Unprofessionalism

As my guest this week will tell you: to avoid a difficult conversation, is to choose the path of least resistance. But when leaders choose the easy way out? Nothing good ever comes from it; only rising frustrations, anxieties, and eventually, resignations. Luckily for us, Paul Falcone has had every difficult conversation in the book - and he’s written 17 of them! A three-decade career in HR, a sti...

Every leader has it in them to be a coach, if only they could stay curious a little longer. This was something Michael Bungay Stanier learnt early on as a youth crisis telephone hotline operator: the first answer is rarely the only answer. Better known for penning the #1 bestseller The Coaching Habit, a book that has found its way into the lives of over 1 million people, Michael’s coaching work is...

Words: they are abundantly, inescapably, everywhere in the world of work. Emails, documents, post-its, briefs, meetings, hushed whispers across the office. So why is it that so many organisations still find themselves on the wrong page from one another? Ask the multi-talented master of service design thinking, stand-up comedy, theatrical design and psychology-zoology, Adam StJohn Lawrence, and he...

Over the years, I’ve had many magnificent facilitators in the podcast chair who identify as trainers, and many talented trainers who identify as facilitators. Where does the line blur? Is there a line? Dare I ask, should there be? We settle it once and for all in this special LinkedIn Live conversation with my NDB Course Faculty! We discuss why Facilitation and Training exist on a spectrum with fl...

Imagine a landscape. Perhaps a snow-capped mountain top, studded with pine trees and whispers of clouds. Maybe a bird flutters past. Are there people there, or are you alone with the birds? If only daydreaming from your desk was seen as something to be revered - encouraged even, free from judgement. Well, Mike Parker is here to tell you why it should be! For when we let our minds wander from our d...

Everyone wants to feel like they belong - to places, purpose and people. But how many workplaces can say that they are truly inclusive and anti-racist places that people choose to belong? That is where Letesia Gibson comes in. As a navigator of systemic world views on issues such as race and misogyny, her work exists in the sphere of unlearning, helping organisations to rebuild themselves as place...

The daily exchange of messages, ideas, beliefs, hopes and thoughts, from the mundane to the magical, is what makes the world spin round. Conversations are everywhere! But sometimes, just sometimes, we don’t know how to have the conversations that need to happen - the conversations that can change everything. That’s where Shiao-yin Kuik comes in! As a cultural change strategist, she is a master at...

An extraordinarily curious mind that lives within the pages of books, Theresa Destrebecq has taken the joy of book club and twisted it into a circle of deep, experiential learning: welcome to Emerge Book Circles. In her circles, books become the ultimate impartial co-facilitator. She invites readers to move from the often solitary activity of reading, into a shared space where ideas bloom, shapesh...

If you were to create a formula for a high-performing team, what would it look like? Dave Kline, executive coach and trainer, accomplished writer, and co-founder of The MGMT Accelerator, a program designed to level-up the next cohort of leaders, has the code. And it’s one that he’s perfected over two decades, 250 group diagnostic sessions, 1000 performance evaluations, and many, many talented lead...

Arne van Oosterom shapeshifted from the creative coal face of consultancy life, selling beautiful shiny ideas, into the problem-oriented domain of design thinking, as a creative facilitator, leadership coach, trainer, and community architect.  But swapping aesthetic idea generation, for meaningful problem-solving that helps people to cultivate growth, demands a special duty of care for the most hu...

Starting your own facilitation brand can be daunting business. Thankfully, Jenny Millar, Kirsty Lewis and Michael Zipursky - three exceptionally wise and established founders - are here to teach you everything they wish they’d known sooner. The mistakes, the models, the pricing strategies, and all of the rich learning opportunities they’ve collected along the way. As you might have guessed, our sp...

Even as fully-fledged adults, there are many things about ourselves that we have yet to discover. Unexplored ideas, hidden pools of potential, and uncharted spaces we have yet to step into. That is why coaching exists; to become aware of what we didn’t know, to move from a state of unconscious incompetence, into one of conscious incompetence, realising our blindspots and delving bravely, unreserve...

Fellow power-podcaster and community creator, founder of The Human-Centered Design Network, and teacher of the next generation of thinkers and doers, Gerry Scullion’s impressive list of founding projects is a true testament to his 21-year mastery of ‘service’. Episode 269 is an education into this world; Gerry introduces us to the principles, theories and practices of Service Design, where it inte...

Have you ever found yourself stepping on a dance partner's toes? That's a bit what co-facilitation can feel like without the right rhythm and rapport. Together with Cate Czerwinski and Florentine Versteeg, felllow faculty members from our leadership through facilitation course and peers from the NeverDoneBefore community, we unpack the symphony of co-facilitation, from the powerful duets...

Gather around my podcast airwaves for a special hour of meaningful moments and messages, as Lindsey Caplan brings us into her world of gathering. A Hollywood screenwriter for Malcolm in the Middle, a Silicon Valley Organisational Psychologist and an educator for Dreamworks Animation, Lindsey is a miraculous mind with a showstopper of an oeuvre. Along the way, she’s gathered a collection of learnin...

A constant, unchoreographed dance of tension and harmony, of structure and emergence, of psychological safety and sincerity, of client and group: facilitation is an artful balancing act. And my guest this week Dr Jason Fox, is a master of equilibrium. A wise and mercurial keynote speaker and facilitator, he straddles the opposing realms of speaker presence and facilitator invisibility with shapesh...

From free jazz and the musical echelons of piano concerto, to indigenous beats and the didgeridoo, this week’s episode is an invitation into the wondrous world of Music Thinking. Christof Zürn is the inventor of this mindset; his storied background in musicology, creative direction and service design became the symphony to his brainchild. He now helps organisations to apply the principles of music...

It is wonder, curiosity and imagination wrapped up in one. It is both a suspension from reality and way of navigating the world, a problem solver, a flow of creativity, a creative outlet, a language and a state of mind. It is: play! And true to its nature, we cannot possibly box play into one definition. Lily Higgins, Pauline McNaulty and Jules Gilleland join me in my digital playground this week...

We are all made of stars. The elements of our bodies were first forged in celestial matter across the cosmos billions of years ago. As humans, we tend to think of ourselves as separate from nature, but we are of course, nature itself. So when Life Guide, astrologist and founder of Happiness U, Alice Inoue introduced me to her fascinating psychometric assessment based on the five elements of ancien...

Earlier this year, SessionLab published the second edition of their State of Facilitation report, surveying the ever-evolving landscape of our profession. 93 countries, 372 hours spent answering the survey and a generous 975 respondents later, and the NeverDoneBefore community joins together with the SessionLab community to put the 2024 report findings under a facilitation magnifying glass in our...

From her debut in episode 53, to episode 261 many years later, my guest this week Tanja Murphy-Ilibasic makes her return to the podcast this week! Tanja is a corporate coach, facilitator and communications specialist - and a master at manifesting potential. But potential, the capacity for future success, is only possible with the right conditions at play and the energy to propel it forward. We unr...

The act of naming something gives it presence, it makes it visible. So how then, do we navigate something as infinite and nameworthy as facilitation, when invisibility is so often its modus operandi? Scrum-master, agile-coach and chief explorer of Exploration Labs, Charles-Louis de Maere joins me this week for a juicy, macro-to-micro exploration into facilitation as we toy with this question. We d...

This week we take a look through the iridescent, rainbow lens of leadership, with Dr Steve Yacovelli, aka ‘The Gay Leadership Dude™’, to ask the question: what does it mean to be a truly inclusive leader? Well beyond the DEI acronym and its all too often tick-box allyship mentality, we explore the essence of inclusive leadership and what every impactful leader can learn from the six competencies t...

Can I get your attention? Because this week, I have none other than Colonel Walt Holmes with me on the show, Air Force Commander, author, and master facilitator of community-based education. Walt has been helping individuals to progress through the ranks of military units – and of life – since the 1999s, designing the systems for success in both soldiers and students. His 5 levels of achievement o...

Dominant, supportive. Immediate value, gradual value. Explicit, implicit. Scarcity, abundance. Consultant, Facilitator. It might be tempting to view the roles of a consultant, and that of a facilitator, through these opposing dichotomies, but nothing is ever really that black and white. And as Benjamin Taylor and I speak about this week, there’s a great deal to be learnt from the intersection of t...