thoughtful conversation grounded in a life...

How do we host ourselves as facilitators – and how do we host others? How do we grow bigger minds to meet the complexity out there, and then rest in it without needing to know the answers? Marco Valente joins me for a big, juicy and mind-opening conversation as we navigate the inner workings of the growing self – and the leader – to better understand the messy, unpredictable complexities of our wo...

Helping people to do their best thinking, is Amanda Cookson. A coach, facilitator and all-round neuroscience whizz, she’s made it her mission to help leaders better understand what it means to be human. And it all starts with our own thinking-feeling, wildly brilliant, untamed brain! She guides us through its inner workings with effervescence and passion, showing us how to work with it – rather th...

The greatest myth of creativity? It doesn't fall from the sky into our laps like Isaac Newton’s apple! Creativity is far from that romantic, eureka moment, but rather it is messy, cultivated, and curiosity made manifest. Luckily for us, Amy Climer has created a system to go about finding this elusive, but valuable novelty with intention – consistently and at scale. A TEDx speaker,  trainer an...

When you think of an intelligent person, who do you imagine? Perhaps they’re scholarly, quick-thinking, or possess a rare ability to seemingly know all that there is to know. But intelligence is infinitely more than this! As Daniel Susser teaches us this week, intelligence is greater than the sum of our cognitive parts: it is bodily, inter-connected and contextual. It is a tapestry of inherited, m...

For every word we swallow, every moment we dilute ourselves, and every time we say ‘yes’ when really, we want to say ‘no’, we collect a pebble into our backpack of life. The fantastic duo that is Pete Jordan and Tuulia Syvänen from Honesty Europe join us this week to help us offload these pebbles: showing us the way to live lightly, freely, and in a radical act of resistance, to be ourselves! We e...

What does facilitation have in common with quantum physics? What do organisations have to do with molecules? And why when you ask a question, are you playing around with someone’s mind? All will be revealed this week with Jimmie White! A seven-times best-selling author, an indomitable facilitator that has trained The Peace Corps and supported NASA with somatic integration, and in a past life, a te...

Sometimes, just sometimes, you meet someone who is a balm to the soul, who speak words of wisdom, magic, and nurturing depth. Quanita Roberson has this gift - and she returns to the show to share it with us once again! Mingling spiritual intelligence with raw human experience, Quanita guides us generously through the messy yet beautiful terrain of healing, as we trace emotions back to their source...

A pair of flimsy plastic headphones, a voice in your ears bombarding you with dates, names and historical periods, and a momentary pause at each work of art as you side-step the seemingly disinterested guided tour. If this sounds familiar, then museum facilitator and author Claire Bown is here to bring the museum alive for you! She reimagines the experience by making space for curiosity, conversat...

Can we explore the future as if it were an archaeological site? Instead of predicting trends or following hype cycles, future archaeologist Markus Iofcea uncovers artifacts - fragments of possible futures - that help us rethink what’s to come. Future archaeologist, co-author of the book Zurück zur Zukunft, and all-round inspiring mind, Markus Iofcea, is here to tell us that yes, the future can be...

Facilitation isn’t just about guiding a process—it’s about creating meaning. And in this episode, Jim Kalbach, author of The Jobs To Be Done: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs , shares how facilitation and Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) go hand in hand. We dive into the art of moving from insight to action, exploring how facilitators and leaders can use JTBD to break thr...

It’s an art form, but it’s not rocket science. It’s courageous , but it’s not not cushy or comforting. And it’s saying no in meaningful ways, rather than saying yes to everything. Psychological safety is as much about what it’s not , as what it is . It’s a phenomenon that’s nuanced, ephemeral and often misconceived, asking all of us - facilitator and participant - to hold out our arms to discomfor...

As executive coach Akshay Kapur will tell you, silence isn’t just a pause - but spaciousness that allows for someone to jump into its still, shiny waters. And our conversation this week was a celebration of these gorgeous, ripe spaces in between. The moments before asking the right question, the invitation that comes before an answer, and the needs that reveal themselves when we listen deeply, and...

Bringing beautiful indigenous wisdom to the complexities of trauma-resolution is Louise Marra. A facilitator and occasional human-fielder, Louise joins me for a conversation about finding our way back: to a healed state, to the earth, to ourselves.  Louise opens up her trauma first aid kit in episode 309: what to do when trauma arises in group dynamics, how to resource yourself, how to reroot the...

The journey of the facilitator is rarely linear. It’s often happily accidental, a little squiggly, and punctuated with moments of imposter as we take it from the side-hustle shadows, to big centre-stage business. And Kerri Price can attest to this - after facilitating for what felt like a lifetime, she found herself pressing pause - only to return to the facilitation world with fresh, mindful clar...

If joy was an episode, then it would be episode 307. Welcome back, for the third time, to Jacques The Party Scientist, sober rave host, and social norm disruptor! I’ve witnessed Jacques’ journey for quite some years now as he’s facilitated joy, spread his natural antidepressants, and created experiences that unite people through the hedonism of human connection. He joins us with a party bag of lif...