100 - The nuggets that make workshops work - with 14 listeners

What does it take to make workshops work? And how can we facilitate collaboration that sticks and leads to results? My name is Myriam Hadnes, and with the Workshops Work podcast, I'm on the mission to find the magic ingredients that make workshops work. Today with me on the show are 14 listeners who share generously their magic ingredients that they learned From 100 episodes on the show. And if you want to find more nuggets, why don't you visit workshops.work/ebook to get the compilation of the one-page summaries that I have written so far for each episode in a beautiful design, something Robin has shared as her overall nugget. And now, intro.

Hi, my name is Robin Myretisch, and like many of you, I am a meeting facilitator. Each week when I receive Myriam's email announcing that week's podcast, I look forward to reading the one-page summary especially. These summaries highlight key points from the podcast, and the guests always give me something to think about with their many insights, tips, and techniques. Thank you to them, but especially thank you and congratulations to Myriam for reaching the 100th podcast episode. Myriam, I appreciate all that you do for the facilitation community. Thank you so much.

Before we get to the nuggets related to the facilitator's mindset, workshop design, facilitation itself, and beyond, we'll start with the ground rules that seem to make workshops work in general. So to get the best out of the group, we have to first of all create the safe space, the environment in which Participants feel safe and secure enough to speak up and to really bring forth their best version of themselves and their full creativity. Our brains just function best when we feel safe to explore. Otherwise, if we feel endangered— and this danger can also be triggered by simple email, to be honest— so if we feel endangered, our animal instincts will drive our thinking and our behavior. In this sense, Ana-Maria found her nugget on how to create psychological safety during my interview with Thomas.

Hi, my name is Ana-Maria Dorgo, and I am the Learning and Development Manager at Accentate. One of the many insights that stuck with me after listening to Myriam's podcast was mentioned by Thomas Landhaller on episode 39. And he spoke about curiosity and attention as perfect catalysts for creating psychological safety within a group. Some of the tips are to start with an unexpected exercise that takes the group slightly out of their comfort zone, or even arranging the room in an unusual way to catch them by surprise. Then invite them to reflect and share around this experience, and that's exactly the moment when the connection and the safe space is created.

Since as facilitators we are in charge to hold the space for the participants and to keep the safety intact, we really have to make sure that we are managing the space between our ears. So one recurrent threat that came up throughout all the interviews is the importance of remaining centered as facilitators. Jeremy called it mindset management, so that we don't confuse our inner voices with the voices in the room. Mary Alice Arthur beautifully referred to the concept as hosting ourselves. And Laure found her nugget in exactly this conversation with Mary Alice Arthur on episode Hi, my name is Laure Cohen.

I am an Appreciative Inquiry facilitator. My biggest workshop aha moment came from episode 58 with Mary Alice Arthur, How to Master the Art of Facilitation and Hosting, when I learned about the fourfold process: learn how to host, Each other, including yourself. What is your practice? Be hosted in the conversation, contribute, and co-create the conversation. There was also a beautiful quote from Goethe: stay in the question for long enough for it to become alive within you and show the way. Far away.

Speaking about the facilitator's mindset, there are a few concepts that seem to be central as they kept on returning on several episodes. So there's, for instance, the concept of neutrality, whether this is actually an unreachable goal, as Paul recently pointed out. There's a concept of courage to sit in discomfort with a group, while they are storming towards a shared solution or outcome. And the concept of curiosity to understand and to explore without judging. And in fact, these traits are also making up the researcher's mindset, the ability to remain open to whatever the group comes up with and to help them in the process of connecting the dots. This concept of the researcher's mindset that I have explored in my solo episode number 18 is something that Richard could strongly relate to.

Hi, my name is Richard Dalla Rosa. I'm a UX designer. My biggest learning is from episode 18, Myriam's interview with herself. My aha moment when I was listening to that episode was realizing that facilitators are actually researchers and they're on a quest to find answers that lead to solving problems together with people in the room or their participants who on their own couldn't solve them as completely. So the research project becomes a group project and a co-creation together with all the participants. I thought it was brilliant. Thanks, Myriam.

When it comes to the high art of facilitation, it's the purpose that must be the driver and at the core of everything that will follow after. When we know the honest reason why we ask for the group's time and attention, anything else will follow smoothly. It will make it easier to actually decide who must be in the workshop and also what kind of exercises or activities we're gonna create, what kind of experience we want to design. In a similar context, Gabriel found his nugget on episode 91, the interview with Shane.

What was a nugget, a learning or aha moment For me, from listening to workshops work? Well, there have been so many, but there was something that stuck with me recently that Shane Smart said, which I really, really liked. And it was a distinction between experience and changing someone internally versus problem solving and addressing challenges as a facilitator. His exact quote was, If I wanted to change someone internally, I would give them an experience. If I want to answer a problem, a challenge, or a piece of research, then I would give them a series of exercises to perform. I really like this because I tend to work and include both in my designs and application of my ideas, but they are 2 distinct things, and I think that at times I merge both when I don't need to, when really my objective is giving an experience, or really the purpose should be the problem solving or challenge solving. So having it said in such a simple and direct manner was an aha moment that I am taking with me and look forward to including in my further thinking. Thank you, Myriam. Great podcast. Keep on doing it. Looking forward to being on the show too.

And independently of the purpose of a session, there's this one thing that all the podcast guests would agree with, and it's the importance of a proper check-in. This is actually what ties a workshop design into the facilitation skills itself. An intentional beginning sets the tone and allows the group to slow down to later speed up. A check-in allows them to arrive in the space mentally. Because we cannot expect participants to arrive with a free and open mind to the session. Most leave something unfinished behind. They might rush from one meeting to the next. So in their mind, they're still lagging behind. In the same spirit, it is equally important to also leave time for reflection at the end because We cannot expect the participants to make time for the deeper reflection and note-taking after the session. This is a concept that Annie picked up from episode 20 with Wayne.

Hi, Myriam. This is Annie, and I'm a copywriter and messaging strategist, and I use workshop facilitation to facilitate virtual brand story workshops with my copywriting clients. And My biggest aha moment happened in episode 20 with Rainn talking about the importance of reflection and to create experiences. And I think especially with virtual experiences, it's so tempting to use every second of your time up until the last minute, and then you kind of cut off the Zoom call and the goodness of the exercise kind of seeps out. So, since listening to that episode, I've really put extra focus into including some type of reflection exercise at the end of every workshop, even if it's just a couple of minutes. And I think it's made a big difference. So thank you and happy 100th!

And after the proper check-in, everything that counts is a proper preparation and the facilitation skills. The good thing is that once you master the art of facilitation, actually Doesn't really matter who your audience is, who is in the group. And it doesn't matter whether you're in the physical space or in the virtual space. That's something that Giulio is pointing out.

Hey there, I'm Giulio Maria Muhoro. I was the guest at episode 96 of Workshops Work podcast. And something that I've learned with not only just my interviews, but really interviews from other guests, is that facilitation is essentially the same. Doesn't really matter if you're facilitating a workshop, if you're facilitating a meeting, or you're trying to facilitate a transformation in your life. Facilitation at its core is the same. And also, it doesn't really matter if you're facilitating a group of C-level suite executives or young entrepreneurs in Southern Africa. It really comes down to what does it take for you to make it easier for a person or a group of people to go from point A to point B. And that has been so rewarding and reassuring that yes, our work as facilitators, it's much needed in this world.

Throughout the interviews with facilitators of collaboration, with experts in their field, I came to realize that facilitation skills are something we can apply Not only in workshops, meetings, or gatherings, but also in our daily lives as partners, as educators, as entrepreneurs. That's a concept that Gabrielle on episode 95 referred to as workshop your life. It's a model of agility, of mental agility, which plays a crucial role as it implies the ability to think in prototypes and in small steps instead of in irreversible project plans, no matter what we are aspiring to do. It is a mindset that helps us to reach out to others, to test solutions and reiterate constantly so that we can fail forward. Martijn found his gem, referring to agility, in my conversation with Nissa.

Hi, my name is Martijn Benjamin Teichler and I'm the Head of Software Engineering at Fastned. I found quite a few gems in episode 59 with Nissar. Mostly the explanation of Nissar that Agile is a mindset rather than a framework or toolset is something I could strongly relate to and found confirmation in what he was saying. That it's about learning as quick as possible, either succeeding or failing, and to apply in retrospect small iterations, which is extremely useful in figuring out how to do things. And that means anything. So being on a quest myself to evangelize that agility goes beyond being useful for software projects and promote it as a mindset you can apply to anything, I still find resistance when coming around with a view like this. So it's very nice to get confirmation that I'm not alone thinking in this direction, and that's especially when you're swimming upstream. So that was very useful for me. So thank you for that, Myriam. Good luck with the next 100. And I will be on the lookout for more of these gems.

Ciao!

Hi, this is Andrew. I'm a facilitator and Head of Customer Success at SessionLab, the dynamic workshop planner tool. More than 30,000 facilitators, trainers, and coaches use our workshop planner tool and save time and effort in the design process. So how do they do it? Our drag-and-drop agenda builder makes it easy to transform your ideas into high-quality workshops. And the timing of your agenda automatically updates when you make changes. You can collaborate in real time with your colleagues and easily share professional-looking printouts with your clients. And if you need inspiration, you can check out our library of more than 500 activities and exercises and simply drag the ones you need right into your workshop agenda. So check out SessionLab to save time and effort in your workshop design process.

And now get your first 2 months of SessionLab Pro absolutely free at sessionlab.com/ As a listener to the show, you might have realized that I can pretty much geek out on the fact that facilitation became such a crucial skill. And actually, with every interview, I became more and more convinced of the fact that facilitation is the next most important management skill. While we expected every manager to master presentation skills back in the '90s, and all the managers went to take presentation skill courses, I think that we now must expect them to master facilitation skills, to make meetings matter, even if it's a short daily stand-up. It is the skill that they need to make the team members speak up, to give each of them the chance to participate and to contribute. Sonja, a specialist in meeting culture herself, found her gem in the conversation with Gustavo.

Hi, my name is Sonja Hahnau, and I'm on the mission to help people to have less but better meetings. And therefore, one of my favorite episodes is episode 26, where Gustavo said something like, stop having meetings on autopilot, because that is something I encounter really often. That people have meetings simply because they are in their calendars. And I love the idea of asking first, why are we going to have these meetings? What do we want to achieve? And only if we find an answer to this question, really have this meeting. And if we don't find an answer, then the best thing we could do is to cancel the meeting.

On my quest to find the magic ingredients that make workshops work, I came across professionals who would not necessarily consider themselves facilitators. In fact, some of them don't even spend any time in workshops as we know them. And still, they taught me that we can enrich our facilitation practice and skills By learning from other disciplines, such as video game designers, like Colleen shared on episode 57 on what we can learn about facilitation from video game design. On episode 81, I learned from Howard what we can learn from DJs. And on episode 6, I was amazed what we can learn from the clown in my interview with Steph. Joe, he found his gem on episode 69, listening to my interview with Nick and the concept of unflattening.

Hi, my name is Joe Clark and I'm a freelance copywriter and marketer. My favorite aha moment from the first 100 episodes of the show was in episode 69 with Nick Sousanis. I think Nick's theory of unflattening is applicable to Every professional and creative pursuit. The idea that how we see things is inherently limited and that we're looking at a problem from just one angle of an infinite number continues to influence how I work today. This episode taught me to look outside of my assumptions and challenge my core beliefs when I start anything new. Since listening to this episode, I'm always trying to see how opposite or unrelated forces can inform each other and provide a more complete vision of what I'm working on.

While facilitators might be reluctant to sign up for a clown workshop or a DJ course, I believe that they definitely must consider taking improv classes. Not only because we base our practice on similar principles such as yes-ending any offer or putting down our clever and making our partners and the group Look good, always. The ability to remain nimble is the most important skill I think that we can learn from improv theater. As facilitators, we spend so much time preparing workshops, going through the exercises, and planning everything in the last detail. And still, once a group session starts, it usually gets off track because we don't control group dynamics. Almost never it seems like the best idea to actually stick to the script. This is when improv comes into play, and this is where Samantha found her gem in episode 16.

Hi everybody, my name is Samantha. I'm an aspiring facilitator and former secondary school teacher. My biggest aha moment came from episode 16, listening to Myriam and her guest Tamar. discuss why every facilitator should take improv classes. I've been doing improv for a little while, and it really struck me at how much I could incorporate from that into facilitating as a practice. So I highly recommend you go check out that episode and also take some improv classes if you can.

When we practice facilitation, then it's not only about designing the way how we meet or thinking about the process and the exercises, but it pretty much also takes into consideration where we meet. The environment which we create for our participants is part of the careful preparation process, as it will set the tone of the experience we are creating. This is a concept that I have also explored with Eike on episode 55, when we spoke about beauty and how beauty is less about design than about care. If participants can feel that we care for them, for the insights, and for the outcomes, they will be more open and they will be more willing to share their best versions of themselves, their insight, their knowing, so that we can achieve the impossible together. Nadja found her aha moment of the Workshops Work podcast on episode 88 about art-based learning.

Hi, I'm Nadja von Holzen and I'm a facilitator coach supporting others to have great meetings and workshops. My biggest Workshop Work aha moment came from episode 88, A Virtual Museum as a Workshop Space. Listening to Romina Scheppers triggered definitely something in me. How we meet matters and where we meet too. Being surrounded by art, this is something I want to try out in one of my next workshops as soon as it is possible again.

I must admit that before starting the podcast, I was pretty much ignorant of the power of visual facilitation. But then from my guests, I learned that visuals help us to put the meetings on the wall, like I learned from Matthias, or to make all voices heard, as Sam shared, to make minutes more accessible, as Mireille shared, and to assure equal understanding of the outcomes by everyone. This is where Anna M. found her nugget in the conversation with Celine, who calls the visual The third facilitator in the room.

Hi, my name is Ana M. Marin, and I am a coach, a facilitator, and a communication specialist. My biggest workshop work aha moment came from episode 49, the one with Céline about the third facilitator in the room, because I have so many things in common with her story. My journal is full of drawings. I use the walls at my workplace to teach people to draw in 5-step tutorials. And the use of graphic facilitation in my training and coaching sessions offers support for a clear picture according to my clients. Listening to your conversation with Céline made me realize that I invite the drawings and doodles into my sessions, and they hold a powerful role equal to mine. I've always looked at the ability to visually represent as a tool, not as a co-facilitator. So after that episode, the perspective changed for me, and I don't dismiss the process anymore when people marvel over it. Now I am grateful to have that as an important part of my training and coaching sessions, because when everything turned to full online, I adapted and took the visual facilitation with me in my sessions, even if it meant a new journey, because now we are a team. So thank you and your guests for being an inspiration.

If I had known where this podcast journey would take me, maybe I would have never started. If I had known that I would spend 8 hours or even more per week for almost half a year on just the podcast, maybe I wouldn't have started. If I had known that I would still spend weekends to write the one-page summaries, Maybe I wouldn't have started. But what a pity would this have been! I would have missed out of most of the joy that my business brings me today. I wouldn't be the facilitator I am because almost everything that I know about facilitation I've learned from my podcast guests. Today, the podcast not only led me to change my business name from iDays to Workshops Work, But it actually grew to be the backbone of my business. Without the podcast, I would have not started the Never Done Before Facilitation Festival, a crazily bold project. It was the beginner's mindset that took me to where I am. It is our beginner's mindset that takes us where we want to be. And it's the people we surround ourselves with that help us to get there. and to achieve the unthinkable. Like Patrick Cowden, who sent me a, sure, let's do it, when I asked him to record episode 1 for the podcast. And I didn't even have a microphone back then. And there were my podcast heroes who joined me on the first facilitation festival called Never Done Before. It's on a special episode where Michelle Howard actually interviewed me on the Never Done Before journey. that Lucy found her nugget from Workshops Work.

Hi, Myriam. It's Lucy Agolini here, a user interface designer based in Amsterdam and a big-time fan of the show. I've enjoyed so many of your episodes, but actually the one that I loved the most was the episode where you were interviewed, because I thought it was just such a lovely collection of all the insights you've gathered from your various podcasts and the people you've met along the way. And there was one thing that really stuck out for me, which was when you were describing the Never Done Before Festival process, and, and you said had you known beforehand what work would have gone into it, you would never have started it in the first place, which I don't believe. I think you still would have. But it was, um, a really nice reminder that as you go through the process of really sticky projects where everything gets a a little bit messy in the middle and you feel like you're wading through the mud and you're never going to get to the end. But in actual fact, there is a turning point. And at the end, you do end up doing something wonderful and the mess is cleared up and organized and gets great feedback. And so I think Your Never Done Before Conference was wonderful and it truly was something that was never done before. And in light of that, it spurs me on when I'm having hard days and it feels a little bit muddy messy. And I know that there will be a corner I will turn at some point, and everything will all start coming together again and making sense. So thank you for reminding me that sometimes you just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other, soldiering on, and all will be well in the end. Thank you again for your podcasts. I love them.

So that was it. Episode 100 done. At the time I'm recording this, we attract Almost 3,000 plays per month, and you're one of them. I appreciate your time and your attention. And now, obviously, I'm curious, what are your nuggets from the show? What have you learned from 100 episodes of Workshops Work? Please feel free, reach out to me, send me a little text. I would love to hear from you. And if you have the magic ingredient, that makes workshops work? Let me know. Maybe you'll be the next guest on the show. And for now, stay happy and healthy. Thank you so much for sharing your most important resources with me, your time and your attention. Talk to you soon. Thank you for staying tuned and listening to the show. I appreciate your attention as I know how busy you are. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and engage by sharing your comments and thoughts and visit workshops.work to download the one-page summary. I'm looking forward to seeing you back at the next episode, and I wish you a fruitful day.